US MBA

Appleseed wrote a very good discussion on US or non-US MBA.

My major concern, of course, was the staggering amount of money required in order to do an MBA down in the States. I could get a line of credit, but with over 10k US dollars borrowed, the interest rate alone which I'd have to keep paying while at school, would be hundreds of dollars per month. Where am I supposed to get that money from? I would expect to be paying off the loan for several years after graduation, but it's the aspect of paying interest while I'm in the program that ticks me off. Our dirt cheap Canadian dollars don't help either - it would just make tuition and living expenses that much more expensive.

The other consideration is the length of the program. All top-tier US program are two years in length, which just adds to the time and living expenses that you spend. At this point I was really looking for a good one-year program, and was pretty much set on Queen's and Ivey.

Having said that, a good US school is recognized world-wide, and the compensation for jobs is significantly better in the US than in Canada. (I know this first hand from comparing salaries with my US colleagues who work for the same company, doing the same job as I did, only in the States.) If I can just deal with two difficult years of school and pull it off, ten years from now I would possibly be fairly well off.

Unlike Appleseed, I'm single and open to staying in the US long-term after an MBA. Although in theory you can still choose to move south of the border after you finish an MBA in Canada, in reality I believe that it'd be easier for you to stay in the US, if you had already gone to school there.

I then decided to apply to one good US school. My chances of getting into this school would be similar to my chances at Queen's or Ivey, and this would be a reputable school that nonetheless runs a program small enough to allow for personal interactions, etc. Of course, it also needs to offer a program that I like. After some research, I chose The Johnson School at Cornell University. It's not ranked that much to the top such that I likely wouldn't get in anyway, but it's within the top 20 and an ivy league school with a good reputation. Its program is small (compared to almost all other good US programs), and its based out of the small town of Ithaca, NY. Therefore, in addition to having virtually no commuter students like in big cities, housing would also be relatively cheap. Lastly, it is not that far away from home in Toronto.

I would apply to the Johnson School the same time I apply to Queen's and Ivey, and would hope that I get into a Canadian program. If it so happens that I only get into the program in the States, I would prepared myself for the long (and financially difficult) haul. I also figured that it would take the Johnson School longer to process my application, because they admit a significantly larger class. So by the time I hear a decision from them, I would already have my Canadian decisions.

AWA Results

Got emailed my official GMAT results. Way faster than I expected. Got 5.5 on the AWA, so I'm really happy. I guess all that essay preparation was worth it.

Ivey Class Visit

It was actually the first time I'd been on a first class train, which impressed me to no end. For starters, I didn't know that they would provide a meal. After a big breakfast at home, I had to say pass to the delicious-looking breakfast that everyone else was having. The attendants walked by every 10 or 15 minutes and kept offering stuff: drinks, pastries, more drinks, more stuff to eat... no wonder the tickets cost so much.

I arrived at the train station in London shortly before 10am, and got on a limo arranged by Ivey. There were 7 of us from this train that were getting picked up. Ten minutes later, we were at the Spencer Leadership Centre. The admissions director was there to greet each one of us, we had coffee and fruit, and joined the rest of the visitors in one of the classrooms.

There were about two dozens of people that came out for this visit. We first sat through an admissions presentation of mostly things I already knew - that is, easily found on their website. One thing that they really stress is that they were the oldest MBA school in Canada, and had a huge alumni network of 40 thousand people I believe. The alumni network kinda came with being an old school, and also, their alumni included both MBA and HBA graduates. The HBA is their undergraduate counterpart of the MBA, where students do work that's very similar to the MBA during the final two years of their studies, after which you can apply to do an accelerated MBA for 8 months at Ivey.

I noticed that when asked about why Ivey was not ranked as THE top school, one of the staff completely dissed the rankings, saying that there are many factors that influence the rankings, and that he didn't know at all how the rankings people came up with their rankings. I understand, but that's not really an answer. There was just a hint of arrogance, for lack of a better word, that I didn't like.

This is also a good place to mention the fact that I later noticed that Ivey was only accredited by one of the world's top three accrediting bodies. I know that this doesn't have much practical impact for an individual student, but you would expect that recognitions like this would be important for them as a school.

After the presentation, four professors took over and did a brief introduction of the academic side of things as well as a question and answer session. I already knew that they rely heavily on the case-based method. They also made sure we knew that a large percentage of the grades are based on class participation. While it was also made clear that the grading is based on the quality of your comments rather than the quantity, I don't think it would be very easy (even for a professor) to grade the quality of a comment. Also, assuming all students are of similar aptitude, the more things you say the more likely you are to hit a "good quality" comment. Overall, I think that this just puts too much emphasis on speaking up in class, and possibly pressure on the students to say things all the time.

There was a brief tour of the building after the presentation. They do have a nice-looking building, complete with places to eat, meeting rooms that you can book, and even their own gym. Lunch was then provided in a lounge, with a panel of current students who were of course very enthusiastic about the program and very willing to help and answer any questions or concerns that we had. In fact, Ivey has a "student ambassador" program just for the purpose of recruitment, where you can personally email the student ambassadors and it is their duty to attend to you.

Ivey's class schedule alternates between morning and afternoon. On any given day you would only get one 4-hour block of class, either in the morning or in the afternoon, but not both. The professors and the students think that there would surely not be enough time to do all the work, if class runs the entire day. This is interesting to note, since Queen's usually has classes both in the morning and in the afternoon, all day everyday.

After lunch, we sat in the first half of the day's class, which was accounting. We were given the case just that morning, so there hadn't been time to look through it, plus I knew nothing whatsoever about accounting, so it was a little difficult to actually understand the class. One thing that's for sure though is that the class was very dynamic, and students were VERY eager to participate. The professor acted as a facilitator to the students' discussions (this was also a point Ivey made sure that we understood).

I'd like to add that because Ivey uses only cases for the entire duration of the program, you end up with over 300 cases by the time you're done. Because cases are practical, a lot of alumni find that the higher up the ranks they are within a company, the more applicable their MBA learnings become (with regards to making executive decisions, etc.).

During the class break, we made our way to another room where a career management presentation awaited us. Of course the numbers are impressive, and I don't need to say more. As with most other MBA programs, the most popular areas of employment for grads are finance and consulting. Ivey integrates their career management course into the curriculum just like accounting or any other course, and uses cases in this career management course as well. A typical case would be like "Linda is finishing up her MBA and is torn between becoming a financial analyst and a management consultant" etc. I thought this approach was interesting enough that I should mention it.

The day ended with opportunities to ask questions to admissions and career management staff, who then arranged for those us that came by train to be picked up by a couple of limos to head back to the train station. (The first class waiting room at the London station is beautiful, by the way.)

Overall I thought it was a good experience, and good effort on Ivey's part. Apart from what I've already mentioned, here are some other things that stood out (neither positively nor negatively):

• Incredible amount of workload - students, faculty, and staff kept warning us about it
• "Transformation" - a word that's often used to describe the effect that an Ivey education has on students. I thought it was interesting.
• A lot of the staff have graduated from Ivey. The "director of admissions" is a young HBA who graduated only in 2003.

I also had the following reservations:

• For at least some of the topics, I believe that lectures (and other methods) would at least be a good supplement to the case-based method.
• They kept mentioning the HBA to an extent that gave me the impression that you'd be better off choosing the HBA as an undergrad, rather than the MBA. What's up with that?
• The issue with how important class participation is.
• Rankings and accreditation.

Overall though it is definitely a good school. The reputation and alumni network should come in very handy when it comes time to look for a job.

Appleseed documents his experience with Ivey here.

GMAT Test Day

Overall I had a good test experience. I did my homework and anticipated the potentially intimidating aspects. I knew that I was going to have my fingerprint taken every time I went in and out of the room. I knew I was also going to have my picture taken. And I knew that my watch wasn't even allowed inside. I had read somewhere that once someone had a cold and was not allowed to bring napkins into the room, so she had to go all the way out of the building every time she needed to blow her nose and lost a lot of time. This was not the case - while you can't bring in your own napkins, I was offered their napkins at the centre.

However, I was still understandably more or less nervous. More than ten minutes into the first essay, I was just beginning the second paragraph and felt stuck. My heart was beating so rapidly I had to hold on to my chest, at one point it felt like I was going to flunk this thing. Then I took a couple of minutes to tell myself that I had written these essays many times, and they all worked out okay without exception, even if I felt stuck at the beginning. Basically, I managed to collect myself and focus, and finished the first essay. The second essay went fairly smoothly.

Since my biggest roadblock was always the essays, I felt like a weight lifted off my shoulders by the first break - this had been exactly what I would feel during all of my practice tests. After the essays, I proceeded through the exam normally as I would any other practice. Yes, I wanted to take extra time to make sure that my answers were correct, but I also knew that I probably didn't have time to double check everything, and that with my extensive practice the past 3 weeks, I was very rarely making stupid mistakes anymore. I think the most important thing is to practice as if you're taking the real test, and go to the real thing as if you're just doing a practice.

I felt that the questions on the test were on par with GMATPrep, regarding content and difficulty. No odd or weird things that I sometimes encountered in Kaplan/Princeton Review. I finished the quant section about 6 minutes early and the verbal section about 8 minutes early, which was basically consistent with the timing of my practice tests. Occasionally there would be the odd question that I wasn't 100% sure about, but I also kept in mind that a lot of the questions (>10 in each section) were going to be trial questions that would not count towards my score, so I never sweat over any one single question, and nothing in particular influenced my performance.

By the end of it, I was pretty sure that I would get 700+. Although, being conservative, I also anticipated the possibility that I might get 680. I chose to veiw my score - you should always view your score, unless something catastrophic happened during the test that caused you to leave half of it unfinished, or something. The only concern is if you've done badly, but so what? You gotta retake it, but if you don't view your score, you still gotta retake it anyway. If you improve on your second attempt, it'll be viewed as a positive thing. Schools don't mind if you've taken it four times, as long as there's a general trend of improvement.

I was then presented with five choices of schools to which I would like my score report sent. Since this service is included with writing the test, one should take advantage of it. If you decide to send an extra report after you've taken the test, there is a charge of $25 or $28 US per school.

The computer took forever to calculate my score, during which time I lowered my head, prayed and kept my fingers crossed. Then, through the corner of my eyes, I saw that a scored had appeared on the screen. I took a deep breath, and looked up.

770

Oh my god. Reality check. Yes it's real. Go me!

In total it took about 3 months of preparation, including trying to decide on materials at the beginning. Much of this preparation was for the essays - my time would probably be much shorter if I wasn't so neurotic about AWA. Incidentally, 3 months was a good preparation timeframe suggested by GMAT instructors. If you take too long, you start forgetting what you did when you first started.

The Day Before GMAT Test Day

Even though I made mock-testing a daily routine, I did nothing the day before the test. I was too nervous and neurotic to do anything. I tried to look at some of the most difficult essay topics again (since I had forgotten about some of them), but didn't get too far. Basically I just lazed around and browsed the internet.

GMAT Practice Tests

Undoubtedly, this was one of the most important components of my preparation, and anyone taking any standardized test should invest a significant amount of effort in practice tests. I took a couple of tests when I first started studying, and then realized that I would be making less mistakes if I took these tests after reviewing all study materials. Hence, I stopped doing full tests and concentrated on getting through the essays and the Manhattan GMAT books/problem sets.

As I said in my previous post, after I was through with reviewing everything, I booked the real test for three weeks down the road, and started doing one full 4-hour test each weekday for the next 3 weeks. It's very important to do the 4 hours, including essays - while you don't have to do it for 3 weeks (I was getting very annoyed by the final week and wished I booked the thing for earlier so I could get it over with already :p), I think it's a good idea to do this everyday for at least a week, so it becomes part of your daily routine (like eating and sleeping), and you get used to having to sit through the 4 hours. When I took the first couple of practices before the majority of my revision, I realized that I had a problem with the verbal component, simply because I was getting very tired towards the end and just could not absorb anything I read. Making the test part of my daily routine helped a lot with building the stamina I needed on test day.

The other thing about doing practice tests is that you should take into consideration the time of the day of your real test appointment. My test was at 12:15pm (did not want to do 8am or 6pm, this was the only other option), and I was to arrived 30 minutes prior. I saw a potential problem with the scheduling of my lunch - I needed to either take it at maybe 10:30, or postpone it until after the test. I decided to go with the latter, so for three weeks, I would get up and have a gigantic breakfast. I would then start my 4-hour test at around 12, and have a light meal after that. During my breaks, I would have a sip of water, a 2-minute snack, and use the washroom, just as what I would do on the real test. This is something else that's important to note - you should always try to duplicate real test conditions. Unplug your phones. Come back to the computer a couple of minutes earlier to make sure that you're not late.

A note about AWA: after a couple of practice tests, I stopped writing essays from Kaplan/Princeton Review/Manhattan GMAT/etc. The reason is simple: they're prohibited from using actual GMAT essay topics so they had to make up their own, but we have the real topics. I used a random number generator to randomly pick my topics from the list of real topics, and those would be my essay questions for whatever test I'm taking. I had the PDF file of topics on the top part of my screen, notepad at the bottom, and an online countdown clock on the side. This was a modest duplication of the real split screen for essay questions.

Here's a brief review of the tests that I've taken:

GMATPrep: of course this is a must-have. I took one at the beginning of my preparations and another one three days before the real test. There was a 40-point increase in scores, which gave me a boost of confidence. I would recommend using this software this way, so that you can see how much you've improved, and you have the most accurate estimate of your real score close to the test date.

GMAT past paper exams: these are probably neglected by most test takers, but they're an excellent source of real past GMAT questions. Some of the questions are duplicated in OG, but most are not (or I couldn't tell). They are from a decade ago and tend to be easier than current questions, but I used them mostly for the purpose of practicing more real questions, and building the stamina needed for the 4 hours. The format is also different, so I rearranged the sections so that it was 75 minutes of each of quant and verbal, instead of 6 little sections. I didn't pay much attention to the score, since the questions were easy and scoring mechanism was different (they deduct points for wrong answers, so you're not encouraged to guess).

Princeton Review: I really needed that boost of confidence from GMATPrep, because of other tests that had been giving me really low scores, including some from PR. Their quant sections seemed way too easy (I would finish 20+ minutes before time was up), and some of their verbal answers just didn't feel right, even after I read their explanations (this is where I lost most of my points).

Kaplan: unstable and unpredictable scoring. The quant and verbal questions were okay, with the exception of extremely hard-to-understand reading comprehension passages on one of my tests. They also had the weirdest essay topics - I even had trouble identifying whether one was an argument or an issue. (This was when I decided I wouldn't put up with these topics anymore.)

Manhattan GMAT: definitely has the best questions. The quant questions were MUCH more difficult than those on the real test, nevertheless they were very good practice. I also liked the verbal sections, and even the essay questions were very similar to real GMAT topics. If you do these tests within the time limit, you will get a fairly good prediction of your score. However, for me this required a slightly different strategy for the quant section. I never had issues with timing for any other practice test, and MGMAT were the only tests in which I had to hurry and guess answers at times when I knew I could do them if I had more time. I would recommend top scorers to go through all MGMAT tests - with time constraints if you want a more accurate score, and untimed (for quant) if you want to focus on the contents, which I think is worth doing.