Star blog of the month

Star blog of the month

Featured Blogger Rutika Muchhala, Student at IIT, Mumbai.
Blog on range of subjects including a wealth of information and tips on securing an ivy-league college admission.
Here is a selection from Rutika Muchhala's blog. The layout is simple and pleasant and the content especially inspiring and a very valuable resource for College Canteen's users.

On Business school admissions

Before I went to Boston for my interview, I had read about what HBS interviews were like online, seen the kind of questions asked, spoken to an HBS alum and also to someone who had interviewed for the 2+2 the previous year. I made my own list of possible questions that can be asked.
In spite of all this, I felt acutely ignorant of what the interview would be like, as the kind of questions you’d face as a college senior are very different from those that people with work-ex are asked. Nor did I prepare for the interview till the last 2 days. I thought of questions like what my long-term goals were, but always came across a blank. Ideally I should have practised talking aloud to a friend and received feedback, but I was too scared of not living up to my own expectations.
Yet the last 2 days of preparation helped a lot, and the 30 min interview breezed by without leaving me any time to ponder over how it went until later.
I’ll list down the questions I was asked last year and provide some preparation tips as well as some interview information.
HBS INTERVIEWS
1. The interview length is 30 mins. The interviewer will make sure you are quite comfortable and that all your anxieties evaporate initially itself. 30 mins pass by so quickly, you just don’t realise it
2. As of now, 2+2 interviews are conducted only by admission board officials and not by HBS alums.
3. HBS is one of the few schools which conducts non-blind interviews. This means that the interviewer will have read your application and your file from cover to cover, and will have prepared very pointed and well-thought out questions to ask you.
4. It is advised to speak to HBS alum beforehand, since they can give you a flavor of the interview. There is also a Clearadmit Wiki Page with a list of interview experiences of people who have gone through the HBS process, I’ve provided the link below.
http://www.clearadmit.com/wiki/index.php?title=HarvardInterview
5. Using the available resources, make a list of questions that you think you can be asked. Then sit and write down answers to each one of them. Rehearse these well enough to sound polished, but not so much that you sound artificial.
6. A good exercise would be to give 2-3 mock interviews to a close friend, family member or HBS alum, who can tell you whether you sound like yourself and give you good, honest feedback.
7. If you are giving mock interviews, or simply rehearsing your answers in the mirror, try to videotape yourself speaking. This can be of immense help.
8. Be confident, and be honest. If you’ve been invited for an interview, you should KNOW that you’re someone they think is incredible.
9. Like I’ve said before, the interview is only one component of your application. They want to see whether you are as good in person as you are on paper. You may feel you completely ruined it, but you can still get in, and vice versa. Don’t ever let your hopes down!
QUESTIONS
You can be asked questions from any part of your application so know it thoroughly. More likely, you will be asked about any gaps the ad-com perceives in your application (eg. I had not mentioned anywhere what I had done in the summer that year. This was the first question I was asked, and I was quite surprised as I was prepared to talk about myself, or walk the interviewer through my resume.)
To give you a better idea of what I mean, I’ll list down most of the questions I was asked.

1. Tell me what you did this summer, its not clear from your application

2. What project are you working on (for my thesis), how many people are you working with, what do you enjoy about it, how does this compare to your ITC internship?

3. How did you get experienced people to respect you & listen to you in the ITC factory? (some more questions on that internship)

4. Tell me about your work at Caltech (d questions related to what i answered)

5. what do you like about robotics? (my career path was down this line, she asked me pointed questions about markets in this field, what i feel can be a hindrance to reaching my goals, etc)

6. tell me something about yourself that would surprise me?

7. tell me about the campus radio-(how we started it, what we did, etc)

8. tell me about a leader you admire?

9. what would be your ideal job for the next 2 years?

10. why an mba and not a phd?

11. what inspired you to apply for 2+2?

12. is there anything else you would like the admissions board to know about you?

Even though you can never make an exhaustive list of questions, there are some that you must prepare

1. Tell me about yourself

2. Walk me through your resume

3. Why do you want to an MBA? Why not an M.S./PhD/J.D./M.D.?

4. Why do you want to do an MBA 2 years after graduation?

5. Why do you want to do an MBA at HBS?

6. Why did you apply to the HBS 2+2 program?

7. What are you long-term goals?

8. How is an MBA going to help you achieve your goals?

9. Is there anything else you would like the admissions board to know about you?

You must also be prepared for questions like:

1. What book are you reading right now?

2. Which is your favorite movie/book?

3. Who is a leader you admire the most?

This has evolved into a fairly long post, and I’d like to cut it short here. Prepare well, be confident and be honest. Thats all it takes

Rutika has also written an excellent post on how to make sure you have the best letters of  recommendation. Must-read for those of you with ambitions to study further.

LORs are without doubt the most terrifying component of a B-school application, since they are completely out of your control. I have been giving some tips to my juniors over the past few months that I think may reduce some of the dread associated, and I’ll share those with you.
1. HBS 2+2 requires only 2 LORs, which makes your job much easier.
2. Your can choose your recommenders from a wide range of people: summer internship guides, extra-curricular activities in-charges, professors you have worked with. As an undergrad applying to HBS you can take academic recos (not the case when applying to Stanford)
3. Preferably try to take LORs from someone you have known for a while, atleast a few months, and interacted with significantly.
4. Don’t be too concerned regd the recommender’s post: For eg. If you have barely interacted with a CEO vs worked everyday with a manager, it is without doubt better to take the LOR from the manager who knows your work better and knows your personal traits as well.
5. This isn’t hard and fast, but try to let the recommendation be related to some activity/organization/community that you’ve mentioned in your essays/application. This ensures that the ad-com gets proof that whatever you’ve written is valid.
6. Give your recommender sufficient notice, atleast 1 month if not 2. This will ensure he writes your LOR in the best state of mind, and not in a hurry.
7. No matter what, even if your recommender offers it, don’t write the LOR yourself. The admissions board will have read your essays and can clearly identify writing styles. In such a scenario, you will be doomed.
8. When you request a LOR, present the recommender with a envelope that contains your resume, a rough draft of your essays if possible, and a brief summary of the work that you have done with him. You can mention specific anecdotes that highlight, for example, your determination or communication skills or ability to work with senior management. This will ensure that if he has forgotten something important, you refresh his memory.
9. At the same time, any story you wish for him to remember must be mentioned only in bullet points. Otherwise you run the risk of him transferring it word by word, which is a bad idea(as mentioned in point 7)
10. Drop the recommender fairly frequent, polite reminders inquiring the status of your LOR and mentioning the deadline. It is your job to get the LOR submitted on time!

Here are some valuable tips on writing your personal essay
The most important component of a business school application,in terms of painting your portrait for the admissions board, is your essays. It is also the most personal component, and the topics vary from year to year, so there is fairly little I will be able to contribute at a generic level. However, I will try to mention a few things that might help you.

1. Since the essays are the only part of your application that you can control from the time that you decide to apply, spend an inordinate amount of time of them. The topics often require a great deal of introspection and thought, and it is likely that this activity will require more time than the actual essay-writing.
Give yourself 2 months before the application deadline to think about what you want to write and write the actual essays. You should then try to get your family and a few close friends to review your drafts and then edit them. This might require a few iterations. Leave some time at the end for proofreading.
2. Ensure that in each of your essays you talk about different subjects and incidents, so that the admissions boards gets to know as much about you as possible.
3. Bring out instances of leadership and teamwork. Leadership doesn’t only mean that you need to be the team captain, it can also mean that you are the team member who has contributed most to the success of the team in some way, or thought leadership, where you have made some breakthrough in research or published a paper.
4. Use the SAR method – Situation, Action, Result. Always try to talk about the impact of your actions, and if you can quantify the impact, that’s even better.
5. Answer each part of the question carefully. For example, in “What are your 3 greatest achievements and why do you view them as such?”, people often forget to answer the “Why”. There is a reason they have asked you this question, and they won’t like it if you don’t give them an answer!
6. Stick to the word limits. The first time you write your essays, don’t worry about limits too much, but after the iterations, make sure you reduce redunduncy and maintain the word limits carefully.
7. Reduce redunduncy. Don’t use flowery language unnecessarily. This is not a vocabulary test.
For example: The durability of the enemy’s forces was hardy and steadfast.
Changes to —> The enemy’s forces were strong.
8. Get your drafts reviewed by close family and friends. They will be able to remember incidents and stories that you may have forgotten, and they will know whether the essays present the most honest picture of you. At the same time, don’t ask too many people to review your essays, since that will only confuse you more.
9. Proofread the essays. You don’t want any grammatical errors or spelling mistakes. Try to finish the essays atleast a week before the submission deadline, so you’re left with little to fret about
B-school essays are very personal, and you will find very very few original essays online. There is no set format, or no ideal template for an essay. The best essays will infact be those that have been written with an open mind, staying true to oneself.

Published with thanks to Rutika Muchhala. For more, do check out her blog at
http://rutikamuchhala.wordpress.com/