Update

It is 7-30 in the morning here. I just woke up after a long night. I am usually trying to get up at 5-30 everyday and work on my application, but yesterday was Christmas so we all went out together after a long time and hence I was tired at the end of the day. I am eating like a glutton, as I miss Indian food badly – who doesn’t like mom’s own home cooked food; it is heaven compared to McDonald’s or Pizza Hut. Slowly, the temperature is also going down but it is nothing compared to the cold in CA. I have almost got used to the lifestyle here. I met a lot of old friends, especially I met some of my school friends after a gap of almost 10 years. Strangely most of them have completed their MBAs and have taken up marketing jobs here. But the usual trend in India is that most of the people go for MBAs after fresh out of college or with one or two years of experience.

I have re-worked on my Kellogg essays as we felt that the short answers section was totally crap. It took me an arduous 5 hours to finish the drafts once more – I re-wrote almost all the essays. Wharton is in a respectable state as we have done some initial reviews and have come to the conclusion that it may not need much work. I may be submitting my applications after I return back because of some last minute changes I may make. I can hardly wait for January for the results of Michigan.

I think I was taking too much of a risk in the Kellogg essays, which I realized later after I re-read some of my old drafts. It’s always wise to take a calculated risk – too much of risk may be actually detrimental to the application. Anyway, it feels much better now. I still need a lot of work on Wharton Essay 5 and 6 – especially the weakness essay. This is another essay, which stumped me initially, but some moment of introspection helped me to gather my sanity and my courage to reveal the actual weakness in my application – I also mentioned it in the assessment essay of Kellogg. Last time I remembered that in the assessment essay I had actually given a rosy picture of myself without mentioning any weaknesses (It is obvious that the admission committee member would be able to find at least one weakness in any application.) Let’s see how it works out finally.

One thing I realized that my blogs have been thoroughly honest – no sycophancy, no external glitz, no drum beating (though I believe that most of the MBA blogs are similar – poweryogi, joey, futurembagirl). Blogging is not an easy task and we all realize that.
I usually tend to speak my heart out in the blogs and hence may sometime generate controversy. As I said before I have tried to write without any pretensions or prejudices, such that the future applicants would get an honest insight into the MBA application procedure.