Almost done !!

I am almost done with my internship with just one more week to go. Yesterday, I went to a barbecue at a Tepper alumna’s house from the class of 1997. I was happily surprised by how engaging they were. I went there half expecting it to be a super formal dinner but it was just awesome. We had great conversations about Tepper, told great stories and got a lot of wonderful advice about our career ahead. The more I meet new Tepper people, the more I get convinced that my decision to come to Tepper because the people seem so nice is one of the best ones I have made in life.

and then it rained !!

Yeah….yesterday it did rain like the sky was coming down but this post is not about rain in Pittsburgh because had this blog been about the instances of unexpected precipitation in Pittsburgh, there would have been way too many posts.

Last I wrote, it must have been some rant about the lack of interviews in my life. Well, I was going through the dry spell and then it rained interviews. One week, I had first round interviews every single day and even more than one on some days. The next week, I had a second round every single day. Now in the third week its raining offers with conflicting deadlines. So, now I am going crazy writing to recruiters to extend the deadline, speed up the process and just give me an answer asap meanwhile looking for apartments in the Bay area. I still am not sure about how many of these efforts are going to go down the drain but then again, if there is one thing this experience has taught me, it’s that an honest effort never goes down the drain.

Amidst all the prevailing uncertainties and ongoing negotiations (and negotiate I must after all wisdom I got from Sheryl Sandberg’s ted video about how women in business end up getting a poorer deal because they don’t negotiate enough), there is one thing I am sure of – that I am going to the Bay area this summer.

Why I love Tepper so much

Dec 12, 2012: It was my birthday and we had the most hated final on the very next day. This has been the thing about my birthday since my childhood…..it always overlaps with one exam or the other. I knew that none of my friends will have the time to do anything. So, I came back home from school, cooked some food and went to my room to listen to the lecture videos. I found it intriguing that my roommate (of the cleaning-and-cooking-is-a-waste-of time school of thought) was meticulously cleaning the kitchen and the hall. Anyways, I took my dinner and went to my room.

Around midnight, I just went to the kitchen to dump my dirty dishes in the sink to find the surprise party my friend were hurriedly putting together. Surprised I was…and however cheesy it may sound…it did feel great that they had braved the final-exam-times and decided to celebrate my birthday.
Dec 13, 2012: The next day I went to my school and found that almost everyone in my class knew that it’s my birthday (I have it on FB, ha!). One of my friends treated me with lunch and then we wolfed-down desserts till we hated ourselves. It was time for the last Finance-I class after that. Just wishing me in the corridors was not enough for the awesome Teperronis. So, the moment our Finance Prof stepped out of the class to let us complete the course evaluation, my lovely classmates decided to wish me kindergarten style, that is, by singing Happy Birthday out loud while clapping and all. It was nice and a bit embarrassing.

But that was not the end of Tepper awesomeness for the day. Before leaving the class, the professor joked saying, “May be I should go out and get a cup of coffee so that I don’t influence your evaluation” to which one of my classmates replied -“May be you should get two while you are at it.” Guess what…. once the lovely b’day song was over, the professor entered with two cups of coffee, walked over to the student and handed him the coffee saying, “I got two sugars….didn’t know your milk preference.”

Everyday I spend at Tepper, I fall more in love with the school and the people and feel happy about the day I decided to come to Tepper. It’s the applications season now. I have applied for four internships already and have been talking to our alumni in the companies I am interested in. I hope that we all get cool internships asap so that the parties and the Tepper awesomeness can ensue.

Coming down with something

Finals are coming up….the To Do for the emails I have to write never seems to end….our kitchen sink is still not fixed…it’s raining cats and dogs and I feel like I am coming down with something. We are dealing with Lagrange’s multipliers and Hessian matrices in our optimization class….things I thought I will never encounter again after Mathematics-III in college. I feel that i have completely lost track of  what’s going on around me.

It’s December….almost half gone !!

I have the first deadline of the recruiting season tomorrow and I haven’t even started on the cover letter yet. The finals are approaching and I am pretty clueless about what’s going on in Finance and Optimization. I know I can catch up but I need sometime for that and I don’t see any readily available time slot in near future. My kitchen sink is getting flooded and I can’t quite figure out why. My roommate and I haven’t taken out the trash in a long long time and I don’t know when are we gonna do that. I feel that I am lagging behind everyone in networking and have so many emails to write and phone calls to make to make-up for that. Although all my classmates are super-nice people, I see the niceness subliming from some of them and that doesn’t feel good. I am fat but I never make it to the gym. My schedule is crazy and the one thing I fear the most is myself…the fact that I may not do my best and lose out on things I can get.

This makes me very tired and sleep deprived. This is what I was looking for when I decided to come for an MBA. The zeal to succeed, to push myself beyond my limits and see how far I can go. And am I enjoying every moment of it?? Absolutely !!

PS:-Whoever tells you that the tough part of an MBA is getting in is lying. When you are awaiting the decision from the adcoms, you have almost nothing at stake. You just are presented with the choice to make that leap of faith. MBA recruitment is the time which decides whether your leap of faith is going to turn into a blissful flight or a nasty fall.

Before midterms

Here I am sitting in the silent study, trying to study accounting and that’s the exact moment the thought of writing a blog post occurs to me. Anyways, I have got another hour to go through the assignment I have already done and print it. I think I am good here. We have the mid-terms looming around and that’s kind of scary. The last time I remember when I wrote tests was sometime in early 2007. Yeah…it’s been a long long time. The only thing I am really worried about is Accounting and I think it’s pretty clear why (if not, goto the later part of line 1)

Reporting from Pittsburgh

I started writing this post when base camp had just started. Now it’s over and today was the first day of classes. I will write in detail about the base camp. Just getting this stuff out for now.

I have completed the first week at business school and it has been pretty cool so far. The base camp has started and now we have stuff to do. But I think I should start from the beginning.

I boarded the flight with three of my batch-mates in Delhi on July 27 (notice the switch to mm dd) and landed in Chicago after around 22 hours. At the immigration check, I realized that I have lost my I20 and that kind of panicked me. After emptying my bag on the floor and sifting through all the stuff, I was able to locate it somehow. As soon as I reached the counter, I had lined up for, the nice lady sitting there decided to call it a day and I had to look for an immigration officer willing to check me in. Right after I was done with the immigration check, I somehow managed to lose my I20 with my passport. Thankfully, I soon found them in a corner. After that it was more or less routine stuff till we reached Pittsburgh.

It was raining really hard when we landed in Pittsburgh….stay tuned for more.

Update so far

I am all set for Tepper….well almost. The finances seemed to have worked out…..well somewhat. Cornell continues to ignore me….well I hope they change that stance.

Anyhow, I got a loan sanctioned from Credilla and a bunch of other things are in the pipeline. I keep getting setbacks here and there….as if the cosmos is conspiring to keep me on my toes. Will update with the details once things completely work out for me.

ClearAdmit Snapshot Review: Tepper School of Business

I just read the snapshot and the first thought was- Why didn’t I get this before my Tepper application. Not that I am complaining about the outcome of my Tepper application but it did take me some time to make a structure out of all the information I gathered. What the snapshot will do for you is give a basic understanding of the school which can work as the framework for all the information you will access through different resources.

It explains the curriculum very well which used to be the first thing I looked at while researching a school. I strongly feel that the snapshots will save you from the disorientation that happens with the information overdose midway through the application period. It will certainly help you get a feel about the school. Most importantly, it will give you ideas about the things that you should be seeking more information about.

That’s it for now. Happy apping people !!

PS:- And….the snapshots are for free

Tepper deposit: Check

Submitted the confirmation deposit for Tepper. There is still some significant gap in the money required and the money I have. Credilla will get back by the end of this week. Haven’t even started with the I-20 stuff.

To cope with this all, I have started going to the gym again. Hope I will be back to my pre-application season form by fall.