My Kellogg Interview Experience

Although I did not end up choosing Kellogg, I did spend a humongous amount of time preparing and submitting my application. Infact, given the larger consumer appeal of the US MBA, especially to many Indian applicants, I receive many e-mails from my under-grad MBA apping club about my Kellogg experience. So, in an attempt to answer some of those questions, I am re-posting a blog entry that I wrote for Clear admit.

Kellogg MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 2 / Alumnus / Off-campus

I had an interview scheduled with an alum in a coffee shop and got there well in advance. My interviewer came on time and after a few pleasantries we started off. He explained the format of interview (blind), anticipated duration (45mts), Q&A time (10mts) and had a copy of my CV although he had not looked through it. He jotted down notes as he spoke to me. The questions were pretty standard, but it became very very conversational, casual and zero stress. It was interesting in that he was a client of my current company and so I had some specific challenges that he posed.

- Elevator pitch: Take me through your resume (He interrupted me after 1 minute and asked me to elaborate a few points that interested him)

- Why change in industries between Job 2 & 3

- Specific questions about my consulting background and some challenges based on working with my company

- Why MBA?

- Why Kellogg?

- Why 1Y (this got answered in the process of answering the prior qns. He stopped to offer some advice based on his experience here)

- Which other schools did you apply for?

- An example of how I manage a global team

- An example of a successful & challenging consulting engagement – He probed with: 1) What did you do specifically?

- What was a difficult decision you made as a team leader that impacted your team? (I took some time to think about this as it was not something I prepared for)

- What clubs will I participate on campus?

- What is the single most weakest point in my application (I had prepared for this, but he delved deep into this point and so important what you choose to answer. I think I came out strong but we will see.)

- Being a member of a demographically over-represented group, he asked how will my application stand out of my peers?

He then asked me about any questions I had. We discussed for a while and he wished be the best in my application process. Overall this was an anticipated Kellogg interview with no surprises. I think it is great that Kellogg adds this additional dimension to evaluate all applicants and add a personality to each essay they read. Hopefully I land in Evanston with my performance and wish all R2/R3 applicants all the best.

Dominic Barton, McKinsey's CEO, speaking at Berkeley Haas

A very interesting and visionary speech by the Mckinsey CEO. I started watching at 1:30pm after a post-lunch slump and was 99.9% attentive (in true Dettol Style), 10 minutes into the talk. 

The Road to Cambridge!

Reverse chronological order for some reason appeals to the human mind, atleast for some like me, with our memory seemingly having a limited retention capability. So, I will start my application process monologue with this blog post I write on Clear admit and referred a lot of Round 3, 4 and 5 applicants when they requested for some tips. Hopefully, I will follow-up with information on my other applications, why I chose to apply to the schools I applied to and how I attempted the GMAT (I carefully chose attempted instead of "aced", "cracked" or any such eulogies). So, here it goes:

Cambridge / Judge MBA Admissions Interview Questions: Round 2 / Faculty / On-campus

Of adcoms & applicants!

Have you got within 200 yards of Lake Geneva and not walked towards it to take a stroll by it or a photograph, out of sheer over-confidence? 

This is precisely what I did, when I traveled to Lausanne to interview at IMD. I promised myself that I am going to return to do my MBA and so did not click a single picture or go near the shores of the lake although I could see it from the school, the bus, the tram and on the train from Geneva to Lausanne.

As much as choosing and applying to the right college is an arduous and time consuming task to the applicant, there is an equally exhausting & exasperating task on the other side for adcoms. This multiplies when the school decides to assemble a class that is 1/10th or 1/15th the size of a Top business school. I got admitted into one of them - Cambridge, which made me think it is going to be easy and not that bad after all. My opinion has changed after my 5 months of waiting for IMD. 

Being a demographically over-represented lot in the applicant pool, Indians have a tough time applying to B-schools. This, especially, when you are not a gifted GMAT cracker, like me. Fortunately, my story did help me standout of the applicant pool and I was interviewed by IMD on the 26th of March. It was quite an interesting process with a personal interview, case study presentation and group case assessment. The first two parts went well for me, although the third was a bit tricky due to the way the professor ran it, disallowing extensive participation, despite having done very strong analysis. Long-story short, IMD put me on a hold list. 

While time froze as I was waiting for IMD - I paid my acceptance fee for Cambridge (April), got admitted into Kellogg (Mid-May), decided to drop Kellogg (end May) and paid my 2nd installment to Cambridge (mid-June). However my status in IMD did not budge. While the wait is usually very painful for the applicants, I can now imagine the difficulty that adcom have to go through to ensure they have unique candidates in the cohort - especially when there are 90 (like IMD) or 150 (like Cambridge) across 50+ countries. So it was with a heavy heart that I finally mustered my strength to write the below e-mail, today:

Hi xxx, 

Thanks for your mail. I have accepted my offer from Cambridge and you can now remove me off the wait list for IMD as I cannot wait any longer. 

I wish you the best in assembling your class for 2014. :)

Cheers,

Vignesh

My solace lies in the fact that I decided to reject 2 schools (Kellogg & IMD) and accept Cambridge, A school that gives me the best of both selectivity and location (by being in the UK). 

Now all I need is to be offered a job in Nestle HQ to see Lake Geneva :)

Being Controversial!

You must wonder, how busy can an MBA prospect, who knows he is going to quit his job, be? I can tell you the last few weeks were nerve wrecking, not because of my job but because of one big decision I had to confront. 

In a way, I liked the experience. Like any 30 year old I've been pushed into a few life changing decisions - my marriage, moving to the UK and maybe even going to do under-graduation in an unknown land. I do dread these big moments but, in retrospect, appreciate that it is a reminder that "I am the master of my fate". 

Exactly a month ago, I got admitted into Kellogg School of Managment in the US, while already having admission to Cambridge University's Judge School of Business. Now you might think whoa, this is awesome. But just after the inebriation dies down, you realize you are torn between 2 big names with relative strengths and competitive advantages. Add to this the fact that there are other parameters to consider including career goals, likes, wants, needs, resources, flexibility, location, visa, finance, jobs, risk-return and personal commitments. 

Given my consulting experience, I am good at recommending options, while here I was having to decide & act in the midst of sleepless nights and bi-polar emotions. After many calls with alumni, adcom, friends, relatives and creating many excels with decision trees, ROIs, opportunity costs etc. there was still a lot of inertia around my indecision. While I reminisced and kept toying with my thoughts a couple of powerful quotes gave me direction: "Between Oxbridge and Kellogg, you cannot go wrong"  and "You are unique, The school is unique". 

I decided that I cannot change the name of my blog from BostontoCambridge to something else and confident that I can "make this work for me". So, once again, Cambridge MBA - here I come! :)

PS: I will make another post on the criteria I used to decide/short-list schools as it is something that any MBA hopeful will be curious about!

Life is like that!

Just when I thought life was taking its course, I got offered a spot in Kellogg School of Business. Almost everyone advises me to take the effort to move stateside!

Oh good confusions are over-rated! I will hibernate now and try convincing the wife that this is good and convincing myself to take the poison pill to kill UK residency and the red  pill to become a Kelloggian.

PS: Wait is there a green pill option still? IMD are you listening!

What's your story?

Why MBA? Why quit a comfy job in an un-predictable economy, spend as much as a mini-mortgage on tuition, regress to a student life and change just about everything around and including me?

The idea of an internationally recognized degree from a top 20 university in the world, was seeded a long-time back and never died really although I took a long-winded path to get here. But somehow many of my decisions were linked to the fact that I would re-visit the MBA at a later point in life, when appropriate. I started running, moved to a different country, worked in 3 industries and a year back, on my 29th Birthday, came to the realization that this is it.

So, the MBA is really a step in changing my life. I knew and worked towards this change and infact told anyone that if I don't change my personality and lifestyle, I think my MBA journey would be incomplete. Hence, the name of my blog !

My essay writing experience taught me the importance of telling a great story. This blog will be my attempt to tell my stories (of all types) as a student in Cambridge University's Judge Business School. What's yours?