HEC Paris - a top non-US b-school

I had filled in HEC Paris' Candidate preliminary evaluation form and this what they had to say...

Dear Ashwanth,

Thank you for the interest you have expressed in the HEC MBA Program and for having taken the time to submit your Candidate Profile. We have carefully examined the form you provided and would like to provide you a preliminary evaluation of your profile.

Like all leading MBA programs, HEC requires candidates to submit official GMAT scores. Our participants currently have an average score of around 670. Based on the information you have provided, your GMAT results are well within our standard range, so we encourage you to have your official score sent to us using school code 0TL-6C-28.

The HEC MBA Program is taught in English, with the option to do coursework in French. In order to succeed in this environment, candidates whose mother tongue is not English or those who do not hold a university degree from an English-speaking institution must show a minimum TOEFL score of 100 (ibt), a minimum IELTS score of 7.5 or a minimum TOIEC score of 800. The results you have reported appear to meet our requirements; but please be sure to have your official score sent to us using school code 0649.

HEC MBA participants learn as much from each other as from our excellent faculty and high-profile guest speakers. Our class size of just 200 and our ideal program length allow our participants to benefit from the experience of their classmates, who represent over 50 different nationalities and have on average 6 years of professional experience. We believe that the professional experience outlined in your Candidate Profile would equip you to make a positive contribution to the HEC MBA learning experience.

Overall, we feel that you are an excellent candidate for the HEC MBA Program. Hence, we encourage you to proceed to the next step of the admissions process by filling out our online application form....

This is quite encouraging. HEC Paris now makes its way into the list of non-US b-schools that I'll be applying to in case I get dinged at ISB. I know a couple of alums from this school and they have had only good things to say about it. ISB will let out its interview shortlist for the Hyderabad candidates in the coming week. If I do clear this first hurdle then I'll wait till the 20th of Nov (ISB decision deadline) before proceeding with the R2 applications.

Well...lets c what the future has in store for me...

To Goa and back again...

And I'm back!

These last few days have been awesome...it was a vacation well deserved! It felt good to get away from work and the stress. My MBA journey also needed this breather.

We hardly slept throughout the journey. Mornings were spent sight-seeing, afternoons at the beach and the evenings partying - and boy were the parties trippy or what!!

Here are some pictures of what I saw and did in Goa...


The road to Goa from Hubli....


The resort that we lived in...


View from our balcony...


The beach...


Can you spot me there??? :-D

It was one fantastic vacation...sad that it had to come to an end.

Meanwhile, ISB has started sending out interview invites to the Delhi candidates. Hyderabad candidates can expect to receive their's around the 20th of Oct. Am keeping my fingers crossed.

Time to grab some food now.

Later then...

Darden submitted!

So, with this I have successfully completed my round one application submissions. Hopefully I won't have to submit anymore apps this year. My Managing Director submitted his recommendation for Stanford yesterday. With that, all my applications are complete. I now wait to hear from the admission committees. Its been one heck of a journey - more a road to self discovery. To be honest, my career, thus far, has been inline with my ambition do an MBA. The thought of pursuing an MBA has been in mind ever since I finished schooling in 2001. I am happy with the way things have shaped up. I am grateful to a lot of people for their continuous support; something that, I am sure, will never cease. I hope I get into at least one of these four good schools that I have applied to. It will be a huge step towards achieving my career goal.

Anyways, its now time to relax and calm the mind and nerves. They'll be working overtime in the coming weeks! I am off to Goa, tonight, with friends. I'll be spending the next four days there - away from work, tension, and anxiety. Been looking forward to this trip for a while now.

So until the next post, its gonna be...Sun, Sand, and the Sea...

Be good.

R1 apps: Darden in

Well...I had options. My choices were Wharton, Tuck, Said (Oxford) and Darden. I would have applied to most of these schools in R2 anyway. So, I decided to move one of them to R1. I chose Darden. My chances of getting admission to Darden are quite realistic. I loved the resources that Darden has to offer to its students and I am also for the case-based methodology. Their FAQ suggest that I need to send them my official GMAT score only on admission. Now that's pretty kewl. I also stand a good chance of getting a lucrative scholarship. Moreover, I don't mind staying in Charlottesville.

I spoke with my potential evaluators for Darden and they agreed to send in their recommendations. I also found time to finish one of the three essays (a creative challenge). It was a situation based essay that I had already written for Ross. So I only needed to prune it to meet Darden's word limit. I really like the essay because it portrays an important trait that adds color to my persona.

I will be waiting for my ISB results before I apply to colleges in the second round. If I manage admission into ISB then I will not be applying to any other school. I will, then, wait to hear from Ross, Stan and Darden.

US Subprime Crisis

I came across this hilarious, yet true, document/presentation on the housing crisis. Thought I'll share the same with all of you.

Check this out.

Stanford app submitted!!!

Today was the big day...

All my dreams, my ambitions, and my vision have been properly packaged and are, now, at the doorstep of, probably, the best business school in the world, the Stanford GSB. Yes..I have submitted my Stanford MBA application.

I started my application in the first week of August. The last month and a half have been really enjoyable. I have loved answering every bit of the essay questions. On seeing the app, the first thing I realized was that I had more than one good and convincing reply for each of the essays. They, nevertheless, made me dig deep into my past and unearth situations/experiences that I hold dear and had really learned from.

At 13:45 IST, I closed my eyes, said a little prayer and hit the submit button. Its now a long wait for the interview invitation. Two of my recommenders have already submitted their evaluations. The third person is currently out of the country. He will be submitting his recommendation by the first week of October.

With this I end my planned set of Round1 applications. With over a month left for the deadlines, I am tempted to apply to one more school.

Well...we'll just have to wait and see.

GMAT scores, GPA and essays

It is quite obvious that an applicant's GPA and her GMAT score are the major indicators of her readiness to face the academic rigor at a B-school. Although it is true that admission committees view each application holistically, it is nevertheless important for an applicant to judge for herself if her GPA and GMAT score will hold her in good stead while applying to various schools, especially the top 5 schools. I came across Are your GMAT scores competitive? recently and thought I'll share this link with you all. It is not, by any means, a tool that guarantees admission to a school of your dreams but will, no doubt, help you make realistic choices.


Another interesting tool that I recently came across is the Readability Index Calculator. It uses the Flesch-Kincaid method to determine how easy it is to read a text. The higher the score, the better is the readability. For example, comics score around 90 but legal/law documents end up with scores of less than 10. This does not mean that complex text isn't as interesting to read as other stuff. But it is definitely useful to write text that is easy to comprehend. Generally, a score of around 40 is considered to be excellent. This post has a readability score of 49! Pretty useful while writing essays, isn't it?

In other news, the ISB round1 application deadline is today. People are facing problems, big-time, due to server over-load. AFAIK, 1337 applications had already been submitted by late last night. I won't be surprised if the final count of R1 applications touches 2000.


Will grab some lunch now...catch you later...