The Wait has begun…

Time has almost stopped! A minute passes like an hour, an hour like a week, and a week like a month! I am desperately waiting for the ISB shortlist.

Every movement of the clock takes me closer to the day when the shortlist for ISB will be declared. I have worked hard on my essays and with my decent profile, I should deserve a chance to interact with the AdCom for a one on one discussion! I have done whatever I could… now all depends on the evaluators of my application packet.

I submited my application for R1 on September 15th and my current status on the website displays,

Application Completion Status: Completed.
Your application is complete. Further update will be available approximately 3 to 7 days before the interview date for the interview location you have chosen.

Some forum posts from current students on PagalGuy have indicated that the total number of applications received this year for R1 are ~1550 (~1000 last year) and an average GMAT score of ~690 (~680 last year). Don’t know if these numbers are correct but the competition definitely seems to be tougher this year!

PS: For the uninitiated, ISB is one of the best known business schools in India. For more info, visit ISB website

My Verbal strategies for GMAT

• Books and material

Hard copies
- Princeton review …good basics book
- Kaplan 800 … toughie
- OG 11 … good set of GMAT level questions.. will not call it bible… there is much more to GMAT than just OG
Soft copies
- Manhattan SC (must read for improving your SC hit rate)
- Manhattan CR,RC … nothing much to gain from… you can still read it as it is quite closely integrated with OG and can give you some good starting points. I read this after I had read other CR and RC strategies (from kaplan, princeton, 800score.com)
- OG 11 verbal review
- OG 10
Other material
- SC1000
- questions floating on scoretop.com , pagalguy.com , gmat_may2007@googlegroups, prachi_parekh_gmat@yahoogroups
- 800score.com material

• 123

Always remember the simple principle for GMAT preparation… work on your basics, get a feel of the questions, improve your accuracy and then time yourself.
My 123 approach is
1. Basic
2. Accuracy
3. Speed
Do not try to move from 1 to 3 or directly 3… it is extremely important that you go step by step.

Princeton Review and Kaplan GMAT are good books for your basic preparation. Keep working until you are comfortable with all types of questions. Ample number of questions are available online to test your accuracy. Continue with questions till you reach an accuracy atleast greater than 85%. Start timing yourself and target your speed to
SC-1 to 1.5 min
CR-1 to 1.75 min
RC-1.5 to 2.0 min (including time taken to read the passage)

• Practice Tests and actual exam

Do not panic! Keep your cool and keep talking to yourself… keep faith in the system and your capabilities.
GMATPrep 1 – try to give this exam around atleast 10/12 days before the actual test
GMATPrep 2 – 2/3 days before actual test

Other tests… you can give them at any time depending on your level of preparation

• Bottom line

Work hard…Never lose hope …and believe in yourself… after all GMAT is just an exam… there is more to life than just this shitty exam… Give yourself sufficient time for other important things too

All the best! Feel free to ask any specific questions… I will be happy if I could help in any way

Disclaimer – I took the GMAT twice… there are many people who may be better than me… I have just tried to put down my beliefs and strategies.

Product Life cycle

MBA is all about bell curves. The product life cycle(PLC) stages, each require a unique strategy to maximize returns in product business.

• Introduction
• Growth
• Maturity
• Decline

And Yes.. did we miss the initial development phase! There will be sunk costs in the product development, R&D, innovations,  etc. Let’s discuss this later. For the moment, I plan to have an individual writeup of strategies and decisions required during each of the above mentioned stages.

Happy Reading …