Sweating Bullets

Okay, maybe I'm not really sweating bullets but it just dawned on me that the Columbia ED review cycle begins in a month! A month! (a month plus a few days but c'mon) I remember thinking about this stuff in January and thinking that there was so much dead time to kill and now it's really hitting me. It's go time.

GMAT is obviously done. My essays are up in the air... I have my goals essay and I'm happy with it (despite being terribly over the recommended word count). I have my passion essay though I'm not happy with it and it still needs a few edits. The other 2 essay topics we won't know until the app is released though some have guessed it will be the same as the J-term questions. I may look at them if I have time and the Columbia app isn't out yet. Crazy that the app should be out in 2 weeks (or so)... no date has been given but late July is the commonly accepted timeframe. From then, it'll be a frantic 2 more weeks before the opening of the review cycle. Ayyyyy!

Sidebar here. You know how there was a big stir when Harvard decided to release their essay topics in May? Then schools like Stanford (and I think Kellogg to an extent) released their essays early as well. The whole online b-school aspirant community was lauding HBS for being forerunners and pioneers once again (first with the case study method and now with the super duper early app I guess). Well I'm kinda glad Columbia stuck to their guns and stayed with their traditional late July release date. They didn't let Harvard sway them to and fro in an effort to keep up with the Joneses. And I'm proud of them for that. Even though CBS gets a ton of flack for their ED policy (and how it lets them inflate their yield slightly) and for being the supposed laggard of the M7, I'm really happy that they didn't follow Harvard's lead like a little lemming. I do understand why Stanford did it though (since they're HBS' primary competitor for the creme de la creme, they understandably didn't want applicants' minds mulling over Harvard's application and falling in love for too long a time before remembering Stanford has an app too)

Anyway, my two recommenders are in place and by tomorrow, one of them will have made some major progress. I gave them last year's set of 10 recommender questions to "prepare with" in the hopes that the questions stay the same. One of them said that they expect to be done tomorrow so at least one guy will be in the bag. I can "encourage" the other one too. One interesting thought here though. I am Asian. Coincidentally, both of my recommenders are Asian. I wonder if this will send up a red flag in the eyes of the adcom? Will they think "oh grrreat, here's anothe cliquey Asian anti-social who is only gonna hang out with other Asians." They better not! I am so not that. I listen to country music and my best friends from high school are all Jewish. Oi vey. Maybe I'm being neurotic but let's pray they don't think that.

On an unrelated note, I've noticed that Samantha and Soni and HappyBunny (fellow 2009 bloggers) have all received offers for "sponsorship" by ManhattanGMAT. I learned this by reading comments left by a ManhattanGMAT blogger on those 3 aspirants' respective blogs. The term "sponsorship" is actually incredibly misleading though. ManhattanGMAT is basically asking them to post a link to ManhattanGMAT on their blog in exchange for ManhattanGMAT posting a link on their own website. Haha! What a ridiculous offer. This is great for ManhattanGMAT because obviously they get more hits and potentially more customers and revenue and profits (since the GMAT prep business has such high start-up costs and minimal continuing operations costs). But is this equally great for the aspirants? Not really... I mean, they get more hits but they don't have the opportunity for great economic gain that ManhattanGMAT would get. It would be more fair if Manhattan GMAT offered to give a tiny, tiny royalty to the blogger if any of their referrals become a paying customer. Now that would be equitable. Thankfully, I don't believe any of them have accepted this dumbass "sponsorship" suggestion. Kudos to them. Or perhaps I'm just being a prickly, jealous idiot who is insulted that I didn't receive such a "sponsorship" suggestion. Haha! I understand they're the standard in GMAT prep but if they don't like my blog, they can... well, let's just say that I shouldn't write about that stuff. :)

Another observation. My blog's hits have been up by something like 50% since the ScoreTop scandal. I wonder if I'm coming up in search engine queries. Maybe I should investigate. Maybe I should shut up and go to bed.