1. The system makes sure that you learn

There is no use picking up a book and practicing questions in a fixed order. The system has to learn your learning speed and learning style and adjust accordingly. So it throws the questions at you based on your learning speed. If you are learning faster, the questions start becoming difficult soon and vice versa.

2. Comprehensive Comparative Analytics

As a detailed feedback, Edvento’s performance charts show more information than you can imagine. It will show you your accuracy, pace, and game standing in overall course, subject or even topic. This way you know where you should improve. These metrics are calculated on not just your performance, but also how others are performing in that area. Click on the line chart in the graph and you’ll know where you stand and where you have to reach.

3. Fun environment

There is a feel good factor about the whole Edvento experience. As soon as you login, you get a colorful badge named ‘Initiated’. It’s not just that, as you practice, depending on your performance, you keep getting these badges for completing 10 correct questions in a row, attempting 5 verbal questions correctly and so on. Moreover, you always see this leaderboard on the main page and it drives you to practice hard to reach there.

Overall, it’s a good supplement to have along with lessons material like Official Guide and the Verbal and Quant Review books by GMAC.

Disclaimer: I have founding interest in Edvento.com

1. What is CRM ?
- Explained what it meant and gave an example specific to telecom.

2. Asked me to explain in a generic scenario ?
- Explained generally how it is to handle customer interactions.

3. Asked me to break down those interactions ?
- Explained Leads / Sales / Actual Customers and how it becomes a 2 way communication at that point and the idea is to keep a customer satisfied.

4. You have interacted with CSR’s, what do you think they expect from the system ?

5. You mention novels, what is the latest novel you have read ?
- Currently reading the 5th book in a series by George RR Martin, A Dance with Dragons. Did not explain further since he did not ask.

6. How do you develop a product ?
- Clarified what he meant by the question, he said just answer what ever you think !!
So I started with, look at the customer requirements/ look at my firms strengths and if I can actually deliver such a product/ convert those requirements into technical specifications and interface to the development teams/ interact with customer to make sure we are going down the right path / finally have a few rounds of testing before it is released to the customer.

7. If I remove the first phase of Customer Requirements/ There are no requirements, how will you go about developing a product ?
- I would look at developing something to the strengths of my firm, look at what is there in the market and use the consumer feedback. Example if my firm is good at say creating Smartphone OS’s, I would look at all the OS’s in the market today, look at consumer feedback and create a OS that combines the best features of the other OS’s and uses the feedback of the consumers.

8. What are the latest trends in Consumer Electronics ?
1) Explained how a single subscription account will be used across multiple screens, phone / tablet and television.
2) How tablets have the potential to take over notebooks as viable computing devices. Went on explain how it be depending on how the players in he market would work it out. Gave 2 options, 1 with Microsoft lauching the Windows 8 which potentially works with tablets along with full featured document editing. And how the use of a subscription service, where potentially the tablet will be used as a dumb client and processing done on the cloud. – Eventually how I believe tablets have the real potential to replace notebooks over the next 5 yrs.

9. Why ISB ?

10. How has you profile evovled over 3 years?

11. What is your Backup ?
- Today I am passionate enough and have a clear goal. So if ISB does reject me this year, I will apply to the asian schools NTU and NUS.

12. You application does not show any leadership capabilities ? Can you cite one example ?

13. Any questions for us ?
- Asked about the Campus exchange and how for someone like me the panel probably thinks, I would pick marketing electives, so you can put me in both say Mohali and HYD. What in term 6-7 I choose to take an elective from IT thats offered only in HYD, how would that work ?
Prof. Kannan now got up and started answering about how its a X/Y concept. So I asked that it mentioned the exchange would be a 1:1. He furhter explained if either number X/Y from either campus is differnt a max of 20 students from one campus can move the other. And explained the criteria of student distribution how they would try to maintain the diversity and quality across both campuses.

Overall It was a much better interview than the 1st time I had taken it. No Hiccups, no round about answers.

Qualification: Engineer
Nationality: Indian
Work-experience: 5 years 
Experience: IT Services. 3 years international experience.
GMAT: 760
Applied in: R1
Location and time of interview: 22nd October 2011, Switzerland

My interview was taken by an alumnus. We met at the lobby of a hotel and moved on to a cafè for the interview. Both of us were dressed in business casuals. The interview lasted for about 55-65 minutes.

I sent him my resume before hand, as he requested for it but he dint have a copy of it during the interview.

Here are a few questions:

1. What do you think are three qualities of a good leader?
2. Tell me about a time you took risks.
3. Tell me about a time when you were surprised with yourself.
4. What do you do on a Tuesday evening?
5. What do you do in a Saturday evening?
6. Three strengths and one weakness
7. If I asked your supervisor to describe your three best qualities, what would that be?
8. Explain your current job responsibilities?
8. What are the responsibilities of you supervisor?
9. What are the responsibilities of the four analysts under you?
10. Short term and long term goals.
11. Why MBA now?
12. Why Kellogg? Why not an MBA in India?

Qualification: Engineer
Work-experience: 4 years 2 months
Experience: 1 year in IT and 3 years in a government research organization as a scientist
GMAT: 710
Applied in: R1
Location and time of interview: 2nd October 2011, ISB Hyderabad

1. How did you reach Hyderabad? As per my information <place of work> is an island?
2. Why two IT companies?
3. Tell me about NASA’s 30 year roadmap?
4. Both of your recommendations state about a Robotics Project. What was your contribution in the project?
5. Why did you apply that particular approach?
6. You said that you have worked on many other better projects. Explain about your best project experience.
7. What kind of work you do at <current government research organization>? Do you sit in a closed room and just work all by yourself?
8. How did you manage the technicians at your workplace?
9. What did you do when two technicians fight?
10. Tell me about a particular example when you handled such a situation.
11. What were your learnings at <current government research organization>?
12. List any two challenges from your supervisor?
13. Are you stating with respect to the same person who has written your recommendation?
14. You changed yourself so much, but the character from your favourite novel “Fountain Head” named “Howard Roark” never changed himself. Why so?
15. Any questions for us?

Lessons on MBA Interview preparation

1. You should have a solid reason prepared for every career decision you have made so far.
2. You should have thorough industry knowledge and aware of future outlook.
3. Clear and crisp introduction and the description of your job responsibilities is required.
4. Be thorough with what you have written in your essays. The interviewers will go deep into the content to check for ingenuity. See questions 8 and 9 above where the interviewers went deep into the contents of the essays.
5. Have a couple of examples ready for each skill or strength that you mention.
6. Prepare a couple of questions to ask the panel.

All of us have a lot to learn from his life. His thoughts do make sense but tough to implement. It takes guts to be where you think the world will be, but that is vision and courage, the most critical qualities of a successful leader.

On Teamwork

What Steve Jobs has achieved despite the setbacks in his life is unprecedented. He attributes it to teamwork. When asked about his business model, he replied:

My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.

A visionary

Since the re-arrival of Jobs in Apple, Apple has maintained a history of under-committing and over-achieving. It has always awed technologists and admirers by successfully managing over expectations. This is only possible if you have the ability to look far into the future. Nobody knew they wanted iPhone, or iPad. It just wasn’t there. But Jobs saw it and solved the problem that no one knew existed. He quoted the ice hockey legend Wayne Gretzky:

There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.

Follow your heart

I believe the only way to be happy is follow your heart. But it’s not easy. It takes courage. It involves knowing yourself and have the guts to follow your passion. We all make our lives so complicated and so involved with people around us that we start to think that our relationships make us. We think that making others happy will make us happy. But that is not what maketh a successful leader:

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Perseverance and knowing where your heart lies

This continues from following your heart. All the pieces just fit together whether being an entrepreneur or being happy, doing what you are truly passionate about requires courage. Hard to believe.

A lot of people come to me and say “I want to be an entrepreneur”. And I go “Oh that’s great, what’s your idea?”And they say, “I don’t have one yet.” And I say, “I think you should go get a job as a busboy or something until you find something you’re really passionate about because it’s a lot of work.” I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance.

It is so hard. You put so much of your life into this thing. There are such rough moments in time that I think most people give up. I don’t blame them. It’s really tough and it consumes your life. If you’ve got a family and you’re in the early days of a company, I can’t imagine how one could do it. I’m sure its been done but it’s rough. It’s pretty much an eighteen-hour day job, seven days a week for awhile. Unless you have a lot of passion about this, you’re not going to survive. You’re going to give it up. So you’ve got to have an idea, or a problem or a wrong that you want to right that you’re passionate about. otherwise you’re not going to have the perseverance to stick it through. I think that’s half the battle right there.

On  Death and the ultimate Truth of Life

Jobs has been an inventor and innovator who has changed the way we live today. According to him, an inventor changes the way of life. But Death, changing Life itself, is the biggest inventor. At the Stanford Commencement Address, 2005, he said:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Apple’s website has put up a grayscale picture of Steve Jobs leading to a page as a tribute to him:

Round 1: 1-Oct 2011 till 31-Jan 2012

Round 2: 1-Feb 2012 till 31-Mar 2012

The essay topics for this year’s application are:

Essay 1

Choose one of the two questions below:
a. Describe your most valued accomplishment and explain why you view it as such OR
b. Describe a time when you failed. What did you learn from that failure? How has that failure made you better equipped for the future?

Essay 2

Name one current issue (economic / social / political) that Asia is facing and identify a couple of strategies that you feel may adequately address the issue.

Essay 3

“Rampant consumerism (seeking material goods without the ability to afford them) is one of the main causes for the current global economic crisis. Restraining consumerism remains a key task for developed countries like the US and Western Europe.” What are your views?

This is a standard career goals essay with a focus on your career progression. Layout a structure for the essay first and then attack it in that framework. Keep in mind that the career goals essay is the most important essay for any B-school. It is alright if you are unsure, but for the sake of the application, you need to be able to chart out a practical career path for yourself, and that is what the MBA admissions committee wants to see.

The questions that you need to answer here

How your career has progressed since your undergrad

Typically you need to justify every professional decision you have taken so far. Starting from your first job, you need to focus on the significant contributions you have made at work that reflect a different skill of yours. Every career decision should not be a result of the circumstances but should be decisions taken consciously. Show that you are in control of your career and do not succumb to circumstances. In the story, highlight any promotions, appreciations that you have received and why. Also cover any international, cross-functional and leadership experiences.

Now where you are and where you are headed, your long term and short term goal

At this stage of your career, assess your accomplishments so far and tell where you have reached. If you are asked to pause for a moment and asked where do you see yourself at the end of this race, where do you want to reach? That is your end goal. To achieve your long term goal, there are certain skills and experiences that you require. To gain those relevant skills, you will start with your short term goal that will be achieved by an MBA.

Here comes the need for an MBA that should be justified and takeaways from the MBA should be well reasoned and relevant.

You can skip the portion of Why Kellogg in this essay as those are to be covered in depth in essay 3.

Essay 2: Describe your key leadership experiences and evaluate what leadership areas you hope to develop through your MBA experiences. (600 words)

Have you ever taken an initiative at work beyond your scope of work, have you taken any decision that has impacted the environment around you, have you ever stood up for what you believed in, have you ever managed a team so well that the output brought in another project for the firm? This is the essay to show all your leadership skills. Leadership is not always by virtue of position. It is an attitude to work and can be shown at any place. The question does not ask you about workplace leadership. It is open and can be extrapolated to any environment.

To approach this essay, list out all leadership skills that you have and describe; rather, show those skills through specific incidents. You should consider showing two-three leadership examples from different environments (professional/personal/community) and those examples should each show a different skill. At the end, leave scope for covering your areas of improvement. What additional skill you need to develop or improve that will make you a complete leader? And how will that skill be developed from the MBA experience? The MBA experience covers in-class and outside of class personality development. Here comes the point when you can also hit on the takeaways from Kellogg that will focus on leadership development. Fit the offerings of Kellogg with your personality and blend in.

Essay 3: Assume you are evaluating your application from the perspective of a student member of the Kellogg Admissions Committee. Why would you and your peers select you for admission, and what impact would you make as a member of the Kellogg community? (600 word limit)

This essay is very personal and asks how you fit into the Kellogg community. Here is the chance to show the adcom how you “Stand out and yet Fit In”.

Stand out

You have to differentiate yourself from the other candidates who are applying having similar background as yours. In every aspect, just show how you stand out, what aspects of your personality are unique and how good a team player you are.

Fit In

While it is important to stand out, it does not mean you are so different that you do not fit in the culture of the school and become a loner. Every school has a culture and you need to show your fit with the school’s values and culture. Show them your value system and how you agree with that of the school. Do some research and tell in which activities you will be involved. Think of the impact that you will make on the Kellogg community.

Highlight your qualities that you excel at. Show your personality and make your character vivid. The approach to be taken here is that of an outsider. Characterize yourself and judge yourself from the eyes of your classmate. What qualities would you like to see in a classmate? What kind of an alumnus will you be?

Essay 4: Complete one of the following three questions or statements. (400 word limit)

This is an interesting set of questions. Choosing one of them requires you to finalize the content for the above essays. Making a list of qualities that you want to highlight in your application is important. The skills or qualities that you have not covered yet but are vital for your application should be covered in the below essays.

a) Describe a time you had to inspire a reluctant individual or group.

This is the essay where you need to display leadership skills and professional maturity. To inspire a reluctant group, you have to have self belief and the power to motivate and convince a hesitant group. This is a vital skill of a leader and in demonstrating this skill through an example, you are showcasing your leadership skills. Think of a time when you were leading a team and you had to drill down your ideas to the team for implementation when the team members were not agreeing to the ideologies. Better, even if you were not leading a team, as a team member you might have had an opinion different from the rest of the group. How did you convince them and got them on board? Remember to finish the example with an evident impact or result. What was the outcome: both external and internal? Were the team members convinced and all were in agreement? How did this exercise change you as a person/leader?

b) People may be surprised to learn that I…..

Use this opportunity to talk about a unique aspect of your personality not talked about in the previous essays. This particular quality can be an unexpected trait for a person from your background, your experience. In addition, you should use this essay as another opportunity to differentiate yourself. Importantly, relate this skill of yours to your professional goals for it to be relevant.

c) The riskiest personal or professional decision I ever made was…..

Your decision making skills are being tested in this question. A balance of personality is to be displayed between your risk taking ability and how much calculated risks do you take. So show some examples with good decision making.

The second essay asks:

Where do you see yourself three years after you graduate from the ISB? (300 words max)

The focus on three years specifically demands a different approach to the essay. Here’s what we suggest as one of the structure and approach to this essay.

Start by stating your vision or the long term goal and define it to some extent. Tell the reader where you see yourself ultimately, what your passion is. Then connect the dots by specifying where you will start to ultimately reach your long term goal. That starting point is your short term goal, your immediate post MBA career. Add how an MBA combined with your skills and experience will help you achieve your short term goal.

At this point the story is set that starts from your current position, combines with it the skills and experience gained from the MBA, you achieve your post MBA goal and that will ‘somehow’ lead to your long term goal.

That ‘somehow’ is your ‘three year’ connector. When you achieve the job or role that you wanted immediately after your MBA, you will need to gain certain skills or experience that help you march towards attaining your ultimate goal. That three year period is a transition phase where you will be earning what you wanted, you will be growing in your role, you will be attaining the required network, the skills, the knowledge, etc that will ease your transition to your long term goal.

Application Deadlines – September 2012 Intake (Class of July 2013)
Round 1
Application Deadline – 28 Sept 2011
Interview Decision – 4 Nov 2011
Final Decision – 16 Dec 2011

Round 2
Application Deadline – 7 Dec 2011
Interview Decision – 13 Jan 2012
Final Decision – 24 Feb 2012

Round 3
Application Deadline – 21 Mar 2012
Interview Decision – 20 Apr 2012
Final Decision – 1 Jun 2012

Application Deadlines – January 2013 Intake (Class of December 2013)
Round 1
Application Deadline – 11 Apr 2012
Interview Decision – 18 May 2012
Final Decision – 29 Jun 2012

Round 2
Application Deadline – 20 Jun 2012
Interview Decision – 27 Jul 2012
Final Decision – 7 Sept 2012

Round 3
Application Deadline – 16 Aug 2012
Interview Decision – 14 Sept 2012
Final Decision – 26 Oct 2012

Essay Topics

Job Description Essays

1. Briefly summarise your current (or most recent) job, including the nature of work, major responsibilities, and, where relevant, employees under your supervision, size of budget, clients/ products and results achieved. (250 words maximum)

2. Please give a full description of your career since graduating from university. If you were to remain with your present employer, what would be your next step in terms of position? (250 words maximum)

3. If you are currently not working, what are you doing and what do you plan to do until you start the MBA programme? (250 words maximum)

Essays

1. Give a candid description of yourself, stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors, which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary. (600 words maximum)

2. Describe what you believe to be your two most substantial accomplishments to date (if possible specify one personal and one professional), explaining why you view them as such. (400 words maximum)

3. Describe a situation taken from your personal or professional life where you failed. Discuss what you learned. (400 words maximum)

4. a) Discuss your short and long term career goals. (300 words maximum) and
b) How will studying at INSEAD help you achieve your vision? (250 words maximum)

5. Please choose one of the following two essay topics:
a) Have you ever experienced culture shock? What insights did you gain? (250 words maximum)
b) Describe the ways in which a foreigner in your country might experience culture shock. (250 words maximum)

Demonstrated Academic Excellence

Every business school expects all its candidates to go through a rigorous academic experience. This includes both qualitative and especially quantitative excellence. Two important components of your application form the primary source of academic indicator: Undergraduate record and GMAT score. If you screwed up your undergrad score, nothing can be done about it now. But you can compensate for it with a good GMAT score. Some people are just not good test takers. For them, certain secondary sources come into picture. If your work involves lot of data mining, heavy calculations, etc., you can show your comfort level with quant through achievements at work in your essays or your recommendations. If you have taken any additional coursework or certifications, those will definitely help in adding credibility to your academic strength.

Demonstrated Leadership

Leadership is the most important aspect or quality required to be present in every applicant. Tuck aptly puts “demonstrated leadership” and show that you have displayed leadership in various settings: college, work, extra curricular, community or personal life. The parts of the application where  you can show leadership skills are essays, resume and recommendations.

Demonstrated Accomplishments

Tuck indicates achieving something valuable by being passionate about it. And we agree. If you are passionate about doing something, or making a change, you will take your task through closure. Show that you have the ability to take on a challenge, identify the steps to overcome it and achieve something valuable at the end. Whenever you talk about an achievement, always always follow the STAR framework to show your skill, in the essays. In your resume, always start your sentence with a verb indicating achievement followed by the task you performed to achieve it.

Interpersonal Skills

It is highly imperative that a leader is good with people. Be it working in a team or managing a team, interpersonal skills are required to be successful when working with people. Tuck, of course values this skill a lot and that is visible in the culture at the school that has a tight knit community. Interviews thus form a very critical aspect of the complete admission process at Tuck where you get a chance to display your interpersonal skills, through your demeanor, your attitude and your body language. A hint at your interpersonal skills is also given by your recommender. So help him/her by reminding of specific examples displaying this skill of yours.

Diversity (Background and Experience)

A business school is a learning experience and a transformational experience for some. You learn as much in class as outside of the class. There is just so much to do, and most of the activities are team based. The enrichment happens through peer interaction. While you want to get into Tuck to get this experience, you also want to contribute to its richness. You hone your interpersonal skills by interacting with people from diverse backgrounds. You learn about your desired industry, you develop cultural sensitivity and prepare yourself for working in a multicultural environment. These are some softer benefits of a diverse peer group and you would be contributing towards it. Your essays are the best primary source for this information.

Global Mindset

In today’s global environment, no one expects you to be inward looking and have a limited scope of knowledge. A first hand experience of working in a multicultural environment shapes your personality to be prepared to work in a global environment. And school like Tuck, that has culture built on global diversity, would expect you to bring something substantial to the table. As they mention, you can show a global inclination by talking about your experiences of studying, working or traveling outside your home country or by showing a penchant of learning new languages.