Simon Interview Expereince!

Well guys, I had my SIMON interview today at around midnight my time. The interviewer was an Alumni, she was from 2007 batch(Part Time). The interview was more kind of conversational than anything else. The questions were also standard and some of them were as follows :

Walk me through your resume?
Why MBA?
Why do you think this is the right time for you to complete your MBA?
What do you expect from the SIMON school of business?
How can SIMON help you to achieve your goals?(I failed to understand what was the difference between this question and the previous one, comments/suggestions welcome.)
What unique qualities will you be bringing to SIMON?
Tell me about a strength and a weakness in your application?
How do you handle conflicts in your team provide an example from your professional life?
Any Questions I had for her?
I asked her few questions but as she had completed a Part Time MBA she was not able to provide good explanations for the questions I asked which were mostly related to full time program.

This interview of mine made me wonder, as on what factors do the AD-COM decide that a particular candidates needs to be interviewed by the AD-COM or by an Alumni. I feel its not a random selection, What do you guys think?

Till the time me meet again Guten Tag Zusammen :).

Happy New Year!

My first post in new year and would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very successful year ahead!

Now I know what happens if you try to test your endurance. To explain my point I would like to give you my example.
To treat myself on new year I went for "ICE SKATING" with couple of my close friends and boy oh boy... what an experience I had, throughly enjoyed it. I could have never imagined that I would be able to stand on those thin blades let alone skate on them.At the end of the day I did fairly well.
But even after two days I can feel that every bone of my body is crying out loud for help :). I think I just pushed my body over its limit in the excitement of displaying my prowess in skating arena (We were there in the arena for more than 4 hours):).

On the MBA front nothing much is happening, most of the colleges I applied to will be releasing there results by third week of January so wait continues....

Best of luck to other guys in there process.

MBS Interview Experience !

Had my Manchester Business School(MBS) interview today 9A.M. UK time. The interview was a telephonic one with an Ad Com and was kind of OK(we spoke for around 40 minutes), it was a tag different from all the other interviews I had till now.
I could remember the following questions which were asked during the interview:
1) What was your reaction when your managers asked you to travel to client location and what qualities you thing you possessed which prompted them to take that decision?
2) You have only 4.5 years of experience how will you contribute to the class which has an average of 7 years of experience?
3) What you learned by working in a diverse culture?
4) What two qualities your subordinates will say about you?
5) If you really help your subordinates how do you find time to finish of the task assigned to you?
6) What are your two strengths and two areas of improvement?
7) Tell me an incident when one of your team members was not performing well and what did you do as a team member/leader to help him/her?
8) What do you think about networking and whom do you network with?
9) Tell me an incident when something was enforced upon you and what was your reaction?
10) Why MBA? and are you trying to shift careers.
11) What was one of your initiative and how did you convince your Managers about the initiative?
12) What was one of the problems you faced in onsite-offshore model?
13) Any questions for her?

Overall the interview focussed on real life situations and scenarios and what did I learn from each of the incidents. They are really trying to judge as what did you learn during your work ex.

Tips for the prospective candidates will be to know there story well and prepare for all the real world scenarios.

The School is closed for Christmas break and I will get to know about my decision somewhere in mid of January. So keeping my fingers crossed for now and hoping for the best. Guys wish me luck for the same.

Mixed Feelings!

This week had a mixed set of results for me. First I received an e-mail from Mr.Ranga Rao that my application to ISB has been rejected without even an interview. It seems that this time around the competition is really tough and specially for IT people it is very difficult to get in. Only time will tell whether this reject was a blessing in disguise :). I am just being optimistic.

But the solace for the week came from SIMON school of business, I have been selected for interview and I have arranged the same for 8th of Jan, as that was the only earliest available date.

I hope everything turns out to be fine! Wish me luck guys!

The Journey Begins!

Well Well Well... after too many days spent on pondering over whether to start a blog or not, I finally came to the conclusion that if I procrastinate it more I might never be able to blog.

So Guys here I am writing my first blog and would require guidance and support from all my fellow bloggers.

In this blog I will try to cover my topsy turvy ride of getting an MBA from a premium program.