Stanford GSB Admission Event: KL - Review

OK before I forget, I better write down my thoughts on the recent Stanford GSB Admission Event that took place at Parkview 2, Mandarin Oriental on 1st August - which also happened to be my mother's birthday (Happy Birthday, Mama!)

Initially the event was scheduled to start at 7.00 and finished at 9.00 pm and I thought I would have to break my fast with a sip of water (I was used to it though, from my university fasting days in the UK but I definitely was not looking forward to it...). But a couple of days before the event, Stanford sent an email updating the change of time. So the event started at 5.30 instead, to allow the Muslims who needed to leave for buka puasa to leave around 7.15 pm ish... how thoughtful!

So I arrived there at around 5.15 pm with two of my friends whom I managed to drag (ha ha!) and we were greeted by Sabah, a very lovely lady who's also the Assistant Dean of Admission (if I'm not mistaken). She looked a bit tired from the traveling but nevertheless, she was really welcoming. I asked if she's gonna be joined by some alumni but unfortunately according to her all of Malaysia-based alumni were not availble for the event... oh, what a bummer (I was really looking forward to network with the alumni, especially since these people are the leaders in local businesses)

The event then started pretty much on time, and there were about 10 of us, so it was really an intimate session. A few others who came in late sneaked in in the middle of Sabah's presentation. So I think in the end, there were about 15 of us who sat there listening to Sabah's presentation.

The presentation itself was nothing new, though it did give me some insights on how to tackle the essays... (guess that's what happen when you can remember school stats by heart). But what made a lasting impression on me was how simple the presentation was - the slides were very plan with a picture or a comic graph and a buzz phrase that captures what GSB stands for or is looking in applicants. There was this one slide with Vegemite that immediately get me to chuckle (honestly, I didn't why I chuckled at that moment - the mental image of Stanford looking for Vegemite just seemed odd to me). But the slide also kinda shed the light into how to approach the tough essays - be who you really are, some people might like it, some might not but if you're vegemite, just let Stanford know you're vegemite!

There were two parts to the presentation - the first part was more about Why Stanfrod, What We Offer etc - the marketing thingy. The second part talked about the application process itself. Again, all of the info was not new to me, who has been obsessing with top US BS for years... but I guess it was useful for the potential MBA applicant who were just starting to get obsessed with the whole process!

So in the end, although I got some really good pointers for my essays, I didn't feel like I learnt anything new about the school. But I knew I had to make an impression on Sabah, so I chatted with her for a few minutes after she wrapped her presentation. It so happened that we had something in common - we both once worked in Malawi! So, there was some obligatory reminiscing about the good ol' Lilongwe and I asked for her email before I left for buka puasa.

Overall, I was glad that Stanford made the effort to come to KL. Most other top US BS didn't bother to stop in KL for their admission event - Bangkok and Singapore are their fav spots. Unfortunately, I can't just drop everything I was doing to go on a trip to Singapore or Bangkok for each admission event... HBS, I'm talking to YOU!

I'm definitely liking Stanford more and more... I just hope they will like me too!!!!

OK, now I need to drop Sabah an email to remind her about my application...

Stanford GSB MBA Admission Event in KL!

Yay, tonight I'll be meeting some of the adcom from Stanford GSB and hopefully some really interesting alumni too!

The event will be at Parkview 2, Mandarin Oriental and it will start at 5.30 pm and hopefully ends around 7.30, just perfect for buka puasa!

OK, here's a few tips to make the most out of admission event such as this one, for you MBA hopefuls out there:

1. Come early, leave last
2. Make a connection, make a lasting impression
3. After the event, send a follow up email to the adcom that you've made good connection with - tell them you'll be applying in whichever round you're working towards
4. Once you've submitted your application, send a reminder to them - remind them who you are, that you met them in KL in August etc and tell them you're super excited about the school!

But most importantly, before attending the event - read as much as possible about the programme so you won't waste time asking the "duh" questions and get a standard "you can check this info at our website" answer!

Remember, you're trying to impress the adcom of Stanford GSB, one of the top-5 US BS!

If you're going too, see you there!

Stanford GSB's Webinar for ASEAN Countries

OK, first thing first - the morning after I decided to retake GMAT, I woke up with severe migraine, sore throat, blocked nose and ears... was it a sign?!!

Anyway, last night, Stanford GSB held a webinar for ASEAN countries to give a chance for the prospective MBA and Sloan programme applicants to chat with 2 of its recent graduates. So we had the pleasure to meet Tilia Wong, who was from Malaysia but is now living in the US, recent MBA 2012 and Khai something something, a recent Sloan programme graudated who is now a civil worker in Singapore.

OK, confession time - I didn't really pay attention to what Khai something-something said because he was a bit kiasu, spoke longer than necessary and mainly he was talking about Sloan programme... yea... not really interested in the Sloan programme...

But Tilia came across as a very charming lady, soft spoken but very articulated and obviously smart. I just wished that Khai would be less of a mic hogger and let her speak more... like really MORE! and Khai just had opinions about everything, even on MBA specific matters... oh well.... kiasuness...

What I like about the webinar - it was at 9 pm on a weekday, a nice change from having to wake at 2 am on a weekday to attend other top school's webinar (HBS, I'm looking at you!).

What I don't like about the webinar - Khai... like seriously, I rather Tilia be the sole speaker for the session so she could explain more about her experience as a student at GSB...

What I learnt about GSB that I couldn't get elsewhere - hmm, ah this actually came from Khai (thanks, Khai, hahaha) - he said to take advantage of the different programmes offer by the 7 other schools in Stanford and work with the young people who are doing the undergraduate there.

What thing that was quite obvious from the way both of them talk - the entrepreneurial spirit of GSB and the Silicone Valley... this seems like something unique to GSB and students should really take advantage of it.

OK, now I can't wait to attend their info session on 1st August!

GMAT Round 2

...I better start studying the IR section!

What is Your Favourite Food?

Stanford GSB wants to know what is your favourite food!

here's one of my many-many fav food:

Nasi Lemak Sambal Kerang!

As a Malaysian (I can hardly call myself a Malay since I'm part Malay, Thai & Indian...) I'm completely at a loss as to what food I will actually put in that tiny little box in Stanford GSB's application... we're such a food society, it's tough to just pick one!!

Data-Mining My Life...

In between cramming 15 slides worth of info into 3 for a presentation this Monday, I’ve started the painful process of data-mining my life, all for the hope to finding the tread that binds all of my life experience together to substantiate my obsession with HBS…

 

This reflection process is a crucial first step towards crafting my application theme. To borrow from Stanford GSB’s Dean’s Corner entry on writing effective essays:

“Essays are not a marketing exercise but an accounting exercise. This is a process in which you look inside yourself and try to express most clearly what is there. We are trying to get a good sense of your perspectives, your thoughts on management and leadership, and how the business school can help you realize your goals.”

Ah, that’s why I hate writing these essays… they remind me of my awful accounting classes I took during my final year in uni! Joking aside, I do think that in order for you to intelligently market yourself, you need to know yourself first, and the only way of effectively doing this is by accounting all significant events in your life that have had an influence on who you are today.  In other word, good book-keeping is a pre-requisite to great self-marketing!

The way I look at it, I have 3 areas (or books) that I need to fill up with relevant stories:

1.       Professional Life

2.       Personal Life

3.       Student Life

Professional Life:
I have about 5 years of work experience in 2 major firms. At the moment, I don’t have anyone reporting directly under me but I’m leading various small teams and initiatives. I’m comfortable leading as well as being a proactive team player. I’m comfortable with numbers and in my analytical ability, I live by a set of principles and never compromised on them. I’ve lived in the UK for 4 years, and I’ve worked with people from various cultural backgrounds. And as an added bonus, I speak 3 languages. So I think coming up with good examples in my professional life to highlight my leadership impacts, teamwork, motivation, ethics and diversity will not me a major hassle.

Personal Life:
Ah… the elusive life outside of work! I volunteered a lot. But mostly on work-related event – stuff like leading an event management team to organise an engagement session. Problem is, these involvements are so intertwined with my work that I find it difficult to categorically put them either under the professional or personal life banner… I’m a coach to my alma mater’s debate team, I enjoy running marathons. And I used to play a lot of MMORPG… but I bet business school doesn’t want to know about my video gaming hay-days! This is certainly an area that I really need to think hard about to get any substantial evidence of leadership, ethical values, diversity, teamwork and management experience… anyone knows of any good leadership volunteering opportunity online or around KL?

Student Life:
Ah… now is where the trouble begins…
The four years of my university life was the “lost years”. Really, I was completely burnt out by the time I made it to university. You guys know how it works in Malaysia – in order to get a scholarship to study overseas, you pretty much have to mortgage your childhood to the devil (fortunately with way better interest rate than say, Freddie Mac…) and commit yourself to various leadership and extra-curriculum activities while you were in primary and secondary school. I’m not ashamed that I did it all – I played hockey for my school, I was a nationally ranked debater and captain of my debate team since form 3. I won every single academic prize offered by my school, I was on top of every exam list, I was a prefect AND library monitor. I represented my school to almost all academic events, quizzes and completion. I served the community as a St John’s Ambulance volunteer and for a short while I was in a band… and I started doing all these when I was 10 years old! So pardon me for being lazy during the university years… all I could think of during that time period was traveling around the world, enjoying different cultures and meeting as many different people as possible.

***

5 years after graduation, I’m f**ked!

Lucky for me, I have 3 – 5 months to improve my candidacy!

Trend of Admission Essays...

I think I wanna close the night by commenting on the recent trend of admission essays by top US business schools and reflecting a bit what my gameplan is moving forward with the application season this year...

Last year when I applied to HBS, I had to wreck my brain to answer 4 questions:

• Essay 1: Tell us about three of your accomplishments. (600 words)
• Essay 2: Tell us three setbacks you have faced. (600 words)
• Essay 3: Why do you want an MBA? (400 words)
• Essay 4: Answer a question you wish we had asked. (400 words)

Essentially, HBS asked each applicant to share with them 6 short stories about themselves, through their accomplishments and setbacks, their short, mid and long term goals for pursuing an MBA degree and a really wildcard question that they hope the applicant could reveal more about their unique traits and why these traits are relevant for their business career... total word counts for the applicant to capture the admission committee's short attention span is 2000 words.

HBS 2012/13 application essays:

• Essay 1: Tell us about something you did well. (400 words)
• Essay 2: Tell us about something you wish you had done better. (400 words)

This year however, HBS dramatically cut their essay requirement to TWO with total word counts of not more than 800 words! Thats a 60% reduction in word counts!!! Of course they include the post-interview memo-style reflection but given than HBS only interviews about 20% of its total applicants... not a lot of people will get the chance to have their "final say"

And as a testament to HBS' leadership in MBA branding, most other top business schools follow suit with their own changes to either their essay word count, no of essay, or the application components itself.

Stanford reduced one essay required from 4 to only 3 and reflected the change in their word counts as well.

Last year Stanford GSB asked:

• Essay 1: What matters most to you, and why?
• Essay 2: What do you want to do—REALLY—and why Stanford?
• Essay 3: Answer two of the four questions below. Tell us not only what you did but also how you did it. What was the outcome? How did people respond? Only describe experiences that have occurred during the last three years.
• Option A: Tell us about a time when you built or developed a team whose performance exceeded expectations.
• Option B: Tell us about a time when you made a lasting impact on your organization.
• Option C: Tell us about a time when you generated support from others for an idea or initiative.
• Option D: Tell us about a time when you went beyond what was defined or established.

...and the word limit was 1800 words total, 200 less than HBS'.

This year Stanford GSB asks:

• Essay 1: What matters most to you, and why?
• Essay 2: What do you want to do—REALLY—and why Stanford?
• Essay 3: Answer one of the three questions below. Tell us not only what you did but also how you did it. What was the outcome? How did people respond? Only describe experiences that have occurred during the last three years.
• Option A: Tell us about a time in the last three years when you built or developed a team whose performance exceeded expectations.
• Option B: Tell us about a time in the last three years when you identified and pursued an opportunity to improve an organization.
• Option C: Tell us about a time in the last three years when you went beyond what was defined or established.

...and the maximum word counts for all of the essays combined is 1600 words. That's double HBS'! This year it looks like they combine last year's Option B and C to create Option B. Logically, if you generated support for your brilliant ideas to make a lasting impact on your organisation, of course you'd have pursued an opportunity to improve your organisation... I guess a lot of applicants in the past answer both question in ONE single essay and this could well trigger the admission to reword their Option B!

And Kellogg also completely revamped their essay for this year...

Last year, Kellog asked:

• Essay 1: Briefly assess your career progress to date. Elaborate on your future career plans and your motivation for pursuing an MBA.
• Essay 2: Describe your key leadership experiences and evaluate what leadership areas you hope to develop through your MBA experiences.
• Essay 3: Why would you and your peers select you for admission, and what impact would you make as a member of the Kellogg community?
• Essay 4: Complete one of the following:
• Describe a time you had to inspire a reluctant individual or group
• People may be surprised to learn that I…..
• The riskiest personal or professional decision I ever made was….

This year, Kellog asks:

• Essay 1: Discuss moments or influences in your personal life that have defined who you are today. (500 word limit)
• Essay 2: What have been your most significant leadership experiences? What challenges did you face, and what impact did you have? This is your opportunity to explain how you Think Bravely (personally and/or professionally). (500-word limit)
• Essay 3: Imagine yourself at your Kellogg graduation. What career will you be preparing to enter, and how have the MBA and Kellogg helped you get there? (Please answer in terms of your program choice: One-Year, Two-Year, MMM, JD-MBA) (500-word limit)
• Essay 4: (For MMM applicants only): How have you redefined yourself, your business environment and community through the pursuit of design and innovation? (400-word limit)

...and owh, they have this really cute tweet-like essay that you have to answer in 25 words or less:

“What one interesting or fun fact would you want your future Kellogg classmates to know about you?”

I won't be surprise if next year these schools adcom asks applicants to just tweet their "essay"...

 

My GMAT Experience

I personally felt that the most stressful part of my MBA application last year was the GMAT... only because I gave myself 1 month to familiarise with the format and study the key concepts of the test. Now, before I share my GMAT prep experience, it might be worth mentioning why I only had 1 month to prepare...

I've been looking for the right time to pursue my MBA education ever since I joined the workforce, way back in 2008 but I never really started any research on the whole admission process until about a year ago and the only admission process that I bothered to check was HBS'. Basically, I just know that I need to fill in an online application form, sit for GMAT, write essays to recap my achievements and why I want to study MBA at a particular school.

Last year, without going into too much details, was not a good year for me. I was part of a product development team (engineering team lead) who managed to deliver stretched results but was sideline during the annual appraisal cycle because my new line manager "didn't know me well enough" to vouch for my contributions to the project (he came to the project AFTER we completed and passed all of our internal review for funding). Well, things like this happen every day in the business world, but to me, it was really the kick that I needed to start considering MBA seriously.

That happened way back in October, so at the end of the month, I decided to submit my application to HBS for 2012 intake.... and yea, I know... I was way unprepared!

From my readings, applying in R3 is not advisable, and you might as well apply in R1 for the following application season. By end of October, R1 deadline had already passed, so I was hard-pressed to submit my application in R2, and the last date of GMAT offered by the only test centre in Kuala Lumpur was in the middle of December, before the Christmas holiday rush and the next available appointment was in March, after the Chinese New Year holidays (!)... hence why I only had 1 month to prepare for my GMAT!!!

Cue drama...

But if it wasn't for the extremely strecthed and ambitious timing that I set for myself, I don't think I'd have the discipline to actually study GMAT in a structured way. From the moment I booked my session, I diligently spent 3-4 hours after offfice hours to revise for GMAT. In a month, I clocked a total of 130 hours of revision time, so that averaged at 4 hour 20 mins -ish a day (I read somewhere that said the top scorers put at least 100 hours into revision).

OK, here's the obligatory disclaimer - putting more than 100 hours into your GMAT study doesn't automatically guarantee great score (and on that subject, what is a great score?). I think, I was being extremely paranoid about my own Quant performance that I spent more hours than necessary into revising the Quant portion of the test, whereas I only spent half a day going through sample AWA anwers and I scored 6.0...

The point I'm trying to make is, before you start any study plan, know your weaknesses... I was a trained engineer and my ego let me think that I don't really need high Verbal score and low Quant score on the other hand would really hurt my reputation... clearly I was misinformed...

If you're aiming for a high overall score, pay more attention to your Verbal skills. Apparently, people who scored 99% in Verbal and only in the low 70ish% in Quant have overall score of 730++... whereas those who scored close to 90% in Quant and 80ish% in Verbal can hardly break 700...

OK so back to my experience, I went to the test centre on the fated day, feeling completely horrified after doing a last online test and received a 640 score from the official GMAC tool... to make matter worse, I had to guess last 3 questions in the Quant section and my paranoia-o-meter just shot up the sky... I was completely sure that I just messed up my 1st attempt at GMAT...

So during the break, I had to recollect my thoughts and had to pull every shred of motivation that I could muster to focus on the Verbal section. Ironically, I became calmer and managed to finish the Verbal section well on time. Now come the dreaded decision time - should I cancel my report or press the submit button?

I thought to myself - what the heck?!! I spent countless hours worrying about this and I was not about to chicken out at the last minute, so I chose to submit my result... and....

Imagine my relief when I broke the 700 barrier!

I think my GMAT test day was one of the most intense days of my last 3 years... it almost gave me a heart-attack!

In the next post, I'll share my revision plan and the resources that I used to help me break into the 700 club... I seriously need to give a lot of people credit for my GMAT accomplishment!

Let's see where this will bring us!

OK, so I've decided to blog about my experience in applying to top US Business Schools, mainly as a mechanism to cope with the intense pressure and expectation, on top of my gruelling work schedule and almost non-existance personal life, outside of work that is.

I won't be detailing my short-term and long-terms goals here, or at least not in this post... but I intend to discuss my career projection and my aspiration in the coming posts.

I'll also use this space to blog about my experience with GMAT - perhaps the most time consuming preparation for business school application. I'll recap my experience last year applying to HBS just for nostalgia sake! And of course I'll be updating on my progress for 2012/13 application rounds...

I hope this blog can help those who are seriously thinking about pursuing their MBA, especially Malaysian whom I'll be more than happy to meet up and bore you guys about my mba journey, ha ha ha...

untill next time!