Pre-MBA preparations

I am yet to set foot on the CMU campus. The classes are still more than a month away. But the warm up has already started - to prepare me for the MBA marathon for the next two years. There is a list of action items lined up by Tepper that are supposed to keep us busy over the entire summer and make us better prepared before we start school.  

B-school is a big investment, both in terms of money and time. Like many others, I wanted to be prepared in whatever way possible, before I start school this fall. The action items are just what I was looking for. The action items include completing accounting workbook, attending webinars, building resume as per the tepper template, completing speech courses and refreshing quants basics.
The webinars have been a good way to provide insights into basic things like the importance of preparing your resume before the classes start and who should attend the different career fairs and what to expect from such career fairs. These are all student led webinars and thus provide the first hand experiences and learnings - which according to me are ‘golden’.

As far as the accounting workbook is concerned, it is a great way to kick start the next phase of academics for me. I have been out of academics for a while now, but I must say that the book has been designed in such a fashion that you do not get bored and at the same time it is an immense source of learning - specially with the interactive teaching material and the cases to test your understanding(which makes me go back to the material again and again). It already makes me feel that that I would be in the right hands for the next two years.   

If this was not enough, the Skype chat hosted by the South Asian Business Association Club at Tepper was the icing on the cake. In this chat, the Indian current students gave highlights of the different profiles out there. This was resourceful, enlightening and most importantly it was from the perspectives of international student, which at times makes all the difference.

I am also all geared up for the basecamp and the new curriculum. I have heard all good things from the seniors about both. The basecamp is supposed to give us a fair idea of different functions and a good medium to help us decide where our heart lies. Though I have my reservations. From my experience I have come to believe that a lot of expectations is not good and results in disappointments. However with the Tepper experience so far, I would give basecamp the benefit of doubt. It is a month long program and would give me the opportunity to interact with classmates,socialize with them and get to know them better. So even if I do not learn much(which will definitely not be the case) - when I start my semester, I am already set into the new place, be surrounded with friends and already start feeling at home. I am not sure if any other program does this. But I can definitely say that I am Teppered.

VISA'ed

The reporting time for the interview was 7:45 am. It was advised that I reach the US consulate half an hour before the reporting time. I had a bad experience of the huge serpentine line in front of the Consulate, and the last I was there - it took me 4-5 hours for the whole process. I had learnt the lesson the hard way. So I reached the Consulate by 6:30 am and even then there were around 60 people in front of me. I had got in touch with all the people who had already got their Visas and had a list of questions that the consulate officers had asked. While standing in the queue, I was trying to remember the questions and the possible answers. Getting bored in the queue, I started talking with an uncle standing right infront of me. I was surprised to find that he had no clue of the whole Visa process. He had paid for the services of an agent who had done all the paperwork for him. Though I felt good that I knew the process in and out, I still envied that person because I was not sure whether the effort was worth it or not. Anyways, I focused on the more important thing for which I was there. Finally, I entered the Consulate office. (Yes, for about an hour, I was still standing outside the office.) After the security check and an initial screening of my passport, my token number sticker was put on the passport. Then I was back in the queue again. At the next check post, they again took my passport and scanned it. It was 7:45 am and I was finally ready for the interview. The only issue was that the consulate officer would open the windows only at 8 am. While I waited, I felt quite at peace with myself and all the nervousness seemed to have evaporated. When the windows did open and the interview started, I saw a lot of people going back with their passports. That meant that their Visas were rejected. Nervousness was back ! When my token number was displayed along with the window number, I promptly went to the window only to find out that it was the same window where all the passports were being scanned.

They had made a mistake ! Why me God ?! Why can’t you get it done with !!!!!        

I was assigned another window. This is my conversation with the consulate officer:

Me: Good morning
CO: Good morning, give me your passport and I20.
(I promptly handed both my passport and I20 to him)
CO(After taking a look at my I20): Which course?
Me(thinking - isn’t it specified in the I20 itself !): MBA
CO(started scratching my L1 visa): Congratulations, your visa has been approved and you will get your passport in a week.
Me(relieved and a bit surprised): Thanks and have a nice day!!!

As is evident, the whole conversation wouldn’t have lasted for more than 15 seconds. Though I was surprised, that he did not ask me the usual questions - I was happy that I finally got it. Almost 5 months after the admit and with around 3 months of restlessness, I had finally got the Visa.(I would still suggest people to be thoroughly prepared because after talking to other admits I realized mine was indeed a special case and others were asked the usual run-of-the-mill questions)

I remember sharing my pessimism of the foreign sponsor with almost every other person I interacted with. I know people would have got sick of hearing the same thing again and again. But I could not help it. Only after I got my Visa, I felt relieved. It was only then that I started dreaming of my life at Tepper. Yes, I am a dreamer - what can i say !

I20, funding and beyond

So, I got admitted to Tepper School of Business. For me, the hardest part was over. It felt like it would be a joy ride from now on. This was all before I looked at the student Visa process. Damn me! Why do I still harbor such false beliefs of ‘Hardest Work Done, Smooth Road Ahead’ ?

Don’t get me wrong. The visa process is not a rocket science or anything, but it is not a piece of cake either.

The first and the foremost thing that I had to take care of was to show availability of funds (tuition plus living expenses) for the two years of the program. This is needed by the school to send the Certificate of Eligibility (I20) which in turn is needed during the Visa interview and also during immigration. The available options were – personal savings, an approved loan or an affidavit of support from someone who is ready to sponsor your education. I have an uncle in US who is a permanent resident and I would be taking a loan from US with him as the co-signer. But I had this weird preconceived notion that I would not be able to apply for the loan unless I have my VISA (Which by the way, is completely baseless and false notion). So with this belief, I thought I would show the funds through two sponsors - my uncle and a cousin who are both permanent residents in US. I had chosen this option – because lazy as I am, it was the easiest way out and involved the least effort from my side. Just when I was ready to send the documents to the school, a friend of mine told me about how having foreign sponsors increases the chances of Visa rejections. Since I did not want to take any chances with the Visa, I started looking for available alternatives. Showing funds of the tune of 150k dollars was a big deal for me and I guess for most others in India. With all the efforts, I could only manage 30k dollars which included borrowed money from my kind hearted friends. I convinced an uncle in India to sponsor for another 35k dollars. Still I needed 85k dollars and had no other option other than showing my uncle in the US as the other sponsor (It is not ideal to have more than two sponsors and may result in rejection of I20). The more I searched about the foreign sponsorship, the more nervous and restless I got. I even called up the Office of International Education and even they confirmed my doubts that it is usually not preferred to have a foreign sponsor. But what option did I have. I made up my mind and convinced the optimistic self that ‘All will be well’. This whole nerve wrecking process took almost 2 months and finally I had all the documents in place. Without any further delay I couriered it to the school.

The office of International Education states that it issues the I20 in usually 2-4 weeks and I received my I20 documents exactly after 4 weeks. Impatient as I am, I had already researched about the list of steps that had to be done once I received my I20. I took the HDFC receipt for which one is required to go to the HDFC bank and deposit the Visa fees to get the barcode (which takes two days to get activated) required for scheduling the visa interview. The next was paying the SEVIS fees and printing the confirmation receipt as the original receipt arrives almost one month after the payment. The next was DS160 – which I filled in one day flat. I won’t advise that though.(You should be very careful in filling the information because it is a long form and requires a lot of information.) I was in such a hurry because I wanted to get it done with. But God had other plans and wanted the excruciating wait to last a little longer. I had to plan an urgent trip home – so I had to schedule my visa interview after two weeks.

The Acceptance Story

Last July, I decided to give GMAT another try. The last attempt was not up to my expectation. Though I have made peace with the whole – ‘too much expectation from myself’ point of view, still somehow this performance was not going down well with me. After a month of practice and some good mock test scores later, I was confident that I would do much better this time. It might be that I have a habit of screwing on the D-day or the mock test scores were not worth relying on, whatever it was, my score was again not up to my expectation but this time it was enough to keep my head above water. Since the deadlines of application for my target schools were just a couple of months away, I decided to accept what I had heard through various platforms – ‘GMAT score is just one aspect of the application’ and focused on the next hurdle in the race – the essays.

After a month of dedicated preparation for GMAT, I was pretty sure that the hard part was over. When I took a stab on the first set of essays for one of the schools, Chandler would have described my feelings as: ‘Could you BE more wrong?’ I just knew that I had to do my MBA but did I know why I want to do it? Was I clear on what my short term and long term goals were? What made me decide to do it at this point in my life? And there were similar other questions popping up everywhere and the answer for each one of these questions was a big ‘NO’.  I knew all my efforts will be in vain, unless I give myself sometime for introspection. After almost 15 days of introspection, I was still at the START line – no progress. Then I came across a guy, without the help of whom, I can safely say that I would not have been where I am right now. It seemed he had a magic wand and just an hour of conversation made me take some big strides towards the finish line.

My first target school was Ross. A month and numerous drafts later, I reached a position where I thought that the drafts were the best they could ever get. Satisfied with my effort, I decided to take the feedback from another friend. Although his comments made all sense, it was a big blow since it appeared I had to not only revisit the essays but do major changes in the structure too. The deadline was just a couple of days ahead, but thankfully I did not lose my cool and did not get bogged down which worked wonders for me. My final draft even surpassed my expectation and all my friends who took out the time to review my essays finally gave me the ‘good to go’ signal.

The next application deadline was of Darden and it was just in a week and I was pretty sure I would not be able to make it. This was the school where I intended to apply the most because one of my friends is a current student there and she had been overwhelmed by her experience. I would say that the application essay topic was one of its kinds and gave me a real hard time and even nightmares. Ultimately I ended up not applying in the first round (and not at all even later). That was when a friend and a colleague in my office suggested me to consider applying to Tepper, which I was considering as a backup and had happily kept it for the second round. Having dropped off Darden from the list for the first round, I focused fully on Tepper with just one week left for the deadline. I had already done the initial research of the school including reading about it on forums like GMATClub and BeatTheGMAT. My interaction with some of the seniors specially a second year student of Tepper who had managed to impress me a lot and who almost took a mini-interview which I completely screwed up, was a great eye opener – giving me an unmatched perspective and a dry run of the whole process. Talking to a current student is the closest I could get to finding out the fit to the school, since I was in India and visiting the school was completely out of my budget.  

The high point of Tepper is its close knit student community which is always ready to help. I had researched a lot of schools and none of the student community came even close to this one. Add to it, the quant focus of the school and the small class size – it was the perfect recipe. Now that I look back, I am not sure why did I ever keep it as a backup option. I was lucky that I applied in the first round, all thanks to my friend. I gave my best shot in the application and managed to submit it a day before the deadline.

In just three days at around midnight, I saw a mail in my inbox with the subject – Interview Request from Tepper School of Business. Though I received interview request from all three school where I had applied, this was the first and hence my first taste of success in the application process. Many would say that it was just an interview invite but for me it was a window of opportunity. It meant that my efforts were not gone to waste and the school actually liked my application and was interested to know more about it. I was no doubt excited but at the same time a bit worried. Interviews have never been my forte. This meant that I needed to put in more effort so that I am fully prepared before the interview. I took a date almost a month from the invite so that I could get ample time to prepare. I started my prep with searching the questions on different forums and compiling the list of questions. Then I jotted down the pointers about the different stories I would like to use in the interview. And then I practiced and practiced and practiced a bit more. By the way, I was given an option between a telephonic interview and a skype interview. I am more comfortable talking in person and skype would be the closest I could get to a face-to-face interview. So I opted for a Skype interview. On the interview day, I got all dressed up and went through the stories one last time. It would be an understatement to say that I was nervous. I was actually sweating and my hands were trembling when I got the call from a lady from admissions. She was a really sweet lady and she made me comfortable in the first couple of minutes. I was much more confident now and I answered questions for nearly 30 minutes with complete poise. Though I faltered at the last question and went off the track- blabbering for nearly 2 minutes and then realized my mistake. Thankfully, I was able to give a better and more objective answer in my second attempt. The interview was wrapped up with a couple of my questions about Pittsburgh and her experience about Tepper and Pittsburgh in general. I had a good feeling about the interview after it was over. But as time went by, the good feeling kept subsiding and self-doubt took its place when I analyzed and over-analyzed my answers. The interview experiences of people on various forums did not help either.

After an excruciating wait of almost a month, when I was completely convinced that the result day would never come – the D-day finally decided to drop by. Since the result was supposed to be declared at around 3-5 pm EST and I was in India, it meant waiting for the whole day and a good part of the night. It was easily the least productive day of my life. All day, I could do nothing else but check on the forums for any news and sharing my nervousness with other fellow applicants. I was sure that I would not sleep till I see the result but my father somehow managed to convince me otherwise. And somehow I did listen to him and slept early. At around 2 in the morning, I got a call from one of my junior colleague from office who had also applied to the same school. With all dreamy eyes, I picked up the phone and got the news that he has been waitlisted. It was a bit of shock because he has a stellar GMAT score. I tried to sleep after the call, thinking that I would check it in the morning – a bit convinced that I have got a ding and didn’t want to lose my sleep because of it. Impatient that I am, I could not sleep anyways knowing that the results were out. After a lot of tossing and turning in the bed, I gave in. As I opened my mailbox, my heart skipped a beat on seeing a mail from Tepper. The subject read – Exciting news from Tepper. I knew I was IN and already started jumping with joy on my bed like a small kid. After I managed to calm myself down, I opened the mail and it has one of the best flash videos I had ever seen. Needless to say, just like all the other admits, I saw the video infinite number of times – getting goose bumps each time I saw it. Now that I had got in, I decided to catch up on my sleep. I was surprised to see that I couldn’t catch a minute of sleep all night. After losing sleep on countless nights when my dream of getting into an MBA school did not allow me to sleep, I finally tasted success and the joy did not let me sleep. In short, I can say that I lost a lot of sleep over the whole process. And I had heard, the workload in an MBA does not allow you to sleep. It is sad in a way, because in sorts, Sleeping is my thing.

Next morning, I got a call from my father. It was a wakeup call so that I can check the result, and he was oblivious to the fact that I have already got in. I was a bit drowsy with no sleep all night, so when he asked me whether I checked the result – I just managed to say ‘hmm’. Since my voice was a bit hoarse in the morning and it completely lacked excitement, my father concluded that I had not made the cut. To cheer me up, he started quoting phrases like – ‘whatever happens, happens for your own good’ and ‘better luck next time’ before I could share the good news with him. Anyways, all is well that ends well.