Feeling Good About Everything - Update!

I told you guys earlier this week that I thought that this week was going to be very good!  Maybe I was speaking it into fruition...  But I'm feeling good.  Just have to keep up the momentum!

B-School Email Overload - Did anyone notice that the B-schools sent out a ton of emails yesterday?  I think I received 8 different emails from schools.  I was like "Whoa horsey what's going on today?"  I think we're officially in the swing of things!

NYU Stern Event - Is anyone attending "HEC/NYU Stern Luxury & Retail Event: A Celebration of Fashion Week"?  I received a memo about this event on September 16th.  ::sigh:: I'm excited to attend but it requires some work.  Here's the link for those interested.

 To apply I need to send the following:
- Resume
- Summary of why I would like to attend the event
- Date of Birth
- Program of Interest

Essays - So I know that last week I was feeling really down about my essays.  I received another email with some feedback and it completely turned my perspective around.  I know which direction I need to take my essays in now.  ALL of my essays to be exact.  One essay I'm going to totally nix so I can take it a different route. It'll work out for the best.  I actually have to write a debrief about my experience up until this point with my consultant.  Actually let me send an email right now giving a deadline for the debrief...  (hold please)...ok I'm back!

GMAT Prep - So I can honestly say that 13 of the last 14 days I have studied!  I'm going through the OG yet again doing sets of 37.  I'm proud to say that when I do these sets I may get 2 wrong of questions that I should not have gotten incorrect, and I may mark 4/5 with question marks as those that I just don't know how to conquer because I don't see them often enough.  I'm slowly beginning to see that the OG does not provide enough problems for those wishing to score 700+  but that's ok because if I'm still unable to get everything right, then I don't need anything harder at the moment.

Now you may be asking yourself... well... if you're getting things wrong, why are you feeling good?  Well... I'm feeling more confident about what I do know.  Also there are types of questions I didn't have a clue how to solve months ago that I now consider easy because I see them frequently.

Some days I do Quant and Verbal... and other days I do one or the other, but if I do Quant one day I make sure that I definitely do Verbal the next day in some regard.  Charles told me that I must either do Verbal everyday or every other day because it's a marathon, not a sprint.

GMAT Exam - A lot of people keep asking me when my GMAT date is... well.. it's...on...  Not Telling!  No really... I won't be telling anyone except for my tutor, Charles, this time around.  The last time I had too many congratulations coming at me that it was distracting and I got caught up in everything.  So this time around to prevent that from happening, I will simply post my score the day that I take it.  Sorry folks, I'm all for disclosure, but there's too much riding on this one!  <3 ya though.. haha

Meeting at Work Today - So people have asked me "What do you do?"  Well... my title is Search Engine Marketing Analyst for Bloomingdales.com, but I also do display media, mobile, and SEO.  So what is a Search Engine Marketing Analyst?  Well let's break it down..  Search Engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing).. Marketing (Sell our products on Bloomingdales.com)... Analyst.. I analyze and optimize performance.

So anyway today we had a Paid Search meeting where they brought our team into the Marketing Council weekly meeting.  Basically the conversations revolved around how to attribute online media budgets and conversion to in-store lift in sales, WHICH THERE IS A RELATIONSHIP!  People keep talking about a shift in budgets from traditional media to digital media.  This is most definitely true, but where the industry is going now is that we are beginning to be able to attribute clicks and impressions online, to in-store sales!  So yeah if you go to Google, and click on a paid search advertisement... we can track that back to see if you actually purchased something in one of our stores!  - the caveat is that we have to already have your email address.

So why is this the topic of conversation?  Well... let's extrapolate this to a larger company.  Let's take a Proctor & Gamble for instance.  We all know that these companies have large marketing budgets - mainly traditional media.  Imagine if now we can tell if someone clicks on say a banner ad online... and then buys the product online or in a store.  How valuable would that be?  Well pretty valuable.

Now here is where I come in... a lot of people in say brand management roles or CMO positions do not understand the influence that digital media has on the larger organization as a whole... I need to be in a position where I can bring my background into the conversations.

Now I'm just tired of typing about this... so I'm going to end it now hahaha...  I'm going to watch American Greed.  LOVE THIS SHOW.  This one is about Bernie Madoff

Yeah Hi GMAT? You're not that special!

So I've been studying hard...going hard with Quant these last couple of weeks.  I mean if you don't do well on the Quant section then there's really nothing more you can do in terms of the application and trying to optimize the "holistic" approach.  I understand what b-schools say when they mention this approach, but I only believe it to an extent.  I wonder if business schools are just as unsure about the process as applicants are.

I mean think about it...  it HAS to be holistic to an extent.  Just take a look at the average GMAT scores amongst (could have said among but I've naturally gravitated towards the English way of saying it) the top business schools.  All of the mean GMAT scores are above 700, so yes... Holistic approach - sure I'll give you that...BUT let's look at the numbers shall we?

Let's say there are 5 students in a matriculating class and the mean GMAT score is a 710 and the school admits a 650 GMAT score..  Well what do the other 4 scores need to be in order to have a school mean of 710?  So we have:

(A+B+C+D+650)/5 = 710
A+B+C+D+650 = 3550
A+B+C+D=2900
2900/4 = 725

So in order to admit that 650 student and maintain an Mean GMAT of 710 the adcom needs to admit FOUR 730 GMAT scores, since we would need to round up in order to reach that 710 minimum.  I say this all to say that yes while schools take on a holistic approach when reviewing applications... I personally need to keep in mind that it may be a reach for them to admit a lower stratosphere score even if my application is superb!  Just a little note to self  :-)

My tutor is going to have a BLAST with me tomorrow!  I've done all of the worksheets he's given me to do while he's been away for the past week, and I must admit that I feel defeated because of the last worksheet I completed.  It was very tough - even as I was going through it I said to myself "WTF!"  The good thing about it was that I knew what the questions were asking, and there is a definite pattern as to which types of questions I'm missing.  I have a plethora of questions for him tomorrow, so our session should be interesting.

@Charles ... if you're reading this... I'm not going to hold anything back tomorrow!  Just so YOU know!

@Everyone else studying for the GMAT - we can do this!  It's JUST a test, albeit a stressful one, but JUST  a BEATABLE test!  Let's keep each other going...

@People who only had to take it once - like my friend admitted to Ross - yeah... um... I envy you right now!

Tomorrow I'll be finishing up the first rough drafts of my Tuck essays!
Saturday I'll be going sailing with a friend I haven't seen in 10 years!
Sunday I'll be studying my ass off.

Until tomorrow!  Take Care!

GMAT Prep - Downside

First let me say that I've updated the Business school poll on the left hand side of the screen (scroll down). When I started the poll I put schools in it that I was genuinely interested in and some that I needed to fill up space. I have now updated it with the top schools from what you guys chose and added another batch of potential schools. GO VOTE - CHOOSE 3!


So I my GMAT prep hiatus is coming to an end... I had a phenomenal time off! The downside of not studying is re-injecting myself back into my circle of friends and spending $$$$ again. It's amazing how much money one saves when he or she (almost said THEY, but that would have been incorrect) goes out.

For instance, this weekend:

Friday -
$10 at a rooftop bar in Midtown with coworkers
$6 for a cab to a bar for a friends fundraiser/birthday.
$15 for the fundraiser and a wristband for 1/2 appetizers and 1/2 drinks
$15 for 4 beers
$10 for appetizers
$15 for cab crosstown to my apt.
$10 for pizza at 3am - didn't eat it fell asleep
$10 for cigarettes
________
$81

Saturday -
$10 for hamburger/fries/gatorade/chips (breakfast of champions at 1pm)
$30 for a shirt for a birthday party later that night
$30 for a bottle of Svedka
$10 for cigarettes
$20 for my omelet at the diner later that night
$XX for the cab home (yes it was one of those nights!)
________
> $120

Grand Total about $200 and for what? All I got out of it was some tagged Facebook photos!

Granted I needed to go out and have a weekend like that since I held back for so long. I am now looking forward to getting back into study mode. I refuse to go into hiding as a I did previously for two reasons. The first is that it's SUMMER TIME. The second is simply that it just was not productive. I burnt myself out...

Statistics Class - In any event, tomorrow I have to buy my Statistics book. I have a weird feeling that it won't be available in the bookstore! The first class was good. It was much different from (not different than....think about it.. you would say "Differs from" - thanks Brian@Veritas haha) my algebra class. So much so that multiple people knew the fraction for Pi (22/7) and someone else knew to the hundred thousandths digit for e.

There is this one girl though who tries to answer every question first, while being on her laptop. Like really girl? Put it away it's not that serious... but maybe I'll befriend her so that when we do our assignments I can have her my rolodex of go to people.


Miscellaneous: Hhmm let's see... what else is going on? I reached out to a couple students at UC Berkeley Haas who are members of Q@Haas, which is the LGBT group on campus. I really need to get all of the information out of them that I can so I can determine which school is my top choice Tuck or Haas. They are very similar but very different in a couple ways. That will be a post later down the road, where I'll list out the pros and cons of them both.

Friends update: I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but one of the girls that I met when I visited Tuck is from Canada. I email with her probably once every week. She applied R4 and found out that she was waitlisted. She's pretty happy about it and I think that goes to show that she had a great profile. I've never heard of anyone being waitlisted in R4, but I guess it can happen. Everyone please keep your fingers crossed for her!