Cornell Johnson Interview Scheduled

CORNELL INTERVIEW - I realize that it's been a hot minute since I've posted.  I've just been incredibly busy with a lot of things.  My interview is scheduled on campus for Wednesday the 16th at 10:15!  I emailed my friend (one of the guys I met at the Reaching Out Leadership Conference) who is a 2nd year at Cornell to see if I could crash at his place.

I will be taking the Cornell Campus-2-Campus shuttle on Tuesday and will arrive infront of Sage Hall a little after 5:00.  Then I'll be going to my friends apartment.  I gotta remember to not forget to print out updated copies of my resume.  Note To Self

There is a lot going on behind the scenes now that I've been invited to interview.  I have a lot of research to do.  There's a lot of emailing going on... What are the emails for?  Well instead of talking to my Cornell friends on FB, I need a more formal venue.  I just want to make sure that the things that I have in my head make sense.  I've also dug out the information that I received at Johnson Means Business.  I told myself to keep all of that information JUST IN CASE I needed them for an interview or as a re-applicant.  Thankfully it's because of the former.

VIDEO ESSAYS - Tonight I sent my Tuck video essay to my friend because he wanted to see it.  Any time I send the video to people via YouTube, I upload it and then take it down immediately.  I do this even if the video is private just in case ya know?  Well I remember my friend from Saturday Night telling me that there were a lot of NYU ESSAY 3's on YouTube.  So after I sent my video to my friend I started watching NYU Essays on YouTube.  I watched about 5 of them and the main difference between their videos and mine was the time allowed.

My video could be a maximum of 1 minute and 30 seconds.  Some of the NYU Essays were 10 minutes+!  A.) I can't imagine editing and putting together a 10 minute video essay.  I know how long my video essay took so if I had to add another 8 minutes and 30 seconds to it, I would die.  I don't think they had a time limit but I wonder at what point does one tell themselves "Ok this is a long video"   Then on the flipside - how do X amount of application reviewers watch that many videos that are that long?  It boggles my mind!  ::shrugs:: Oh well I didn't have to do one for NYU thankfully, because that would have thrown a wrench in my plans.

Yale SOM - I received an email yesterday from Yale SOM saying that their decisions for my round would be released on February 25th.  Soooo......  I don't even have to say "Next month I'll find out official decisions."  It'll be THIS month!  Can't believe the time has arrived.

It Doesn't Stop - For all of those who are starting this process... just know this - once you hit submit.... "It" slows down but "It" doesn't stop.  After March I will tell you what "It" is.  There's too much competition now and the cost/benefit analysis doesn't warrant me filling in the blanks at this juncture.

This was a boring/forced post.  Sorry guys lmao - but such is the life of someone in my position right now.  Like I said... there's a lot going on behind the scenes.

Reaching Out Conference: Pre-Arrival

The good news is that I've just finished packing for the Reaching Out Conference in LA!  

The "bad" news is that the van to take me to the airport comes in three hours!  I realized that I had to do laundry because I forgot to include a couple of things in my original list.

I'll be flying out of Newark airport.  I know that a lot of New Yorkers prefer to fly out of Laguardia or JFK, but since I'm a New Yorker by way of New Jersey, I prefer Newark.  I consider THAT to be MY airport!

So now is when I start debating whether or not I should just stay up for three hours and then sleep on the way there, in the airport, and on the plane half way until they serve breakfast.  Or if I should take a quick nap and hope that I don't oversleep.  Luckily the van will be at my door and they have my cell phone number, so hopefully if that's the case, I would hear my phone, but you never know.  

Honestly, at this point I'll probably opt for the first option.  

I'll be rooming with two people whom I connected with online through conference references.  Definitely a great way to cut costs...  So what will occur at this conference?  Well here is the agenda for the Reaching Out Conference.

Let's just say that it's going to be incredibly fun!

The conference is mainly for MBA students and professionals, but there are about 20 pre-mba students (myself included) who will also be in attendance.  A great thing about the conference is that it's mainly organized by 2nd year MBA students.   I've met a handful of them.  Two are 2nd year Tuckies, one of whom I met when I visited in March.  The other one I was introduced to a couple weeks ago by the Tuckie whose going away (from NYC) party I attended.  Another organizer is the gentleman that I reached out too who goes to Cornell.

They suggested that the pre-mba students get together before the reception tomorrow at 8, so I sent an email to all of the pre-mba's to see if they wanted to meet up for dinner.  I'll be arriving at the hotel around 1 and then will check into the room and study a bit.  I have a whole host of homework to get done, and I know that later in the day I won't be able too.  From 4-6 I'll be volunteering which may entail helping to set up... or helping to register folks in.  There are two reasons I chose to volunteer.  The first reason is because I figured it would be a good networking opportunity before the conference officially starts.  The second reason is because instead of the $99 registration fee the fee for volunteers is $75.

So on that note, I'm going to watch a CNBC Original about the life of garbage!

GMAT Sentence Correction & more

Hello everyone... very quickly because I have to go to sleep.

Today, I took the crosstown bus to work and I was doing Sentence Correction on the bus.  Yes!  Believe it!  I was THAT guy doing GMAT work on public transportation.  Oh well, I don't care...X years post business school I'll be doing work in the back of my Maybach!  ;-)  Work was very hectic today.  I'm still playing catch up after being out last friday, so I'm going in tomorrow around 7:30 so I can try to get caught up and then get ahead before heading off to LA for the weekend for the Reaching Out conference.  Although tomorrow I do have a 6 hour training session on some business objects thing-a-ma-jig so that should be "fun".

After work, I hopped on the subway and headed down towards WTC to go to the Goldman Sachs building where UC Berkeley Haas was having their information session.  I got there just as the presentation was beginning.  I was VERY impressed with the presentation and when the list of recruiters came on the screen I nearly threw up - mainly because I saw Google and Apple... well mainly Apple.  I think Google needs to work on their marketing a bit.  Hhmm.. maybe that's why I should work there... to help them work on that.  Anyway I digress....

I left the info session a bit early because the representative was talking about scoring in range on the gmat.  The range is 680-760 and I thought to myself "well.. sitting here will not help me score in range so let me go home and study..."  So I hopped back on the subway... did 10 more sentence correction problems and came home.  Once home I did 20 more sentence corrections.

I've been out of the sentence correction game for a while now.  Just getting back into it recently.  I did all of the SC's in the purple OG review guide.  Out of the 113 problems I got 27 incorrect.  I was surprised I still knew a lot of information.  I did see a trend in what I was missing so now I know how to hone in on those topics.  Or rather... have my tutor drill the concepts into my head.

After studying... I started packing for the conference and then looked at the agenda.  I honestly think that this weekend will be the best weekend of my life!

In any event, it's time for me to go to sleep.  Tomorrow I have a tutoring session and I'm slightly scared at what he's going to throw at me.  Actually no... let me rescind that statement.  My TUTOR should be worried about what I'm going to throw at him!  I have a list of a lot of math problems that I do not fully understand quite yet.

Until next time... Battle-Baxter = OUT

How I reach out to current MBA students...

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY!!!

The only thing I have planned for today is to sit on my couch and go through my Veritas basic math guide.  I had the first weekend of the Veritas weekend class, this past weekend, and we went through all of the verbal sections on the GMAT.  I am not writing this post today to speak about that... that'll come later in the week.

My friend Purple Yogi (his Blogger username) posted a question on one of my previous posts, and I want to address it:

He Posted - "Anyway, I intend to check out a couple of schools in June, that is make a campus visit, what tips would you have when meeting current students and learning about the program?"

Meeting current students to learn about the program is quite different from (different from is an idiom... it's never different than) meeting AdCom members, so you need to approach it differently.  Here is what I do when I know that I'm going to be visiting a school - and I will use my Dartmouth Tuck visit, which can be found here: http://money9111.blogspot.com/2010/03/dartmouth-tuck-visit.html  as an example.

RESEARCH - I research ALL of the clubs/organizations that I think I may want to be involved in.  So at Tuck I definitely want to be involved in the LGBT group, Center for Digital Stategies, and The African Ancestry Business Association, more formerly known as Taaba.

Now one may ask - why do I need to research them, instead of just learning what they are and then asking the students about them?  Well if you can find the information on a website, then it's not something that you should ask about solely in person.

What I mean by this is - it's different to say:

"I read on the website that last year the LGBT group attended the Reaching Out conference in Atlanta.  Did you go to this conference?  Can you tell me more?"  That is a much better way than asking "Do you guys go to any conferences?"

Put yourself in the shoes of a current student.  If someone shows that they've done research and asked me a question similar to the first one, I'm going to be more open about my experience.  I'll probably go off on a couple of tangents too.  Those are the kinds of things that you want to happen, when you're speaking to current students because that's when you really get to the meat of their experiences.

You get the idea on research....

CONTACTING - This part is fairly easy even though there are many ways you can go about accomplishing this.  If you've ever been to any MBA Fairs or information sessions, and have collected business cards from current students, don't be afraid to email them.  To me that's a no brainer.  If you give me your business card, you've opened up the possibility of my contacting you.  

You can always find the contact emails of students who are the presidents/co-chairs of the organizations you wish to be a part of.  Don't think to yourself "Oh but I don't want information on that club... I want to know what life is like."  Well... while you're talking about the club...ask them what life is like for them!  They are students lol they can answer that question too - and probably want to!

INTRODUCTORY EMAIL - It takes me a while to write this.  Probably 30 minutes because I figure, this person may get 5-10 emails a week, and I don't want their stock response.  

So in the email I... 

- Introduce myself 

- Tell them how I found their info 

- Give a short background on why i'm contacting them and why I want to attend School X 

- See if we can set up a time to meet when I'm visiting.

This is what I wrote to a member of the Center for Digital Strategies at Tuck before going up there.


Good Evening ______,


My name is Richard Battle-Baxter, and I’m planning to visit Hanover and The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.  I feel like I visit the Tuck website every day trying looking for information that I missed the last time.  One component of Tuck that I'm the most excited about is the potential to become a fellow with Center for Digital Strategies.  I first learned about the center from Dawna Clark at the Tuck information session at the Yale club back in the fall.  She eased my reservations about "leaving" the ever changing digital world to pursue and MBA.  After some more research I realized that a similar center at another school would be hard to come by and that I should delve deeper. 


I just recently subscribed to the Tuck blog and was going through my Google reader and saw your Tech@Tuck post starting with "One of the perks of being an MBA Fellow at Tuck's Center for Digital Strategies..." and my eyes opened widely.  Just yesterday, I was writing about why I wanted to go to Tuck; the Center for Digital Strategies is the of the main reasons.  As an SEM Analyst for Bloomingdales.com and having worked in the digital space for about four and a half years, It's not surprising that I would be drawn to everything digital.  


On Thursday March 25th, I will be hopping on the Dartmouth Coach from NYC and heading up to Hanover to participate in the visitors events that routinely occur, minus the interview since I have not applied yet.  I will be leaving early Saturday morning which leaves me approximately 48 hours to experience all that Dartmouth has to offer.  If you're not busy and have a couple extra minutes, would you mind letting me pick your brain about the Center and Tuck itself?  It would be greatly appreciated!


Thank You,
Richard Battle-Baxter

He responded within 24 hours.  I know if I were a current student and I received an email such as that one, I would be more prone to get back to the student.  I sent an email like that one to a member of the LGBT group as well as TAABA.  

MEETING CURRENT STUDENTS - So this is the bread and butter right?  The whole reason you do the research and send the introductory email is to meet current students.  I will re-iterate here...  DO YOUR RESEARCH on the program as a whole and the specific clubs.  

When you set up a meeting with Current Students - be respectful of their time and be flexible.  If they only have 15 minutes to meet with you...MEET WITH THEM.  If they have to change the time in the middle of the day...AGREE TO IT!  Also, DO NOT BE LATE!!!

If you go out for coffee or something of that nature - OFFER TO PAY FOR THEM!  Treat them as you would treat a client.  (Sidenote - I believe AS is the correct word to use here, because I'm comparing actions = "Treat".)

TYPES OF QUESTIONS - Ok that's enough yelling.. so what types of questions do you ask people? The short answer is ANYTHING!

These students remember when they were in your position.  I didn't have any questions unanswered.  Do not meet students with a piece of paper in hand with a list of questions.  You should have a conversation with them.  The questions will come to you...  Sorry this section wasn't more descriptive - actually I'm not haha... 

AFTER THE MEETING - Definitely thank them as you part ways, but more importantly, SEND THEM A THANK YOU LETTER/EMAIL.  In this email you should point out a couple things you spoke about and you appreciate their time etc etc blah blah.  Also, do not forget to ask their permission to keep the lines of communication open between the two of you.  I have learned that this is the most invaluable part of the process.  Here is what I sent as a follow up email:


Hi _____,


I wanted to thank you for meeting me last Thursday.

I had a phenomenal time during my visit at Tuck.  Sitting in on the MBA Fellows lunch was undoubtedly the best part of my trip up there.  During that lunch hour I definitely envisioned myself sitting around the table as a T'13 as an MBA Fellow.  The main hurdle in front of me now is the GMAT.  Have to bang that out from what the Associate Admissions Director told me.

I hope you don't mind that I sent you a LinkedIn request.  Also, I'll probably have more questions for you at random intervals so I'm hoping that the invitation is always open.

Enjoy your day!

- Richard

One note about this... be careful with the LinkedIn requests.  If you don't want your colleagues to know that you're looking into business schools, you probably shouldn't request 5 students from the same MBA program at the same time!  Remember LinkedIn updates and people can see who your new friends are! It will set off red flags hahaha...

So I visited Dartmouth back in March and I still email back and forth with a member of TAABA and the Center for Digital Strategies.  I feel that we have a symbiotic relationship. I don't just email them with more follow up questions, but I also ask them how they're doing.  


We are no longer in the stage of me trying to extract information from them.  That occurred during out hour long meeting months ago.  During that hour I had their time...but now...for instance - the MBA fellow at the Center for Digital Stategies HAS GRADUATED.  So there are a couple things to this point...


First... If I think I have an ally on campus when I visit again for my interview - I do not!  Well I         do... but it's not him anymore.  Also, because of the rapport that I have with him he's going to introduce me to the current Fellow of the CDS.  This way I can reach out to them and will know people at Tuck when I visit again in the fall.  


Second...Our emails since my visit have touched on his job search and his plans post MBA.  It's great to see the impact an MBA has on their lives, which is something you can't really ask them before they've graduated.


As I mentioned before, I also keep in touch with a member of TAABA.  I consider him a friend now actually.  Because I've kept the lines of communication open I can ask more personal questions that may have been slightly uncomfortable or awkward for me to ask upon first meeting him.  He's also great a giving me advice for the upcoming application process.  He's mentioned on multiple occasions that he is waiting for me to send him my essays to look over!  See things like that are invaluable and all arose from our initial meeting.


The reason I say that you should be flexible in your scheduling is because this Tuck student wasn't even the student I reached out too initially.  The first person I reached out too was unavailable and then I was going to meet with a girl and she brought this student along.  I don't talk to the female student any more, but I email back and forth with ______  about once a week.


I think if you're really gung-ho about a program you should do all of your research because you will undoubtedly get the most out of your meeting and visit.  I come from a world where I didn't know anyone with an MBA.  Thanks to BeatTheGMAT.com I think I have penetrated the barriers to entry and have entered this world of MBA's.  I don't know how people navigate PROPERLY through this process without the access.  I have now built up a rolodex of many students and alumni who I have relationships with.


Read more about my Dartmouth Tuck visit here (VERY LONG - but entertaining :-) ): 
http://money9111.blogspot.com/2010/03/dartmouth-tuck-visit.html


I hope this helps Purple Yogi ;-) !  


Later in the week will be a post about my Veritas Class - Love Love Love!