Extremely Good News

I've been accepted to Wharton!

Second Decision

I have been wait listed at Kellogg. I don't know if anyone ever anticipates being placed in MBA purgatory, but here I am. To say that this is a disappointment would be understating how I feel. In general, I don't deal well with being in limbo. I process any maybe's as no's especially because I don't know what I can do to ameliorate any weaknesses that I haven't done already. I took [expensive] courses to augment my quantitative profile, performed well on the GMAT (my score is higher than their average), went through eight iterations of my Kellogg essays, and practiced for my interview. Perhaps my age has given cause for concern? I can't imagine there are too many people like me in the applicant pool. Sure there are other 700+ GMAT scorers from ivy leagues, but my career goals are pretty unique [so I've been told] and you just don't find too many people in my industry applying to business schools.

So, now I wait to hear from Wharton. Hopefully Tuesday will bring better news, but my hope has waned after two straight days of disappointment.

First Decision

I received my official Stanford rejection letter today and to my surprise I wasn't disappointed by the decision. I think I was more relieved than anything to close the door on one potential path.

In any event, congratulations to those who were accepted!

The Waiting Game Part Deux

I can't believe a month has flown by since my last update. Within the span of four weeks, I got an interview invite at Wharton, went to London, went to Paris, flew to Philadelphia, interviewed, wrote some first drafts, wrote some second drafts, went to a few holiday parties, and roasted a turkey!

I wasn't expecting to hear anything from Kellogg until next week, but I unwittingly looked at the gmatclub Kellogg thread to see that the school has already begun making admit calls. They've also started sending out dings. So now I'm on pins and needles hoping to hear something. I've checked my application status several times and nothing has changed. Is no news good news? I don't know, but I'm getting scared. What if I don't get in anywhere at all? I guess that's what R2 apps are for.

My nerves are shot to hades right now.

The Wait is OVA!

I've been anxiously checking my email everyday since 10/27, the day that Wharton began sending out interview invites. As I hadn't received anything and today was the last day they'd send out invites, I assumed that I would surely receive a ding today.

Imagine my delight when I checked my email at 1:15 PST, and saw an invitation to interview! Of course all of the SF hub interview slots are full and I have to fly to PHL and of course the most cost effective day for me to go is the day after I get back from my week long trip to Europe, but I'm not complaining!

I'm in a celebratory mood, but hunny bunny (my boyfriend) and I are sick, so I'll have to have a glass of champagne in the house.

Kelley School of Business

I went to a Kelley School of Business admissions event last night. It was awesome. Instead of sitting us down and giving a power point presentation, we had a cooking class led by two professional chefs. There was lots of wine and I got to know the alumni and staff very well in this informal gathering!

The chef is meant to be sending us the recipes from what we made, and I really need that recipe for the turkey sliders. They were simply phenomenal.

Waiting for a decision is pure agony!

A Year Ago Today

I took the GMAT. I had been studying diligently for three months and spent top dollar on a ManhattanGMAT Preparation course. The highest I had scored on a practice test was 710, but I could never duplicate that score again, so I resolved to score in the mid 600s on the real test and just take it again.

Looking back, I have never been so ready for game time than I had been on that day. The evening before, I decided to take it easy and go get a manicure, so my hands were looking quite pretty. When I got to the testing center, I was so ready to rock. I had played my game song for the GMAT on the way to the building so I was in the zone.

Halfway into the quant section, I knew I bombed the test. I got stuck on a particularly hard question and lost crucial time. I had to basically hack away at some of the questions so I could have a bank of time at the end to finish strong.

Convinced I bombed quant, I figured that verbal would be my saving grace as it's always been. But I felt like I was bombing that too at one point. I got to a particularly technical passage for RC, read through it twice, and still couldn't retain anything. I tried to use process of elimination, and wound up eliminating all the answer choices. I sped through the next few sentence correction and critical reasoning questions to make up ground so I wouldn't be penalized for not finishing.

When I got to the end of the exam, I was relieved to have finally taken the test and had braced myself for the 600 I thought I'd see. Imagine my surprise when I hit show me the score and saw a freaking 730. I had scored that high in quant before and that high in verbal but on separate tests! The moral of the story is don't cancel your score. Because the test is adaptive, the better you're doing, the more you'll feel like you're flailing because the test will give you harder and harder questions. The other moral of the story is to make the most of your GMAT prep course. I know folks who took them and didn't really do all the homework and take advantage of all the resources the company provides. I lived, breathed, ate, slept the GMAT for three months and I went from a 590 (practice exam) to a 730. It can be done, but it's not easy.

And finally, my GMAT theme song, Cosmic Slop by Parliament Funkadellic. It has absolutely nothing to do with overcoming obstacles or winning. It's actually just a really funky song with a nice bass line and guitar riff that always got me amped up to go through a 3 hour practice test.

Good Idea/Bad Idea

My boyfriend has gone home to Los Angeles to attend the CAL vs. UCLA football game. Initially I thought it was a good idea for me to opt to stay at home this weekend and work on MBA applications, but now that I've been sitting in this coffee shop for two hours, working on an essay for USC Marshall, I am starting to think about all the fun going down at the game. Tailgating. Touch downs. On-side kicks. Cheerleaders. Hot dogs. Beer. Man, I'm missing out.

I've tried to refrain from looking at the MBA message boards while Wharton is releasing decisions and focus my attention elsewhere, but I just can't. At least over the weekend, I won't have to worry about anything coming in. I'm afraid that I'll get a rejection notice while I'm at work and be in a sour mood for the rest of the day. I honestly don't know how I'd respond. Will I cry? It's very likely. I am a big crier and am known to cry at sappy engagement commercials and have cried everytime I've watched that cheesy movie The Notebook. Or will I be relieved to finally have an indication as to where I stand and be able to use that indication to formalize a round 2 strategy. One thing's for sure, although there is a weakness in my profile, I'm feeling very optimistic. Not just about Wharton, but about my future in general.

I've had two shots of espresso, and am contemplating a third in another hour or so. My energy is insane right now, so it's time for a dance party!





Beyonce Get Me Bodied

So, tell me about yourself?

Today I had my Kellogg interview, and I do think that it went well. There were two questions that I probably could have answered better but I'm happy with how it went. After having written so many essays, I actually had quite a few stories at the ready for some of the behavioral questions. I also think that I made a great case for Why Kellogg and I loved seeing how my alumni interviewer had very strong ties to her alma mater. Hearing her talk about her experience at Kellogg and her experience as a Kellogg alum reinforced my desire to attend. Now I cross my fingers and hope for good news come December.

Party's over

On Tuesday, I celebrated being done with R1 with a few two dollar Martinis, and now that I've got the fun out of my system, it's time to turn my attention back to my apps. Focusing on R2 apps will also take off some of the anxiety of waiting to see if the R1 schools want to interview me.

I need to get a version of my HBS R2 essays to my reviewer by Monday. Since HBS is a last minute addition, I still need to do some research on the school, so it's taking me longer than I thought to complete the career goals essay. Outlines for Setbacks and Achievements are chugging right along, and I have a few ideas for the question I wished they had asked me.

I am also going to try to make the 11/15 R1 deadline for consortium schools. This gives me about a month to make things happen, and if it doesn't happen, then I'll at least be halfway done for January submission.

The other day I had an ingenious idea for Booth's power point pages, and I made a sketch of it so that I won't forget it.

Full steam ahead!

Kellogg is in!

YES YES YES! As of today, all of my R1 apps are in and submitted. More champagne for everyone!!!!

Stanford is in!

Congrats to everyone who submitted a Stanford app. I might have to pop a bottle of cheap champagne when I get home. This one took a lot out of me!

The Stanford Data Form

is not a game. I was on it for 3 hours today and am still not finished.

Congratulations

Congratulations to everyone who submitted Wharton or HBS applications today!

Wharton due Monday

Come hell or high water, this Wharton application is getting submitted. I considered putting the app off until round 2, but I've been on this b-school journey for over a year now and I'm really ready to get this party started already.

I spent last night clarifying my career goals in my professional objective essay. I like it. It sings. I've just got to cut out some extraneous words, and that's a done deal.

I spent most of today redoing the interpersonal essay. In my earlier versions, I felt like I didn't own up to my mistakes in navigating this experience so I gave it a minor face lift to reflect these mistakes.

I spent the last few hours overhauling the innovation essay, and am still at it.

Through this essay writing process, I've learned two things -- 1) you have to choose who you're going to take your feedback from and how you're going to use it and 2) you can get feedback until the end of time so at one point you have to create a plan and roll with it.

As far as my other applications....

Tuck -- I visited campus and loved it. My interview with the student ambassador went well. No hard ball questions and I am happy with it.

Kellogg -- got some encouraging feedback so now I'm going to rewrite two of the essays. One is completely done and I'm not changing a thing. The career goals essay needs a bit of clarification. This app is on hold for the moment in light of the two deadlines that are more pressing.

Stanford -- I have been neglecting this baby. Actually that's not entirely true. I've done some good work on the last two behavioral questions and my career objectives were all but set in stone until I had a stroke of genius on the plane ride to Cambridge. I started the career objectives over from scratch and sheer brilliance was flowing through these fingers here. Of course that computer crashed, and along with it, the brilliance. I think I can get into that zone again. It was truly the realest thing I ever wrote (cookie to anyone who got that Tupac reference). I have a draft of What Matters to Me Most, but I'm not confident with it and don't think it's an accurate reflection of what matters to me most.

My boyfriend is out of town this weekend so I have no distractions outside of the 4th season of Mad Men on netflix. I'm on episode five and it's getting quite good so I have to resist. I've been listening to a lot of Prince to power through this....

My Stanford essays suck but are in good shape

Quite a paradox. How could this possibly be? My Stanford essays currently aren't worth the paper they're printed on yet I consider them to be in good shape. Everyone says that Kellogg's essay questions are the hardest, but I wouldn't know it. Stanford is kicking my behind. These word limits are the bane of my existence right now. I'm having a difficult time distilling my behavioral essays to their essential parts so that they fit into 300 words. 300 little words.

I received confirmation that the stories I want to tell are compelling, so in my opinion, they're in fighting shape. I have a starting point (well not quite, since I've rewritten these things multiple times), and know how I can improve them. it's just a matter of sitting down to do it.

In other news, I am feeling confident about both my Wharton and my Kellogg essays. My resume has been sealed with a kiss and I do not forsee additional alterations. I do not have the mental bandwith to think about Chicago's application or essays right now. They only have two essays and a power point presentation, so it's much less writing intense than Kellogg's essays, but the esoteric "leadership" question has me at a loss. I'm sure I can dig deep and find some jewels, but until I get Stanford to a point where I'm just fine tuning things, I don't think focusing on Chicago will do either school justice.

It is late, and I've spent my day off writing essays. Although there is no rest for the weary, I'm going to lay my head on my pillow.

Writing Everyone's Essays But My Own

Before I get started, in honor of Mondays...




One of my colleagues in the Management Leadership Tomorrow program remarked that I am probably having an easy time right now because writing is one of my strengths. He's right, but then he's wrong. He's right in that I have an easy time with grammar, word use, etc, and that I can see for myself where an essay needs work. He's wrong in that I'm going to have to write just as many drafts as everyone else will. I'm not so cavalier as to think that I've got the essays in the bag. That type of hubris in this process is what results in rejections. In fact, the bar will probably be higher for me as an English major who works at a publishing company.

I do enjoy the essay writing process more than the studying for the GMAT process, though. I like to write and always have. You may be surprised to learn that I never wanted to be a fiction writer. The few times I've tried my hand at fiction, I have found myself bored and never felt compelled to see my work through to completion. I'd stop at the first draft and just lose interest. Non-fiction is where my heart was/is. At one point in my life I wanted to be a journalist so that makes sense. I love to recount true stories and find the symbolism, pathos, and humor in things that normal people do on a daily basis. Even still, my attention span has never allowed me to see any of my non fiction work through to the end (but I would love to write a biography of my grandmother -- she just refuses to be interviewed). Sure, I'm a decent writer, but my real talent (I think) is for bringing out the strengths of other writers. Kind of like a writing coach (or editor).

That same colleague sent out an SOS and asked me to look over some of his essays this weekend. He had received the same feedback multiple times and when he thought he was improving, his reviewer told him he hadn't made any progress. I looked them over and what had happened is that the treasure was buried deep, deep in the essay. Several paragraphs into a 750 word essay. He meandered through the essay making a few claims and never substantiating them or introducing ideas and never reconciling them. He had some cool ideas for metaphors but needed a coach to help him make the metaphors work and sing. I went through and helped him create a structure and develop a theme.

I also have a friend applying for medical rotations and she asked me to help her with essays for those programs. Unlike my colleague, She had so many treasures in one essay that readers were getting overwhelmed and she failed to connect the dots for why she wanted to go into radiology in a way that we could understand. So I helped her with creating an outline that kept her on track as she rewrote the essay. We have all of her treasures connected with a central theme that we laid out in the beginning of the essay.

While I was doing all this essay help, I avoided rewriting my own Kellogg essays. It did not help that I can now stream all four seasons of Mad Men on Netflix.


I spent Saturday watching Season 1 and pretending to write. To my credit, I did manage to finish a first draft of my Wharton essays at 2 AM last night and I'm glad that I got my ideas on to paper. As much as I preach about the benefits of outlining, I totally winged it on my career goals essay and wrote what I felt as it came to me.

Got my Kellogg Essays Back

I'm happy to report that my essays were in better shape than I thought they were. I am awesome at those Situation Task Action Results essays. Simply awesome. Where I am much less awesome is the Career Goals and Why This School essays. I've actually decided to alter my career goals. More on that later.

Don't Sweat the Small Stuff

Recently, I got hooked on a series of blog posts wherein an admissions consultant was sizing up an applicants chances for a variety of schools. Though entertaining, I found myself a bit demoralized after reading these posts and started second guessing my accomplishments, chances, and choice in schools. I know that my GPA is low and am prepared to overcome that hurdle, but the emphasis on working for a big name firm is what got to me. Am I wasting application fees here? I know that it's unlikely that I'll be accepted everywhere I apply, but I do want to have a fighting chance at the school's I apply to. Now is not the time to lose faith in myself, so I decided to tune the self-doubt out and stop reading the series. I will instead channel that energy into fuel to produce stand out applications.

So my theme song for the day...

Onward, Ho! More Essay Outlining

I had a lovely evening last night. Simply lovely. Despite leaving work at 6 PM, I did not make it home until 8 due to protests on the subway.


I won't go into the details of the protest or even offer an opinion on them as my blog is not political in nature. All I will say is that my subway station was closed and I wound up having to take the expensive ferry home. Though inconvenient, it was a beautiful ride on the SF Bay.

The subway shut down took a chunk of my time last night that I was going to devote to writing Wharton essays, but last night I managed to get outlines for all down on paper. After having written a set of essays for Kellogg, my ideas flowed more freely. I'm going to be able to re-use an anecdote for Wharton that I've used in my Kellogg essay. I will not be copying and pasting, however, because the Wharton question is actually different from the Kellogg question. It's just that the theme is similar.

So why Wharton?




Wharton is a program that I got excited about in the last month after learning about the small business development center and their integrated marketing and operations major. I originally hesitated because it's a larger program and after speaking to some marketing students I got the impression that their support for those entering brand management wasn't that great. Upon a more thorough reflection of my career goals, I realized that Wharton's emphasis on finance and analytics is perfect for me in that I'll be forced to develop a knowledge base in areas that I'm currently lacking and through experiential opportunities, I'll be able to connect marketing and analytics in a way that I haven't been able to before.

Kellogg First Draft Finished

After a brutal seven-hour writing session, I have completed the first draft of my Kellogg essays. I need to give my boyfriend a special thank you for his understanding. We were supposed to go to the movies and out to eat this weekend but I just haven't had the bandwith. I managed to make breakfast and lunch today but have not changed from my pajamas. I had to send him to the store to get things for dinner, and at 9 oclock we will have our Sunday snuggle time. :) Right now, I'm unwinding with a cheap glass of Sauvignon Blac.

Reminders to myself about essay writing:

Be yourself. I'm sure you've heard admissions officers and consultants advise applicants to be themselves and not try to paint a portrait of what they think the adcom wants them to be. Truer words have never been spoken. I had trouble articulating the motivation behind my long term goals on paper and I hesitated to go for broke in talking about my career plans because I was afraid the adcom wouldn't believe I had the juice to make a career switch. For weeks, my career goals essays were boring and seemed too force. They actually pained me to write. Today, I restructured my career goals essay and talked about the deal with my father that led me to this career goal. My words flowed so naturally and so much easier than they had before.

Brainstorm and outline. It is essential to have a plan before you start attacking an essay. You need to know what you want to highlight in your essay, what anecdotes you want to tell and why they're relevant before you set pen to paper. This outline is your essay's skeleton. This outline allows you to think through your essay and establish a structure. I am a big structure freak. Structure in writing fascinates me. James Joyce is painful to read but I had to respect dude's structure. In fact in undergrad, I contemplated doing a PhD in Literature studying narrative structure (yes I'm that much of a geek). Structure gives the reader sign posts. The reader needs these sign posts so that your points are not lost. It also gives you a frame work to operate in so that you don't get lost in the writing sauce yourself.

A rough draft is just that. Rough. I am an experienced writer and spent my college education writing papers upon papers, but even with that experience I had to remind myself that the first rough draft is to really get your ideas on paper. There's no way in Hades that you're going to sound like Maya Angelou or Nabokov as soon as you put your fingers on the keys. It's just not happening. If the outline gives you a skeleton, the rough draft puts the meat on that skeleton. Power through those moments where you get stumped. One of my tricks is if I get stuck on how to describe something or on a word to use I'll write a stand-in phrase and put brackets around it so I know to go back and clean it up when I do my first repass. Some people work best when they do this rough draft through stream of consciousness (a literary style that I've always hated due to my love of structure), and this may be you. So you have to let the words flow through you and write your thoughts out. Follow the map you created in your outline until you get to the end and don't worry about how crappy or how good the essay is when you've finished.

Do not be afraid to abort the mission. This is another tip I picked up writing papers. I have thrown away pages of a paper and entire essays because after I got them on paper they sparked an idea for a paper that was much better than what I had. In the past few weeks, I wrote maybe two entire essays that I abandoned. I lifted maybe one or two sentences or ideas and used them to spark the essays that I have labeled my first draft. You have to give yourself ample time to write garbage. Nabokov's first iteration of Lolita was probably rubbish, so keep in mind that the greats got that way because they practiced, practiced, practiced. We're not writing novels here, but expect to go through some iterations before you get your polished jewel ready to submit to the adcom.




It is almost time for True Blood and Breaking Bad. My first draft has been sent off to my MBA application coach and I look forward to seeing what she has to say. I should include another self-reminder -- humble yourself. You need someone to keep it real with you and tell you where and why your essay sucks. I'm expecting lots of constructive criticism. I'd be kidding if I told you that I will squeal with glee when I see all of the comments about what I need to change and what sucked, but I need and want to hear this.

Time flies

I can't believe it's been a month since I last took the time out to draft a blog post. So much has happened..

1) My work trip to MD has been canceled. I planned to take a week off afterward and visit Tuck, Wharton, Columbia and Yale. After much deliberation on how to get the best bang for my buck, I decided to push off visiting the east coast schools until September. This situation is not ideal, but I am going to make the best of it by getting all of my west coast visits out of the way now. Which leads me to point #2...

2) Not going to MD means that I can go to the Many Voices conference. If I were going to MD I would not be in the bay area for the event, so there is some silver lining in that cloud. Stanford is my top choice right now. I visited in the fall, and sat in on a class, but did not speak to very many students outside of my former Housemate. This weekend I'll get to hear more from students, get to speak to admissions officers and ask questions, and get to partake in an actual class. The Many Voices folks have sent along assignments -- one of the readings is 40 pages long. I'm going to have a veritable read-a-thon.



3) Speaking of visiting campuses, I had an opportunity to visit Darden at the beginning of this month for the MLT kick-off seminar. I wound up getting to Virginia pretty early on Thursday so I planned to visit a class, take a campus tour and attend a chili cook-off. Well I wound up falling ill that first day. I don't know if I was dehydrated or what, but I did not feel up to touring campus etc. Lucky for me I got to see a lot of the campus over the weekend and it's gorgeous. Like absolutely stunning. We also got our own classroom experience as one of the most popular professors at Darden led a case-based discussion for us. I enjoyed the case method. It was stimulating, but it didn't strike me as something that I must have as the dominant/sole teaching method. One could argue that with the case method you are always applying theories, but I'll have to think about devoting my entire 2-years to case studies. I spoke to numerous students over the weekend and they were all very friendly. I heard a lot about the benefits of going to a school like Darden when it comes to recruiting for management consulting. I also heard from quite a few future brand managers (more than I expected). I'm still undecided on Darden. It's a beautiful campus -- there's no denying that. I would get a great general management education there and I'm sure I would land a great first gig post MBA. I need to do some soul-searching to see if I can adjust to living in a small city.




4) I wound up getting an A on my calculus final and subsequently an A in the class. Yay me! I'm glad that it's out of the way and I've got my Thursdays back. Now I have a stats course and a calc course under my belt -- and I got A's in both. Woot. I had originally planned to take Micro economics and accounting in addition to calc and stat, but my MLT coach has me rethinking my original plna. I long ago abandoned the idea of taking 4 courses and settled on 3, but she thinks that 2 is sufficient. A 3rd would just be me driving the point home. I have a few months to think about what I'm going to do. I can take micro economics, lose another 4-6 hours out of my week and pay about 800 bucks. Or I can save the money for something else. If the $800 puts me closer to my long term goal without putting me into the red, it's probably worth taking the additional course. Fortunately I won't have to cross that bridge until May when the extension school offers the micro economics course.

5) This past month I researched Duke Fuqua. The students I spoke to seem excited about the program, but right now I am undecided on how I feel about it. I plan to visit the school in the fall to experience life on campus.

6) I gave my resume yet another face lift and have included more figures to show impact

7) I spoke with a former house mate who is a 2Y at Wharton. She's majoring in marketing there and I wondered how that was like for her. When I hear Wharton, I think consulting, not so much marketing/brand management, and as it's a school I'm considering, I wanted to talk to her on the phone about her time at Wharton. As it turns out, she thought she was going into finance but after a few weeks she quickly realized that it was not for her and managed to shift her career focus before recruiting started. She gave me the email address of one of her cohort mates who, like me, is from a publishing background and who, like I hopefully will be, is going into brand management next year. I need to email her to arrange a time for an informational interview.

8) My little sister surprised me with a visit this past weekend. She came up from Southern California for a weekend and wound up spending most of her time playing Call of Duty and hanging out with one of her friends who moved away from Santa Barbara. She did cook a fabulous dinner for me on Saturday and we got to spend some time together despite my pretty hectic schedule.

In summary, my list of schools is looking like this now:
Stanford
Tuck
Wharton
Fuqua
Darden
Anderson
Marshall
Stern
Columbia
Haas
Georgetown
Yale SOM
Kellogg
Booth

Keep in mind that this is a long list and I haven't researched all of these schools in depth yet. Stanford, Haas, and Anderson are definitely on my short list.
What's on the agenda for April:

Many Voices Conference
Toastmasters Speech # 5 (I've already got an idea)
Lent
Vegas and Janet Jackson at the end of the month with two of my bffs
A visit to Haas and hopefully a visit to USC and Anderson
Career planning and informational interviews with brand managers (I'm trying to paint vividly what my short term and long term goals are. They are abstract right now and for b-school apps, they need to be crystal clear).
And an email to my grandmother, and that I'll do right now.

Task 1 Completed

My application to the Many Voices Event is signed, sealed, and delivered.

SO.FREAKING.BUSY

I'm busy both at work and outside of work. I've been occupied every night this week. Monday with my Prince concert. Tuesday with Toastmasters. Wednesday with laundry. Thursday with Calculus and tonight I have a work event. I have to come in to work tomorrow for the same work event. On top of that I have an application for the Many Voices at Stanford event due today and I haven't yet set pen to paper to figure out what intellectual diversity I bring to the student body. I've got to figure out something to do with my mentee on Sunday. Monday I've got an MLT assignment due. Tuesday I'm giving a speech at Toastmasters and on Wednesday night I'm off to UVA. In the words of Prince, LET'S WORK!

The Purple One: Prince Concert in the Bay Area

Last night I finally got to see my favorite artist of all time live in concert -- PRINCE. I missed out on his last US tour because I was studying abroad so when I heard that he was coming to Oakland I was amped. The man puts on a great show. I thought about getting a long purple coat and a frilly top to wear to the concert but didn't have enough time to get an outfit together.

Typically when I go to concerts, I spring for the cheapest tickets, but I went all out and got the 2nd cheapest option this time (lol)! We were still in the nose bleeds but not in the very last row like usual. The opening act was a classic funk musician Larry Graham and he killed it on the bass. Now I know a little bit of how it feels to have been at a Parliament-Funkadelic concert back in the 70s.

In between acts, my boyfriend went to the restroom, and he comes back and says "I got tickets to the lower level." I'm thinking he's joking or someone is playing a joke on him, but as it turns out there were too many empty seats in the lower level so the box office staff started giving out lower level seats to folks in the nose bleed. I knew the seats were lower level but I thought they'd still be towards the back of the lower level. I got to the section and started trying to find my row. I kept walking and walking and walking until I was 5 rows from the stage! Freaking awesome! It was like my dream come true. The only thing that could have made it better was Prince asking me to come up on the stage and sing Little Red Corvette with him.

As I said before, the man puts on a good show. He is full of energy, still has a great voice, and knows how to work a crowd. His back up singers were awesome, too, and Sheila E was great. He sang lots of his old hits: Cream, Controversy, If I Was Your Girlfriend, Purple Rain, Scandalous, Uptown, Raspberry Beret.... He also sang Adore! I was surprised he didn't sing at least one other song from Purple Rain, but I was pleased with the song selection. I was reading some comments on reveiw articles and some were disappointed that he didn't sing Erotic City, 1999 etc... There were a few of my favorites that he didn't sing, but to be honest the man has so many hits that we could have been there all night jamming. He did a good job of integrating enough songs from the various areas of his discography so that everyone had their needs met so to speak. Hell we got a performance from Sheila E and a surprise appearance from Carlos Santana and the entire show was like 3 hours.




All said, I loved it! I'm thinking of going again if he does a show in LA.

Management Consulting may not be for me after all...

One of the early activities in the MLT program is to take a career assessment survey. I've taken one of these years ago at my first job and was surprised at some of the assessment. I thought for sure it was going to peg me as a soft spoken person who is very detail oriented, but when I got my results the survey pegged me as a pretty gregarious person, with a big picture outlook, and who is not afraid of making difficult decisions. Not surprisingly, the assessment said I wasn't a very good listener. I remember the line verbatim, "Be careful in a meeting with her. She may very well appear alert and attentive but she is probably not listening." lol

The organization also had an expert come and talk to us in more depth about the assessment and the guy said based on my profile that I'm probably more reticent when I first meet people and that I'd make a good people manager due to my honesty, and my eventual outspoken-ness but that I have to work on warming up to people faster. That was five or so years ago, and the assessment was pretty spot on. Fast-forward to now, I have a hard time dealing with details, I'm known in the department for being honest and pointing out potential weaknesses in our strategies, and I enjoy talking and being the center of attention.

This recent assessment hadn't changed much since then. It still pegs me as someone who is outspoken and honest, someone who has a hard time listening instead of talking, and someone who prefers to deal with the big picture. The survey also says that my top values are monetary gain, autonomy, innovative thought/strategy, creativity, and ability to pursue interests outside of my career. In addition to the career profile assessment, it gave me a list of careers and a score on how much I'd like the work. What surprised me is that I scored a 96 in venture capital (I'm thinking this is due to my affinity for innovation) and only an 88 in Marketing.



What surprised me was the 37 in Management Consulting. I'm assuming I scored low in this area because autonomy is one of my most important values.






That said, I should probably conduct some informational interviews with management consultants. I'm not going to strike it off my list of possible career avenues just yet, but the assessment has me thinking more seriously about brand management.

Career Goals & My Performance Evaluation

It's time for our annual performance evaluations and I finished evaluating myself today. It's interesting doing this in light of my B-school applications. Going through the process of evaluating myself and setting clear cut goals for the next year was much different this time around. The goals I set for next year are much more clear, concrete and specific and I can't help but wonder if that's attributable in any way to the B-school application process.

Firstly, one of my goals for next year is to be promoted from associate -- something that I've been told is improbably if not altogether impossible. In the past, I've been far more calculating and decided to play nice and go about getting a promotion the traditional way. With my sights on B-school, I'm kind of throwing caution to the wind and going for the gusto. I do wonder how my manager is going to react to this goal. She might try to get me to change it before I submit it to HR, but I'm going to hold firm.

I've identified specific areas that I want to develop: my communication and negotiation skills. I'm very good at public speaking but I notice at meetings that when I speak extemperaneously it's difficult for me to articulate my ideas in such a way that gets me buy-in from the others in the meeting. I've also never had to negotiate a deal before and this is a skill I need to hone if I'm going to be an effective leader.

In addition to setting clear quantifiable goals and identifying areas where I need to improve, I also came up with some projects and initiatives that will assist me in getting to that end and will (if all goes according to plan) positively impact my company.

I need a suit!

Back when I had my epiphany, I started going to MBA informational sessions (both general and for specific schools). What became very apparent very quickly is that my publishing get up is not going to cut it. I need some more business attire. I usually buy a new suit when I go looking for a job, but I haven't been looking in three or so years, so all of my suits are now outdated and don't fit right now(I just reinstated my early morning workouts and egg white breakfasts to remedy that situation). The first MLT event is in approximately a month. I need a suit by then. Or maybe a nice dress...

GMAT Tip

I am so thankful that I don't have to think about this test anymore (or at least I hope I don't) but when I was perusing Beat The GMAT today I ran across a great article about eliminating test anxiety and how practice tests are a good study tool. I did a lot of studying with the OG and Manhattan GMAT materials, but I attribute a good portion of my GMAT success to taking practice tests.

Snippet from the article Eliminate Test Day Anxiety:

But as this research demonstrates, the process of struggling through and potentially even performing poorly on practice tests is instrumental in the process of learning and improving. Some study techniques – flashcards, reading lists of formulas, note taking, etc. – “feel” more productive simply because they remove the pressure and anxiety of testing. But as the common workout axiom goes, “no pain, no gain”.

Happy Studying!

Things to do, good news and updates.

1) Stanford is hosting a diversity conference for prospective students sometime in April. Of course you have to submit an application for consideration. The question is (and I paraphrase), "how would you bring intellectual diversity to Stanford GSB." How esoteric.

2) The good news is that I'm finding calculus to be pretty intuitive this time around. The bad news is that the teacher assigns SO MUCH HOMEWORK. And I accidentally missed the Sunday meeting because I lost my phone and thereby my calendar and got my times screwed up. Grr.

3) I'm taking a work trip to MD that will enable me to visit Wharton, NYU, Tuck, and Columbia (though I don't think I have a shot in hell at getting in) in a much more economical fashion.

4) I made a succulent beef brisket yestereday. It was 7 pounds, so I have more than enough meat for the rest of the week. Perhaps I will create another post about it.

5) I've already got my next Toastmasters speech etched out. I just need to get put on the calendar for February. My goal is to finish my Competent Communicator manual by August so I'll have time to devote solely to apps.

Resume Revision

Essay writing is kind of fun for me. Writing has always come pretty easy for me and I've always preferred writing papers to taking exams. I feel that I have more control over the way I'm perceived in an essay, so I've already started thinking about anecdotes and stories to tell when I start my applications. As productive as essay brainstorming has been, I've been putting the cart before the horse because I should really try to refine and improve my resume so that I can get a better sense of what my perceived weaknesses will be. The resume in its current state needs a face lift.

Before I applied to MLT in September, my resume was essentially a list of my duties. I didn't really speak about my accomplishments whatsoever. When I prepared my resume for MLT, I tried to make my resume more achievement oriented by injecting sales figures. Lots of the bullet points still need refining, though.

When applying to jobs, I don't even include the first job I had out of college (3-month program with the United Way) or the internship I had after that. In my mind's eye, my pre-publishing experiences aren't really relevant, but I'll need to include at least a bullet point for these two positions and these bullet points need to reflect a major accomplishment. I have to reach back into the deep recesses of my mind to think of something to write about.

I also need to translate these accomplishments into general terms. It's difficult talking about my project that generated half a mil in revenue when other b-school applicants are talking about 15 million dollar accounts that they worked on. I need to think of points to contrast my accomplishments with. So I can talk about my 500 k project, but then I need to say that similar projects average 200 K or I need to talk about how I exceeded a goal. The resume will probably be the most painstaking aspect for me. Had I done my due diligence and kept my brag book up back 5 years ago, I'd have a record of my older achievements. Now, I'll have to make the best with what I have. Perhaps I can get in touch with my former supervisors and get some hard figures from them.

Grandma's Enchiladas

This week I had a craving for my grandmother's enchiladas. These are far from authentic, but they are so tasty. I probably will never be as good a cook as my grandmother is, but I did the enchilada's justice last night. The pictures were taken an my boyfriend's iPhone so please excuse the quality.

The enchiladas were a pretty easy meal. Here's what I used:

Flour tortillas (it's customary to use corn tortillas for enchiladas, but I love red enchiladas with flour tortillas)
La Victoria Enchilada Sauce (red)
Sharp cheddar cheese
1 Garlic clove
1/2 Onion
Lean Ground turkey

I found pre-seasoned "Taco" ground turkey in the super market on sale, so I bought that. Typically you'll need to season your ground turkey with chili powder, seasoning salt and other things.

What you do:

Sautee chopped garlic and onion in extra virgin olive oil until translucent. Add the ground turkey in chunks and brown. Grate your cheese (however much or little you want) and set it to the side. Next open the La Victoria Enchilada Sauce and pour a little on to a plate. Lightly coat each side of a tortilla in the sauce. Place a spoonful or two of the browned meat into the center of the tortilla. Top the meat with cheese and then roll the tortilla tightly. Place the rolled tortilla in a glass baking dish. Repeat until the meat is gone. When done, pour the remaining enchilada sauce over the rolled tortillas and top that with cheese. Bake in the oven on 350 for 30 minutes.

To round out the meal, I decided to go the easy route and make boxed Mexican Rice (from Rice-A-Roni) and canned re-fried beans. For vegetables, I sauteed collard greens, garlic, and salsa in extra virgin olive oil.



When you're ready to eat, just top the enchiladas with a small amount of sour cream and you're good to do. My grandmother always tells me that no one will want to eat your food if they don't like how it looks, so my presentation still leaves much to be desired. My boyfriend, however, can attest to how good they turned out. He licked the pan!

Patience has never been one of my virtues, part two

So I thought briefly last night about submitting an application for Haas' part time MBA, but reality just hit me. I am inundated with work right now. Yesterday I was on the phone with clients all.day.long. I didn't have more than 30 minutes to follow up with folks on email, get coffee, organize a spreadsheet -- nothing! Imagine working this hard, trying to maintain a social life, trying to maintain your figure, trying to maintain your sanity, -- and doing all of that while going to school and keeping up with homework. No can do. With that said, part time is off!

What's my story?

If you're applying to B-school, you've surely heard talk about honing "your story." When we applied to college, we didn't have to speak much about our future goals. Sure we talked a bit about who we were and the experiences we had in high school, but our professional goals weren't really at play. We weren't expected to have a concrete plan of what we wanted to do post graduation. Applying to b-school is a different beast. Business school is a professional school and you need to give admissions committees a clear idea of what you want to do after you obtain your MBA.

I'm reminded of an epsiode of Living Single. Sinclair (Kadijah's cousin and secretary) asks for more responsibility. When Kadijah asks her what exactly she wants to do, Sinclair whines and says she doesn't know. I'm kind of feeling like Sinclair -- but just kind of. After all, I embarked on this journey after taking some personal inventory. So I have a hazy vision of leaving my current industry and perhaps my current function. When I was brainstorming , I thought about which aspects of my job that I liked and enjoyed the most. In certain ways I work as an internal consultant. I'm not married to just one product team. I conduct market research and pre-launch market seeding campaigns to unearth information about the market for any given editor or to help an editor solve problems with their book list or individual books. It'd be cool, I thought, to do something similar outside of publishing. Then I thought, and thought, and said you know what, that using an external, fresh perspective and approach to solving a problems is what consultants do. I did an informational interview with one of my good friends from college (I believe I've posted about it here) and confirmed that my idea of what she really did was correct. I was fearful, however, of how well I'd be able to convince an admissions committee that I'd be successful in making a transition from publishing to consulting.

That fear led me to other avenues that seemed more predictable for someone with my background. What if I stayed in publishing and wrote about my goal to revolutionize the industry in my essays? This is quite a lofty and original goal. Thinking about your career goals in terms of how good your essays will be is kind of backwards, though, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to convince an admissions committee that I was passionate about that goal. While my end goal is to leave the industry, I won't pretend that there aren't any aspects about it that I like. I also won't pretend that if I stayed in publishing I couldn't find a niche for myself that would be fulfilling. That said I'm giving some more thought to using my MBA to come back to publishing, but there are other industries and functions that have caught my eye.

One day I was waiting for a friend to pick me up and I wandered into a GAP, and I found another career inspiration there. I love marketing. I really do. I started my publishing career in marketing, and I took my current job because it was a hybrid between marketing and editorial. When I did a stint at Starbucks fresh out of undergrad while looking for a full time job, I used to study the marketing materials that were sent to the store. Starbucks' marketing and branding is totally integrated from the core. There's no element in a Starbucks store that does not serve to communicate Starbucks' benefits to its customers. This is also what I saw at the GAP that day (though they have been suffering in sales as of late). A light bulb went off. Perhaps retail marketing is really where I need to be. I had had a few drinks at happy hour no more than ten minutes prior, so the $5 wine could have been at work.


Then out of no where a few weeks ago, without the aid of $5 wine, my editorial mind resurfaced. While I don't necessarily want to work with books anymore, I do like the idea of cultivating a list of books or products. And that is very similar to what a brand manager would do with a particular brand's products. I went to Wet Fish to research. According to wetfish, here are a Brand Manager's basic duties:

1. Monitoring the competitive landscape of the category in which your brand resides.
2. Developing strategies to exploit market opportunities.
3. Executing those strategies with the help of a cross-functional team.
4. Delivering the sales volume, market share, and profit projections for the business.

Currently, I participate in a process that is responsible for all four of the above.

Now I have four career paths in mind and four career paths I need to explore in more depth. I would like to develop a clear picture of my goals before B-school not only for the sake of my applications, but also for the sake of attaining these goals. I understand that most b-school students wind up veering in a different direction than the one they charted in their applications. I might also fall under that umbrella, but doing personal inventory so I know what I really like to do, what I'm good at doing, and what makes me happy will still be helpful to me no matter which career path I ultimately choose.

Needless to say, pensive cat has some thinking to do....

Chance Indication Link

I might be tardy to the party on this, but I found this Chances Indication link on Vocaz.com. The site is geared towards engineers looking to obtain an MBA, but I still found it interesting. It's like one of those quizzes you see in the back of cosmo.

My competitiveness rating wound up totaling to 70.1 (don't forget that .1). I could increase it by scoring at least 20 points higher on the GMAT, but we've already done that dance before.

Round 3 is off

I just had a Road to Damascus moment. The Stanford acceptance rate is 8%. Odds are that submitting a Round 3 application will be a waste of money. I can deal with a rejection. I can't deal with throwing 250 bucks down the drain.

Patience has never been one of my virtues...

I've spent the last hour or so brainstorming for possible Stanford essays. The Round 3 deadline isn't until April, so I have some time to get off my lazy behind, and I won't have to make a concrete decision on submitting an application until the end of this month. What's the harm in outlining essays?

Back to Life. Back to Reality.

My holiday season was joyous. I took a week off from work, had a tree trimming party, went home to Los Angeles, and roasted my first turkey by myself. I also finished my statistics course and earned an A.

However, all good things come to an end, and it's back to work on Monday. The first two weeks of January is always a busy time for me at work, and I'm going to enroll in a Calculus course that starts on January 13th. 2011 is going to be busy so I'm happy that I was able to get some R&R before the storm. I do, however, have my birthday to look forward to this month.

Now comes the time where most MBA aspirants start weighing the pros and cons of applying round 3 in March in hopes of matriculating in the fall and the pros and cons of waiting till Round 1 in October and matriculating in fall of 2012.

I like to think of myself as a person who has a good balance between logic & reason and emotion & impulse so I'm really torn right now. Logic and reason is telling me to wait. My heart and impulse is telling me to pull the trigger in March.

Why apply now? I'm really excited about the prospect of going back to school! And I really am ready to move on from my current line of work.

Why wait? I've just been elected as an officer at toastmasters and I just started serving as a mentor in a local program for at risk youth. Both of these will look good on an application, but more importantly, I am obligated to the mentorship program for one year. This obligation will limit the schools I can apply to should I need to matriculate in Fall -- I'd have to stay local. Additionally my plan to bolster my gpa was to take 3-4 quant courses. If I apply in Round 3, I'll only have 2 under my belt. Should I apply in Round 3 and get dinged, I'll have made my boss aware of the fact that I plan on leaving which could jeopardize promotions (not that I'm up for any at the moment). Lastly, but most definitely not least, I really don't feel like writing any essays right now. Whenever I think about that long "What matters to you most and why" Stanford essay I wind up turning on re-runs of the Golden Girls to avoid having to write it.




So for today, logic and reason prevails.