Inspired by KV's blog, I added a global visitors map on my blog a few days ago. It's great to see how many visit this blog from so many places, I didn't expect to have so many people visiting from places like Ghana, Indonesia and Egypt, amazing! Unfortunately I also feel really guilty since I have this information, I'm sure some hopeful LBS applicants come here looking for useful information and end up reading about the best shoe stores in Madrid and my holiday in Uzbekistan, sorry guys ;-)! So I think it's time again for a real "LBS application blog", especially since the R3 deadline is coming up next Friday!
Let's go through the application. I made sure to get all those things out of the way very early that usually take a long time because they're not under your control . So even though R1 deadline was in October, I already organized my official transcripts and two letters of recommendation letters in August. This was lucky because it turned out one of the letters of recommendation got lost and I had to ask my referee, a busy partner of my company, to write it again. The problem with the recommendation forms is the way they're made your referee is likely to fill them in by hand, which causes problems if it gets lost. Try to convince them to type their answers in word so they can easily access them in case something get lost. Also, the second time I asked the referees to give the letters of recommendation to me in a sealed envelope and I sent them together with my application to ensure they don't get lost again.
The next big step was taking the GMAT, in my opinion a very important part of the application, despite what schools say. I won't write much about the GMAT, as there is so much information out there. If you don't have time, I think the most important thing is to download the two sample tests from the official GMAT website and buy one of the books for revision. I bought the Princeton Review (Cracking the GMAT) and was extremely satisfied with the book, it helped me to review all the forgotten concepts of geometry and offers lots of small tricks, helpful formulas and shortcuts. After reading about how the GMAT works and reviewing formulas, I took the first of the two official practice tests to know how much more I had to study. It turned out I got 99% in verbal and only 75% in quant so from then on I studied only maths, no verbal questions, which significantly reduced what I had to study. So these diagnostic tests are very helpful to focus your efforts. About one or two weeks before the GMAT I panicked a bit and bought Kaplan's GMAT800 and visited the gmatclub website, but I think they made me more nervous than anything, so I actually think it's much better to focus on the basics and sleep well before the test. One thing I wish I had known was how many probability questions would come up (they are hardly touched upon in the practice tests and books). I read that they are reserved for the highest scorers and even then you would only get one or two of them, so I didn't bother studying probability problems very much, but it turned out I got 4 pretty complicated probability questions, most of which I was unable to solve because I didn't know the necessary formulas and they were a bit too complex for me to solve them by logic alone. There is quite a good review of probability problems on the gmatclub website. Many people also recommend using the Official Guide to the GMAT. Unfortunately I didn't know about that so I never used it, but based on the material I read afterwards I would suggest everyone to go for Princeton Review, The Official Guide and gmatclub website. Recently, a new website has been set up, it's called beat the GMAT and also looks very helpful!
Another word of advice on the GMAT (maybe this is only relevant for the overly ambitious and impatient like me :-) ) . Apart from preparation and your brain, the third very important factor is your health and fitness on the day of the test. If you don't feel well, definitely reschedule the appointment for the next available date, even if it means having to apply in R2 instead of R1. In my case, I was too stupid to do that. I had quite a serious head injury four days before the GMAT (I was overly tired after 16h of work and ran into the corner of a shelf in my office, creating a little hole in my forehead and forcing me to go to hospital for the night). Still, I was determined on taking the GMAT, since otherwise I would have had to apply for R2, and I just wanted to know if I could go to LBS before X-mas. Though I scored okay, I had a strong headache for the second part of the GMAT and in the end rushed through it to get home fast. I scored about 50 points lower than I had scored on the practice tests and than what I thought should be a realistic score for me. I'm not saying reschedule it if you have a bit of a cold, but if you have fever or feel very tired in any way or have a headache, make sure you only go if you feel your performance won't be affected. In my case, it worked out fine, but there is a big difference between a score of 690 and a score of 660 (think about the shape of the bell curve!).
A very small part of the application is adding your CV, and I think this is the most underrated part. I don't think it's about how you present yourself so much as what you have done in your life. People always worry so much about the essays and what they should write and how and when they should call the adcom, while I believe the most important thing is what grades you got at school and what you did in your life in terms of internships, extracurriculars and work experience. Especially at LBS I think it is important to show you have international experience, so don't forget about your CV while worrying about essays. This always makes me think about very good networking advice I once read on the web. It was buy a networking guru who complained about friends who would call him saying "I just lost my job and need to start networking now, how do I do that?" - his answer would be "networking is what you should have been doing for the last two years while you still had a job!". Basically, what I want to say that essay writing and CV compiling is not really the activity that decides if you get into business school or not. What matters most is what you have done for the last 5 years, and if you have done well, writing the essays and compiling a convincing CV will be much easier.
The essay questions are all pretty straightforward, such as why do you want to do an MBA, what do you want to do afterwards and so on. I didn't really have a great strategy there but just answered them very honestly. One thing that helped me a lot though was having the essays checked by an alumna who had just joined my company a month earlier. She was happy to help me to promote LBS, so she reviewed my essays, corrected a bit of grammar and gave me very useful hints on how to make my answers more concrete. The only essay I had a big problem with was the one about "which social event do you see yourself initiating"? Browsing the LBS website, it seems like every club already existed, every event already existed, and I could hardly say "I think the women in business club is a great thing and I want to participate", that wouldn't be original! So I actually had the whole application done, the GMAT out of the way etc. but couldn't send my application because I was so uninspired. I was trying to think of something very meaningful or impressive, which made it even harder to even start. In the end, a colleague rescued me. We were going back home on the plane on a Friday night, all tired and foolish, and I was telling him about my drama with this essay questions. He said he would just write something completely absurd and exaggerated, making the adcom think I was either really funny or really stupid. So in the end I just forgot everything about rescuing the world and thought of an event that would be really fun and make people laugh, and from then on it was very easy to write the essay. In fact, I would really like to set up this event at the beginning of the school year, let's see!
I think among all those four items I had to list responding to the tag, there was one important category missing.
Four things I want to do over the next 5 years
- Learn Karate. Karate has fascinated me for the last 15 years. Somehow I never got to do it because I was doing lots of other sports. I tried Taek Won Do for half a year but had to join an advanced course (it was the only one offered at my university) and it was too tough, I became frustrated. I still really want to learn Karate but I wonder am I too old to start at 27? I know I'll never be a blackbelt or karate star, but as long as I can defend myself I would be very happy
- Get a driver's license. This is pretty embarassing. I just never took one. At the beginning, I just found it too expensive and I didn't really need one. Then I didn't have time. Then I was moving a lot, then I lived in the UK and didn't want to learn to drive "on the wrong side of the road" and now I'm away from home from Monday to Friday for my job and I REALLY don't want to spend my precious spare time on weekends taking driving lessons. But when I move to London I definitely need to get a driver's license
- Start having children. This is something I cannot compromise on. I would reallly love to have children already but I know it will be difficult during the MBA and also straight after that. I don't thing starting an investment banking career just when you're about to have a child is good, neither for the baby nor for your career. So I have to wait a few years but I definitely won't wait more than 5 years so that's the most important thing I'll do, no matter what (FYI: I have already found the perfect future father so that's not going to be a problem ;-) ).
- Play the guitar. Another thing I hope to be picking up at business school. As a child, I played the piano for 9 years. Then I played the guitar for five years. I even had a Fender electrical guitar. Unfortunately I was too lazy to practice and ended up giving the guitar to my cousin when I was 20 or so. This Christmas, my mother gave me an acoustic guitar so I could start playing again on the weekends to relax. A month has passed and I still haven't played the guitar even once. It's embarrassing. I really hope I'll start playing soon. It would be great to have a flatmate who plays the guitar so he/she could teach me some thing and we could play together, maybe I would overcome my lazyness.
Those are my wishes for today, over the next days I have to give more application advice as it seems that R2 applicants have been invited for interviews and R3 deadline is coming up soon. Regarding the R2 applicants I am quite sad today. I have a very good friend and colleague who applied in R2 and I really wished she would be my classmate but she hasn't been invited for an interview and has been asked to reapply. She has the most impressive profile ever but only 1 year of work experience. It's sad the work experience requirements are so strict. I can understand you can be sceptical about someone's leadership skills when they are 20, but in the interest of diversity why not take one person like that into your class, because she is not going to reapply, she'll just end up going to another business school this year. So that's very sad.
I've been tagged by Moe, my future MBA2008 classmate. I never knew what tagging means and still don't know, but it seems to be something very helpful since I haven't been very inspired lately due to unhappy times at work (too many weirdos working in this company!). Thank you, Moe, and here goes my list:
Four jobs I've had in my life:
- Babysitter
- Experimental psychologist
- Political risk analyst
- Statistical analyst
Four movies I can watch over and over (yes, love is all around ;-) ):
- An Affair to Remember
- Legally Blonde
- In the Mood for Love
- Love Actually
Four places I have lived:
- Dresden
- Barcelona
- Manila
- St Andrews
Four TV shows I love to watch:
- Friends
- Seinfeld
- Father Ted
- Blackadder
Four places I have been on vacation:
- Uzbekistan - most impressive palaces and mosques I have seen in my life...
... and lots of melons on the bazar ;-) !!
- Basque Country - nice food, nice mountains, great music, great nightlife, good surfing
- California - great beaches, great people, sunny, relaxed
- Finland - enjoying lakes and little isles without traces of modern life
Four of my favourite dishes:
- Pilav/Osh
- Coconut curry (green/red/yellow with lamb/fish/chicken/tofu whatever...)
- Aromatic crispy duck wrapped in crèpes with Hoisin sauce, YUMMY (especially in Gerrard Street in Soho)
- I guess I need to take a dish from my home country as well. My absolute favourite is the grilled fish called plaice with Bratkartoffeln (slices of potato grilled with onions)
Four websites I visit daily:
Four places I would rather be right now:
- London, UK
- Tashkent, Uzbekistan
- Rome, Italy
- Palermo, Sicily
Four bloggers I am tagging:
This is really tough, first of all I haven't been involved much in the community, and then everybody seems to have been tagged already. The good thing is not everybody has responded so maybe they can be tagged twice? Let's try...
So far I've written a lot about shopping and Spain and London and food, but not really given any useful advice. But R2 decisions are coming up in February so I want to start giving useful advice for R2 applicants. When R3 deadline approaches, I will dedicated some space here to GMAT, essay writing and CVs, but for now I want to share my interview experience.
R2 interview decision are scheduled to be sent out on February 10th but if they do the same they will actually be sent out on the evening of February 9th, perhaps to ensure that applicants from Asia get the decision on the 10th. A few days later, you will get the contact info of an LBS alumni in your location and can set up an interview.
Overall, I found the interviews very relaxed and informal. I heard it depends very much on your interviewer though. In my case, I talked to some LBS students and alumni I knew and asked them for advice, but everybody just said relax, be yourself and know why you want to do an MBA and why you want to go to LBS. Also they told me to read through my application essays again. I also checked the MBA interview advice on accepted.com that I found very helpful. I didn't know back then (maybe the page didn't exist then) but clear admit's MBA admissions wiki is also extremely helpful.
They matched me with a very recent alumni (MBA2005) who worked in my city. Because I'm out of town during weekdays and he was traveling as well, we agreed to hold it on a Saturday. Saturday came and I had tonsilitis and my interviewer called that he actually had the flu, so we just agreed to do it the next day. So as I said, pretty flexible and informal.
The way it seems to work is that LBS sends out a list of dozens of questions to the interviewers separated into several categories. So each interviewer would get 10 questions on "motivation", 10 questions on "leadership", 10 questions on "team work" and so on. And then I think the interviewer picks the questions he wants to ask out of that list and also adds some of his own questions that he had while looking through your application (at least this is what I gathered from watching him during the interview).
Typical questions would be
- "Have you ever lead a team?"
- "Did you ever face a problem with a client? How did you handle it?"
- "What do you want to do after the MBA?"
- "Since you also applied to other schools, how will you decide which school to go to?"
I was surprised I wasn't asked anything about extracurricular activities, since this was stressed very much in the essays, but somehow he didn't ask about that. After all these questions, I had to do a little presentation. The interviewers again receive a list of about 15 topics and they can choose which one they give the interviewee. They are all topics that you probably have no information on, but you have to take one position or the other (classical debating stuff really), so you just have to choose one side and invent arguments. They give you five minutes to prepare and the 5-10min for the presentation. I assume what they look for is how clear your communication is, how well structured, how convincing and how compelling. I wouldn't take it too seriously though, just waffle on a little bit :-).
Then I asked some more questions about things I wanted to know more about, like shadowing and summer internships and the exchange. He was very helpful and in the end we talked for almost 3 hours. I don't know how you could fit all those questions in an hour, since the interview is supposed to take about an hour, but I think in general it is more likely to last two hours.
For those of you who are invited to interviews on February 10th, feel free to post more questions and good luck!
In most European countries, the toughest thing for females working in male dominated companies is not the work itself - it's finding suitable clothes for the job! When I was about to start my job and had to find something else to wear than the old jeans and woolen sweaters I had been wearing all the years before, I found out it is almost impossible to find good professional clothes for women. There seem to be hundreds of shops selling excellent ties and shirts and suits for men, while the female section (if there is any!) is usually very small and made for women over 40.
In my job, it is quite common to wear very dark suits (well, for men basically no other colour than black or dark grey or at the most dark blue is allowed, women can wear what they want, but to avoid being taken for a secretary it is also helpful to wear dark colours). It is hard enough to find suits and blouses, but if you do, they are usually badly cut or too big. Only if you start looking at expensive designer stuff things start getting acceptable, but then these are usually unaffordable. That's why I was extremely happy to discover there is a place to go. So if you have job offer or an internship pending and you need to buy some suits and shoes and blouses for your new job, all I can advise you is to hop on the plane fast and go to Madrid!
First of all, there are excellent shops for professional female clothing. Second, they are very cheap compared to other European countries. Third, sales started this weekend and will go on for another 2 months. Your next chance to catch cheap and excellent clothes will be the summer sales in August, so even if you can't get on the plane now you should read on...
The perfect shopping district in Madrid is the barrio de Salamanca, where you'll find all the typical brands like Massimo Dutti, Zara etc., but of course I have some more specific advice. The two shops that solved all my problems at excellent prices are VILAGALLO on the street Hermosilla, 35, and JAIME MASCARÓ in the same side street, Hermosilla, 22.
I can't understand why VILAGALLO hasn't expanded into all of Europe yet, somehow they have three branches in Madrid but that's it. They sell excellent suits and blouses of many varieties and colours that fit perfectly and are really inexpensive, especially now during the sales (a beautiful, perfectly cut suit will cost you around €135). At the left is a little picture I took with my mobile of the types of blouses they sell. I love this shop because you can try on any suit and they all fit perfectly, so if you need three suits you could just buy them there and all your problems are solved for the rest of the year.
The next shop I recommend is a shop by the Spanish shoe designer Jaime Mascaró who is quite well known throughout Europe, but his shoes here usually cost around €150 to 200, while during the sales in Madrid you can get them for as cheap as €60.
I love it the same as Vilagallo because you could basically buy any shoe in their store and each choice would be excellent. The shoes are very stylish and extremely comfortable (look at the picture I took on the left - would you say no to these shoes?).
After getting all the essentials in these shops, there are lots of other nice shops on the two main shopping streets Calle Serrano and Calle Goya. One shop I especially like is Adolfo Dominguez on Calle Serrano, it is a Spanish designer not very known outside of Spain, the clothes are quite original and very accessible,
especially during summer and winter sales.
The Salamanca district is also an excellent place to have tapas. One place I find especially excellent was El Rincón de Goya on Calle Lagasca (crossing the earlier mentioned Goya street). There are also many hotels in the same area
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Happy new year everyone! I'm on holiday at the moment so I disappeared for a while, not a good move right after starting the blog, but I definitely plan to write more frequently from mid-January.
In the time I've been gone, I was very happy to discover that I'm not the only MBA2008 blogger of London Business School anymore :-). Moe has joined me with his blog . With two blogs like this, I hope current applicants will get ample advice and the admits can start networking :-).
I'm starting a new project in the new year, specifically I have to fly to Las Vegas on Sunday for a week. Not a bad way to start a new project. I wonder if the technology fair will still be on and I bump into Bill Gates :-). I know Lufthansa offers wireless internet access on its transatlantic flights by now but I don't know if US Airways does. If it does, I'll definitely have lots of time to write blogs over the weekend, otherwise I'll just pick up the weekend after.
Happy new year to everyone again!
Inspired by KV's blog, I added a global visitors map on my blog a few days ago. It's great to see how many visit this blog from so many places, I didn't expect to have so many people visiting from places like Ghana, Indonesia and Egypt, amazing! Unfortunately I also feel really guilty since I have this information, I'm sure some hopeful LBS applicants come here looking for useful information and end up reading about the best shoe stores in Madrid and my holiday in Uzbekistan, sorry guys ;-)! So I think it's time again for a real "LBS application blog", especially since the R3 deadline is coming up next Friday!
