Waiting for the Tuck result, should be out any day now.

Apart from refreshing my inbox every few minutes - hoping for that invite from Sloan - I am also keeping an eye on the other big result that looms around the horizon. Tuck is officially supposed to come up with its results on Dec 17. The good thing with the Tuck results is that they don’t keep you in the limbo for a long time. Officially all results – accepts, dings, and waitlists - go out that one day. But based on what I have heard from fellow applicants they do call up or mail applicants a few days before this date. Some even mentioned that they do so a week ahead of the deadline.

Like I mentioned in my previous post today, all this really does not bode too well for my R2 applications. I am spending too much time digging and reading about these when I should totally concentrate on my applications. Easy to say but so hard to keep your mind away from such impending and high impact decisions!

MIT Sloan update: The results are trickling in and I have my fingers crossed

Two days ago MIT released its first set of invites for the R1 applications and since then I have been following the people who are reporting their interview invites on online forums. Sadly I haven’t got mine yet! It’s still early days though, we are only into the third day, and if historical evidence is anything to go by the invites will keep coming until the second week of January. So there is no reason to be dejected and not all is lost. Irrespective of how logical this may sound, it does not seem to be a good enough reason to assuage my fear.

Here is what scares me about the MIT invites. Based on what I am reading on these online forums, MIT releases it’s invites by regional hubs. So the Boston area invites are released first, then rest of North East, trickling down to the Central and West coast areas, and finally international. There is no official backing to this nor is there enough empirical data to prove it, this is entirely based off the little data available on online forums (all courtesy people who report their status rather than being just bystanders). You might have guessed why I am so nervous…yes, I am from the Boston area! Going by this little theory I should have received my invite yesterday.

I am trying not to mull over this too much and instead focus on my R2 applications (which in all honesty have not taken off at all yet). I am hoping I won’t get that dreaded ‘d-worded’ letter. Keeping my fingers crossed and refreshing my inbox every minute, that’s all I can do for now. 

The 'D' month is here.

It's December and the day of reckoning is not too far away. I can already sense the fluttery feeling while I wait for my Tuck EA decision and MIT interview invite – both should be out somewhere in the second week of December.

The online forums are already buzzing with a lot of activity, fellow applicants who are tired of the waiting game and cannot take it anymore are posting their feelings on these forums and finding comfort from other's stories. Fuqua is expected to come out with its EA decisions any time now. When I read about a fellow applicant refreshing his email every few seconds looking for that magical mail, I could very well picture myself doing that in the next few weeks. I am guessing that people might have been logging into and refreshing their application page too, which might have led to the application site being down today.


All this does not bode too well for my R2 applications. I have been on the slow side and all these factors do not make it any easier. I get the feeling things are only going to get compounded over the next two weeks.

Seven lessons from my round one application.

I have submitted applications to three business schools thus far – Tuck, Sloan, and Fuqua – in that order. The last one month, while I moved from one application to the other, has proved to be a big learning exercise for me. Though I think I did justice to each of my applications, in particular the essays, I keep getting the feeling I could do better. By the time I submitted my third application, I could already see things that could do with some improvement in my first application. But then again, that’s the case with afterthought – you always think you can improve.

Nevertheless, I still have learned some important things that I surely plan to apply in the second round of application. So this post is a summary of what I have learned.

1)      Start the application (not just essays) early – By application I mean the online application process – creating a login, personal information, professional and educational background, test score, and a few other things. I waited till the last week to fill in these details for my first application, which I learned was not the ideal way. These points are equally important and it is important to devote enough time. Also, it is better to have someone review these points for you.

2)     Don’t worry about the word count for the first draft: Word limits present an important limitation, sometimes they can be a blessing in disguise too. It is important to convey your story, so to begin with just write your heart out and don’t bother about the word limit. Once you know that everything that you wanted to convey has been covered, go ahead with the editing. Sometimes it takes the skills of a seasoned Editor to trim your essay, and it might be better to associate levels of importance with each paragraph (or for that matter sentence). This way when you have your scissors out you know what to chop off!

3)     Don’t try to complete an essay in one sitting: The human mind is so full of conflicts and biases, and once you get into one of those modes it’s hard to get out. No wonder, it so often happens that a problem that you struggle with for hours is solved within a few minutes after a good nights sleep. Same applies to essays too! Work on your essays with a schedule, give yourself 7 days and work 1 hour each day. You will be surprised how much your thought process and the output improves this way.

4)     Reach out to recommenders early and follow up with reminders– I was fortunate that my recommenders were equally enthusiastic about my application and devoted enough time on it. Most of the time they submitted the recommendation well ahead of the deadline, except for the last one. My manager happened to be on a two week business tour to Europe before the deadline and she had planned to do the recommendation during one of the weekends on her trip. However, as is the case with business meetings, she was pulled into other things and by the time she came back we were facing the deadline. On the day of the deadline, she marked few hours on her calendar, worked on the recommendation, and submitted my recommendation.

I had a few nervous moments, though schools are a lenient about deadline for recommendations, why take a chance? I started reaching out to my recommenders 4 weeks before the deadline; in hindsight I should have done it at least six weeks earlier. With the holiday season coming up, I will ensure that for round two I reach out to them at least by next week – 8 weeks before the deadline.

5)      Never recycle one schools essay for another: I think this is what we read everywhere. But after writing that one great essay it is not wrong at all to feel you have the right to use it for another school, especially if questions are similar. That’s perfectly logical, but what that does is it sets a platform for your essays which is hard to tweak or change. Best would be start with the bullet items for the new essay, form a structure, and then try to use content from the previous essay to fill in.

6)      Give your reviewers enough time: I had very good experience with my first essay, multiple reviews with 3 different people (2 friends and a current student) - all handled very nicely. But my third essay, that’s a slightly different story. I kind of rushed it and ended up rushing my only reviewer too. Though I feel extremely good about the third set of essays I submitted, I was not happy the way I did it. Allocating enough time for reviewers is important to get the most out of them.

7)     Do one school at a time: This is how I approached my first three schools and it worked out perfect for me. Sometimes, when the essay questions are similar, there is a tendency to tackle the similar ones together. I don’t think this is a good idea, though the essay questions might look similar each school is different in the way they ask for it and it requires extreme care to make sure those finer details are addressed. More importantly, working on one school at a time allows you to portray a holistic perspective of your candidacy by presenting different aspects in different essays.

My second application and why I procrastinated till the last minute?

A day before deadline, I submitted the MIT Sloan application. Towards the end it turned out to be a very stressful period, all self inflicted though. The three days that preceded this, I barely slept for more than 4 hours each night. So what led to this last minute stress, especially since I had started well ahead of time?

The problem was with one of the essays. I had three incidents to pick from I picked the one that I thought really stood out. After my first draft, I sent this to my confidants, who had agreed to review my essay. I trust their thoughts and if they think that my essays do not cover all the aspects, it is very likely that the ad-com will think the same.

The initial feedback was mixed, though I had presented a compelling case – it was not addressing the questions to the fullest. This is where I kind of lost it, instead of bringing out those missing aspects I went back to the drawing board and tried to think about the other two incidents that I had originally considered. Sometimes it’s so much better to not have choices! My muddled thinking about which one to choose was the chief culprit for the delay. I finally went back to my original pick and just covered those areas that my reviewers thought was missing. After all, I had picked this one with a lot of deliberation and self-reflection.

This reminds me of my 8^th grade when I had a similar situation. Back then I had enrolled for the poetry recitation competition. My overconfidence led me to wait till the last minute to pick the right poem. 2 days before the event, I picked up the latest Young World (newspaper supplement) looking for good poems. I found two that I liked – “My mother” & “Smile”. I memorized both and presented it to my family. They thought both were equally good but left the difficult decision - of choosing one – to me!

I prolonged the decision till the last minute. When it was my turn to recite, I presented the perfect mix. There was so much indecision, I mixed up both poems. The audience soon figured out and I burst into laughter, I had to withdraw. My teachers gave me another chance and asked me to recite once everyone else was done with. I went backstage and was very nervous. Part of me told me just to run away. But I mustered enough courage, decided to go with “My mother”, recited the poem, and got the third prize! I was a relieved kid.

I hope my essay does not call for a similar second-try, which I am pretty sure won’t be coming this time around. 

Essays, essays and more essays!

Last week I submitted my first application (the only one till now), that was four essays and since then I have jumped on to Sloan and Fuqua applications. I took a two day break - now that the first one was done with subsequent ones should be a piece of cake. Absolutely wrong!

The MIT essays require a totally different approach, not that I did not know of this, but I assumed that my experiences writing the Tuck essays will come good. That has not been the case, thoughts flow naturally and take decent shape in the form of words and sentences, but each time I read my essay after completing a draft – it’s like I am missing some piece of the puzzle. Then I go into that endless loop trying to fit everything from my story into a single page.

Word limit does not help too. Almost every time I write an essay, I feel 700 is the right count for me. Somehow, removing those extra 40% takes more time than actually coming up with the first draft itself.