The Good Samaritan

I got an email from someone in UCLA Extension. He read my post cribbing about the silence from the school and wrote to me apologising for their lack of response and asking me to send across my queries. I was pleasantly surprised and touched!

This is unexpected help and I am very grateful for it. Blogging seems to have excellent benefits. I am now encouraged to update (& crib?) more often!

Even small things like this make me happy. Baby steps, slow and steady.

Thank you, John, from UCLA Extension School. :-)

Green Tea Ruminations

I have been down with some viral infection for the past couple of days. Spent two whole days sleeping and reading intermittently. Fit as a fiddle now and back to blogging.

It is 9:30 am, a bright and sunny morning and I am sipping my first cup of green tea. I have just spent a precious morning hour reading MBA blogs, one that should have been spent cracking quant problems. Bad bad girl! I cannot help myself. The addiction to blogs and forums is ever growing and I seem to be in a trance, unable to control it. Behind all this is not just a thirst for information but more so, a yearning and envy at all these successful applicants. I look for some common thread that would indicate that my chances of getting into a dream school are bright. What I really want, I think, is some sign from the heavens that I am not blindly day dreaming. Thats all I have been doing in the past few days anyways - day dreaming. It really is time for less thinking and more action.

My research has inevitably revolved around building an alternative transcript. I have been unable to shortlist a more suitable school than UCLA extension. Now, I am mulling over the right time to enroll in these courses. I do not want to tackle them in parallel with GMAT. That still gives me a month to mull on this. I wrote to UCLA extension asking for their next enrolment dates - a couple of the courses I am interested in are closed - and I have received no reply. I hope some clarity dawns on this.

I have also decided to modify my work hours a bit. My work timings are flexible, the only consideration being client meetings that may be scheduled late. I intend to take these meetings from home. From tomorrow I will go it to work at 8:30 am and come home by 6 pm. This will give me a religious couple of hours every evening to GMAT prep. I can obsess over blogs during lunch hour. :)

Have to, have to be more disciplined. Now, off to work!

The Prodigal Returns

I have been gone for quite a while. I haven't been thinking about MBA, GMAT and other such synonymous things. Instead I have been working, working and then working some more. I have missed all my deadlines, well, except for the first and if I continue this way, I will miss that one too. I have been lost in mountains of work for the past ten days. I cannot say that I have not been managing my time well because really, where is all the time? I have sat glued to my laptop pulling miraculous all nighters, night after night and catching a couple of hours of sleep in the wee hours of the morning. But now, it has been over and done with (I hope). I took the whole day off yesterday from thinking about anything, slept the sleep of the dead and had an easy day at work. Today I feel well rested and except for a couple of meetings I am relatively free. So I'll attack the need of the hour - GMAT prep scheduling. I have exactly 2 months to go. Yikes! I need to scoot!

To Do:
1) Draw up a study schedule for GMAT.
Deadline: Thursday Oct 4

PS: I am on Hella! :-)

Beating the GPA Bug!

How to attack the Low GPA bug?

1. Build a stellar alternative transcript.

Issues:

- High cost
- Possible lack of time to build a strong transcript - atleast 4 courses
- Uncertainty of grades - I have to HAVE TO make an A in all the courses

Possible Schools:

UCLA/UCB/Harvard - of which UCLA has the best & cheapest ($525 each!) collection of courses available for distance learning.
(Are there others?)

and

2. Ace GMAT

Are there other options to address this weakness?

Relentless scouring of forums has only left me discouraged. And, when I ask the heavens, they respond with a lacklustre drizzle.

The Long Distance Runner

Coffee in hand, I am writing my first post. The name of the blog says it all. This is a marathon and I am a long distance runner. I run, explore, blaze new trails. Bring on the endurance test!

This blog will chronicle my long marathon towards B school admissions. I am planning to apply come Fall 2008. My not so stellar profile needs serious reworking, rethinking and repositioning. Most importantly, my life, at the moment, needs direction and focus.

The roles of this blog are manifold.
1) Disciplinarian
2) Sounding board - I will spend atleast a few minutes everyday thinking about what-to-do's and how-to-do's towards my admission
3) File of links
4) Journal - My whining, gleeful outbursts, successes & failures, this blog will record them all!
5) To Do - This is perhaps the most important part and directly relates to point 1. Every post will have a to-do list - sometimes with a deadline - and I will track the progress of each of them in the subsequent posts until they are closed.

The Basics
I am 24, female and work in India.

Past:
Engineering graduate from one of the top institutes in the country, with unsuitably low GPA :)
Software engineer for 1.5 years in a Fortune 500 company
Analyst in a startup KPO

Present:
Marketing Consultant in a small-ish KPO

Other:
I also make time to read, write, wine and dine.

To Do:
1) Ace GMAT.
Deadline: Monday Dec 3
2) Draw up a study schedule for GMAT.
Deadline: Friday Sep 28
3) Study UG transcript to identify patterns/weak grades.
Deadline: Sunday Sep 30
4) Research Extension Schools.
Deadline: Sunday Sep 30