Queen's MBA: The Voyage

Strategic Implementation, Nexen CSR Case Competition, Halloween

2009-11-02T17:31:00.005-05:00

The Implementation course has started and is going great. Professor Tina Dacin plans for many activities in class and really gets it going. She's bold and straighforward, but fun at the same time. The course deals with the details of implementing change, and has a lot to do with the organizational behaviour and leadership courses that we had earlier on in the program. In addition to a lot of case analyses in class and in teams, the major individual assignment requires us to come up with an idea for a social change, and an execution plan. It should be very interesting to see what people come up with.

Last Thursday and Friday, Nexen came to host a case competition. I wasn't involved, but it was a great success, and you can read all about it here.

Friday also happened to be the day before Halloween. After the case competition, the school took us out to Fort Fright at Fort Henry, for a frightening tour and dinner, which were excellent. Because we're split into 2 classes, we don't get to see much of the other class, so it was good to spend time together. All had a good time.

Managing IT, Negotiations, Finance Strategy, International Business, Nicholas Boothman

2009-10-19T19:11:00.004-04:00

So we started a new module last week! And of course I neglected posting anything, but I'll blame it on having a full day of classes on Saturday. :p

Professor Jim McKeen teaches Managing IT, and uses a textbook that he's written. Professor David Detomasi teaches International Business. The reason I mention these courses together is because they're very similar in terms of teaching method and style. They both have an emphasis on cases, and both professors are great at capturing the class's attention and engaging the students.

Finance Strategy is taught by Professor Wei Wang, who's young and energetic, and if I'm going to HAVE to take yet another finance course (*sighs*), it won't do me any further harm to take it from him. As someone who has neither interest nor ability in anything finance-related, I even managed to enjoy his class sometimes.

Professor Rick Jackson came out of retirement to teach Negotiations. It's an interesting course, we did a negotiation simulation in the first class.

Strategic Implementation has yet to start.

Overall this module is definitely qualitative, even finance is going to focus on strategies more than formulas. The lectures are all very interesting and there's a lot to be learned, but again I'm not looking forward to the writing components. I'm also going to be off to do some finance right now - at least I'll make an attempt to not stay behind.

On Saturday Nick Boothman came to give a workshop on - for lack of a better description - effectively connecting with people. It was a good workshop, and the career centre also ordered his books for those of us who attended. There has been some changes going on in the career centre the past couple of months, but whatever it is, I think it's for the better.

Exams, Interviews, Outlook

2009-10-08T19:44:00.003-04:00

I thought I had blogged last weekend, but I guess not. Exams last week were not much of a surprise - they were okay for people who devoted massive amounts of time to studying, which is almost nobody. I won't go into a rant here about people who could in fact afford the time to study. The rest of us in survival mode weren't slaughtered, but our ol' rankings are definitely taking a hit.

Getting invitations to first and second round interviews have been incredibly competitive, and many are disappointed by reality. But life goes on, and it's not the end of the world to do job search on your own outside of OCR.

I'm in a quasi-panicking mode, looking at work for the next module. We're definitely shifting to the qualitative components and I don't know how I'm going to write all those papers. I've been able to wing it so far, but it is incredibly difficult and takes unbelievably long for me to write anything (yes, that includes this blog). No idea how to deal with multiple papers. I guess we shall see.

Exams, Interviews

2009-10-05T18:53:00.004-04:00

This past week we had exams in management accounting, finance, and marketing. In this module, I (and a number of us) felt slightly "disconnected", for lack of a better word. In our previous courses where we've had exams, we've also had assignments that closely resembled exam questions, so that if you understood the assignments, you would have little trouble with the exams. This module, on the other hand, bombarded us with presentation and report assignments that didn't have much to do with preparing for the exams. There were problem sets that somewhat resembled the exam problems, but they weren't to be handed in, and honestly, most people wouldn't have had time to look at them while doing all the assignments and career stuff. As a result, studying for the exams was more difficult than it had been in the previous modules.

We have the coming week off, so many are rejuvenating, many have gone away on trips, and many others have interviews. Making it back to Kingston for on-campus interviews in the middle of the week off isn't very appealing, but we suck it up.

Career Stuff, Exams

2009-09-26T15:26:00.004-04:00

The last couple of weeks have been filled with employer info sessions, networking, and job applications. Many people have also been invited to interviews. For me personally, there has been no time whatsoever to do any studying, except to help write and read the last couple of team report assignments of this module. Next week is exam week, I've now been studying management accounting for three hours, and let's just say, outlook not so good. One definitely needs a fine balance and to prioritize between job search and academics. A lot of us are really trying to utilize our current rankings for on campus recruiting these days, but at the same time, it is almost certain that not everyone who looks for jobs will get a job, in which case our grades would've taken a hit for nothing. By sacrificing study time for job search, we're all taking a great risk.

Marketing, Finance, OCR, Craziness

2009-09-20T21:30:00.004-04:00

I haven't posted for almost a month? I mean, I knew I hadn't posted for long, but I thought it was just a couple of weeks.

Since I lasted posted anything about the program and course content, we've started Marketing and Finance courses. Before I even have a chance to write about these courses, this entire module is coming to an end already. Each course will only have one class next week, and exams will take place the week after. The course load in this module has been crazy:

Ops: 8 mini cases, 2 individual cases, 1 field trip report and presentation
Management accounting: 2 reports and presentations
Finance: 2 quizzes, 2 reports and presentations
Marketing: 2 team cases, 1 giant assignment separated into 3 stages of deliverables with huge report and presentation at the end, 1 individual paper that I've been procrastinating writing for 2 weeks

As you can see here, the theme of the program has really switched to "reports and presentations", which means way more qualitative material. The dynamics amongst students have also changed, as super quant people start to struggle through these reports.

We have received our first ranking. I'm very proud of my team, at least 5 out of 7 of us are ranked within the first quartile.

On Campus Recruiting also kicked off this past week, which is the cause of all sorts of craziness for MBA students, in addition to marketing deliverables. As well as attending company info sessions, which are an hour and a half each, two slots per day every day, applications are usually due midnight right after the info session. Essentially, for an aggressive OCR job hunter such as myself, all evenings since 5pm onwards have become non studying time. The key is to utilize our half days off effectively, and if that's not happening, then a lot of the work would have to be done late at night. It doesn't help that the undergrads are back this week, and as a result of them fighting with us for classrooms, all morning classes in my section have been bumped earlier to 8am.

I would write more but I still have loads to do. Hope to have time to jot down more stuff next weekend.

English

2009-08-22T00:44:00.007-04:00

This might be going a little off topic, but I've wanted to talk about this for some time, so I'm going to exercise my power as the owner of this blog, and post whatever I want for today.

I have this pet peeve for obvious and consistent improper/weird uses of English, especially if the speaker/writer has perfect command of the language otherwise. And in fact, this does have something to do with the MBA. Since a large number of students come from places other than North America, it might help straighten out a few things and potentially avoid confusion that may cause other people when they hear certain odd phrases for the first time. Or it might not help. I dunno. I just wanted to vent a little. :p

1. You did not "pass out" from undergrad, and you're not going to "pass out" now.
You graduated. And you will graduate from the MBA. You've probable had a few episodes of passing out, but you don't use the phrase when you actually mean graduate.

2. You did not "give" the GMAT. You took it.
The GMAC gives the GMAT. Not you. You take the GMAT. A student takes exams, giving exams is the teacher's job.

3. You don't have a "query". You have a question.
This does not cause as much confusion, but whenever I see "query", I think of SQL. In the context of normal langauge (as opposed to computer language), you have questions instead of queries.

4. Sign up for "the same".
Again, does not really cause as much confusion as it causes me personal misery. Haha. A classic example: we have an event next week, please sign up for the same. We don't need to sign up for "the same", we simply need to sign up. If we have to sign up FOR something, we can simply sign up "for it". Why not save a few keystrokes.

I feel better now that I've gotten it out of my system. I might even add more items as I think of more. But for now, bed time.

Added Aug 24, 2009:

5. I must be knowing
Classic example: you must be knowing that we have a class tomorrow. I'm not knowing. I just know. I must know that we have a class tomorrow. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think in general we tend to use "be doing" more when the doing is an actual action that we do. Example: we'll be going around collecting money. "Knowing" is not something you physically do.

Added Aug 25, 2009 (the list just keeps growing...):

6. Very less
"Less" is a comparative adjective, which means you don't stick "very" in front of it. What you mean to say is "very little" or "very few", depending on the noun you wish to qualify. For example, "very little quantity" or "very few units sold". Of course, "much less" is perfectly fine to say, but from my experience, people almost never mean "much less" when they say "very less".

CSR, Management Accounting, Ops Management

2009-08-19T20:21:00.006-04:00

So, long time no post! Since Lots have happened since I last posted at the beginning of the month:

As I mentioned last time, we kicked off this month with a week of career stuff. Wall Street Prep and David Ohrvall came to give one day workshops on finance and consulting interviews, respectively. Both were excellent for those interested in careers in finance or consulting.

Saturday after the career week was our first case competition, with A. T. Kearny. Everyone who participated had fun, but at the same time we also realized how much further we still need to go before we could realistically compete for an MBA job at A. T. Kearney. Basically, the case they gave us was an example of what they use for their second round of interviews, where the candidate is given ~45 minutes to read the case and come up with recommendations, after which the interviewer comes back into the room for a presentation from the candidate. For our case competition, we had teams of 7 with 2.5 hours to work on the case, and it was still obvious that there was room for improvement. We really need to double up our case prep effort, which is actually recurring feedback the school keeps hearing from recruiters - that the students are smart, but just don't prepare enough for the interviews.

After the career week, we had a one-week module on corporate social responsibility. It was interesting, because the focus is not "how to be a good corporate citizen" per se, but rather aligning a company's CSR strategy with its corporate strategy. There were some good case studies and great videos, as well as three presentation opportunities for each team, which was an excellent amount for a 5-day course. The only side that was perhaps not so good was that each of us needed to write a relatively long individual essay worth half our grades. Not many people were fond of it, and half the class scrambled to get it done between 2am and 5am the morning it was due.

I also had my first encounter with a prospective student this week, who sat at the back of the class during our final presentation sessions. We chatted briefly during break, and I told him about all the good things that impressed me here at Queen's. I don't say this often anymore, but I do still pause once in a while, look around in amazement, and give myself props for ending up at such a great school. Then my train of thoughts would drift to getting a job afterwards and case interviews, and hectic life resumes.

This past Friday the MBA office organized a sunset boat cruise around thousand islands, which was really good. Gotta love the value-added stuff here. The next day, a whole bunch of people went skydiving and had a blast. I considered my severe motion sickness and chickened out, but went to the salsa class instead, which was fun.

This week we started a new large module with four courses. The ones that we've had so far are management accounting and operations management.

Management accounting is taught by Professor Clinton Free who's a good and engaging teacher, Australian, and a cricket player. He helped the faculty win a cricket match with the exec MBA students, and have now extended the invitation to play to our class. The course content is also very interesting, and it has to do with making good accounting choices within an organization. We do lots of interesting examples in class and there are lots of calculations, so I feel right at home, and Clinton's been impressed by my ability to work the numbers without a calculator. :p

Clinton also did a pitch on the CMA designation, and encouraged us to take advantage of the Queen's MBA-CMA combined program. Which actually prompted me to go to the CMA info session today. I had never thought of doing a CMA, but now I'm thinking. Clinton makes a lot of references to the consulting career, and says that this is a good designation to have not only for accountants, but for consultants as well.

Professor Paul Roman teachers operations management. He's part of the reason why I'm here, because it was his class that I sat in a year ago, and I thought he was one of the best profs I had encountered. He still is, along with pretty much all other Queen's profs! The course content though gets a little difficult for me at times, since we've talked a lot about manufacturing and production lines and such, which I'm totally ignorant of. It doesn't help that this class is always in the afternoon, when my brain is the slowest. But I definitely want to learn this stuff, and it'll probably be one of the most practical and useful courses for my intended career as a strategy consultant.

Now need to get back to reading...

Back to School

2009-08-04T22:33:00.006-04:00

Exams for the last module were done with last Wednesday, after which I promptly headed back home to Toronto. Nevermind the end-of-module "party like a rock star" party that night, although I've heard good things about it (and seen hilarious pictures).

Returned to Kingston last night after the long weekend. This entire week will be filled with career stuff:

Today: intro prep sessions on finance and consulting interviews.
Over the next two days: professionals who help people prepare interviews for a living will come and give a full day workshop on each of finance and consulting.
Friday: our corporate partners and alumni will conduct group mock interviews, which should be a good learning experience as well as networking opportunity.
Saturday: AT Kearney case competition. This is just internal to our class, and we're the only school AT Kearney chose to do a competition at. This will again be an excellent opportunity to score some contacts.

In the background, there are two books that we need to read within this week and the next, for the next two modules. They're both interesting reads, but will take some time.

Now allow me to rant a little, which I almost never do. We suffered in heat the entire day today, it was brutal. It was hot, I mean HOT, H-O-T, in the classrooms. Something to do with the air conditioning being turned off over the weekend, and probably having trouble coming back on. So it got increasingly hot in the morning, until the AC came back on in the afternoon, but it would take hours for the classrooms to cool down, so it never really cooled down before the sessions ended for the day. Did I mention it was brutal? It also doesn't help that my house isn't air conditioned, but you know, I cheap out on housing, I suffer the consequences. This is not to say that I recommend not cheaping out on housing. For a generally healthy student in his/her prime years without a rich daddy, cheap housing is worth the suffering.

Exams and Resumes

2009-07-27T21:28:00.001-04:00

Exams: 1 down, 2 to go.

Resumes have been live for almost a week: http://www.business.queensu.ca/recruiting/student_resumes/mba/index.php

Back to cash flow statements.

Studying

2009-07-25T15:07:00.003-04:00

This weekend is full of studying for exams, which will happen Monday - Wednesday. The consensus seems to be that there is way too much to study and too little time to study it. This is certainly true in my case. It's been incredibly difficult to keep up with individual readings and exercises, because people tend to devote most of their time to team assignments/projects, which is more of a priority than individual work, since no one wants to be the reason for potential sub-par team performance.

So now I should get back to the work that I've been neglecting all month, do as much as I can and hope for the best.

Busy Times

2009-07-22T13:14:00.004-04:00

I'm having lunch and finally find myself in a temporary moment of peace AND remembering to update the blog.

The past week has been very busy, as is this week. Classes are wrapping up and we have exams next week. Some of the things that's happened since I last posted:

The marketing club invited the head of marketing here at the business school to give a short introduction to marketing over lunch. It definitely stimulated my interest in the field.
A full career day again last Wednesday, mostly on preparing for on-campus-recruiting that will start as early as August and will go on till probably the end of September. This included some logistics and ground rules, as well as tips for writing custom cover letters and resumes.
The second networking event with the other section of the Cornell-Queens exec MBA students.
Lots and lots of assignment work.

On Saturday Taste of Kingston happened at confederation park downtown at the waters. The food/drinks are pretty good, and cheap with generous portions too, compared to similar events in Toronto. The other difference is that this is a fundraising event, whereas most restaurants in Toronto probably make a profit out of participating. Recommended for future students, since it only happens once a year and we're only here for a year.

So while this was happening, a salsa dance class for MBA students was also happening simultaneously, and I managed to utilize myself to attend both. I've missed dancing (used to do it in undergrad) and the class was great. It's also only an hour every couple of weeks, and a good opportunity to take your mind off anything else school-related.

This week we've concluded our accounting class, and will have the final BDM and economics classes the next two days. Tonight there's a networking event again with the national and Ottawa exec MBA students, we've been promised good food, which I look forward to!

Final HR Class

2009-07-13T23:52:00.002-04:00

Today we had a full day of HR class that concluded the course. In the morning each team gave a 5-minute creative presentation on a "hot topic", which was very interesting, and everyone had fun doing it. In the afternoon, we did a "frame build" exercise, which was also a great exercise and we learned more about our teammates as well as the potential we didn't know we had.

In googling this exercise, I stumbled upon this page, which introduces the exercise as well as other team building sessions we did with Shawna back in orientation week. This is just a small portion of what the school provides to ensure that teams have the necessary tools to be successful.

Module 3 Continued

2009-07-11T22:27:00.004-04:00

So it's the weekend! Not that it means much, except for some modest sleep-in tomorrow.

We had Tuesday off, which was nice, but the other section had the Monday off, which means they had a long weekend. We had a big individual HR paper due on Thursday ("big" in the sense that it's 50% of the course mark), and for most people it required intensive effort from Monday night to Wednesday night, because we hadn't had much time for it until it was upon us and we had to get on with it. I'm sure most of us were very grateful for the Monday/Tuesday off, I spent almost the entire day exclusively on this assignment.

But not exactly exclusively. We squeezed in some time this week for Business Decision Modeling, both the final assignment and the big term project. In addition, we had an entire day of BDM class today (notice it's a Saturday). The upside of having a class on Saturday is that we get free lunch and Yuri let us out half an hour early.

The accounting project is ongoing and people are really getting into their assigned sections of the project, which take quite a bit of time. I'm not sure if I actually talked about what this project was about, basically we need to read two annual reports and compare them, and write a report. It doesn't help when each annual report is over 100 pages in length.

The second microeconomics assignment is due next week and our team is meeting tomorrow to discuss it. We'll also be discussing a presentation for HR that we'll be doing on Monday. So yeah, not much of a weekend.

Wednesday was full of career sessions, ending with a formal dinner when we all dressed up and were told things like which way to scoop our soup in the bowl. The image management and communications sessions were also very good.

Last night we had a networking event with one section of the Cornell-Queen's Exec MBA students, which was a blast, for me at least. It was good to meet other business students that are somewhat different from ourselves, and not to mention the value of an expanded network. The same event happens again next Saturday with the other section of the CQ students. According to one of Vault's surveys, the number one benefit of attending business school is your expanded business network, so ANY type of networking event is highly recommended.

Clubs, committees and the exec council have been trying to squeeze out time for their non-academic work. It's getting difficult.

I think I'm going to change my blogging strategy a little bit. Basically, sometimes in the middle of the week, something happens and I think to myself "I should blog that", but by the end of the week so much other stuff would've happened that chances are I don't remember all of them. Conversely, crazy as it may sound, I don't always have time to blog the entire week's happenings on the weekend. Therefore, I'm just going to blog little bits and pieces as I go along, and see how it works out.

The folks responsible for marketing our program are also organizing an "official" student blog, with contributions by many students in the class. Stay tuned!

Canada Day Week

2009-07-07T00:20:00.003-04:00

I realized that I haven't posted yet this past weekend. It's been a crazy week and this week will be even crazier. Most of the class went to Ottawa for Canada Day, I opted out, which I feel was a good decision, because aside from the fact that I've been to Ottawa before for Canada Day (and I could go again anytime), what was going to be 2am return time turned out to be close to 4am. There was no way I could've physically done it with 8:30am class 4.5 hours later!

Instead, I went to Fort Henry for their sunset ceremony kickoff. If you don't care much for Ottawa, I would recommend this as a nice little thing to do on Canada Day.

Other than that... we have an econ assignment due soon, BDM assignment due soon, accounting project and BDM project in full force, and both the individual and team essay for HR/OB also due soon. So, as I said, this week will be crazy as well as this weekend. Hopefully sometime during the weekend I will be able to update on just exactly how crazy it is! Our team is great working together though, and I think the team-based approach is invaluable in the sense that there's a strong support system and you never need to feel alone. Even if the workload is cut to a level that's manageable by one person, I would still prefer what we currently have, because it maximizes each person's learning as our teammates present what they've learned from doing their part of an assignment.

On a final note, all the clubs and committees have organized themselves and held the first few meetings. The club execs and committee members are really putting a lot of effort into it and doing a great job.

Microeconomics, HR, The MBA Ultimate Challenge, and The MBA Bug

2009-06-26T18:12:00.002-04:00

Last Sunday morning we had an MBA mini version of the amazing race, where teams signed up to complete a series of physical and mental challenges, ending with a BBQ lunch and prizes. Everyone who participated had a blast. The school really goes out of their way to try and make the MBA experience as fun as possible, and events like this are a big part of this experience, so it's definitely worth it to take part. These are the things that stay in your memory.

This week we kicked off the other two courses of the module: Microeconomics and HR. Microeconomics is taught by Professor Bo Pazderka, who's an excellent teacher and makes the material interesting and easy to understand. Up to this point there has been quite some overlap between the materials in this course and the previous module's economics course (supply/demand diagrams, elasticity, etc.), but for someone who's not very strong in the subject, it doesn't hurt to go through things a second time.

HR is being taught by Professor Shawna O'Grady, who also spent three extensive days with us on team building back in the first week. Shawna presented some interesting materials, and the class has also included a couple of mock interview prepared and conducted by students whose names were drawn out of a hat, which were entertaining to watch. Thus far we have covered recruiting and selecting talent and employee retention.

In addition we continued with our accounting and modeling courses.

For the past couple of weeks, more and more people have become sick, with either what's known as the "MBA Bug", or something else. Today we learned that the "something else" included something rather serious. The administration has been taking huge precautions in terms of having people stay home if they're sick and doing everything they can together with the faculty to ensure that those who miss classes don't miss too much. This includes videotaping all lectures, having profs run extra review sessions, and securing tutors. Desks in lecture halls are cleaned daily, and we're getting individual teamroom desks cleaned today. Hand sanitizers are everywhere. Hopefully we've really constrained the spread of the bugs.

Accounting, Modeling, Career Stuff, Plagiarism, Clubs, Movie Night

2009-06-19T17:11:00.004-04:00

Module 3 began this week with major differences in the scheduling for the two classrooms. (More information about the classroom split can be found here, and we are indeed rotating quarters.) There are four courses in this module, my class had Accounting and Business Decision Models whereas the other class had quite a bit of HR/OB and not as much BDM. It is also where I start to notice major differences between this year's class and Appleseed's documentation of last years class.

Financial Accounting
We had professor John Moore for the warm-up, and he continues to be a great teacher. There were a few complaints about some of the first day's class being repeats of the warm-up, but they quickly disappeared by the next day. Besides, with a subject like accounting, it never hurts to listen to the lecture twice, unless you already knew it, in which case you wouldn't have gone to the warm-up anyway. I can't stress enough, for anyone who's coming to this program in the future, that if you have no background in the subject matter, it is very important that you read the accounting workbook before classes start. It took me some time to absorb the material, but now that I've at least read it, I can concentrate on doing more practice problems as opposed to struggling to understand things.

Business Decision Models
"Business Decision Models is taught by Yuri Levin and will cover optimizations models, simulation models, decision analysis and revenue management&dynamic pricing. So far this course has been comprised of symbolic logic with basic math that we then turn into models in excel and use "solver" to complete. Yuri is quite interesting and has a very strong understanding of the material."
- Appleseed's blog (he didn't have this course until module 5)

Career Advantage Program
On Tuesday we had a whole day of career stuff: networking presentation in the morning followed by students giving "pitches", and feedback on those pitches. In the afternoon we had an "industry panel" with whom there were also "networking opportunities" afterwards. Overall I found it useful because there's a lot of information on consulting. On the other hand, those who don't particularly want to do consulting or finance, and don't have a clear goal in mind, will likely need to do more research on their own.

Plagiarism Session
This morning we had a 2-hour session on plagiarism. It was presented by Professor Steven Moore and was far more interesting than most of us thought it would turn out to be, with a lot of good information too. I won't elaborate here, because then it wouldn't be as interesting. I will simply give kudos to professor Moore for making a great session out of what would normally be a boring subject.

Clubs
This week most of the clubs met and had their elections for the club President/VP/etc. People have some very good ideas about what they want to do for the clubs, and we're eager to see them in action.

Movie Night
Last night's point four was a movie night in no other than our regular classroom. There was a great amount of junk food and it was nice to do something in the classroom other than having a class. We watched Russel Peters' Red White Brown, and half of Wedding Crashers before the projector screen crashed on us. It was a good time for me to stop, because I made it home just in time for my 8 hours of sleep. Some people went out to a pub later on and stayed quite late.

This weekend will be full of modeling assignment / accounting problems / economics and HR readings. Prioritizing is definitely of vital importance.

End of Module 2

2009-06-14T21:29:00.003-04:00

Appleseed's post

This week we wrapped up the module 2 courses, and had the economics exam on Thursday and stats final quiz on Friday. The fact that they were both open book made it significantly easier for me, and I'm already starting to dread the exams for the next module, at least one of which is explicitly stated as closed book.

After the quiz on Friday morning, a lot of people started getting out of town, myself included. Several carloads of Torontonians went back home for the weekend, and a few cars headed for Montreal, where it's either home or just a nice place to spend a free weekend in.

Next week many of the clubs are holding elections for their excecutives. The next module consists of four courses and spans over six or seven weeks. There are LOTS of readings for the human resources course, which I should be doing right now.

Statistics, Economics, Kingston Venture Tour

2009-06-07T17:07:00.005-04:00

Appleseed's week

"Intense" is definitely the word to summarize the week. My perception of time is very confusing right now. Sometimes things are so intense that I'm totally unaware of time passing. At the same time, because everyday is so packed, at the end of the week I usually feel like I've lived a month.

We didn't need to go back to class after the stats quiz, which was excellent because it provided me with the only time slot in the entire week when I could make the visit that I needed to make to the health centre. The two assignments (and the one coming up on Wednesday) had been a lot of work, but also great opportunities for good discussions and to learn from fellow team members. We could've probably completed the assignments individually, but the quality would be nowhere near what we produced as a team.

I am again scrambling to find time to read economics, which I will do right after I finish writing this. Ramzi from last year's class talks about this week's courses here, and I especially agree with what he said about Professor McHale. Hence, the lectures themselves are fairly difficult for me to understand, and as someone who can usually do without reading textbooks, I found it a must to read the books (which, by the way, are very well written) of this course.

On Thursday, we had our Kingston Venture Tour, which Appleseed talked about here. The setup was the same, and we definitely got to see some very cool companies and learned a great deal. The point four afterwards was at the grad pub for their trivial night, which I heard was great. That night I put together the economics assignment and went home to sleep instead, which I believe was the better option for my well-being at that point in time.

This week we also held the election for the executive council. There was a fair bit of competition for every position, and I heard that this was the first time ever when a proper private voting booth was set up. The elections committee really did a great job, and now everyone's looking forward to putting the exec council to work.

You can probably tell that in addition to scrambling for time for economics, I'm also scrambling for time I spend on this blog. I'm hoping to post every week(end-ish), and I have to say that having Appleseed's blog as a reference has made it much easier for me. ;)

Statistics and Economics

2009-05-29T21:56:00.004-04:00

This week has been very different from the previous week. Appleseed recounts his week here.

I have almost exactly the same experience, and it was definitely a switch of gears as far as course contents are concerned. I should really read more of the economics textbook - it's difficult to find time to read everything!

Had fitness assessment done. Had first meeting with a career centre lady, which was very helpful - I'm looking forward to keep working with her towards making myself more presentable.

The social aspect has also been going strong, although I've missed out on more than a couple of social activities. I naturally need lots of sleep, so I'm almost either awake and doing something school-related, or asleep. Hopefully I can find a way to fix it somewhat so that I can be less anti-social. :p

First Week of Real Classes

2009-05-23T13:27:00.007-04:00

Let me start by saying that last Saturday night we had a kickass transition event organized by members of last year's class, who sent us running all over Kingston on a scavenger hunt, which ended at a pub, where more fun activities happened.

This week has been a full-blown week, with classes 8:30-4:30 everyday and four assignments due. And we did it! Challenging as they are, I'm having a great time doing crush assignments (where you get the actual assignment after lunch, and you have from 4:30pm to midnight to finish it with your team).

Here's Appleseed's account of his week, and I just have a few things to add.

We did not end up getting home at 3am last night! Our team went home after we handed in the assignment at midnight, had a great night's sleep (much needed because of the combination of late nights and early mornings this week), and came for our presentation this morning after 11, which went very well.

I'm loving every moment of my time here at Queen's, even though sometimes it's just struggling to not fall asleep. The classes have been amazing, and I'm just constantly in awe of what excellent teachers the profs are, and what everyone in the class has to say from his or her own experience and perspective. It definitely promises to be one of the best years of my life.

I haven't heard anything official on starting up the .4 club, I'll wait and see. The election for the executive council is going to be very soon (Monday, if I'm not mistaken).

I'm going to go freshen up now for a wine and cheese this afternoon with alumni who graduated 5 and 10 years ago. For the rest of the weekend, I'll squeenze in as much reading for economics next week as possible. I've wanted to read some economics before I came to Kingston, but never ended up doing it. I've heard that the prof is such a pro on the subject that the basic concepts are just second nature to him, so it'll be challenging for those of us who never did anything on the subject.

Orientation Week

2009-05-15T20:24:00.004-04:00

This week is the official start of the program. It's been so overwhelming that it feels like much more than a week has passed. I am tempted to just link to Appleseed's experience of his first week here and skip writing about it myself, but there are a few things I would like to add.

Appleseed's first week

I too am very tired from this week, but unlike Appleseed, I don't get to sleep in tomorrow, because some of us have our team facilitator meetings at 9am. Queen's assigns each team a professional facilitator, and a brief introduction can be found here. I am truly impressed of the amount of effort put into the two distinguishing factors that sets Queen's apart from other business schools: the team approach and the level of personalization. Teambuilding is such a conscious activity here, there is so much time (and money) invested into getting our teams to the high performance level. I'm very excited and look forward to working with my team. In addition, although I've heard a lot about the personal service that the students receive here, it's not until I experience it myself that it truly dawned on me. I'm sure everyone really appreciates having everything delivered to our desks (binders/textbooks/documents/gift baskets!), and it just impressed us to no end when one of the ladies in the program office sent us all an email, asking the six people who bought their textbooks from the bookstore to bring their receipts to the office to get reimbursed. How did she even know? I would never have imagined being a student and receiving this level of service.

I would write more, but I've written the highlight and I should really get back to my readings for next week. It looks like next week is going to be one of the busiest weeks of the entire year: it's the first week of "real" classes and we have four assignments due, with a team presentation on Saturday. Go team!

Accounting Warm-Up

2009-05-07T17:42:00.002-04:00

We had the accounting workshop today. Professor John Moore is an excellent teacher with a great sense of humour, who have won many teaching awards - rightfully so. He makes the subject of accounting very intersting and easy to understand.

I have to say that for someone with no accounting background, having read through the accounting and finance workbook helped a lot (in fact, also helped a lot in yesterday's finance class). I could tell from the way that some people asked/answered questions, that they hadn't read particular sections of the book. Although, while I understood everything, I still need to be more familiar with them, so that essentially I'd be able to tell what's going on more quickly from the numbers.

To keep up with the socializing aspect, people are meeting up at The Iron Duke later this evening. It has just occurred to me as I'm typing this, that this should've been the point four club kickoff, haha.

Finance Warm-Up

2009-05-06T18:39:00.002-04:00

Today we had the Finance workshop, and I'm really tired, mostly from getting up early the previous two days. I should mention that despite my complaints about yesterday's basic math, Professor Jeff McGill is a great prof, and is very enthusiastic about the things he teaches, even if they're at the elementary level.

Professor Louis Gagnon is equally enthusiastic, if not more, in the classroom. The morning was interesting, in the sense that the material covered was basically from the finance and accounting workbook, but I found the instruction engaging and easier to understand than the book. The afternoon was more challenging as people tend to experience a lack of oxygen in their brains, but in all fairness there were some interesting topics discussed.

This has felt like a long week already, and I'm already looking forward to sleeping in Friday. In exchange for having all that time to do all that prep work because I was almost free of actual work, I gotta really get used to getting up early, a challenge that probably wouldn't exist had I been working in a normal office the past little while.

Housing and Unofficial Start

2009-05-05T17:08:00.004-04:00

I've settled nicely into the house I found. I might as well talk about my housing situation here. I was well aware of the intense workload of the MBA program, and figured that I likely won't have much time to prepare food for myself. Since I'm pretty serious about food, my number one priority was to go for a meal plan. I had initially wanted to rent a 1-bedroom apartment or the grad residence, and go for the meal plan that the university offers. But, the university meal plans have assigned time slots for when you go for your meals. If you miss it, you stay hungry until the next meal. With crazy MBA schedule, I didn't want to be confined to these time slots three times a day. Besides, if I were to go for an apartment, I'd have to worry about furniture, since furnished apartments that are within my price range are pretty much nonexistent. And of course, I didn't want to be bothered to think about furniture.

Then I found out about co-op, which offers furnished rooms with meal plans. Great, except the meal plan isn't offered in the summer. The university doesn't have a meal plan in the summer either. Looked like I couldn't escape cooking for the summer in any case, so the next item on my agenda was to find a place for the summer where I can comfortably cook. I could've stayed at co-op for the summer as well, but with ~10 people and one kitchen per house, I doubt it would work out nicely. After searching around on the internet, I found a nice house to share for the summer with a couple of other girl grad students. The AMS Marketplace is where I found this place, I think this is one of the lesser-known sites for some reason. The internal portal provides a list of sites to search for accomodation. In addition, check out craigslist.

A couple of suggestions regarding housing:

While it might be tempting to try secure housing as early as possible, realistically there's no need. When it gets closer to the date of your intended move-in, more places become available, and at lower prices.
If you look for a private apartment within a house, be sure to personally pay a visit, or have someone check it out for you. I've heard horror stories of apartments that are not suitable for human habitation.
You may hear about various rules governing the application process for the grad residence - don't pay much attention to them. In the end, if you apply, you'd probably get in. I know people who applied the very last minute and still got a spot.

In other news:

I finished all prep materials. I'm finding that I'm way ahead of a lot of people in the class in this respect, I guess I have it easy, not having a lot to do for work in the past couple of months.

A whole lot of us met at The Tango last night, it was great fun. I heard that some people also went for poutine afterwards - gotta stay in the loop and join them next time!

Had our first pre-MBA workshop today, on "Basic Math and Spreadsheet Skills for Business Analysis". I was less up for the "basic math" and more for the spreadsheet skills, but the prof spent most of the time doing basic math (starting from 2 + 3 = 5), and went a little fast, in my opinion, with the spreadsheets at the end. I didn't think people needed to relearn math that's THAT basic (since we've all done our GMAT), so would've been nice to spend more time with the spreadsheets, or possibly extend this to beyond one day.

Tomorrow is Finance. I haven't bothered much with looking at my calculator, it's the only "prep" that I haven't done. I figured I'll do it once I have a better grasp of doing the same things on paper first.

Hello Kingston

2009-05-02T01:40:00.004-04:00

It is officially May 2nd at this point. May 1st has been a long day - I moved, and fussed around forever to put everything in place and make my room look nice and cozy. I have a furnished room in a house shared with a couple of other people, so everything is immediately functional and I can focus on other things, such as:

Still half a case to read.
Study my new financial calculator.
Locate nearest supermakets, banks, drug store, etc etc

I'll just end it here for now, and will write when I'm not as tired and ready for bed.

T minus 10 days

2009-04-21T15:22:00.007-04:00

Since apparently countdowns are a popular theme around this time of year, I'm going join the club.

So I've finally started to pack. Haha. I'm a little delirious at this point. Still can't believe I'm doing this. But only ten days till I move, and my life is going to drastically change.

What's new:

Signed loan documents and have student account set up with Royal Bank - ready to go financially.
Finalized housing arrangements - made some atypical choices but I think it'll work for me. (There will be a separate post.) Have place to live for the next 12 months.
Read all I have to read from the annoying business statistics book, and finished all Excel tutorials.
Handed in all assignments given by the career centre - forgot if I mentioned this before, we basically had a couple of questionnaires to complete as well as a resume, so that the career centre will be prepared to work with us as soon as the program starts.
Got a couple of books recommended by the career centre's reading list: Barbara Minto's The Pyramid Principle (but no, I did not exactly spend $125) and Marc Cosentino's Case in Point. The materials presented in these books coincide with my personal interest and intended career in consulting.
Received schedule for the first week of school, which is similar to last year's schedule.

What's still outstanding:

Two more chapters of the finance and accounting workbook to go.
Three more papers/cases to read.
Would like to get started on economics, since I have no background whatsoever.
Serious packing!

Now back to the outstanding items.

RBC Line of Credit

2009-04-06T17:54:00.003-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I sent in an application for a student line of credit with the program that Queen's MBA has with Royal bank. (There's a brief description on this page.) The huge advantage of the program is that it's specifically for Queen's MBA students, providing very competitive interest rates, and Queen's pays for all the interest during the time that you're at school.

It took the Kingston branch less than a week to process and approve my application. Today I spoke with the banker in charge of it, and he walked me through some of the logistics. Basically, since I will not be in Kingston before school starts, he will send whatever documents I need to sign to a branch close to where I live. At the same time, he will open a student chequing account for me and mail me a bank card. After I get the card, I can take it to my local branch, who will have received the loan docs, to sign the documents and activate my card, and whatnot.

Towards the end of this month, the banker will pay the first instalment of my tuition for me, directly into my student account at Queen's. This is because I told him that I'd like to use the money to pay this tuition. If I'd rather have the cash instead, I guess either he would just deposit the amount into my new chequing account, or I could use the account to take out money as I need (like any other line of credit).

Technically, you need to pay the bank the interest that's accumulated, on a monthly basis. The first such payment is due at the beginning of June. At this time the bank will charge whatever interest there is, from your new chequing account. Around the same time, Queen's would've gotten a bill from the bank for the students' interests for the month, and the school will also pay the bank at the beginning of the month. After the bank receives payment from the school, it will credit the amount back to the students' chequing accounts.

Therefore, effectively, the students don't pay the interest during the school year, but are just required to have some amount of money available in the account so that it can be debitted first when reimbursement from Queen's comes a few days later. It's a seamless process. RBC also has a very competitive rate - prime + 0% - for the first two years that you're in this loan program. Prime is 2.5% at this time.

Business Statistics

2009-03-19T11:19:00.003-04:00

For the past week or so, I have been going through Schaum's Outline of Business Statistics as recommended by the prof that teaches the stats course. There's a one liner review on amazon, stating that "This is a poorly presented text in terms of language." I didn't quite get it when I ordered the book, but after reading a few chapters, I totally understand what it means. The language is very counter-intuitive, and it is unlike any textbook I have ever read. I did learn all of these statistics materials back during my undergrad years, and what I learned was way more advanced than what is required/presented here. I still have my old stats textbooks, but I got this (cheap) book anyway, to see the level of understanding that's required in the MBA program. I have to say that even with familiarity of the topics presented, I have a hard time understanding what the book is going on about sometimes. It does a poor job explaining anything that's slightly complicated. I'm mostly using the examples as a refresher, so I can't imagine someone who never studied stats learning and understanding much from this book. The problems are a good resource though. Solutions are provided, so if you only need to reinforce your understanding in something you've already learned, doing these exercises is not a bad idea.

On a different note, the emphasis of business statistics lies in the applications of problems, which is different from my undergraduate courses. As part of my math-intensive program, my undergrad stats courses centred around theories, complicated formulas, and proofs.

Microsoft Office 2007

2009-03-02T14:12:00.003-05:00

I've just installed a trial version of office 2007. I originally wanted to do this because there is a tutorial on Excel 2007 that's recommended , and I only had office 2003. Now I realize that this would be a very good move even if it wasn't for the tutorial. Office 2007 looks completely different from office 2003. All the functions are there, plus more I'm sure, but it just takes me forever to find anything right now. Definitely a good idea to install the trial and get used to the new layout for anyone who's starting the program and haven't used much of office 2007.

Activating the trial today gives me an expiry date of May 31, which is more than enough time to last after the full version is supplied by the school.

Portal is Up

2009-02-19T19:39:00.003-05:00

As the title suggests - portal is up!

The only useful piece of information on it right now is the online resume template from the business career centre. Email is functional too, so that's something to play with. As a veteran outlook user, I would need some time to get used to this lotus thing.

Technology and Portal Update

2009-02-19T16:16:00.005-05:00

Heard back from IT helpdesk. The portal administrators are just placing the finishing touches on user access, and we should receive access in a few days.

Also received a document of notebook requirements, which are similar to last year's requirements. Looks like my 2.5-year-old computer will do.

Queen’s MBA Notebook Computer Requirements

A notebook computer with Microsoft Windows is a requirement for the duration of your Queen’s MBA program. This document outlines the minimum requirements for any notebook that you wish to use and also outlines the minimum specifications you should be seeking should you need to purchase a notebook.

If you plan to bring to the Program a notebook computer that you already own, not only should it meet our minimum specifications, but you should ensure that it can be serviced conveniently and quickly in Kingston. Nationally-known brands such as Dell, Lenovo and Toshiba HP should present no problem but it may be difficult to find service for lesser-known systems. You would be well advised to purchase extended warranty coverage for the duration of the program to avoid any unpleasant surprises. It is also wise to ensure that you have a copy of the original invoice should warranty service be required.

Queen’s School of Business Technology Helpdesk stands ready to assist you in any way possible with regards to any computer-related problems or issues that may arise throughout your studies. Our specialists are available from 8:00 am to 6:00 pm Monday to Friday to help you with any of your computer-related needs for your various courses. Service is available by phone, email, website, walk-in or even team-room visits. We will act as a “first contact” point in troubleshooting system problems, providing simple diagnostic procedures and possible suggestions toward the fastest possible resolution. Should it be necessary to contact your vendor or manufacturer we can direct you to your nearest service depot as well as provide you, when possible, with the appropriate phone number or web address.

It is possible to use a Mac PC in the program as long as either Windows XP or Vista is installed and running under Bootcamp or a virtualization system such as Parallels. We are not in a position to be able to support Mac OS. Moreover, some software integral to the program will only run under Windows and we cannot guarantee full functionality of Mac OS with the Queen’s MBA portal or Domino-based email and collaboration services.

Should your notebook computer require service we maintain a limited stock of notebook computers that are available to you for short-term loan.

Our helpdesk staff members are fully trained in all of the software applications required for your studies including Microsoft Office applications, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Symantec Antivirus, and Lotus Notes/Domino applications. We support Windows Vista and Windows XP Professional/Home operating systems.

We will do our very best to relieve you of any worries or concerns surrounding the technological component of Queen’s MBA program allowing you to remain focused on the course material.

Minimum Notebook requirements

If you have purchased a computer within the last year or two then you can pretty much be guaranteed that it will meet at least the very minimum requirements for the Queen’s MBA Program.

The main concern for the purposes of the Program is that your system runs well with the following:
· Internet Explorer 6 or 7
· Lotus Notes 8.0 or 8.5
· MS Office Pro 2007 (which will be supplied to you)
· Windows XP Home or Pro or Windows Vista

To achieve this we would suggest at least the following computer configuration
· Processor of at least 1GHz
· 1GB of RAM memory (2GB if running VISTA)
· A hard disk with at least 20GB of free space
· Video of at least an XGA resolution (1024 x 768) and 256MB of video memory if running VISTA
· Ethernet and wireless LAN support

If you have any questions or concerns regarding either your current notebook computer or wish advice on purchasing a new system please do not hesitate to contact the QSB Technology Helpdesk.

1.866.622.2667
helpdesk@business.queensu.ca

Prep Materials Arrived

2009-02-18T14:22:00.002-05:00

Today I received a package from Queen's. Appleseed documented the contents of his package, which were much the same as what I received:

Pre-Study

I am definitely going to go over these materials word for word. It'll take a lot of time, but it's worth it if it makes the workload a little easier to manage when I'm actually in the program.

The introductory letter states that I should've been notified by email about access to the class portal, which has not happened. I'm going to email the IT helpdesk about the detailed requirements for a laptop, as well as to inquire into the portal situation (most likely just a delay, as Appleseed mentioned in his blog last year).

More Facebook Group

2009-02-06T17:20:00.004-05:00

I found another facebook group that's more active than the one mentioned in the previous entry:

Queen's MBA Class of 2010

Facebook Group

2009-01-26T18:39:00.003-05:00

I have no idea how many (or how few, haha) of my soon-to-be classmates have found or will find this blog, but if you are one, come join our group on facebook!

Queen's MBA 2010

On a separate note, I finally finished all the back-dated blog posts towards the end of last week, so I'm just taking a little break with the blogging and will post as soon as there are updates.

Confirmation of Attendance

2009-01-06T17:26:00.003-05:00

The next weekday after I received the message from Queen's, I got a FedEx package of the official letter of acceptance and scholarship letter. Since I was to provide a "passport style" photo when I sign back my offer, it took me a few days to arrange to get it done. I also signed up for all three days of the pre-MBA warm up. I figured it wouldn't hurt, and $375 is not too much to spend compared with the tuition and living expenses I'm about to pay.

I mailed my stuff back to them around boxing day, and come January 5th they emailed to say that they had received my material. Now I had yet another letter FedEx'd to me, confirming that I am indeed attending Queen's.

The Unexpected

2008-12-19T17:04:00.002-05:00

I had the day to work from home. I turned on my cellphone mid-morning to find a message from the associate director at Queen's.

"I have some great news," she says. I thought to myself, here we go, I'm about to get interviewed. This was expected. But, what she did say after was not expected at all.

"We'd like to offer you a seat in our program that starts in May 2009. Additionally, the admissions committee would also like to award you with a $20,000 scholarship."

What in the WORLD? I couldn't believe it. Whatever happened to the phone interview? I was so ecstatic though, I started to cry. I'm going to Queen's. My life is about to change.

The rest of the message said that she was also going to email me. I looked into my personal email and found two messages. One was from her with the same information as she'd just told me on the phone, and one from her staff, with the word version of the official letters they were going to send, and asking me to confirm my mailing address.

(I had a very merry Christmas.)

Messages Regarding Application

2008-12-02T16:55:00.001-05:00

Queen's staff sent me three emails (that were not automatically generated) after I submitted my application.

The first one was to acknowledge that they have received my application, and are still expecting some items, namely one of my references and my undergrad transcript. I knew that they were on their way.

Each of the latter emails was to say that they had received one of the items that they were expecting.

Application Submitted

2008-11-26T16:32:00.004-05:00

After several weeks of essay-writing and revising and getting very very neurotic over them, I finally submitted my application for Queen's before the first round deadline of November 29. They had been accepting applications since June, so I had planned on submitting way before the deadline, but trying to perfect the essays held me up.

In addition, rumour has it that people who submit really early are usually the most qualified and conscientious applicants who did all their homework and are way ahead of the game than us "normal" people. So, you want to submit early enough to ensure full consideration for both the application and possibly a scholarship, but not so early such that you're competing with all the best of applicants.

Unlike a lot of other schools, Queen's only asks for a resume, and has no detailed work experience or activities section on the application where you can elaborate up to 4000 characters per activity. Therefore, it goes without saying that it's extremely important to write a good resume. I thought it was actually good practice, because there was no pressure to write a lot, and you can choose the most important things to write for each job.

The students' advice of "really work on your essays" was very important as well. Instead of trying to impress the admissions committee, you should write with your own voice and present yourself as a whole person. I won't elaborate much here, there are many websites and articles that tells you how to write a good application.

Visiting Queen's

2008-09-25T23:14:00.013-04:00

Appleseed documents his experience visiting Queen's here.

I boarded the train to Kingston Wednesday afternoon. With my previous experience travelling to London, I now knew what to expect as a first class passenger on a train.

I grabbed a cab after I got to Kingston, and arrived at the nice inn that Queen's set me up with. As promised, there was a package waiting for me in my room. It contained a welcome letter and a card, some placement stats, blurb about the professor whose class I was going to sit in the next day, and information on recommended eating places nearby.

Originally I was due at Goodes Hall by 8:15am the next morning, to have a brief tour of the building before class starts at 8:30. Then the lady at the office found out that the B&B served breakfast between 8 and 9, so she emailed to tell me to enjoy my breakfast, and arrive before 9:30. They would then let me into the class during the morning break. This was a minor detail that I really appreciated, and it made me feel that they actually do care about my comfort and well-being.

For the next couple of hours, I sat on my bed and read the material in the package, as well as browsed the Queen's MBA website. Since I was only going to have a "chat" the next day, I hadn't prepared anything except for a question or two that I wanted to ask.

At around 8 or 9, I decided that it would be a waste not to go out for a walk, get some fresh air, and get some food. The dinner that I had on the train before 4pm wasn't going to last until bedtime. I checked out the recommended places on the sheet and walked for 5 minutes to a nearby bar, since it was close. Got a snack to go. It was yummy. My room smelled of fish'n'chips afterwards, but no matter. :p

The next morning I got up and had an extremely delicious breakfast - I totally understood why Queen's didn't want me to miss it! Called a taxi, since I had a taxi voucher from the package, although walking to Goodes Hall would've been under 10 minutes. Arrived at 9:15.

I was introduced to everyone that was at the office at the time. The staff seemed very nice and approachable. I was then led on a brief tour of the building, and saw first hand what I'd seen in the brochure. Messy desks in the team rooms were an indicator that the students really used these rooms. They also had access to photocopier/printer/scanner/fax/etc. Fridge, microwaves, coffee machine, chocolate bars for a dollar! Overall it felt like a comfortable place to be in.

After the tour, I sat down with the associate director for our "chat". Since I hadn't yet put in an application, I spent some time telling her about myself - my background, what I've done, what I want to do. Other than that, there were basically no questions and I didn't need to say a lot of stuff. I then asked her what she thought distinguished the program from other schools, and she said that there were two things she thought were really unique to Queen's: the team-based approach and level of personalization. The Queen's website explains a lot of it. The associate director was honest in explaining that the team-based approach wasn't for everyone. She also mentioned that they use a variety of teaching methods (which is a big difference from using the case-based method only at Ivey).

She asked if I was still just looking around and comparing schools, and I honestly said yes, although by this time I had really started to like Queen's more than other places. She went on to say that the students really appreciate the "little things" that make a difference, little things such as having a team room, having access to photocopiers etc., having somebody deliver your textbooks to your desk, having photocopies of the lecture notes ready at your seat at every lecture. As I mentioned in my previous post, this was also something that really impressed me. One other thing I was told was that since I had already been invited there, my interview later would be over the phone.

We had talked for half an hour or so, when someone came in to let us know that the class had broken out. I was then led into the class to my seat at the back. Since I wasn't there for a formal interview, I had dressed myself in a nice shirt and pants, which were on par with what other female students had on, so I didn't really feel like an odd one out. There was a set of lecture handouts at my seat, and I even had a paper name plate. The student sitting next to me introduced himself and asked if I was there for the interview. I said that I was just invited to come for a "visit" and a "chat", and the student smiled and said "yeah, that was probably the interview."

When class resumed, a team finished off a presentation that they'd been doing that morning. They had been to a certain business, and were presenting their findings/recommendations. After a question and answer period and some comments from the professor, we turned our attention to today's material, which was a consulting case. It was very interesting for me, because the consulting firm presented in the case was one of my previous employers. The main character's problems as a consultant was very similar to what I had experienced. The class discussion was certainly interesting, and there was also some role-playing. This was very relavant to my job as well as my intended future career.

Towards the end of the class there was some discussion on the assignment that was just handed back, and a short lecture on six sigma. The professor had a great sense of humour and was thought provoking at the same time. It was a very good experience for me, and I knew that this was where I wanted to be.

The students I had asked to have lunch with came up and introduced themselves, and off we went. Lunch took almost two hours, during which we talked about almost anything and everything related to the program. Queen's puts you in teams, and then purposefully gives you way too much work to accomplished by yourself, so that you have to utilize your team. The professors are great. Yes, there are classes every morning and every afternoon, 8:30am to 4:30pm, but they don't feel like that's too much to take at all, because the classes are all so interesting. The printers sometimes malfuntion and it can be frustrating. Housing is cheap. It's cold in Kingston in the winter.

I told them that I was an introvert, which possibly means it'd be challenging for me to do team stuff all the time. They were quick to ease my concern by saying that I should look at every challenge as an opportunity. Your teammates have different backgrounds and personalities, and the challenge of team work is an opportunity to learn from others as well as learn to work with them. If you were really good at everything, team work being one of those things, then there would be no need for you to go back to school. An additional comment is that employers report that they could tell Queen's MBA grads apart from other grads, because of the good team work skills that Queen's graduates possess.

They also assured me that my GMAT score was definitely looked upon very favourably. That, combined with my good work experience, they thought that I almost had no problem getting in. Nevermind bad undergraduate marks, other components of my application can make it up. The one thing I was to really work on was my application essays. I needed to nail them.

After lunch, we returned to the MBA office, where I got a taxi voucher for getting back to the train station. My train wasn't until after 6pm, so after saying goodbye to the staff and students, I was off to "explore" on my own. I did no exploring. Instead, I found a spot in the library and started working on my application essays.

It was a very positive experience. The people that I met are down to earth and happy to help. Not to mention the serious level of personalization, both in the program and during my visit. I also loved Goodes Hall, it's beautiful.

Uniquely Queen's

2008-09-17T21:06:00.006-04:00

I read the Queen's brochure, which just continued to impress me. Specifically, I was impressed with the following aspects (that I may or may not have known before, but was just outlined more clearly for me - in no particular order):

Dedicated team-rooms. I wasn't sure that after years of being in the corporate environment, if I could stand being a student again, with no assigned desk, hauling my bags of laptop and books around wherever I went. The team rooms just make the logistics of getting around and meeting up with team members that much easier.

Fit to lead. I hesitate to say that I'm unfit, but I'm definitely not the fittest. It should be interesting to see what this program has to offer.

Personal assessment/coaching. Just adds a personal touch to things!

Professional team facilitator. They're actually hired professionals, but also independent of the program, so they can focus specifically on teamwork issues that students encounter.
Professional designation. I'm possibly interested in a PMP, so this is good for me.

Incredible personal support. Somebody buys my books and delivers them to my desk. Somebody prints out powerpoint presentations and delivers them to my seat in class. This is too good to be the life of a student.

Most of these I have not seen offered at other business schools. I got very excited at the prospect of visiting Queen's.

QS World MBA Tour

2008-09-14T21:24:00.009-04:00

I decided to go to this event and check out the schools that I was considering.

The Toronto stop was held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. I arrived just before 3pm, and there was a huge line up at the registration desk. If you had registered before the event, you would only need to pay $5, otherwise it would cost you $10. There were people in suits and ties and other people in jeans and T-shirts. Suit and tie was totally unnecessary, in my opinion - I think that as long as you're not in ripped baggy jeans and T-shirt with weird logos, you'll do fine.

Once I got in, my first stop was Queen's. This was also one main reason why I came to the event at all: since I was going to visit them the week after, I figured it'd be nice to say hi and get a brochure. I waited for my turn to talk to the lady I'd been corresponding with (they all wore nametags), and introduced myself. She was happy that I dropped by and said that she actually thought of emailing me to let me know that they'd be in town, but didn't get around to it. Since there were many people waiting at the table, I said that I'd chat more when I visit. Grabbed a brochure and left.

Other tables that I visited:

Ivey must've brought in a team of over two dozen people, of admissions staff, professors, and students. All of whom were busy talking to interested prospective students. It was quite the scene. I managed to say hi to the director of admissions, who remembered me from the visit a month back.

Cornell answered the questions I had about sending transcripts/proof of degree. Since I was "foreign", they had some special requests that I wanted to clarify. It turned out that because the system in Canada is fairly similar to that in the States, I could also just send a copy of my transcripts and not worry. They were friendly.

I found out that the "HEC" in HEC Montreal stood for "good school of business", or something like that. It also has nothing to do with HEC Paris. They assured me that one doesn't need to know French in order to live in Montreal. I liked the nice ladies at the table, and I also liked their program. If I didn't get into any of my top 3 choices, they would be the next down the list.

DeGroote wasn't so impressive, somehow. They were very adamant about not considering starting a 1-year program, and they say that their strength is in the co-op, which doesn't mean much to me. The admissions lady I talked to also didn't strike me as very enthusiastic.

Rotman's admissions ladies seemed like they weren't interested at all in anything people might possibly ask them. They chatted amongst themselves, I waited for about 15 seconds for them to notice me, to no avail. Since I wasn't very interested in them to begin with, I just left. Having said that, I did attend an MBA lecture given by one of Rotman's professors, and it was quite interesting. Although, I'm sure that almost any properly recognized school can put forward a good lecture, let alone Rotman. I just wasn't interested in their program as a whole.

Telfer didn't even participate in this thing. I hoped I wouldn't need to one day seriously consider the school, who either isn't in the the same or similar "league" as the other schools, or just didn't bother with these types of events.

I should mention that once you register with your email address, be prepared to be forever electronically bombarded by a hundred MBA schools around the world.

Queen's Visit Scheduled

2008-09-09T22:01:00.007-04:00

I got a FedEx package from Queen's MBA. It basically says this:

We were very happy to recently receive your GMAT results, and congratulations on your excellent score of 770! We would like to invite you on an all expense paid overnight trip to visit Queen's, whenever you wish, during which time you would have the opportunities to sit in a class, chat with our program's Associate Director, and have lunch with students whose interests are similar to your own.

This is great! You gotta understand, I haven't even applied to Queen's yet. ALL I did was listing them as a recepient of my GMAT score report. What a deal. I had been looking for something similar to Ivey's class visit, from Queen's, but couldn't find anything. I guess it's fairly exclusive.

I emailed them back and said I'd be really happy to visit. After a couple of emails back and forth, I've picked a date and a couple of students with whom I want to have lunch. The lady in charge of this scheduled me with first class VIA rail travel and booked me at a B&B.

US MBA

2008-08-16T15:40:00.003-04:00

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

2008-08-14T23:09:00.001-04:00

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

2008-08-14T22:12:00.001-04:00

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

2008-08-09T22:44:00.001-04:00

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

2008-08-08T22:01:00.000-04:00

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

2008-08-07T21:44:00.004-04:00

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.

Ivey Class Visit Scheduled

2008-07-31T22:04:00.004-04:00

When I'm not doing the mock tests, I browse the internet and find out about the schools I'm interested in. Ivey offers a class visit every month, when they welcome a bunch of prospective students to campus, sit in a class, sit through presentations, talk with profs/students/admissions people/etc. This is all expense paid if you live in southern Ontario, up to $600 reimbursement if you lived in North America (I think), and up to $1200 reimbursement if you're anywhere else in the world. If you fall under the reimbursement category, you do actually need to apply to Ivey for the next cohort, before you can get your money.

This is open to pretty much everyone, as long as you're more or less eligible to apply to their program. They do require your resume before they can confirm your booking.

I registered online and someone was quick to get back to me. They needed to know how I wanted to get myself to London. From Toronto, I could either drive and receive a gas card (forgot how much), or I could opt for first class train travel. I opted for first class train travel. Its net worth was more than the gas card, and I could relax instead of concentrating on the road. I was put in touch with a VIA rail booking agent, and I was now booked to visit Ivey on August 14th.

GMAT Scheduled

2008-07-18T21:31:00.002-04:00

At this point, I was done with reviewing all the materials. I think it was a good move to book the test at this time, for three weeks down the road. This allowed enough time to still get an appointment time slot that was good for me. In addition, booking the test meant there was no turning back, no getting neurotic and thinking I needed more time, and giving myself more time. It was already mid-July and I still needed to take the test and do the applications. My plan was to do one mock test (almost) everyday, up until test day, so that test day would just be like a normal day.

Choosing Schools

2008-07-05T21:44:00.014-04:00

Of course, preparing for the GMAT wasn't the only item on my agenda during this period of time. If I wanted to make it to the next class, I still needed to make some decisions about where to apply, and craft my applications. I also didn't want to be too late in the game, especially this year when many people are choosing to go back to school because of the recession looming in the background.

Believe it or not, my choices were actually very limited. As I've mentioned before, I have a weak undergraduate GPA. Specifically, most of the Canadian programs have a hard GPA requirement of 3.0, which I don't have. Now that I think about it, this was also part of the reason I put off doing the GMAT two years ago - I didn't think I had a chance of being admitted into a reasonable school.

With this in mind, the most popular schools in Toronto where I'm at - Rotman (U of Toronto) and Schulich (York U) - were out of the question. I had no doubt that they would not waive this requirement under any circumstances, partly because I've personally experienced the bureaucratic ways of U of T, and partly because there's surely no lack of good applicants that meet this requirement, so there would be no need for them to make exceptions.

On a side note, Rotman and Schulich rarely interview applicants. Rumour has it that if you had a stellar GPA/GMAT/both, you're pretty much guaranteed a spot in the program. This means that you might get a classmate who is an expert at studying (on their own) but lacks other essential skills.

I also figured that I didn't want to stay in a big city anyway, with commuter classmates. I wanted to go somewhere where the MBA class is way more than just schoolwork. I wanted an entire community, complete with networking, socializing and forming friendships. I didn't want to be in a class with people who disappear to go home after class. I also wanted to attend a small program, so that there's enough personal attention and less bureaucracy to go around.

The other thing I prefered was a one-year program, instead of two years. Basically, a one-year program does not contain much less material. First, a "two-year" program really only uses 8 months in a year, so it's only 16 months, versus the 12-months of the one-year program. Secondly, these 16-month-programs are way less intensive - specifically, many of them don't have classes on Fridays, for example.

The only real drawback is the lack of internship opportunities in a 12-month program, but considering that I want to stay in consulting, I don't think that it is necessary for me to have this internship experience. I'm not getting any younger and would rather just get it over with in less time.

Appleseed also briefly discussed the pros and cons of a 12-month-program here, as well as posted a very comprehensive list of what to consider when choosing a program here.

Eventually, without visiting or talking to any school (due to lack of time), I narrowed down my choices to three schools (links on the right):

Queen's School of Business
Richard Ivey School of Business (University of Western Ontario)
The Johnson School (Cornell University)

One thing that these schools have in common is that they're all relatively small programs in small cities, and most, if not all, of their students relocate for the year. I will talk about my experience with each of them individually in later posts.

I thought that my odds of getting into each of these schools are similar, and so applied to them all at around the same time.

I also picked out a few safety schools, and was going to do another round of applications in February if I didn't get into any of my top choices:

HEC Montreal
Specifically a business school with no other disciplines. Like Queen's, this place is accredited by all three of the world's leading accrediting bodies. One-year program, has a consulting focus that I'm interested in.

Telfer School of Management (University of Ottawa)
One-year program also with consulting options, accredited by 2 out of the 3 accrediting bodies.

DeGroote School of Business (McMaster University)
This made the list because it was close to home, although I was increasingly leaning towards not going there. They only have a 2-year program without a consulting focus, and an admissions lady at the MBA fair told me that their strength was in the co-op program, which is mostly for new grads without work experience.

GMAT Essays (a.k.a. AWA)

2008-06-30T21:25:00.001-04:00

Procrastination was obviously not the way to go. This is how I got over my fear for the essays.

I searched online and got a grasp of what the structure of the essays should look like (intro, 2-3 points, conclusion, each point in a paragraph - here is one of the many similar templates online). Also, luckily, we're given the topics beforehand, and I knew that the only way for me to beat the essays was to go through every single topic. There are about 300 topics, so I figured that if I went through 10 topics in details every day, I would need a month to go through them all, and that seemed like an attainable goal.

I started this mission of familiarizing myself with all essay topics right around when I started reading the MGMAT materials. For each topic, I would think of at least 2 to 3 points that I could talk about, together with examples. As I've mentioned before, I work flexible hours (and mostly from home), so it was very convenient that I had quite some time to spend on studying. At the beginning, I would get lazy on some days and do less than 10 topics a day (or skip a day if I had a lot of other stuff to do), but I knew that I didn't want my 30-day schedule to be significantly delayed, and quickly got better at sticking to what I had planned. If I was fairly busy on any day in particular, I would consider doing less studying on other topics, but stuck to the 10-per-day self-imposed essay quota. As time went by, I also became faster at thinking of points to make, as well as more familiar with some of the topics that were foreign to me (issues regarding the arts, etc), and I saw that as an improvement.

I finished outlining all 300 topics in little over a month, and then concentrated on quickly finishing off the rest of the MGMAT syllabus within the next few days.

The Real Start and Study Materials

2008-04-15T20:57:00.004-04:00

I stopped overworking myself for large consulting companies and started to work for my friend's start-up business, with a very flexible schedule, so that I can devote much of my time to getting into an MBA program. I was serious now, and with the current economic conditions, I believe that going back to school would be a wise step.

After I decided to take the GMAT for real, I spent quite some time deciding on the approach that I should take, while simultaneously doing timed questions from the official guides. I attended free workshops offered by different prep companies, trial classes, etc. Looked up books and reviews on amazon. Browsed the internet for ideas. In the end, I decided not to pay and take a class, because I had a fairly good grasp on the content as a whole, and half the time I would just be sitting in the class waiting for other people to understand.

Having said that, I did want more preparation materials than just the OG, and eventually decided on the set of Manhattan GMAT books (which are thin red booklets - not to be confused with "Manhattan Review", which are blue). I also downloaded the MGMAT syllabus and loosely followed it, so that I was alternating between different verbal and quant topics, not doing too much of anything at once and getting sick of it.

Study Materials

The only books I used were the MGMAT series (all 8 books) and the official guides. By the time I started the MGMAT series, I had already done over half of the official guide problems, in sequence. Here's a brief note on how helpful I found each book, keeping in mind that it only applied to my background:

Official guide: get all 3 books, and do each question at least once. Doing REAL questions are very helpful. Two years ago I never bothered to get the quant book. Then I figured that no matter how well I think I can grasp the concepts, it always helps to go through all official questions. And I was right.

Manhattan GMAT:
Sentence correction: yes, this is a must-have for anyone hoping to improve their sentence correction skills. I did the suggested exercises in the OG/VG after each chapter (including the ones that I had done before), and saw that most of my mistakes were about topics that I had not yet covered. It was also because of this that I decided to hold off doing the majority of my practice exams until after I was completely done with the reviews.

Critical reasoning: personally this was not much help to me. I'm fairly logical to start with, and I found that the best way to improve my CR was to do lots of practice and study each individual question that I did wrong, on a case-by-case basis. This way, I eventually learned to identify some of the things that were more subtle to me at the beginning. My revision of CR was more about doing the problem sets grouped by the type of reasoning (ie, strengthening, weakening, inference, etc) - this grouping may or may not have helped me, but I imagine that it would be more useful to someone who's weaker in CR.

Reading comprehension: since I sucked the most in sentence correction and reading comprehension, and I made an improvement in sentence correction, reading comprehension became my worst area. The guide wasn't completely helpful to me either - I would have no time to "actively" read by outlining the passage as I go along, and I didn't find this particularly useful either. But, I liked some of the points they have summarized at the end, one of them being making sure that you can account for EVERY word in your answer choice.

I knew every single concept in the quant books, but some of these books were still helpful:

Word translation: I really liked this because it gave some neat time-saving strategies that would be very useful for the more difficult problem, and it also had a good supply of extra practice problems. In general, their strategies can apply to all levels of questions, easy to difficult.

Number properties: again, I knew all the concepts, but it was very nice to see them systematically written out. I also was not familiar enough with this type of GMAT questions in general, so this provided just the extra review and exercises that I needed.

The other 3 quant books: not particularly useful to me - I've known all of these by heart since grade 3, no kidding. But they do look like good review material if you need help in any of these areas.

Prelude

2006-06-20T18:13:00.003-04:00

By summer 2006, I had had two years of full-time work experience, which prompted me to start contemplating the MBA. I knew that a GMAT score is valid for five years, so I could start preparing for the GMAT and get it out of the way first. I ordered the official guide (orange book) and the verbal guide (purple book), and started doing the questions timed. With my background in math, I didn't think that I would need the quantitative guide (green book).

However, I started to procrastinate after a little while, because I did not want to start the daunting task of preparing for the GMAT essays. I downloaded the topics and tried a couple, and my best record was an hour for an essay. How was I supposed to accomplish it in half an hour, on the test, twice?

Then work got busy, so my GMAT books sat on the shelf collecting dust for the next year and half.

For the record, when I did the diagnostic test from the OG 2 years ago, I got "above average" for reading comprehension and sentence correction, and "excellent" for the other sections.

About This Blog (and myself)

2006-06-10T22:55:00.002-04:00

January 11, 2009

Hello. I am attending the full-time MBA program that starts in May 2009 at the Queen's School of Business in Canada. During my application process, I have found several MBA blogs (listed on the right) that proved to be extremely helpful, and I thought I would start one as well to share my own thoughts and experience.

I especially highly recommend my favourite blog, as the author provides a very detailed account of his journey. Mine will be somewhat similar but will probably not repeat what has already been documented there (overlap of what we do in class, for example). I do realize that my application experience is probably not a typical one, but nonetheless I hope it still provides some insight and is of some help to other applicants.

I'm also going to backdate the entries so that the timeline will be more obvious. Some of the entries, in particular those concerning the GMAT, I have posted before on a separate forum.

A bit about myself:

I have a bachelor's degree in computer science from a few years back and have mainly worked as a technical consultant since graduation. I would like to use the MBA to switch from technical to management consulting. My undergraduate grades are likely amongst the worst that Queen's will ever accept, but I also have a 99th percentile GMAT score.