One more reason to go to HBS

Well, this post is going to give a funnier side of joining HBS. Barum Moitra advertised (not sure if owns) in her post, and gave one more reason to go to HBS: yes Dating. Want to Date Harvard Graduates from Harvard in Harvard, you got to be in Harvard and try this:
http://www.dateharvardsq.com/
FYI, Harvard Square is the most famous and happening place in the Harvard University for young enthusiastic lover and also budding lovers. So, are you tempted now to go to HBS? Do let me know

ClearAdmit BoB Ballot Submitted

Well, almost 5-6 hrs of research and I submitted my Ballot of BoB awards of ClearAdmit. I, thoroughly, enjoyed the whole process and going through some of the blogs I was not following earlier. It amazes me how Internet and particularly, blogging have enabled people to put so much vast information. Personally, I feel blogs are one of the most strongest medium of sharing information by the current students and the medium of collecting information for vast majority of applicant pools. A very special mention to the efforts of Hella, due to whom the MBA community has been able to closely knit themselves.

One thing that troubled me in the process was bad usage of tags and categories in order to look for specific information. Not all, but some of the blogs lack this basic feature which makes the task of searching for particular category of entries for nominations tough. I hope that people will take a note of it and will try to improve on it.

Wish me Luck and Good Luck to the all the nominees

The Updates…

Well, how have you been guys? Hope all of you are doing well. There are quite a lot of updates from my side. So, I am not going to go in details but with bullet them and share with you all.

1. I got promoted mid of last month, getting the fastest promotion in the batch of guys joining the organization around June-Sept 2007. Well, I am happy but at the same bit let down as the whole process took almost 6 months, which is quite surprising and discouraging being in the private sector. But, I am very satisfied with my performance.
2. My GMAT is round the corner with around 20 days more to go. I have been much occupied with its preparations and the life has really gone bit crazy with the company’s product release also almost at the same time.
3. I talked to my manager and communicated that I will be applying this season and seek his recommendation, to which he agreed without any hesitation. It was a real good sign, considering the fact that we are distant apart and are in two completely opposite different time zones.
4. I am almost there with my final list of first round of schools and I am happy with the overall mixture. Now, I am definitely inclined to Entrepreneurship and VC/PE Courses as that is target industry after my post-MBA and there has been no doubt in any form about the “ENTREPRENEURSHIP” in the long term goal. One thing that is very important for me while selecting the B-Schools is: How well I feel connected with the culture and academics of the school. A lot of top B-Schools do not feature in my lost due to my “feeling”. So, I am applying only to those schools that I feel I can fall in love with and can picture myself spending glorious 2 years of my life.
5. I have started working on my essays also but I am planning to hold them for some time now as the GMAT D-day is approaching fast.
6. As you remember, I won a book and got “Great Application Essays for Business School” by Paul Bodine couriered to me at my desk all for free. Thanks to Accepted.com and Twitter. As I am reading it, I am finding it very useful and self-revealing. As soon as I read it, I am going to post its review very soon.
7. I also got an ebook “Complete Start to Finish Guide” . Thanks to mbaMission and Twitter (again). Twitter is a great resource in all forms, if used judiciously.
8. I am trying to reach some alumni and current students to get some more detail insights about my schools and some of the responses were quite encouraging and motivating.
9. Well, I also registered for Stanford GSB admission event to be held in Bangalore on September 17 and the MBATour to be held on September 19-20. All prospective applicants can take it up because it will be a very good platform to interact and know about your schools. So, go and book your seats now if you have done it.

So, that’s it pretty much form my side. I am getting bit nervous and excited for my GMAT. The last two mocks that I took, I scored 680 and 670. I am yet to see that magical figure of 7xx. I hope that I would be able to make it. Verbal is bit annoying me, basically testing my patience. Let’s see. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

Prioritizing Life

One of my dear friend, classmate, ex-colleague and ex-roommate forwarded me an email, which clearly depicted the truth of life. The short story was in the language of “Hindi and I used Google Translator to convert it to English. after which I had to do few changes (Of course, Software are always dumber than us!). So , here it is:

When we want to do a lot of things quickly at the same time, when we desire to get everything rapidly, and we feel that twenty four hours a day is also a very less, we recollect this, ” A glass Jar and two cups of tea”. A professor of philosophy walks into a classroom to teach an important lesson of Life today. He places the glass jar on the table along with table tennis balls. He, then, begins to put a ball on by one as long as there’s no place left in the jar. He asks the students – Is the entire Jar full? The students say – “Yes”.

The Professor then starts filling the jar with small – small gravels slowly. He moves the Jar so that he can fill all the empty space possible. The professor asks again – “Is now the jar full?”.  The students once again say – “yes”.

Now, the Professor gets his sand bag and start filling the jar with sand till the extent possible. Now the students sensed their immaturity. The professor asks again, It is now full, I guess, right? All said in one voice – “Yes, now it is completely full”. The professor then grabs two cups of tea from under the table and tries to fill into the jar. The tea slowly slips into jar slowly.

With a pause and serious voice, the professor says, “Students, you consider your life like this jar”. The most important part of your life are the table tennis balls namely God, family, children, friends, health and hobbies; the small gravel mean your job, car, house etc.; and the meaning of the sand and small – little things like useless, bad fight and quarrels. Now if we would have filled the jar with sand first, then there would not have been any place for the table tennis balls. In case we would have filled the jar with gravels, then probably sand could have find some place but there would not have been any place for table tennis balls, for sure.”

The Professor continues, “The same logic applies to life also. If we spend all our time and energy in small and unimportant things, it would destroy the important ones and we would not have any time for the most important people in our life. For the happiness of mind, it is important that you decide what to do. Play with your children play, water the garden, go for morning walk with your wife, throw useless stuff from home, do regular medical check – ups. Arrange your table tennis balls first, worry about them, they are the most important. First decide what is important, The rest is sand.”

The students listened carefully the professor. Suddenly one of them asks, “Professor, but ” What are those two cups of tea? The professor replies smilingly, “I was thinking why anyone did not ask this question?” and answered, ” No matter how much we feel that our life is full and satisfied, but here should be always be time to sit and drink two cups of tea with your special friends.”

You guys, might wonder why such a story here. The reason is: we are all MBA aspirants and some of us are MBAs, coming from various parts of the world. Some of us consider such an esteemed graduate degree to a high earning job, become a CEO and so on. Perfectly fine. But unless we try to prioritize our life properly, we can’t expect to put the course of a company or an organization on a responsible and caring road, where the community and the company grows hand in hand. Spread Love and try to create lives and not destroy. I, also, take this opportunity to pray for the troubled Indian students in Australia, who are reported to racist attacks recently and request everyone to maintain peace and love.

Cool Quantitative tricks

Hey guys, lets look into some cool faster mathematics tricks, that we generally call as Vedic Mathematics. We will discuss some of them, which have application almost every time with examples.

Trick 1:  1/(<any_number>9) = ?

The condition here is the denominator ends with 9. Increase the digits preceding  by 1 and divide 1 with the result.

Example: 1/19 = Dividing 1 by 1+1=2 gives ) with remainder 1. Divide 10 by 2 gives 5. Dividing 5 gives 2 with 1 as remainder and so on. The final answer is thus formed with all the quotients, which in this case is .052 (up to 3 digits).

Trick 2: Multiplication with Base 10: Always remember that RHS has just the same number of the digits as the number of 0′s in the base.

Lets us multiply 13 * 17. 13 is +3 than 10. Similarly, 17 is +7 than 10.

13            +3

17            +7

——————————————————————

(13+7 or 17+3)20 | (+7*+3)21 = (20+2) | 1 = 221

——————————————————————

Trick 3: Multiplication with base 100:

Let us multiply 93 * 111

93                             -7

111                          +11

——————————————————————————–

(93+11 or 111-7) 104 |           -77 = (104-1) | (100-77) = 10323

———————————————————————————

Trick 4: Trick 2 and Trick 3 can be extended to any number with bases multiples of 10.

Trick 5: Multiplication with something half of multiple of 10.

For illustration, let us say 50 as the base and we are multiplying 41 * 41

41                          -9

41                        -9

————————————————————————————————-

(41 -9)32 | 81 = 16 | 81 = 1681.

————————————————————————————————-

Trick 6: Squaring

(Base is 10 here ) Square of 12 = (12+2)|(square of 2)= 14|4= 144.

(Base is 100) Square of 94 = (94-6) | (square of -6) = 88|36=8836

Trick 7: Multiply 2-digit number

ax+b and cx+d, where x =10. The result is (a*c)(x^2)|((a*d)+(b*c))x|(b*d)

21 * 43 = (2*4)|((2*3)+(1*4))|(1*3) = 8|10|3=(8+1)|0|3=903

Trick 8: Multiply 3-digit numbers

a(x^2)+bx+c and d(x^2)+ex+f, where x 10. The result is (a*d)(x^4)+((a*e)+(b*d))(x^3)+((a*f)+(b*e)+(c*d))(x^2)+((b*f)+(c*e))x+(c*f).

Trick 9: Squares of number ending in 5.

25 = (2*(2+1))|(square of 5)=(2*3)|25=625

55 = (5*6)|25 = 3025

The above mentioned 9 tricks should help in faster calculation in all competitive exams.

AWA 7

The former secretary general of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold wrote, “Never look down to test the ground before taking your next step: only he who keeps his eye fixed on the far horizon will find his right road.”

While such a philosophy may be appropriate for the leader of the United Nations, it may not be an acceptable practice for ordinary individuals to follow as they go about their daily lives. What is your opinion? Support your position with illustrations from your observation, study, reading, or personal experience.

I believe that Dag Hammarskjold’s philosophy is true in all circumstances for all the people in their lives for the following three reasons.

Firstly, every people have certain dreams but very few actually dare to go to fulfill them. The people who follow their dreams change not only their life but also people around them significantly in future though they may have to face obstacles in the short-term. For example, Dhirubhai Ambani went through all the his initial painful years sacrificing a lot of conventional life to build the largest private company of India, employing 60000 people today and benefiting the economy of the country.

Secondly, ordinary people have certain aspirations. For example, children might get the right education in future if he could be able to save a few dollars of his income sacrificing his present.

Last but not the least, though ordinary person cannot ignore his daily struggle of life but at the same time he cannot ignore the importance of what he wants for himself and his family in future. He needs to act responsibly ignoring the present circumstances to lead a comfortable life later on. For example, our current prosperity is due to the abolition of the evil laws like bonded labor, inequality, etc in the past. I still remember our current Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, brought liberalization policy in 1992, as then Finance Minister despite all criticisms, only to see the today’s healthy growing economy.

Therefore for the above said reasons, I strongly oppose the author’s believe that fulfilling long-term goals with risks in present, is only the characteristics of high profile people and not ordinary people.

AWA 5

Certain schools of thought stress the value to the listener of having some practical experience of music. They suggest that even a rudimentary playing of the piano or some other instrument is better than reading a dozen books about music. There are those, however, who claim that even many concert pianists have only a limited understanding of what music is.

Do you agree with the claim that practical experience is a better teacher of music than learning about it from books? State your position using relevant reasons and examples from your own experiences, observations, or reading.

Practical knowledge is superior to the theoretical bookish knowledge. I strongly support that people with some rudimentary knowledge of playing instruments and knowledge of music can be better than those who don’t. There are various reasons for supporting the above said statement.

Firstly, there can be no denying the fact that people with some knowledge of music can appreciate its variations and types with the significance of instruments palyed in them. For example, for Indian classical music, flute can be soothing but for ROCK, the significance of electronic instruments cannnot be ignored at all. But the person who has no knowledge of what they could be, he could probably neither disntinguish nor appreciate them at all.

Secondly, even though there is no doubt that the very good concert artists might be having only a limited understanding of music, but one cannot deny the fact that they would have been better if they would have possed the knowledge of music.

Thirdly, people with limited knowledge will probably always try to stick to a particular rhythm and tone of the music in which they could feel comfortable and would never try to experiment, thus, bringing a complete stop to the creativity-the basic necessity of music.

Lastly, concert artists may be popular in certain area but they may not be necessarily famous with all the artists across the globe. For example, there is no necessity that concert artists with limited knowledge of certain mixing of certain genre of music may not be hired by famous artists for their performances as occassionally they may require instant audience reaction.

Therefore, I strongly support the artists with some elementary knowledge of music and playing the instruments to be a better and fast learner than those who just know few memorized words read from the music books.

Essay 16

The most important information does not come from books.

Time changes as the world grows. There were times when books were considered to be the best companions of the students and people. Books, magazines, novels, newspapers, libraries, etc. were considered to be the best sources of information. Today Internet techonolgy revolution has taken over it. Google is busy scanning old newspapers now to create the biggest archive of the newspapers after successfully doing so for Google Books.

But still one source of learning remains constant, the mother of all learnings-The Life. Books make us aware of the external world and prepares us to face it confidently. Life throws challenges that makes us think and act in real practical sense. Most successful persons are thos people who understand that LIFE is the real challenge of all and the biggest ever school that can have vaious subjects in a single book itself. For example, Thomas Edison was thrown out of his school after haviing being said that he had poor IQ, worse than the normal. The same poor IQ guy later went on to create a never-forgettabe history by his invention. People like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Steve Ballmer were all school-drop-outs but all went on to pursue their dreams despite all odds to become sucessful in their own areas.

Scientific challenges are better known with the experiments rather than than the books. Similarly, geography can have long lasting impact when we go around places understanding its environment, culture and traditions. Therefore, all subjects come to its true color when we understand it from the books to apply them practically and intelligently to solve the real life problems. This is where the information is learnt rather than just mugging up just the books.

Essay 15

It is much easier to learn in a small class than in a large one.

Small and larger classes, each have their own advantages and disadvantages. Let us snalyze them vis-a-vis.

Firstly, in small classes teachers can give individual attention to each and every student while this may not be possible in the larger classes. But sometimes repeating such things may make a steudent dependent on his teachers for his/her various activites like should he be participating in a dance competition, making him prone to his future decision making capabilities.

Secondly, small classes may encourage less group involvement activites and more individual oriented tasks. On the other hand, their larger counterparts will be involved in more of group oriented activities rather than the individualistic tasks. Thus, larger classes makes an individual understand and decision of giving priorities to the correct part of their involvement in day to day activites. Moreover, in todays fast changing business world, the participation and contribution of the groups can hardly be ignored anymore when an individual’s impact has come almost to its dead level.

Thirdly, smaller classes may be useful when an individual might be doing some advanced study as like PhD and especially in research but larger classes teach how to achieve every individual’s

 goals while achieving the group’s success at the same time.

Last but not the least, larger classes build ever lasting relationships while smaller classes sometimes may lead to harsh competition and rivalry among individuals due to jealousy and many other factors.

Therefore, considering the above said resaons,I would favour learing in a larger class rather than a samller one.

Essay 14

You have received a full scholarship to a good university in your country. You have also been offered a full scholarship to a top university in another country. Which of these two scholarships would you accept?

I would prefer to study in the university of my country rather than going to any another country, if I qualify to get full scholarship at both the universities.

Inida has come up as a strong economic pwerhouse in the past two decades after economic liberalization. It is now considered to be one of the fastest growing and emerging economies. With the future looking good and prosperous for the country, I would prefer to study and work here rather than going abroad to study.

Moreover, top universities like Indian School of Business, Indian Institutes of Managements, Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Information Technology has become global brands with their alumni having established as graduates at par with any other good universities of the world and has been now constantly been ranked at the world level.

Additionally, being in the country helps to be within the reach of my relatives and friends in mutual needs. And I strongly believe that joy of success will be in its true color if we share that joy with our loved near and dear ones.

As I am keenly interested to take my country tot he nect level of its development and see the dream of our past President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam of India becoming a developed country by 2020, I would like to help it from here be lending a hand in its course in every possible way.