[rsb1982]

Thanks for the heads-up Sunil. I do have Haas on my Radar. Like you said, its engineering background and location makes it a very good school for IT. As for the loans, the impact will be felt across all universities since CitiBank has cancelled the CitiAssist program.

I am not keen to take on the liability of 150K for a top school program since my intention is to return to India soon. Given the situation right now and the lottery system beyond the OPT, it might be a huge risk. Which means that I will be relying on obtaining a good scholarship or fellowship. I know MIT is looking to arrange for other forms of aid, but it won't be able to replace the loan program.

That's one of the reasons that ISB sounds very appealing. Whatever might happen to the US, India has sufficient potential to provide opportunities to its graduates. Plus, the cost works out to be between 25 - 30 % of any US program.

So I'm keeping all options open. I guess I'll take that decision when I have an admit in hand after considering the economic factors. Otherwise, the question is moot !!

What about you ? You apping this year as well ?

Originally Posted by sunilchanchlani

Well thats good.....you can also consider UCB (Haas)-even this one is really good for IT and has the perfect location for IT. As far as I know, this year Ross may not provide no-cosigner loans, if thats ok to you then you can consider it. The same problem is there at many other schools as well.....however some schools this year (except ross) are planning to do something of there own for these loans.

[maxwriter]

Originally Posted by rsb1982

Hi Aditya,

I am an electronics engineer working in IT services for a large MNC. I have an experience of over 4 years, a significant portion of it international and am also leading my own team. I have had consistently good acads and have also earned National scholarships from the CBSE. I am avid fan of classical music and am also qualified at the Tabla Visharad level. I read often and blog occasionally.

I'm targeting schools in the top 25 US + ISB and looking for a career in IT. Like I said, I had my ISB interview last week and am waiting for another one this week (don't wanna jinx it !!).

Other than the GMAT, most universities will look at cross-cultural and leadership experiences. They also want humans, not robots - so anything that adds flair to your personality will help. Finally, you must be able to clearly indicate your goals and the utility of the respective MBA programs. But a GMAT score will indicate your aptitude for academic work and make your profile stand out.

Of course, most of this is not new. You will find it on all MBA sites. Anything else, just post.

RSB

Hey RSB!

Congrats on your great score! Your profile is very similar to mine. All the best with your applications

[adityashukla]

Hey, thanks for the reply...Please finally do post all the admits that u recieve finally, one from ISB too...
In between, as far as preparing is concerned, according to your opinion how much useful shall be the CAT related forum and questions for GMAT. Have u gone through few of them too... My mail id is ..If u have some material on mail, please do forward me.

[rsb1982]

Hi Aditya,

In my opinion, CAT is a super-set of the GMAT. If you ace CAT, you should ideally be doing very well on the GMAT too. However, the approach to the GMAT is slightly different. Most of the questions are easier than CAT. You will need to focus on optimizing the answers to get as many right as you can.

Further for the verbal section, you should focus on increasing your idiomatic knowledge of the language, as well as perfecting the grammatical skills. Unlike CAT, which tests sentence arrangement and CR more, GMAT tests grammatical skills extensively. The RCs are more or less at the same level.

Most of my preparation was based on CAT material, OG, Kaplan 800. I don't have online training materials. Sorry !!

Originally Posted by adityashukla

Hey, thanks for the reply...Please finally do post all the admits that u recieve finally, one from ISB too...
In between, as far as preparing is concerned, according to your opinion how much useful shall be the CAT related forum and questions for GMAT. Have u gone through few of them too... My mail id is shukla.aditya@gmail.com ..If u have some material on mail, please do forward me.

[rsb1982]

Thanks, Max.

Would you mind sharing a bit of your experience of the application process ? If you have any tips, we'd greatly appreciate them.

Regards

RSB

Originally Posted by maxwriter

Hey RSB!

Congrats on your great score! Your profile is very similar to mine. All the best with your applications

[Padma Krishna]

hi
thanks a lot . It was quite useful. Yday i took my kaplan diagnostic. I got result as 65%. In your post you had mentioned that you got 720 in your diagnostic test. how did you calculate that. cud you pl tell me as I just strted preparing
Do you advise applying for R2 for Fall 2009 or better to postpone for R1 for 2010
thanks

[rsb1982]

Hi Padma,

I had taken the test on GMATPrep, it reported the score directly - not on a percentile scale. As I had said in my post, I didn't take any test other than GMATPrep.

Originally Posted by Padma Krishna

hi
thanks a lot . It was quite useful. Yday i took my kaplan diagnostic. I got result as 65%. In your post you had mentioned that you got 720 in your diagnostic test. how did you calculate that. cud you pl tell me as I just strted preparing
Do you advise applying for R2 for Fall 2009 or better to postpone for R1 for 2010
thanks

[rsb1982]

I'll update this post as we go along. Found out yesterday that I was admitted to ISB's class of 2010 !!

Originally Posted by adityashukla

Hey, thanks for the reply...Please finally do post all the admits that u recieve finally, one from ISB too...

[mba-fever]

Congrats on the ISB admit !!!

[Padma Krishna]

Originally Posted by rsb1982

I'll update this post as we go along. Found out yesterday that I was admitted to ISB's class of 2010 !!

Hi congratulations

How about other schools?