Thursday was the CBS Admissions Reception in DC. I'll try to keep this brief :) They actually started quite late because they accidentally sent out an email with the wrong time. Ugh. The prospectives I would say were roughly of the same caliber as those at the Yale reception and a noticeable notch below HBS. Interesting that there were considerably more minorities than at HBS though. Anyway, it was pretty packed, I would guess maybe 150-160 people.
The presentation was the same one as the one they show for the campus visits so it was all old news to me. The Q&A session was also pretty lengthy and featured some terrible questions (1 or 2 were answered during the presentation already!) ... not a good showing for my future alma mater (hopefully of course). I did get to meet Christina from the BusinessWeek forums though. She was very nice in-person though she seemed a bit new to delivering the presentation. Jennifer, another assistant director of admissions, was there as well. They are both relatively young, mid-20's, and very easygoing to speak with. At the end, there were about 9 alumni who spoke to prospectives. I only spoke to one of them, a graduate from 1966 who works in real estate investment. He was trying to talk to 8 people at once so I couldn't get any specific questions in but I got his business card so I'll hopefully ask him stuff when he gets back from his business trip in October (such a long time, I know).
I did meet a couple other cool prospectives though, and one of them is super knowledgable about real estate. I think I definitely need to pick his brain before I do my Columbia interview because it'll flesh out my career plan much better (my one weakness, though a major one). I already emailed him so hopefully we can meet up for drinks next week. All in all though, this was the most comfortable that I've felt at one of these functions/receptions. I guess practice does help. I actually spoke to several people and made some good contacts, hence the title of my post :P
Speaking of the interview, apparently none went out this week! That's very surprising given the timeline from last year. However, there is one poster on BusinessWeek who said he got an interview on 8/27 and accepted on 9/10. I've got several reasons to believe that it's just a prank so I'll just disregard for now. I'm not going to get super nervous until I find myself empty-handed after seeing a good 3 or 4 interview invites for the super early submitters. Waiting is hard :(
Also, a shocker today. Some of you may know about NYU's Discover Stern weekend for minorities. Anyway, my application for the free weekend just got rejected! Crazy huh? My profile is higher than their averages and there isn't much to the application other than biographic info and a resume (mine isn't too shabby). I'm really surprised that I wasn't accepted to their little discovery program. I'm thinking that it's primarily for under-represented minorities (not just minorities) which is why my over-represented butt got kicked to the curb :( Hopefully this doesn't happen in the actual admissions process hehe.
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6 comments:
Hi,
I'm just starting out on the application process so had a couple of lame-ass questions :
- are "prospectives" fellow applicants or are they mba students ?
- what sort of dress code is followed at these MBA receptions ?
Cheers !!
Hi Oasis,
Welcome aboard! Prospectives are the applicants such as myself or yourself. We are prospective students. Some people call us aspirants as well because we aspire to earn our MBA or attend whichever program. Most people refer to students as just students. And the dress code is always business casual or business formal, depending on the culture of the school (for instance, HBS had like 95% suits whereas Columbia had maybe 60%). If you want to be safe, just do business formal. And when I said business casual, I meant trousers and a dress shirt without tie. I didn't mean khakis which I think might be pushing it just a lil bit (though some people will do it). Keep firing with the lame questions! :P
Thanks ! I asked about the 'prospectives' as I was thrown off by the 'wear suits'....could never imagine applicants in suits ;-) BTW does the dressing up really help (guess it doesn't hurt but...) ?
any interview invite yet? Not to stress you out or anything!
Hey Sam, no interview invite yet even though I submitted on aug.10 and went under review aug.14. They are certainly slower than last year prob due to increased volume. There have been a small smattering of invites and even acceptances though. Weird. The worst case scenario would be that they're actually on time but being infinitely more selective this year (explaining the non-existent invites). Ugh. I think it's finally Wharton app time.
I want to start MBA. But interview importance for MBA entrance?
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