RusGirl @ LBS

1st year is over

2008-06-13T00:33:00.003+04:00

Had my last lecture of the term today. Three final exams are still due. And after them, on Sunday morning I'm off to Switzerland for my summer internship.
I hope I will have time there to share my first year experiences: about LBS life, recruitment, study groups... if anyone is still reading, stay tuned! :)

Peacocks, BP and Kevin Bacon

2007-10-23T02:10:00.001+04:00

"Peacocks, BP and Kevin Bacon" read one of the slides we used today in group debate on Corporate Social Responsibility.
Confused? Let me then start afresh.

Each Monday morning our stream has Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility. The best thing about the course this year is a group debate that is held each lecture on a separate topic.
For instance, last Monday two groups presented pros and cons of bribery (should a company use bribery when it operates in a country where bribery is common practice). And though the "pro" group brought chocolates for the whole audience, they lost. Sorry, guys, I voted for you :)
It looked like touchy-feely side won all the time. So when we gathered last week to prepare our presentation on the pro side of "The only social responsibility of a law-abiding business is to maximize shareholders' value" the general mood was: "There's no way we can win this, so why not have some fun?"
In order to prepare we had four group meetings, each time with a new central idea, including:
1) Milton Friedman (he is the father of "profit as the only social responsibility"),
2) The Godfather ("It's nothing personal, Sonny, it's strictly business"),
3) video with Warren Buffett giving his money to Gates foundation not as a businessman but as a person,
4) wheel of fortune ...
...and somehow ended up with peacocks (all the credit goes to the President of the Poker Club who presented it to us late on Sunday evening between two deals).

So what do peacocks, BP and Kevin Bacon have in common?
Basically peacocks use bright feathers to attract peahens. And modern companies use social responsibility to attract customers. And everything you can think of, even social responsibility, can be linked in less than 6 steps to Kevin Bacon- ahem, to Profit Maximization.
The "good" team that prepared slides independently was arguing that businesses should be socially responsible. Why? Well, because it's profitable to the companies... gotcha!
For the first time this term in our stream, "bad" guys has won the debate :)

Isle of Wight

2007-10-01T02:57:00.000+04:00

Term start on Monday with Ethics and Finance. This means that Pre-Term is over and we will get much busier.
Meanwhile I wanted to post a couple of photos from my weekend trip to the Isle of Wight:

Beaches of Ryde during low-tide

A man and a gull

One of the famous white cliffs (near Sandown)

One evening I saw a lots of people on the esplanade: everyone was looking in their binoculars and making photos and videos. I asked a lady why were their doing that and she said, "That's the cruise ship, can't you see. It means that people are going on holiday. Come on, where's your camera? That's important!"
So I made a photo too :)

Cruise ship

Seaview

Isle of Wight penguin :)

Set your aspirations high

2007-09-12T02:28:00.000+04:00

London Business School offers a challenging assignment for the first years: it is called the Shadow project. The student has to observe an executive for up to 5 days and write a report about the experience. And since now it is optional (luckily, for many) people come with all sort of creative ideas. One of my classmates wants to shadow Steve Jobs! All I can say is "Wow! Good luck, man!" and will follow his route to the destination with great interest :)

Textbooks and most recommended books

2007-09-05T15:20:00.000+04:00

Long-long time ago when I was applying to business school I wanted to find out which textbooks are used in the study process and what other reading professors recommend. If there's someone out there who is as curious for books as me, the following lists are for you.

First-term textbooks:

Business Statistics: Quantitative Methods for Decision Makers (4th ed) by Mik Wisniewski
Strategy: Contemporary Strategy Analysis: Concepts, techniques, applications (6th ed) by Robert M. Grant
Corporate Finance: Principles of Corporate Finance (8th ed) by Brealey, Myers & Allen
Financial Accounting: Financial Accounting (6th ed) by Harrison and Horngrenn
Managerial Economics: Principles of Microeconomics (Version 4) by N. G. Mankiw

Most recommended books (students' survey, top-15)

The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt
Good to Great by Jim Collins
How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman
Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis
Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter
The Innovator's Dilemma/Solution by Clay Christensen
The New Business Road Test by John Mullins
Are You Ready to Succeed? by Srikumar Rao
Barbarians at the gate by Bruan Burrough
Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
The Pyramid Principle by Barbara Minto
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein

I have only read 6 out of the Top-15 list before, so long way to go! (keeping in mind that the whole survey mentions more than 250 titles)

Away Day

2007-09-05T01:59:00.000+04:00

We had our Away Day today: Streams A&B (~160 people) enjoyed the whole day of outdoor activities. I've been told that it's gonna be great, but I could never imagine how great!

The first task we did was to climb a 30 feet high pole in a group of four, stand on top of it and lean backwards, holding each other (to form so called "flower"). I passed every single stage from "Never-ever" to "OK, if everyone's gonna try I want to try it too". It turned out that the hardest part for me was actually climbing to the top: my left arm ached, I had doubts about my security rope and couldn't help thinking "How am I going to stand on top?". Did I mention that the pole was very shaky? But once I clambered there (I decided to go second and it was a good idea because there's nothing better than a friend's helping hand) the rest became easy: wait for other people to climb, hold tight, lean and then let go. I loved it!

The second task was similar: we had to climb the pole in pairs and jump from it together to a trapeze. If I haven't done the "flower" exercise I would never thought of trying this one. We did a spectacular leap, but barely touched trapeze with the tips. And some of my groupmates undertook two or three attempts! Could you imagine? Perfectionists! :)
The third task was to walk on ropes around a specially prepared area without touching the ground. In this case we needed to think of an algorithm since the necessary support ropes were in short supply.

After that we had to assemble a puzzle on time. The task was split: we had to figure out how to assemble the puzzle in the first place, then to make up a way of dismantling it and assembling back together and (last but not least!) do this as fast as possible. In the end we did it in 17 seconds, but I've heard there was another team who did it in 10!
And the last exercise was getting a "solution" for a blindfolded "client". The solution was in the middle of the "acid lake" which noone could go in. The only way to get there was build a rope system, and guide the blindfolded client towards the answer. A very hard exercise indeed and I was amazed how well out team did it!

We had very good briefings after each task and came up with insightful analysis. It was also very interesting to observe how people tend to react in challenging situations: some listen, some begin to express themselves (all at once), some take lead, some drop out, some propose the ideas, some just go and do it. Great way to find out more about your classmates (and yourself)!
This fantastic day ended with a training in juggling and a barbeque :)

Final number of students

2007-08-29T02:41:00.000+04:00

Following my posts on admission figures and since this was a "hot" topic for some of you, here are some interesting figures from today's presentation by David Simpson.
Last year London Business School received about two thousand applications. They interviewed about half of that number. I haven't got a clue of how many people were admitted, but now we have 315 students in our class.

Orientation: day one

2007-08-28T03:00:00.000+04:00

We were at school for the first day today and the most exiting part of it was finding out which stream and which study group you ended up in. Nobody would have been concerned about that if it was not for the second very question in the F.A.Q. section of Welcome Pack:
Q: Can I change my study group?
A: NO, man! You are stuck with those people for the whole Year One!
And it went on and on for three more pages about how you should resolve conflicts in your group, how you should manage it and how you should survive it... No wonder some people were keeping their fingers crossed and prayed for nice groupmates. I was not among those since
a) no point in worring about things I have no impact on, and
b) I believe that all people can get on well together as long as they are ready to compromise (the latter can be a problem, yes).
Funny thing: three LBS bloggers turned to be in one Stream! I hope there will be more bloggers joining the club because we will need the diversified views on the LBS life ;)
After the Sorting we had a class photo taken then a barbeque and after that most people headed off to a nearby pub. Do we really need to start classes? I will enjoy some more parties, definitely!

Settling in London

2007-08-24T15:35:00.000+04:00

It’s been a week and a half since I am in London. And what a time it has been!

I arrived at Heathrow late on Monday evening and headed off to Russell Square for a weekly stay at the International Hall (I’ll write a comparison of that one to the International Student House in some later post, but shortly, if you can choose, pick International Hall). On Saturday I’ve signed the contract and moved to Angie’s place. Thanks to her, I’ve been saved from viewing a dozen of flats a day, like some of my classmates are doing right now. Talking of flat hunting: London Business School students organize pre-term fortnight of FlatHunters’ Pub Crawl.

What it’s like? It is two weeks of partying, meeting your future classmates (some 50-70 people show up every night), discovering new types of drinks (for instance, I tried Fruli and Pimm's, the latter is on the left), and practicing English. Yes, of course, people look for flatmates (we have nametags and those who are looking for flatmates draw a triangle on it) and share flat hunting experiences (like what agents are the best, how high the rent is this year). The strongest ones even go to a club afterwards: I know people who were doing that several nights in a row! Everyone seems to find flatmates really fast: last Tuesday there were lots of people looking for someone to share with – and most of them had flatmate when I talked to them on Wednesday.

The weather in London is rather cool and rainy (I haven’t used my umbrella during any of the previous visits – now I need it a lot and cannot help wondering if last ts I’ve only seen the “marketing” side of London, you know). But due to that I decided to go and visit some museums. So far I’ve been to the British museum (enjoyed the Asian collection there ad briefly visited others), National gallery (added Claude and Turner to the artists whose works I like) and Science museum (it’s awesome and also a paradise for kids).

What else?

Bought a computer – Lenovo T60 with WinXP. I’ve relied on IBM laptops all my working life and never had any problems (so far so good).

Opened an HSBC bank account: my appointment was scheduled a week after than my call to the bank and the whole process was nice and smooth and took about an hour.

Had an assessment at LBS Fitness Centre and swam my usual 3km per week.

Registered with the police.

Found out how to make free calls to Moscow.

Took an accounting textbook from the library and will make myself read three introductory chapters before the course start (but there are so many things happening here that I simply don’t have much time to sit and read).

Tried Indian food for the first time and liked it!

Despite the fact that there are still some things to do (like registering with a GP), I’m feeling "all settled".
Orientation starts next week on Monday!

LBS reference verification checks process

2007-08-11T01:25:00.000+04:00

London Business School performs reference verification checks for all of the admitted students. This year they sent e-mails to recommenders in the end of July.

To my mind this is strange because of two things:
1) July-August are holiday months, so most people are away and unable to reply promptly.
2) It's too late to perform any actual checks. Suppose they find something about someone - and the person has already paid a big amount of fees, resigned from job, got visa, moved to London...

This process is not advertised and I only discoverd that because one of my recommenders had changed a job, so his e-mail was no longer valid and I got a request of his current address from admission officer. I submitted the new e-mail and of course wrote\called all of my four recommenders.

You may wonder why am I talking about four recommenders while the school requires just two recommendations? And no, my recommenders don't do extreme programming ;) (for eXtreme Programmers a common practice is to work in pairs). I got two recommenders last year and two more the year before that. That's probably why some schools do not like reapplicants - they have to perform double amount of checks on them :)

Two recommenders replied to the school, before they got my e-mails.
Two others returned from holidays, made a heroic attempt to scan their "in" and "spam" folders (you may imagine how many letters a high-level manager would have after two or three weeks away) and... haven't found anything LBS-confirmation-related there. Both of them were the recent recommenders... you see the pattern too, don't you?
So I wrote to admission officer asking [for trouble] her whether the remaining confirmations were needed, and she sent the long-awaited e-mails. Hopefully the replies will fly back next Monday - the same day when I head to London myself.

Exemption exam in Business Statistics

2007-07-21T18:39:00.000+04:00

Small number of posts lately doesn't mean nothing interesting is happening with me. Just the opposite! That's why I'm finally posting this after midnight on Sunday :)

This time I wanted to write about exemption exams at London Business School.
The School gives us 4 options:

Managerial Economics (by Masters degree in Economics)
Financial Accounting (by an appropriate professional qualification in Accounting)
Business Statistics (by eligibility test)
IT for Business Value (by exam in Autumn Semester)

All current students recommend to exempt as much as you can.
I cannot get away from Economics and Accounting, so I applied for the Statistic test in the beginning of July, was one of the first to get it and started solving right away (only two weeks time for the test).
I didn't have a text book (Mik Wisniewski Quantitative Methods for Decision Makers), but I was armed with *rusty-dusty* prior knowledge of statistics and internet connection.

If you are (or will be) in the same shoes, have a look at the following links:

Useful Java applet to check your Z-table figures
Hypothesis test (also with Java applet) and one more explanation
Calculation of portfolio variance (my favourite task so far)
Regression applet in MS Excel: how to work with and how to interpret (*.ppt)
And Wikipedia for every unknown term

To my *mathematical* mind the test was rather hard. Results will be out in the end of August and I'll let you know how I did.

London Business School HSBC loan

2007-06-26T18:11:00.000+04:00

The second most important thing in pre-MBA is finding money to finance the course. When I first met a number of admits couple of years ago they were all saying: “Don’t worry about money, get in first, and finances will be sorted automatically”. Yes, upon acceptance to Stanford you fill a questionnaire and the bank says: “You will need the following amount of money. Here you are”. But things are not like that in Europe. Loans are harder to get and scholarships are scarce (in LBS this year ~25% of the class got a scholarship – “only” or “whole” depends on what side of the fence you are). Thus you should start thinking about money before you secure the place in the next class.

Disclaimer: I will write everything I know about the HSBC loan scheme so it is no use asking me for additional guidance. This information is true to the best of my knowledge and up-to-date in June 2007. If you have any other questions, you’d better contact the program officials.

Features:

Maximum amount is £50,000;
No co-signer or guaranties required;
Repayment starts 6 months after the course completion;
No penalties for early repayment.

Myth: Insert-your-country-here nationals have particular difficulties in getting the loan and are often refused.
Truth: Only the nationals of Myanmar cannot benefit from this scheme (this has something to do with the list of money-laundering countries). People from all other countries will have no difficulties in receiving the loan once they apply wisely and provide all the necessary documents.

Drawback #1: How much can you apply for?
Take two thirds of your net income (take the past 12 months figures without bonuses* and divide by 12). This is what HSBC will consider the maximum amount you’ll be able to repay after getting a job post-MBA.
*you’d better clarify if bonuses should be included or not, because I am not sure

Based on current interest rate of 7.75% and repayment period of 84 months (7 years) for two-year MBA program HSBC gives the following figures:
Amount £20,000 - monthly repayments: £371
Amount £30,000 - monthly repayments: £557
Amount £40,000 - monthly repayments: £743
Amount £50,000 - monthly repayments: £928
Don’t ask me how they got those figures. I tried to check, but the method I was taught at university is not working here, so I will probably have to get an MBA to understand this.

Drawback #2: You cannot apply for the maximum amount
I know people whose salary allowed applying for £50,000, who applied for it and were rejected.
Actually in borderline cases the bank takes into account multiple things apart from your current salary: likelihood of getting employment in the UK once graduated and other financial commitments.
If you know a safe maximum amount to apply for – you’re welcome to write it in comments.

Drawback #3: You need to show the bank how you will pay for the rest of your course
For example, you apply for £40,000 and after estimating all costs you need another £40,000 for living. You will have to show the bank that you have secured those £40,000.

What documents you’ll need to apply for the loan:

A copy of passport main page (this is for identification purposes. I applied for the loan with one passport and exchanged it after that because it expired – this is fine)
Copies of all bank statements for the previous 3 months (take care and do not have any overdraft on your accounts)
Evidence of earnings for the previous 12 months (salary slips or tax documents or a letter on original letterhead from your employer)
Proof of current residential address
Proof of permanent residential address for non-UK residents if different from above
Other evidence for any funds you have to put towards the cost of the course
Filled application
The photocopy of everything above (to use by LBS)

Other useful things:

All the documents should be issued in English or officially translated.
There is a question in the application whether you own a property or assets and the estimated value of those. Your words will be taken for granted if you won’t use this property\assets towards the cost of the course. Otherwise you will have to provide a recent valuation.
It is assumed that you will provide the bank statement from which your salary incomings will be clear or explain why you cannot provide this statement.
By the way, I found that explanatory letters work very well. Read your complete application out loud and if there are some questions remaining spend one more piece of paper to address them.
If the bank decides you asked for too much – they will reject your application.
If you secure the loan for tuition fees you will not be able to use it towards any other purposes (e.g. living expenses).
LBS takes the administration fee of 1% of the loan. This fee is only charged if you agree to take the loan (because you may apply, secure the loan and then find other sources and decide not to take the loan – in this case administration fee is not charged).

Success story: I initially gathered the documents for about three months – the time was spent on budget calculation, providing evidence of other funds and official translation of the documents.
I sent the pack to school by courier in the end of April. In two days I got an e-mail with confirmation of delivery and additional question from financial aid officer. After we clarified the question she sent my application to the bank – and in less than a week there was a positive answer.
I suppose that if you apply later, say in August, it may take longer to get the answer, but all in all the decision process is rather fast.

15 advices for public speakers

2007-06-12T23:36:00.000+04:00

Check out this Doug Lawrence post on Guy's blog.

Circulate with your audience.
Command attention.
Snarl.
Bite your tongue.
Always perform a sound check before you speak.
Use your eyes all the time.
Move away from center to make your point.
Get quiet.
“Underline” certain words with a pause or repetition.
Take a risk and be vulnerable.
Tee it higher.
Know when it’s time to go.
Use Q and A as an “encore.”
Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse.
Perform for a hero.

Getting Things Done

2007-06-08T20:18:00.001+04:00

After Al Martine’s post I’ve decided to finally read Getting Things Done by David Allen. And... thank you, Al, that’s a very useful reading for future MBAs!

What I took from the book:

Free you mind for creative thinking by organizing your commitments: write them down and don’t rewind them over in over in your head
Create lists of what you should do, whom are you waiting for reply, what you may want to do someday
Write actions, e.g. “call to book the table” instead of “birthday dinner”. Always ask “what’s the next action?”
Instantly do things that you can accomplish in less than two minutes. If it will take more time, add them to your lists
Review the lists regularly
And a lot more…

I’ve reorganized my lists in Backpack (see earlier post) and the methodology is now working for me! Two lists are my favorite: what I am waiting from someone and Projects - to get a higher perspective on what’s going on.
If interested then check out this Wikipedia entry for more details and tools to implement this methodology (I’d like to try the Lotus Notes tool next).

UPD: Patxi's impressions of the book.

Booz Allen Hamilton Sponsorship Program for Women in Europe

2007-06-03T20:04:00.001+04:00

What a fun it is to write on some topic other than “why the scholarship committee should consider you for ZZZ scholarship?”!

I decided to post eligibility criteria and documents required for the Sponsorship application for future applicants because the only other way you can get this is write to the organizer.

To be eligible you should be female, willing to work in a European office of Booz Allen and be admitted to one of the top MBA programs (Columbia, Harvard, IESE, IMD, INSEAD, Kellogg, LBS, MIT, Stern, Oxford, Stanford, Chicago, Wharton, Tuck).

Deadline is 3 months before the start of your program: 1 June for September intake, 1 October for January intake.

Required documents:

Current CV (1 page);
Copy of undergraduate university transcript;
The original or a notarized copy of the letter of admission to business school;
A letter of motivation explaining your interest in management consulting and Booz Allen Hamilton (1-2 pages);
Two letters of reference (1-2 pages each).

I found out that reference is needed in the beginning of May, called one of my recommenders to discover that he was flying away for a three-week holiday. Surprise-surprise :)

Moscow: Women in Leadership forum

2007-06-03T15:31:00.000+04:00

The month of May passed by under the title of “Scholarship deadline is coming”. Thus I was writing a lot, but not blogging. Meanwhile a couple of useful posts formed in my mind – so I decided to start with a useless one instead :)

Last Thursday (31st of May) I’ve been at the Women in Leadership forum. Of all the presentations I was able to visit, I liked two most: by BCG and by SAP.
BCG uses a zero-risk approach: the firm collects a bunch of consultants and lets them tell stories. Plus the presentation was focused on the older level of the auditory apart from all other firms that were telling about opportunities for undergraduate students.
SAP guy didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t knew before, but, again, he entertained us with a bunch of vivid stories. For example, this one:

A picture worth a thousand words

I’m not sure that every woman goes like that, but… great difference in the attitude, isn’t it? The man did as he was told, but the woman took creative approach and (there were no constraints, right?) spent as much money as she could :)
Once in my child days mom asked me whom I like to go shopping with more.
“Of course, with you”, I said.
“Why?”
“Because when we go with dad to buy bananas, we buy bananas. And when we go with you, we can buy strawberries, pears, apples, and not even buy bananas in the end. Shopping turns into an adventure and fun”.

I have a rule to take something useful from every book that I read and every event where I go. This time was not an exception. I got this:

Pen&torch from Cisco

Most interesting and innovative thoughts come to you at any place. For instance, in the evening when you’re lying half asleep. You have to get up, turn on the light and write it down. How many thoughts have you lost due to laziness or scribbling in the dark? What a great idea to make such a pen!

R3 Admission Statistics

2007-05-16T11:07:00.000+04:00

It seems that R3 Admits have been added to the Portal (congratulation by the way to all newcomers!).
The number is now 349.
Female rate: down to 24%

Statistics for previous rounds are here: R1, R2

UPD: the number dropped to 338.
UPD2: The official admits number for this year will be 316 (information from program manager by Anonymous).

The world works funny

2007-04-27T13:37:00.000+04:00

Lately I’ve been searching through the LBS booklets I have at home. In one of them I found a letter (“thank you for you interest in…”) which I received about two years ago. The “Ref. Number” on it seemed strangely familiar. I’ve checked it with my acceptance letter… and it turned out that that is my current student number! (Wow! Who could have imagined that all the history is stored?)

Another funny story is about my application for Chevening Scholarship. I applied for it in two subsequent years. First year I got my rejection straight in November, with original of my diploma. This year I didn’t have a straight feedback. As time went by and all deadlines passed, I understood that this year application was not successful either. So I wrote a number of e-mails to British Council officer asking to send me the rejection letter, which I will need as a proof for future scholarship applications.

In beginning of April I phoned the lady and begged her to send me the letter.

I got it yesterday (exactly when I no longer needed it), but the letter itself was quite interesting. It contained my diploma and some other docs from my application which meant that they haven’t sent me this letter earlier and it hasn’t been lost in the depth of Russian post office which I always blame (ah, this reminds me of an anecdote I will post as a footnote). But the letter – the letter said: “Thank you for your interview for Chevening scholarship. However, we are sorry to inform you…”

I haven’t received an interview invitation, neither attended one. And it makes me wonder – who were they interviewing and why this person did so badly and haven’t won me a scholarship? :)

--- anecdote ---

A week before Christmas a post office received a letter addressed to “Santa Claus”. Since there was no address, the officers opened it and read:

‘Dear Santa Claus,

I leeve in orphanage and now winter came and I have no worm clothz. It is very, very cold now and I can not play with my frends outsaid. Pleaze, can you brin me a Christmas prezent a coat, a hat, glovz and boots? Thank you, thank you, thank you…’

The officers were so touched that they chipped in for the present from their low wages and were able to buy a coat, a hat and boots for the boy. They send that as a present from Santa Claus and a week later another letter came from that very boy. They all gathered to read it out loud:

‘Dear Santa Claus,

Thank you very mush for you prezent. I am warm now I got yor coat and boots and hat. I have not got glovz, but this is sure becoz bad guyz at the post ofis stole them…’

Made it to the Top10 Best of Blogging Applicants!

2007-04-25T14:03:00.000+04:00

My blog is named 6th in the Best of Blogging competition! Many-many thanks for everyone who voted for me and to ClearAdmit for organizing the competition!
It was a great opportunity to vote for the blogs I love, and I am glad that my voice counted.
Congratulations to Angel Angie and Rungee!!! You both got the well deserved awards for great blogs and effort you put in them!
Angie, thanks a lot for offering the Room Of Inspiration! I appreciate that ;)

Loan, accommodation and other things

2007-04-22T22:50:00.000+04:00

Instead of having a week holiday during which I planned to complete my loan application, I spent two weeks in bed with quinsy. Speaking of the bright side – this reminded me that most of the pills and medicine in London can only be bought with a doctor prescription. Thus I compiled a list of my favorite medicines to take with me. Mental note: I will also need to think of a list of all other things I will bring to UK and squeeze it to the minimum (postpone until July).

I haven’t submitted the loan application yet, but I hope to send it next week. It turned out that the account statement couldn’t be notarized if the officer who signed it didn’t write her post. So I had to take the already translated document back to the bank (in another city), find the lady who signed it and ask her to put a stamp with her post on the paper. And then take it back to the notary and wait for another couple of days…

I have also thought about accommodation.

As one of the first year students pointed out, LBS offers 33 places in London University accommodation. The biggest minus is lack of cooking facilities in most of the rooms (I prefer not to eat in a dining room – been there, tasted that, didn’t like it).

Since I have no more than 10% chances of getting the university accommodation, a backup is needed. Flathunter’s Pub Crawl will help – and I have joined the group of volunteers who will organize it!

There are a lot of things going on the LBS Portal. The most interesting one is the topic called “Getting to know you!” where my fellow classmates give a short presentation about themselves. Judging from it I will study with a group of very interesting and diverse people!

Looking ahead there are three things I have to start thinking about: short term accommodation, flight and visa.

I can book accommodation right now. London University International Hall offers rooms for 18 pounds a day. But if I postpone this until later, I can only count on other universities and the price will be 30 pounds a day. Or maybe I will be able to have a sublet room from one of the fellow students? (Any offers for 13-26 of August? ;))

I can fly with Aeroflot or British Airways. Aeroflot flies at a convenient time (arrival on 1 p.m.), but only allows 20kg of free baggage. BA flies at inconvenient time (arrival on 6 a.m. or 11 p.m.), but allows 32kg of free baggage. As far as I understand I won’t have student discounts yet since ISIC will be valid from September 2007.

I will apply for the visa as soon as my passport is ready. I have confirmed with fellow students that I do not need to show the consulate the money for the whole course (fee + living expenses). This means I do not need the outcome of the loan and scholarship applications.

Speaking of scholarships I really need to start writing the essays. There’s only one month before deadline left (OMG!). But I use every opportunity to procrastinate (like writing this post!)

New Order Business School (by Seth Godin)

2007-04-04T15:06:00.000+04:00

Check out the following article NoBS, the end of the MBA by Seth Godin. It is Seth's thought exercise that might be useful to:

MBA-haters ("aha, Seth too says that MBA is dead!")
MBA-aspirers ("if I get an MBA from *** it will be my silver bullet")
MBA-about-thinkers ("what other options have I got? What will I get from the degree?")
MBA-admits ("find out what it all about")

And it is also an interesting read!

Reflections on LBS R2 admission statistics

2007-03-29T12:27:00.000+04:00

As a follow up to my post about R1 admission figures I decided to post some R2 admission figures and to think about how many places are left for R3 & R4 (please keep in mind that I am not a member of adcom so my suppositions may be completely wrong).
As one of my future classmates pointed out, admits are not be allowed to disclose the actual figures and other information from the portal (I've skipped the agreement first time I logged in, because I wanted to see the portal itself), so I put up some diagrams without any figures.

In R1 and R2 nearly an equal number of people were admitted:If we compare the actual number of people who confirmed their R1 admission (including those from waitlist) with the number of R2 admits, the diagram will change:
So... let's suppose that the yield of R2 will be, say, 60%... and no one from R1 & R2 defers their admission... and the class size will be 320... then the number of places for R3 & R4 applicants will be as following:

By the way, current female rate is 26%.

UPD: Last year figures in Angie's post.

Congratulations to R2 LBS admits!

2007-03-24T18:50:00.000+03:00

London Business School issued decisions on the R2 admits yesterday and I would like to say "welcome!" to everyone who is in. Special greatings to Mitokondrion :)
And I hope more LBS blogs & bloggers will appear soon ;)

Congratulations to Natasha who has been admitted to Darden - you've earned that admission, girl! Well done :)

I have a mentor now

2007-03-09T12:38:00.000+03:00

London Business School has a practice of assigning mentors to the freshly admitted students.
I've got a letter today (been wondering about who my mentor would be from the mid-January)... and... guess, who is it?

Hints:
1. She is from the same country (this is a good common practice)
2. She is a blogger
OK-OK you've probably already guessed: this is Genie!
:)

Report about the last two months

2007-02-25T23:36:00.000+03:00

The winter is nearly over, though the weather here has no clue (as you can see from the picture on the left). Apart from winter sports (and work, of course) there’s not much to report, since I always try to write something MBA-related.

So recently:

I’ve met a number of LBS students, including Genie, and (hopefully) future classmates (“hopefully” because all of them have more than one offer). The most interesting discovery for me is that all those people have different backgrounds, so one cannot say that LBS only takes Russians from McKinsey or Morgan Stanley.
I’ve got lots of e-mails from rejected applicants, applying applicants and classmates. 95% of all letters in my rusgirl gmailbox came in the last 2 months!
I’ve been a bit overwhelmed by amount of paperwork for an HSBC loan. Like a self-respecting iceberg, the checklist of documents for this loan is rather small, but… the application itself requires a lot of supporting documentation, which is not listed, but better be provided. Well, I have been told it is gonna be like this, so don’t take my words as a complaint. I have already passed the stage of “OMG, I’ve got so much to do! I cannot think of it now I will think of it later” and arrived straight to “The later is now”.
I’ve discovered that I can tell what stage of application process is solely looking at my blog statistics: in February - GMAT posts go down and interview posts go up. And – strangely to me – more people click on INSEAD label on the right-hand bar than on LBS one! Are they trying to tell me something? :)))

Reapplication: How I did it

2007-01-13T22:18:00.000+03:00

A number of people asked me to share my magic recipes and though there is no magic and there are no recipes I have decided to share some thoughts on reapplication process. Every little helps :)

So...
First step you have to do is think whether you really need an MBA. You now have a list of goals (5 and 20 years plan). Why not begin fulfilling them now? (Just think what would you do if all the business schools in the world suddenly vanished?)
If you fail without an MBA - you'll have more convincing future story for adcoms. But if you succeed, you might not need to write a story at all. Your biographer will do it for you.

OK, you're definite to try again (next round or next year).
Second step - get feedback from adcoms.
There are three possible replies:

Change yourself (strengthen part of your application, align your goals, etc)
Change the essays (adcoms haven't fully understood something in your essays)
Change nothing (you were unlucky and someone got there earlier than you)

You'd better ask and know for sure, before addressing what-you-think-your-weaknesses-are.

Next steps - work on the feedback. Get a new job, launch a new club, travel or learn a new language. Visit the schools. Talk to students and alumni. Go to conferences and tours. Learn about the opportunities various schools can offer, try to find the best fit. Based on that re-evaluate your first choice school. To my mind when you know the school and like it, all the process is much easier.
And don't forget to save a lot of courage and energy before the next try.

I've tried all this on myself. I've changed a job (to the one that gave me new skills and international exposure). I've worked on my weaknesses (working experience and career goals). I've found more powerful recommenders (general manager at the previous workplace and current supervisor). I've read a lot. I've met with people. As a result I wrote stronger essays (and expressed more commitment to the School).

If you really want to know the way... here it is: passion, hard work and a bit of luck.

Good luck to you too!

UPD: There's a very good article by Paul Graham: 'Two Kinds of Judgement'. I suppose it will give you courage for the next attempt :)

R1 admission statistics

2006-12-24T13:32:00.001+03:00

Search on the LBS Portal gives 179 R1 admits (including people who deferred from the last year). In 2006 according to Angie's post there were 140 admits at the time. Rumor says that applications were up 50% in R1, so adcoms probably had hard time crossing out the applicants. Female rate is 28%.

Anyway I know that some people are waiting for acceptance letters from other schools, so there is hope for waitlisted candidates. And good luck to all R2 applicants!

UPD: The number of R1 admits has dropped to 129, so the yield this year is 72% in first round.
UPD2: As Marcelo pointed out, the number of MBA admits has risen to 150 - probably those are the people from the wait list - welcome on board! :)

LBS - I am in!

2006-12-19T09:21:00.000+03:00

Yes, I have an offer :)))

So... what's next?

First, I will wait for my "offer pack" to arrive and see if there's something interesting in there.
Angie said in the BusinessWeek forums that last year LBS had notified annual fund scholarship recipients by phone on the day the offers were issued (and I've never heard anyone from Russia receive this scholarship), but still...
Then I will celebrate :). Anyone in Moscow who wants to get in touch - drop me an e-mail!
And then I will pay my commitment fee. Dollar is falling - damn! so it is better to pay sooner than later.

Congratulations to fellow admits! Hope to see you soon on the Portal :)
I wish patience to the 'waitlist' candidates. If you really want to go to LBS, I think, you'll be able to. I know a couple of candidates who were admitted, but are waiting for other offers ;)
All of those, who didn't get in this year - don't be upset and keep struggling. If you really want it - you will make it, I know.

Let’s talk about ethical issues, shall we?

2006-12-07T15:58:00.000+03:00

Fourth essay topic at Harvard is stated as following:

In you career, you will have to deal with many ethical issues. What are likely to be the most challenging and what is your plan for developing the competencies you will need to handle those issues effectively?

Before I came to this essay “ethical issue” was unknown beast to me, but I have done a good research on the subject since.
First, ethical issues should be distinguished from their false brothers. For example, when you receive change in the supermarket and the lady in charge gives you 20 instead of 10 by mistake – it is not an ethical issue. You should return the money.
Second, recently I came across a very interesting ethical issue which in the end resulted in this post.

Imagine, that you are a manager of the team. Your boss comes to you one day, closes the door and says: “Tell anyone and you’ll be fired. We gonna outsource your whole department to a cheap faraway country. We need half a year to do that and full support from the current team. After that we gonna fire them all, apart from you, of course. You will be promoted. But we need to do this transition quickly and effectively. This will save us a billion zillion dollars”.
What are you gonna do?

I do not know the right way to respond. Maybe you should be loyal to The Company. After all, they pay for your heart, soul and mortgage. And your team members are big boys and they should already know that there is no such word as “fair”. As a second thought maybe your boss is just testing how loyal you are?
To hell with the loyalty then.
I will go to my team the same very day and tell them everything. Something like:
“Guys, this company neither loves us, nor respects us. We have to pass our duties to guys in cheap faraway country and then say goodbye. This is bad, bad, really bad news and I understand your shock. But let’s look at it another way. It won’t come to you as a surprise-surprise two week’s notice. We have half a year to polish our CVs, and I will give you all good references, and we will probably receive a nice paycheck in the end”.
OK, let’s make the problem a little bit difficult.

The situation is the same. But you do not like the team you lead. They are arrogant, lazy and overpaid. And the people from the cheap faraway country are good workers and will benefit very much from your firm’s investment into their economy.
Will your decision change?

Nope. I will do the same thing not because I love my team and view them as “my guys”, but because I feel it is the right thing to do. I am not in place to judge if the guys are overpaid: we have a market, aren’t we? They can be a bad team, but they are my team. And maybe I am a bad leader if I have (or agreed to have) such a team. And my people will still face problems with paying loans on time, searching for a job, dealing with their undermined egos, etc. My people are more important than my company.
Good. You treat a team as if they were your family. So let’s make your choice tougher.

You’re not a boss. You are a consultant. Your firm has signed a contract and you have signed non-disclosure agreement. You will help us make the transition and promise to keep our purposes secret.

Yes, this is tough. I cannot say “I won’t work on this project” - someone has to do the job. I cannot tell the people, because it is not really my business. I cannot make their life better in any way. And I cannot be sure that they won’t go straight to their boss – and then my firm gonna lose a billion zillion dollars they obviously promised seducing it to carry out this contract. The only way I see is guerilla warfare. I might begin asking question like: “What do you think your company gonna do after this transition?”, “What have they done previously in such situations?”, and even “Have you looked at the job market recently?” If they are smart they will understand. If not, well, at least I tried.
There is no easy answer to an ethical question. (If your answer was “Just get up and get out of their”, imagine that your mom needs an expensive operation and you need the money badly. Who would you choose: your team or your mom?) Your answer might be completely different from mine.
I will just do what I feel is right. Right to how I feel, how I was brought up, in what I believe… but, please, tell me what on earth does Harvard mean by “developing competencies that will help me to handle those issues”?

LBS interview experience

2006-11-30T13:45:00.000+03:00

I had my interview yesterday and I enjoyed it immensely.
It was a kind of unexpected, so I didn’t have time to become scared (that’s a plus).
We had previously agreed to meet during the weekend, but my interviewer phoned me yesterday morning and asked whether I could come the same very day (he sent me an e-mail on Tuesday night that his plans had changed, but I received it only after his call). I said: “Yes, of course, if you don’t mind seeing me in jeans”. He didn’t mind (and thus missed the opportunity to see me in blue-suit-white-chemise-and-tie :)).
Such “unexpectedness” meant that I didn’t rehearse my answers and didn’t prepare for all of the tough questions. But there were not as many tough questions as I expected (no “ethical” ones, no “tell me how your team failed”). Nearly the first thing the interviewer told me was “Forget about the structure you have probably prepared. It will be more like a normal conversation”.
We planned to talk for about an hour, but ended up with more than 2 hours. I only wish I could steal a little more of his time, because the last part (my questions about his experience) was rather short. Well, it was late, middle of the week, he still had work to do, and his family was waiting for him.

So let’s get to the practical part now.
Interview was conducted in English. He received my current application, essays and CV. No recommendation letters or even the recommenders’ titles, no last year application.
He was curious “what were those huge improvements and changes that made adcoms consider you this year” so we talked about my last year aspirations as well.
I wasn’t asked about Life and Universe and Everything (I mean why MBA, why NOW, why LBS), but this question loomed in the air.
What I was asked:

Your short-term and long-term goals. How LBS curriculum will help you fulfilling them? What skills do you think you need?
How did you like your visit to school and what was your take-away from the lectures you visited?
What project would you choose with your study group at LBS if you were at the point of choosing? What role in the group would you play?
How would you choose between different schools if you were in such situation? (what would be the base for your decision?)
What it the difference between firms at which you are targeting?
Tell me about your current industry, its main players. How do you see the perspectives of this industry?
What would you do if not admitted?
How you plan to finance your studies if admitted?
How do you lead? Describe a recent experience. Any lessons learned from it?
Your three good traits from your colleagues’ point of view? Three bad traits? (that was a tough one)

We got into the details of some of my essays. Talked about my work, current project and international experience.
At the end the interviewer gave me a presentation topic. It was close to my heart so I hope I was able to handle it well. In the meantime I ruined a whiteboard in the conference room, because the highlighter turned out to be non-erasable (The interviewer promised to send me a bill for the board to clear my conscience, so that’s OK ;))

In the end I don’t know what impression I’ve made. On my way home I thought of thousands of better and well-structured answers. But I enjoyed every minute of the interview, I believe this is what really matters.
Let’s wait for the 19th of December and see what the school will say.

Good luck to those of you who are preparing for their interviews.
For those in Moscow don’t forget that LBS is giving an information session this Saturday – hope to meet you all there!

LBS interview invite!

2006-11-17T10:01:00.000+03:00

Yes, I have one!

I am delighted to inform you that based on the strength of your initial application you have been selected for interview by the MBA Admissions Committee.

WooHoo!

UPD: The interview must be scheduled until 8th December and the admission decision will be on the 19th of December.

Book about IB, trading and consulting - "Fast track"

2006-11-05T16:01:00.000+03:00

Couple of days ago I came across one interesting book and immediately thought of first year MBAs who are now torn between banking and consulting.

2Facts:
1. The "Fast Track" is written by Mariam Naficy who worked at Goldman Sachs (IB) and Gemini (MC), and then got her MBA from Stanford.
2. The book holds lots of interviews with insiders and a very good list of additional literature.

If you're interested look at Amazon reviews here.
Tip: don't check the book's website - it is useless.

Terrible guide on writing a great essay

2006-10-26T23:21:00.000+04:00

The first advice which famous writers give to youths dreaming about Pulitzer prize is simple – read. But beware. Reading is the only activity on which one can spend a lot of time and produce nothing (we are not considering computer games, are we?). So read actively. Keep an eye on things that will look good on your application.
I read lots of students’ blogs, professors’ diaries, articles, guides, and books. And write down excerpts and thoughts they evoke in a little green notebook. Many pages are already filled. The book is there every time I’m stuck with my essays.
Funny that it always opens on a certain page with just one word: PASSION!
The word tells me: don’t write what they will like, write what you like. You need to make a strong impression - that’s the only way.
Will you read the book if you don’t like it? Hmm, maybe. If it is classic. And this means you have to. And you can proudly say ‘I did it!’ afterwards. But in any other case you won’t.
They say, anyone can write at least one book. Memoirs. That’s it. And you have two thousand words or so to describe your whole life.
So you’re there with bright thoughts and passion, eager to nail it down and they ask you: “OK, what is most people do not know about you?”. Well… that’s a difficult question for one who lives with a heart upon one’s sleeve. It is even a harder one for those who do not open much. If nearly no one knows what I did last summer, do you really think I will tell you? Another good one is “what role do you think you will play in your study group?”. Of course, I want to be a fairy. No, thank you, I don’t want to play lobster. What? Um, sorry… what roles can I choose from in the first place?
But if you struggle and struggle with words and stories and don’t like what you produce in the end, maybe it is a point to think twice. They ask for a thriller, but you can only write a romance.

--- anecdote ---
Soviet times. Deficit. A wife is going to have a baby and convinces her husband who works at a plant that produces baby carriages to steal some parts and make a carriage for their kid. Husband finally gives up. He tries to make a carriage, but regardless of all his effort, the only thing he can assemble from the stolen parts is a machine-gun.
--- smile here ---

And if they still want a baby carriage, I mean, “what you thought, felt and did”, then, perhaps, this is that notorious “fit”. Or rather “not fit”.
Or maybe they will like your romance anyway and take you for you diversity. And 800+ GMAT. And don’t forget to mention how you saved the world. Twice.
The secret is simple: you need a hook. Make you essays promising. An introduction, like your CV. You won’t wait long for an interview.

A couple of links that would be useful:
Better beginning (short)
Tighten the language (short)
Writing style guide
Crash course on essays

LBS application submitted!

2006-10-19T22:06:00.000+04:00

I am done with application and essays for London Business School. Feeling I have written much stronger application this year:

Recommenders are the most V.I.P. guys from those who know me – check.
Essays have just the right proportion of everything – check.
Definitely much more commitment – check :)
I even included a couple of jokes!

If I myself were on admission’s committee this year I would consider me worth a try.
Thank you everyone, whom I have talked to and whose blogs influenced my writing. Special thanks to Angie and Divine Miss N!

No other Round One schools for me. What a relief! I will have a decent weekend! How I love this application process for the overwhelming joy of life after “submit”!
I have missed lots of b-school events because of writing during the last two weeks. And though they are gone and I cannot have World MBA tour or Chicago Women Meeting back… I won’t regret. Next week is all planned for going out with friends!

The interview decision (or ding) will be available on the 17th of November.

American schools postponed till R2

2006-10-11T23:13:00.000+04:00

I have decided not to rush with my Harvard application after my recommender looked through my essays (you know, the ones with "leadership, leadership, leadership, leadership" all over the place) and said:
- Hmmm, it seems to me, you've missed leadership here.
- Where? Where?
- Between leadership and leadership, I suppose.
- Arghhh....
So I focused on writing Chevening scholarship essays instead (who knows, maybe this year I will be more lucky?) and submitted them yesterday.
And now I have just the LBS application left. Still significant amount of work, because even harmless question "With whom have you discussed your plans to undertake MBA studies and what were their responses?" in the application took me 40 minutes to answer. I reprobate myself for not saving last year application (I have only essays left). If you're applying, be clever than me and save it :) It is saved easily unlike the Harvard one...
A piece of good news is that LBS accepts e-mail recommendations this year.

First Russian LBS blogger!

2006-09-27T20:10:00.000+04:00

Traditionally new LBS bloggers are reported by Divine Miss N and Angel Angie, but this time I decided to create a new tradition.
Let me introduce you to Genie in a bottle: First year LBS MBA student from Moscow who has just started her blog! Good luck girl, we are all looking forward to read you stories!
(and I have run away to talk to my recommender :))

Chicago Students Reception, 18th Sep, Moscow

2006-09-19T22:46:00.000+04:00

Yesterday I managed to get to the reception organized by current Chicago GSB students, Oleg and Katya (Oleg has a LiveJournal in Russian).
Good example (and thank you, guys, if you’re reading)!
I hope to host a similar event when I'll be an MBA student myself ;). I only wish Russian LBS or Harvard or Columbia students could come to Moscow for a cup of tea and tell the audience about their experiences. We are not at all spoilt with b-school attention in Russia :)
It was long time ago when I attended such an interesting and useful meeting.
So... brief takeaway:
1. Why Chicago?

electives, no 'core' (flexible study group as a consequence)
much value is given to facts and figures
big city (has consulting offices, but banks are mainly in NY)

2. Being a bookie I have added "The Goal" to my wish list (read at Operations course and Operations is the essence of Consulting).
3. Post MBA opportunity I haven't ever thought of: VC in IT. My experience will be valuable in accessing start-ups. Not that I viewed VCs as dream-job having heard about them only from developers' side :)

A few photos from Spain

2006-09-17T14:53:00.000+04:00

I wanted to spend this Sunday creeping on my HBS application, but ApplyYourself is down now, so I decided to post some photos from my holiday in Spain :)
As for my choice of schools (this is the most popular question I receive in comments), the list is short: LBS, Harvard, MIT and Chicago. I'm exploring the latter two and not sure that I'll have time to do them in Round 1. A friend from NYU Stern is coming to Moscow this week so I'm also hoping for a lecture on NY opportunities.

Is this beast called 'lobster'?

Beware, it is fresh! (sketch on a restaurant wall)

Coastline near Sant Antonio de Calogne

A mountainview from the citywall in Girona

A piece of ceiling of Dali house in Figueras

Night view on Palamos

UPD: I've somehow managed to delete my entire blog template. So all the links in the righthand bar have disappeared. I will restore them as soon as I can...

Happy@Work

2006-08-08T19:10:00.000+04:00

I've been silent for quite a time being on a wonderful holiday in Spain (promise to post some photos later). But now I'm back to my drafts and applications... and there was a wonderful advice waiting for me at my favourite Happy@Work blog: Top 10 tips for productive, creative, fun writing.
Alex, the author of the blog, is writing his 'Happy at work' book. In fact, he is nearly done (spent just 20 days on it)! So I couldn't leave my fellow MBA applicants without his advice.

I love this blog and would recommend it to anyone who believes that 'work' is other than 'make tons of money and go'. Some random postings I'd share:

And for fun:

Friday weirdness

Quote:
Find out where your boss shops and buy exactly the same outfits. Always wear them one day after your boss does. (This is especially effective if your boss is
a different gender than you are)
Wear a hands free phone headset throughout once in a while drift off into an unrelated conversation, such as: ‘I don’t care if there are no dwarfs, just get the show done!’

Test for MBAs: What's your negotiation style?

Have you read "Freakonomics"?

2006-08-08T18:50:00.000+04:00

Even if you haven't, you've definitely heard about the authors idea - there was some buzz a while ago, blogsearch brings about 20,000 results - that legalization of aborts in seventies decreased crime rate in nineties.

Why?
Authors cite lots of convincing statistics, but I'd like to add my 2 pence.

My granny remembers the times when abortion was legalized in Russia. Death rate among young women and mothers dropped dramatically, she says.
You cannot stop that thing, legal it would be or not, but women suddenly could receive doctor service instead of being treated by some next-door healer.
So more kids had mothers, got better nursing and education, became good citizens, never went to prison and now phone their mothers every weekend. Of course you wouldn't be able to collect any trustworthy data for Russia at that time.

The book is very interesting, a must-read for everyone who likes to question "generally accepted practices". Articles from New York Times on their website and their blog are worth checking too.

UPD: Published in Russian in November 2006. Link to Ozon

Get things done!

2006-08-04T11:46:00.000+04:00

As many of MBA hopefuls who sunbathe and barbequeue and calm themselves stating that tests are passed and rough drafts are written, I'm hypnotized with every article which has a sour "procrastination" word in its title.
This one - A Procratinator's Guide on Getting Things Done is worth checking out for methodology (non MBA related, however, but might be a useful read for interns). As for technology I would advise another tool: Backpackit.
I first read about it in theDivineMissN post and use it ever since to make wonderful to do lists. An example of which I've made below in 37 seconds :)

Worth checking out and has a lot more than that even in free version.

Back on MBA track

2006-07-23T22:40:00.000+04:00

I have decided to stay in current job for one more year and apply to business schools once again.
I haven't finalised the list of schools yet and, of course, I have no time left for research now :) "Where was my head half a year ago?" - a typical question for many MBA-hopefuls, I'm afraid.

LBS, of course.
And a couple of American top schools (again, no safe choices - challenges, here I come!). I'm quite definite on Harvard and I think about Stanford and MIT, Columbia, Chicago (you'd better stop now, girl, or...)
Last year admission season gave me a lot: friendship, better job, lots of contacts and much wisdom :) I wonder what this one will bring?

And a piece of advice from people who managed to get in while having 60+ hours jobs, sleep and private life is most welcomed :)

Natural born entrepreneurs

2006-06-02T12:43:00.000+04:00

Some time ago I read the 'Story of my First Business' by Joel Spolsky and it touched my heartstrings.

Young Joel worked at the university library; he loved donuts, but there were no shops around that sold them. So he asked a friend to buy some on his way to work and began to sell them to other people… whole story here

Every person who ever played a strategy game (Civilization, Settlers, Warcraft, etc) knows this feeling when you focus a lot and play hard and at one moment you raise your head, look around and ask – hey, am I a WINNER?

In real life this feeling is even stronger, because the 'war' never ends and that's this state of constant pleasure of winning little battles is what makes you high. That's why, I think, people start their own companies.

When I read Joel's story I began to think about my first business. As a child I've always had ideas like making hot pies or sewing shirts and selling them. However, when I shared my ideas with parents they told me it's not gonna work. I trusted them and gave up (maybe they were wrong, who knows?).

So my nearly real first business became my web project. It doesn't bring me money, so that's why it is 'nearly real'. When I started it consumed much of my time (and again my parents wanted to persuade me leave it: 'It costs you so much effort and nobody will ever pay attention', 'Phone your friends and go to the movies, don't live this weblife, will you?'), but it became popular so quickly that they stopped.

As you look at the revenues from your business, you'll say, "gosh, it's only 3:00, and we've already had nine customers! This is going to be the best day ever!" And the next year nine customers will seem like a joke, and a couple of years later you'll realize that that intranet report listing all the sales from the last week is unmanageably large.

One day, you'll turn off the feature that emails you every time someone buys your software. That's a huge milestone.

I know.

Do you still check how many people come to your blog and where are they from? I do :)

But I haven't checked this for my project for the last three or four years.

Anyway.

If you think of becoming an entrepreneur once, then you've probably had your first business already. Want to share the story?

UPD: check this article, it's fun: Top 10 Signs You're Made to be an Entrepreneur

Re: 'Microsoft is not a monopoly'

2006-05-19T16:31:00.000+04:00

At LBS I attended a lecture about monopolies and the case was ‘Microsoft vs U.S.Government’. Lately reading Joel on Software I came across and interesting excerpt which may help those who will present Microsoft case in future (if LBS will still use the case next year).
Briefly 'Microsoft' had to prove that they were good, that they were not a monopoly and the fact that they included Internet Explorer in their Windows System didn't mean anything.
Joel think it doesn't mean. If IE is good - it will be used. If not - nope.
Quote:
…even though Windows out of the box can play MP3 files, everyone I know uses WinAmp, not the Windows Media Player, to listen to them. Even though MSN is on the desktop, everybody uses AOL. Back when the browser integrated with Windows was crap, Netscape had 80% market share. So please stop fretting about the power of bundling.
The full article won’t help to crack the case, but the site itself is really interesting (at least for an IT person who I am).

Offtop: Google gives some money for women-students in Computer Science and related

2006-05-19T10:58:00.000+04:00

Sorry for posting this offtop on MBA blog, but maybe this post will help any of the readers.

Summary:
* Scholarship up to $2500 to visit Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference in San Diego, California from Oct 4 -7, 2006
* Eligible women students specializing in Computer Science, Computer Engineering and the like - studying outside of US
* Deadline: Thursday, June 1, 2006
All other details and online application are here.

Things that we shall learn at school, not business school

2006-05-18T23:36:00.000+04:00

Today I was able to attend an event, organized by Chicago GSB Alumni Club and Ernst&Young. It was a lecture by professor Marvin Zonis. He was supposed to talk about transformation of companies in an uncertain world, and he indeed gave us some interesting statistics, but the main point of his speech, which I took home, was the following one. He was asked what his mission was and he said:
‘While I was at high school, I worked at a clothing factory. The work was so hard that I promised myself I would never work again – and I became an academic… *audience laughs*… Yes, I’m joking. In fact, I’m in education, because education can reduce the level of pain people suffer before they change their behavior. Let me explain what change I mean… No one who has lung cancer smokes. Why did they make themselves suffer so much to stop smoking? Why didn’t they stop while being healthy?’
I come to such events for those little things of wisdom. They are obvious when they are pronounced, but it takes a genius to formulate them on your own. So, education is the tool that people can use to learn from other’s experience and mistakes, but not to suffer themselves. On the other note, I believe, that this is the ultimate answer to the Divine Miss N question: why does Entrepreneurship club brings people who are not MBAs - aren’t MBAs make successful entrepreneurs? First, the club does bring just a very small amount of all entrepreneurs – namely – the successful ones (and how many of ‘not MBAs’ are unsuccessful? A lot more than unsuccessful ‘MBAs’, I think). Second, maybe when you know all the statistics, all the constraints and problems – you’re not that eager to try it yourself?
I wish you didn’t have to pay huge sums of money to learn ‘why you need to learn’. I wish more people would hear about it while at school, not business school.
It’s hard to stop doing what you do, even if you know that it may have bad results. That is why it so hard to change companies, even successful ones (especially successful ones!). That is why from the 500 biggest companies in 1947, only 74 of them remained in 1997. That’s why it took Lou Gerstner to take IBM out of crisis. That’s why Jack Welch travels around the world and reads lots of lectures.

Other interesting facts:
* Largest world consumer of gasoline per person… you’ll never guess… It’s Luxembourg!.. The gas is cheaper there than in Germany and France, so many Germans and French go there, buy gas and drive away. So, in fact, the largest consumer is, of course, USA – the first guess you probably had :)
* We will soon reach an oil peak (optimistic estimates – in year 2025), at which half of the oil in the world would be already produced and consumed. So from that point on the prices will go up and the world supplies will go down. Hmmm, maybe a car is not such a nice purchase after all? (No, that’s not the thing that can make me hesitate if I want to buy a car!)
* Bad fact for Russia: easy money (from oil, of course) haven’t helped any country in the world to build a market economy. Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, u-name-it – didn’t have and don’t have a market economy.

Women in business schools

2006-05-04T23:28:00.000+04:00

Tidying up my bookcase yesterday I came across a year old copy of 'Insead Quarterly' I have collected somewhere. I didn't have time to read it during the application process, so I decided eliminate this defect.

There was an article 'How business schools can bring more women into business', a part of which I want to share with all the readers of this blog:

Get 'em when they're young

One of the most obvious challenges that women face at top business schools is the age at which you are supposed to attend them. Since most schools want students to acquire a few years of business experience first, the average student age is around 28. It would be hard to imagine a more difficult time for women. By the time they graduate, they will be around 30, and will be looking for a job at the same period they're thinking of - or actually starting - a family.

It would be better to accept younger women into business school, and not just a year or so younger. Women should be encouraged to apply as early as possible. Two of the authors of this article entered business school at 21 or 22 and managed to launch their careers a decade before they launched their families, giving them time to learn and travel and work, concentrating on the professional dimension, before learning to juggle and balance between family and work. (It's easier when you've gotten better at your job.)

I agree with every word written here. I just wonder - does INSEAD walk the way they are talking?

UPD: I've been linked by Stacy Blackman Consulting. They have posted a very interesting interview 'Stanford's view on the age of applicant', check this out.

Women in Business Forum - first time in Moscow

2006-04-11T13:08:00.000+04:00

Women in Business forum will be held first time in Moscow this year - on the 26th of April.
The forum will roll from 14-00 until 17-00 on Wednesday - and the organizers believe that a lot of business women can show up. Admission is by invitation, you have to submit CV to get be considered. I have the invitation, but I'm not sure I can come since I'm busy working the day it is organised.
At the moment the program is as follows:

Two workshops: "Women Entrepreneurs, Myth vs Reality", "The Importance of Relationship Building"
Panel Debate: "Having It All, Is It Really Possible?"
Company presentations by GE, Shell, L'Oreal, PricewaterhouseCoopers.

It will be a pity if I cannot come, because the event seems to be interesting. Anyway, there will be another Forum - in London on the 22 of September and... who knows?

YES - from Oxford

2006-04-11T08:45:00.000+04:00

Finally got an e-mail from Oxford, saying that I've been offered a place and they sent the letter to me by mail about a month ago. Nice :) Great. Fantastic! Wo-hoo! I have a chance to become a great Computer Science specialist :)
So I'll have to wait for the letter to come and then, I hope, I will know all the details.
I understand why they want to write the decision on paper, but why not inform people by e-mail before the letter comes? It would be great to have a letter on the 1st of May, saying, 'If you do not contact us until the end of April...'

Nothing from Oxford yet, research for B-schools and thank you note

2006-04-09T16:43:00.000+04:00

I am still waiting to hear from Oxford. In their catalogue the decision was due on the 17th of March, in e-mail I got before the interview they hoped to inform prospective students by the end of March. Here we are in the midst of April and no answer yet. I've searched for some kind of forum (like Business Week forums) to find other applicants, but with no success. I've sent adcoms 2 e-mails already, which remained unanswered. I know I have to dare a phone call :)

Meanwhile I decided to take seriously the advice to look at US schools and started my research. Two initials on my list are Harvard and Stanford. I promised to a friend that I will apply to Harvard (nice answer to 'Why HBS' question, right?), and Stanford looks good for further career in IT.
And of course, I will reapply to LBS. On the happy note, this year LBS bloggers community seems to have expanded beyond limit :) 5 people and the term has not even started. Fantastic!
It feels a bit strange to find the links to my blog from new LBS bloggers, hear 'Yes, I've read the blog of a girl who tried, but failed to enter LBS' at the LBS2008 meeting and still see the link to my notes on the current students' diaries. Thanks a lot! This means so much to me... this means that those things I wrote turned out to be useful and interesting to many people, and it is a highest praise any blogger might dream of. And thanks for support, everyone, my journey continues :)

Me in London

2006-03-03T21:36:00.000+03:00

That's Hyde park on the sunny Sunday

My new job includes trips to UK, and right now I'm sitting at a client's office (and since it is the open space and I don't want at least six people around me to know what I'm doing - I'm not blogging for a long time). So now the only one who didn't blog about Rusgirl beeing in London - is me. I decided that this is unfair :)
*so... blogging*

I was lucky to be in London on the same day some LBS admits decided to organize a meeting - and I was invited by Angel Angie (and she IS an angel :)). What can I say? I enjoyed the event immensely! Everyone I've met from LBS so far are very interesting people (adcoms, well done! ;))
Next morning I met DivineMissN and KV for a brunch (if anyone from KV web-fans reading this - know, in real life he is even more cute than in his blog :))
Some information from the kitchen:
* Read The McKinsey way to have a good understanding of what consulting is about (not that I wanted to jump in their shoes, just of pure interest)
* People who get an MBA but do not have enough working experience (or Bachelor degree) can face difficulties in finding a job (and all that MBA thing is about finding a good job after all). Most well-known firms from Industry ask for 5 years of postgraduate experience. They just won't look at your CV no matter how good you are and how killing you CV is! Of course, you have chances with not so well-known companies, this means networking, networking and networking. Be prepared :)

As for my Oxford note, I've had an e-mail interview with them, where they asked me to solve a few problems. Sent it back promptly and they promised to get to me at the end of March.
(at the meeting I met a girl who's finishing her Masters and has been admitted to start MBA next year, so that's an option for me too. But if I happen to be in Oxford, I'll definitely work for a few years after graduation. Now I believe that I need that.)

By the way, I have a dream to skate in Hyde park. Maybe someone knows where I can hire a couple of rollerblades? (I don't want to bring any from Russia, you know :))

My tur... no - tag! now :)

2006-01-31T13:33:00.000+03:00

Thanks for Angie and RSR and Moe for this tag! Wow, what a tag :))

I'm still waiting for my Oxford interview and preparing for a businesss trip, why not write something?
I wanted to write a post about reapplication to LBS, but found out that I don't have anything to write about: if you reapply the following year, you have to submit again one application and the whole set of essays, but the School doesn't ask you for transcripts and recommendations. In two years time you're a brand new guy (gal) and you have to submit every single thing again. Short post that would be, isn't it? :)
But I digress! I wanted to write all those 4-letter-wor... or no, 4-things-whatever. Let's start.

Four jobs I've had in my life:

Ballet dancer
Secretary
Programmer
Sales manager

Four movies I can watch over and over:

Love actually
Insterstate-60
Die Hard (1,2,3) - will that go as one movie? ;)
Run, Lola, run

I'd better stop right now and not mention "Italian Job", "Some Like it Hot", "Dogma", "Ocean's eleven", "Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels", "Crocodile Dundee", "Ice Age", "Matrix", "True Lies", "Hitch", otherwise you'll consider me a film fan which I am not.

Four places I have lived:

Arhangelsk, RU
Kaliningrad, RU
SaintPetersburg, RU
Moscow, RU

And these are not my home towns! ;)

Four TV shows I love to watch:

Friends

well... I don't have a TV thus I don't watch shows. Cartoons from childhood count? Then...

Disney series on Fridays
Macron-I
Star Sheriffs :)

Four places I have been on vacation:

UK
Czechia
Lithuania
Turkey

Four of my favourite dishes:

Pasta
Pizza
Potatoes (fried, baked, boiled, any kind of)
Roasted meat

Four websites I visit daily:

My project (that's 1 website and 2 forums)
My mail
Forum "Rupoint in UK"
EAtlas map

Four places I would rather be right now:

London, UK
Rome, Italy
Dublin, Ireland
somewhere on the south coast... I should have put this first if it was not for London!

Four bloggers I am tagging:

Al - he's been tagged, but not responded ;), so one more label!
Karibu with his new job
Guillaume in L.A.
Mave who has disappered in the R2 rush. Come back!

Timing your application

2006-01-16T22:34:00.000+03:00

As for going to admission consultants, there are three situations when you should think of them:
1. You cannot spend time researching schools and their requirements. You need information right now.
2. You apply to 3+ schools in one round.
3. You need a good advice about your essays.

1. Essays
Start: ASAP
Finish: three weeks before deadline
Think about essays as soon as you decide to do an MBA. Read books, watch news, work – always thinking about your essays. Write down ideas.
Extreme schedule: finish your essays three days before deadline, give yourself a break and then one day before the deadline reread and correct them (not recommended).
Normal schedule: finish the drafts as least three weeks before the deadline and give them to someone to reread. Better it be two persons: a former (or current) MBA and a person, who knows your current affairs very well (a close friend, a beloved one, a parent). The first one can say in what way you should rewrite the essays to sell better, the second – what you have forgotten to mention about yourself.

2. GMAT
Start: ASAP
Finish: 2 months before deadline
Schedule as early as you can. Otherwise you may be prepared but there will be no seats.
Extreme schedule: Pass at least a month before deadline. Prepare for at least for two weeks. You should obtain GMAT literature beforehand. You’ll have to take a two-three week holiday at work and make yourself a crash-course on GMAT. You’ll have to be successful the very first time (not recommended).
Normal schedule: Pass at least two months before deadline, so that you will have time to redo it. Prepare for at least for two months.

3. Language test
Start: ASAP
Finish: 2 months before deadline
If you pass computer-based TOEFL, do it immediately after GMAT.
If you pass a paper test like IELTS, you’ll have to schedule it a month beforehand and wait for results 1,5 months after it.
Important note: make a copy of all your score reports and send them to schools with transcripts. Your official results arrive separately, but you don’t want to worry whether they arrive late and you’ll know about it one day before the decision due.

4. Transcript
Start: three months before deadline
Finish: 2 weeks before deadline
Ask for it as soon as possible. Your university may not make transcripts (Russian universities don’t, for example), so you’ll have to take care of it yourself.

5. Letters of recommendation
Start: two months before deadline
Finish: three days before deadline
Ask your future recommenders at least two months before the deadline. Find out whether they’ll have any business or holiday trips at that time.
You should provide a draft for them at least a month before the deadline.
If you write the whole recommendation yourself, give them at least a week before the deadline to read and correct it.
If they have to print recommendations, sign and give back to you, make sure, you know how to mend the broken printers. Don’t forget to buy envelopes.
If you have online recommendations, offer your recommenders help in submitting it. They may not be accustomed to the interface.
Thank them afterwards.

6. CV
Finish: a week before deadline
I must be ready at least a week before the deadline. This is one of the easiest things to do. You can even start with it: put a tick in your list and feel that part of the task is accomplished. If you’re not sure it is good: send it for some good vacancy – if they reply, you know it is good.

7. Application
Start: two weeks before deadline
Finish: a day before deadline
You’ll need at least a week to make an application. Many schools (including LBS) ask for additional mini-essays in the application form – this may come as an unpleasant surprise. And you’d better spend a day on familiarizing with the interface of the application. And better submit it a day or two before the deadline.

8. Send written application
Finish: two days before deadline
If you send on a holiday (or weekend) DHL will charge you 10 dollars more. So better send on weekday. I’ve heard that in US there is such thing as ‘University express’, e.g. you send documents to universities they take a half of their normal charge. Alas, no such thing in Russia.

Once, when my mother’s friend was waiting for a baby – tired of 8 months of nausea, immobility and all other things that accompany this happy process – she said: ‘Oh, how good it will soon be all over!’. And my mother, who already had me by that time, replied: ‘No, dear, IT is just the beginning’.
The application process is also just the beginning :)
Good luck!

Quick note about myself

2006-01-11T23:53:00.000+03:00

I've sent the application to Oxford. It was a ton easier to get everything together, since I was so much more experienced with the whole application process, but still really difficult. I don't know how you guys manage to write 30 essays while applying to 4+ schools ;)
However, there happened two things that made me less sure that I will actually go there even if I'm accepted.
First, Angies's story (see the link to her blog in my previous post) made me think that I do have chances if I reapply next year to LBS. To my opinion selling yourself to a B-School is the same as selling yourself to an employer. Just a bit harder. That leads me to my second reason: my new job. I'm not sure that I'll be allowed to leave so soon and that I'll want to leave :) I've found my dream job :) I know that I'm exaggerating, but 1) it will give me an international experience and working in a international team 2) I'll learn a new technology and discover a completely new (to myself) industry. Have I mentioned that my former CEO agreed to give a future reference for MBA while I was leaving?

Links: Clearadmit wiki and new LBS Blogger

2005-12-28T11:36:00.000+03:00

Clearadmit decided to make a Wiki and let all applicants participate in it and share their experiences. I think it's a fabulous idea, because most of such communitites need external stimuli - they usually die when applicants become students, stop marketing the community and no new blood comes in.
And another link I wanted to post today: Angie, next year LBS student, admitted in R1! Welcome to the blogging world! :)

My next steps

2005-12-18T13:46:00.000+03:00

I got a good feedback from LBS (the lady which I met at the information session in Moscow was most helpful and provided me that feedback).

Admissions Committee felt that you clearly expressed your intelligence and ambition, but
(1) they were concerned about the lack of full-time post-graduate work experience that you've had
(2) they were also unsure how your work experience to date fits in with your short and long term career aims

What can I say?
I knew that (1) will be the weak point of my application. In UK you can get a bachelor in three years, but in Russia you have to study at least 5 years to get a degree (in my case – 6). And doctors study even longer. But any education, even from a top university is not considered enough to get a job afterwards. In many respects it happens because our universities do not provide specialist that business wants. So many students begin working while studying. This is not easy, because professors want to see you full-time at their lectures, or you will receive bad marks at the end of term. And employers know that you will need a study leave every January and June to pass your exams. Nevertheless, most Russian employers consider it as a good full-time working experience (most of 30-year-olds did the same, so they know). Business-schools consider it as part-time, as I know now.
I knew that (2) is the most difficult point to state if you want to change careers. And I was astonished to find so many clueless about their future work (I mean, among the blogging students). And I put a lot of effort in my application to show how I will prepare ground for myself (and have already prepared). But in this LBS Chat (5 December 2005) I found that if you want to switch, don’t change industry and position at the same time. For instance, if you worked in IT and want to go to marketing, find a marketing position in IT company. And that was what I did wrong: I didn't draw a linw between my current position and future one.

So what will I do now?
I am considering an application to MSc in Computer Science in Oxford. I know what I’m doing. This is all I need to apply to HSMP visa (well, it depends on how they will count my working experience, but it’s a minor point). And there is also a 12-month-work permit for Engineering Graduates in UK. I quitted the idea of switching careers for now. So enhancement (Oxford degree) will make me more competitive as professional. After all, applying to Oxford is easier than applying to B-School ;)
And if I’m successful (I have chances, I think) then I will postpone my idea of MBA for some two or three years.
If I’m not successful I will reapply to LBS next year. And maybe Harvard ;) And maybe some other American school (I’ll see, I still have time).

I won’t stop writing my blog. For instance, I want to write my next post about timing an application (I wanted to write it long ago, but didn’t have time ;) ).

How does is feel to be rejected

2005-12-18T12:47:00.000+03:00

I feel good!
© James Brown

(I believe that this post will be useful to many people, because through your application process you usually receive at least one rejection.)

Unsuccessful? Disappointed? Misunderstood?
Nope. (Ah, well, yes, misunderstood – yes :))
Then – how?
* Prepared, because a week before the rejections from b-schools came, I went for a job interview (just an interesting vacancy, I planned it as some kind of ‘interview practice’). Which disappointed me a lot. They needed absolutely another person, not the one they described in their vacancy. A ‘rainmaker’: some 30+ year-old-man with connections to bring clients out of nothing. Not me. And, of course, rejection followed: ‘If only you were some 5 years older…’ (yes, I would have a husband and two kids and no more work experience than I have now). Maybe my CV was too good? ;)
* Flattered, because from the school answers I could judge that I’m ‘too young’. And show me a girl that doesn’t like being told she is young!
* Philosophical. My grandfather used to say: ‘If you miss this bus, it was not yours. The next will come and it will be yours’. That’s a great thought that saved me much nerve in life.

I started the whole MBA-thing for a following number of reasons.
1. Discover what route I want to take in life.
2. Challenge myself.
3. To go and live abroad (and this was the most fast and obvious opportunity concerning job search and visa, imho).
4. Give myself an immense present of studying in UK.

I cannot put a tick near every point of that list. But I got a lot of what I haven’t asked for.
For instance, I found that one of my recommenders thought about getting an MBA himself, so we had a lot to speak about.
I talked to my degree supervisor and found out that he now teaches parallel programming and grid computing. I envy those students who have his course now: they practice all that things – our professor made us write our programs on paper…
I came to UK and visited the School, and I felt at home there. No matter what adcoms think and how they choose, I know that I would have survived there and fit in ;)
I’ve done some research and I’ve immensely widened my reading list.
I’ve passed tests, and discovered that I do tests well! (‘Do you play the piano?’ – ‘Don’t know, I’ve never tried’)
I gathered everything on time, despite of bureaucracy at my University, broken printers of my recommenders, and all other obstacles that were on my way. I really enjoyed the process, though I cannot yet think of redoing it next year ;)
I found out that it’s OK to tell people about the rejections!
And finally, I would never forgive myself if I hadn’t tried.

About LBS Information Session in Moscow

2005-11-29T20:47:00.000+03:00

I was at the information session in Moscow this Saturday, but I didn't have time to write about it :)
I came to Ararat Hotel wearing a jeans jacket and at first felt out of place in this 'cool' place... some guys were in suits despite of Saturday! But then on the table near registration stand I found a booklet named MBA class 2007... and there were all photos, names and countries of all this year students... and I instantly I felt at home. This feeling stayed while I listen to presentations and talked to alumni. Its nice to know so much about the School ;)
We were showed new LBS film, and then admission ladies talked about all the programs at school. I thought, maybe I should enter a PhD course and write cases for all those MBAs to crack? ;) *just joking*
The thing most emphasized about the School was - its location ("The only school located in the capital!"). By the way, most people think that LBS equals Finance. The school is in fact focused on Finance because of its location (and you know all those things about supply and demand), but it also has a strong hand in Marketing.
We've also been told that during the second year you take 9-12 electives, and if you want to specialize in a subject, you have to take at least 5 electives of that kind. You also can come to school and during your first year decide that you want to graduate in 15 months. You'll probably take 9 electives and your second year would be very packed, but this is possible.
Then I've talked to alumni. Those who graduated 4 of more years ago said it was possible to get a loan at least for tuition for Russians then. And they have heard, that this is possible now. A guy that graduated in 2005 had his company pay tuition for him. One of the alumni named the most difficult thing at school: pubs closing at 11 o'clock. Now this law has been cancelled, so current students have more advantages ;)
On a personal note - I talked with an adcom and she promised to give a feedback to my application (I still haven't received any) and said that it may be reasonable to apply next year (and not in 2 years like INSEAD). That's nice, because I really want to be at school.

And yes, KV, I've changed the name of my blog, I'm afraid that I cannot plan my life for two years ahead, but my heart doesn't lose focus :)

The book

2005-11-25T19:20:00.000+03:00

I once was lost, but now am found

I’ve finished reading Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand. And I can say this is a book!
* I read the first one (it consists of three) during two days (that was back in September), second in a week, began the third, but quitted and finished it only yesterday.
* The first one gave me and answer to the question ‘why do you do this?’ - I know, what to say now: ‘Because I want to and I can’.
* When I told a friend of mine the plot of the first book (how best men suddenly disappear from the world, and the main heroes are standing and struggling), and said that I wonder how it all ends, he replied: ‘Probably a mega-man builds himself a mega-house’. And he was right! :)
* When I read the book I always remembered where she was from. And I knew what she was writing about. I just thought that things never ever changed now matter what century it is.
* I wondered how soft were the bandits she wrote about. Almost humane. Only in last few chapters they (as a system) were beginning to obtain colours of real life. But after all people are not reading books about their real life. They have real life already, thank you.
* The third book was like a light switched on in the dark room. Now I see.
* Great book. Must read. And I will look for the Fountainhead now.
Thanks to Miss N and RSR for mentioning this book :) That’s what made me to read it.

And thanks to everyone who wrote me those encouraging words. I will write a brief summary of my thought on the subject later on.
Tomorrow I plan to attend an LBS information session (Ararat Park Hyatt, 4 Neglinnaya St, Moscow, 11:00), and I hope I will have something to write about :)

And again rejection - from LBS

2005-11-23T10:29:00.000+03:00

Members of the MBA Admissions Committee have now carefully considered your application. It is with regret that we have been asked by the Committee to inform you that they are not able to offer you a place on the MBA Programme this year. The applicant pool has again been of an extremely high calibre, andconsequently competition has been very rigorous.

No feedback yet, but they promised a general feedback a bit later.

So, not next year. I'll wait for feedback and begin planning for the year after next. Or after after... No matter that the first attempt was not successful, I have time, and I will learn. And I have already learned and became better, wiser and older :) I believed that I have earned this (I mean London, this school and this life), but maybe all my documents were not enough to persuade adcoms, and I didn't have a chance to speak in personal.

Meanwhile, I think I will have a look at other master programs in other UK universities, so any recommendations are welcomed. And I'll do what I decided to do in the previous post - start my job search for international company.

Rejection from INSEAD

2005-11-18T18:21:00.000+03:00

The Admissions Committee has decided that you need to gain at least two more years of professional experience before you can be further considered for admission to the programme. Additionally, your application would be strengthened if you were to increase your international exposure, ideally by working in another country.

So, I'm too small and too Russian. And I knew that I was not of INSEAD profile, when I applied. But I still believe, that I wrote a strong pack of essays (I think that my INSEAD essays were more about me than my LBS ones. LBS puts a lot of focus on teamwork and commitment to school). And I've got decent academics. But, alas, I was not considered to be a genius :)
I hoped that they may take me, because of three factors:
1) I'm a woman and they write everywhere that there are not enough women in INSEAD (so, don't believe this, they haven't taken me :))
2) they would have a look at my progress and see that I'm really good
3) I would be some of a diversity type
None of those factors played its role. And I suspect that I may get the same answer next Wednesday from LBS. My only hope is that adcoms will like the club I proposed and allow me to come :) at least, to the interview.
A remark about the silver lining: I can apply for that IFP scholarship, I mentioned previously in one of my posts. And as an oppression factor I can write that I've been discriminated because of age! *joking*
By the way, I got that letter from the same lady who held special INSEAD session in Moscow.

I've started my MBA journey to get more international experience while studying at B-School and after it. If it would be really easy to get a job abroad, I wouldn't bother about B-Schools yet. But it is difficult to get a job in Europe for a non-EU person. In UK I can apply for HSMP visa after finishing the program, but I'm not eligible for this visa yet.
Another way - is to work in Moscow office of a worldwide company and relocate when you have a chance. So while applying I have talked to some people who worked in two of such companies, and was told that I don't have a chance. First, managers, who must approve your relocation, have children, who want to study in Europe too. Second, you may work hard, become a guru, and, perhaps, in some seven years, will be offered to relocate. But by that time you usually have roots that tie you to the spot. But I have only looked at two companies, and there are more, so I will look at others. And I may find what I’m looking for.
And I’m asking for your advice - how can I get a job abroad?
-->Suggestions are welcomed as comments and to RusgirltoLBS at gmail.com.

Visit to LBS. Part 3. Lectures and other useful information

2005-11-18T13:04:00.000+03:00

The lecture theater, where I was, is on -1 floor, so there are no windows there. I like rooms with windows, that is why I mention it. But in all other aspects the classroom is very nice. The professor is well heard, though, if you sit at the backseat, you may not hear what people in front of you say during the discussion (and you'll have to tell every speaker 'Speak up, please!').

The first lecture that I attended was in Managerial Economics.
All lectures are three hours long with a break of twenty or so minutes in the middle (during which you can queue for coffee in 'The Bite').
The first part of ME was not very clear to me ;). I think I should have done some pre-reading (or should have visited the previous lecture) to follow. Professor was talking about two types of customers: rich and mass (they don’t have so much money, but they are numerous), and their willingness to pay for the product during the first hour, second hour (the demand dropped) and on the whole. The task was to propose the pricing scheme, which will give the biggest revenue. All this reminded me of a game set theory: min-max and all that. And maybe it was :)
The second part was devoted to monopolies, and two groups presented a case 'Microsoft vs U.S. Government'. 'Government' presentation was like all governments presentations: long, full of tied together facts and inevitability. On the other hand, 'MS' was funny and nice. They won the sympathy of the audience, of course ;)
Cases are not like real life, where you can find additional information in the Google. You are kept in the frame of the case and cannot mention future or give other suppositions. For instance, Firefox&Mozilla are eating some of IE market share right now and eating fast: 10% a year (that's the statistics which I got myself from a number of website counters, so take it with salt).
A remark: since the school has wireless network, a lot of students open their computers during the lecture to blog, or send an e-mail... Be careful, guys, because sometimes professor is sitting behind you (those who sit in the right wing).
After the case and the discussion whether the monopolies are good or bad (this depends on a sector), professor told us how do antimonopoly committee count if there is a monopoly in the market. And in the end he took out some bottles... and asked if Company X, which has these three products, will buy Product Y, will it be considered as a monopolist or will it diversify the portfolio of its products. And the cleverest guy asked to try Product Y and those products from Company X to see if they are alike. After drinking he concluded that Company X would be buying a part of different market (drinks for ladies), so no monopoly. And after that I was asked numerous times if there was some other B-school where people could drink alcohol during lectures :)

The second lecture was Strategy and professor was talking how you can make your product distinct and add value to it.
The first question was: should you make it the cheapest or add some value into it and make it different. Everyone agreed that you should add value, and only if your business processes are the best so that you can lower price - you can be the cheapest. This will be just your additional distinction.
When professor asked what distinctions you could add, I said to myself 'quality', but none of the student mentioned it in their answers. And having been at London shops I know why. If you have been in some Turkey shops (or Russian shops), just like me, then 'quality' would probably come first to your mind.
We've been shown some very good videos about hotel chains and how they make themselves different. Some cut off everything that will make their price higher, some focus on clients very much. And in the end students discussed the case of refocusing some hotel. I haven't read the case, so it was difficult for me to take part in the discussion, but it was interesting to observe who spoke and who listened. After group discussion, some people were asked to present their answers and, funnily enough, nearly all answers had nothing to do with the real life one, which professor announced after the discussion.
To sum up, the subject of the lecture was not new (it is widely mentioned in the books and articles), but examples were great.
A remark: no cold calls during these two lectures. Professors asked only those (but not all, of course) who raised their hands.

This is a photo of the same stone, Miss N posted. Just upholding the tradition ;)

What else I found out
LBS asks for two languages upon graduation. INSEAD is the only school, which asks for three. Admission officer told me that I must have mixed them up, but I got that impression from reading information on the site and in the catalogue. And I read that before I even thought about INSEAD.

Unpleasant surprise with GMAT score report

2005-11-15T18:36:00.000+03:00

Just now received a letter from INSEAD admission officer, saying that they haven't received my official GMAT score. Schocking news, since the interview decision is due this Friday, and I don't have any GMAT report at hand, and so I cannot phone GMAC or Pearson right now (how will they identify me if I don't remeber my ID?). Yes, I participated in the GMAT Limited Summer Test, which was held by Pearson VUE. I haven't received my official report either. Was that the sign? And I begin to worry if my score report was sent to LBS or not.
Never mind, I'll solve the problem anyway :) And it was good to hear from an ad com even like that.

UPD: Pearson confirmed to have sent my report to the schools in August, and since the EMEA center is located in London I may not worry about London Business School, I think. And they sent a copy to INSEAD. So, I hope, it is settled. Thanks to everyone for support :)

Visit to LBS. Part 2. The School and the students

2005-11-12T22:44:00.000+03:00

I first met the School on fine Sunday morning. A friend of mine who visited the School earlier, prepared me to the 'shop, restaurant... oh, here is LBS!.. and another restaurant' environment of it. First I spotted a shop with all kind of items with LBS labels: bags, umbrellas, bunnies, etc. If your boss doesn't yet know you're applying, it's a good idea to buy something there ;) Then I saw a group of athletic young men and told myself 'This must be it'. And – yes - they were standing near the entrance to the Plowden reception. The school was nice and peaceful. The grass from the back, good-looking entrance (is it ever opened, guys?), was green, the birds were singing, joggers were running around. I took some photos and went for a walk in Regent Park.
On Monday I put on my student's shoes and came in for Managerial Economics.
But first let me say that I would not have had such a nice time at school, if it were not for the New Student Ambassador, Divine Miss N. She was great! She showed me around and introduced me to the whole bunch of people, so in the end I really excelled in phrase: 'I'm-from-Moscow-applied-in-Round-One-fingers-crossed-now'.
I have met RSR, Al Martine, and FutureGuru from the BloggerWorld. And Hussein, who's writing to BusinessWeek. And a lot of others (and I even remembered the names!). I've also found out that there are a lot of Russian speaking students in LBS (about twenty or so). No wonder, since the school is interested in people who have international experience, - all Russians to whom I spoke, left the country more than five years ago and have dual citizenship. Maybe ‘living in Moscow’ will pass as a ‘diversity’ thing for me?
What else I’ve learned from students
1) life is really-really busy here (yes, I can imagine. What I cannot imagine, is that you all can find time to blog)
2) I’m prepared to go to Amsterdam, since I’ve learned how to say ‘Get out of the way, m**r’ in Dutch
3) it takes time and effort to open a bank account in London banks, since they are not willing to give any money to students. Even when they are Mr Future Big Guys. Would they until then have to carry cash in their socks? ;)
Speaking of clothes, on my way to school I thought how I would look in jeans and sweater. I came on holiday and was not going take a suit along by any means! I hit the bull's eye: all students wore jeans. If you saw someone in a suit, he must have been a professor or a second-year on his way to interview.
I would have stood out in jeans on the info session (they take place every Monday and Friday at school at 15:00). Everyone there was in suits except for adcoms ;)
I planned to visit School on Monday and then come for info session on Friday, but the students talked me into coming to Strategy on Wednesday, so all in all I've been to two lectures and three times at School. By Friday I felt myself at home: I knew the difference between two reception areas, didn't get lost on my way to the lady's room, discovered candies on the reception desk, was showed the stand with the Wall Street Journal and could find my way to the MBA Program Office with closed eyes.

*the next part will be about lectures, more students and everything else I forgot to mention*

Visit to LBS. Part 1. My experience with LBS MBA Program Office - bad and good

2005-11-09T19:12:00.000+03:00

Planning my visit I wrote to them, asking about a permission to attend a lecture. I waited for the answer for about a week. Since deadline was coming, I wrote to David Simpson (the only personal address I knew) and he replied the next day. I mentioned that I wanted to attend the lecture with Divine Miss N class and he assured me that it is no problem to come along with a student and take a sit.
While I was at school, students asked me if I am acquainted with the Program Office and I said 'no'. So they showed me the direction and there I went. Mind you, only a student with a student card can get to MBA Program Office, but you know, students are always coming around when you need to open a door... ;)
It was late (about 5 p.m.) and there was just one girl there. I introduced myself and asked if I can talk to someone about my application ('I applied in R1 last week'). I was told that this is impossible, no one is going to discuss my application or give me any clues, or simply reassure me that all my documents have arrived. 'If we will need anything from you, we will contact you by e-mail'. OK, I just asked. It was silly coming all the way to school and not asking, right?
This reminds me of client experience, which, I'm sure, everyone had. When you are a potential client, the firm nurses you around: 'come to our conferences, look at our solutions, talk to our people' and so on. But when it turns you into a client, it forgets about you. Marketing to existing clients simply doesn't work. The policy is just something like that: 'you know some of our people. If you have a problem, contact them'.
I'm just summarizing, not complaining.
I like this 'poor marketing' thing about the school, because:
1) I've been subscribed to the school newsletter for 6 months. So far I received two. Both were really valuable: one told about GMAT limited summer test and the other about LBS infosessions (in Moscow there will be one at the end of November). *I received a third one yesterday - useless - I won't add it to the score :)*
2) when I was at the infosession, there was no presentation, no general information about school. There was a simple Q&A session. They were not trying to persuade us, but mainly listen to us and tell us the issues we were interested in. I like this way of 'selling', I don't like being forced.
Though I know people who have an opposite point of view and were much more impressed with attitude and commitance of adcoms in other schools.

About INSEAD special information session

2005-11-02T19:36:00.000+03:00

There were lots (~10) of alumni from INSEAD (different from those three who were at MBA Tour), so I really did believe, when they said that INSEAD had the strongest alumni community in Moscow than any other b-school.
The session was held by Caroline Diarte Edwards, herself an INSEAD alumni, now working at Jakarta, and maybe promoting INSEAD? I'm not sure, she didn't explain this. She told us about the school and what the school is looking for in applicants. It is:
1) Academic ability
2) Managerial Potential (at work or in extracurricular activities)
3) Ability to contribute to school
4) Proved international motivation
More ticks - the better :)
Then alumni spoke. During the presentation they were saying marketing things, for instance, how much "fun" you would have at school, what a network you would gain, how your life would change. They were not very willing to answer in general Q&A session. I sat in the second row, but most spoke so quietly that it was difficult to hear them. But afterwards, when drinks were served and conversations divided among different groups they became more helpful, talking about their experiences at school, the quality of participants, financial aid, etc. All in all, interesting to look at the faces, to listen, to ask, to get the first-hand experience. And to collect the cards, of course.
But I cannot say, that I got some receipt or absolutely astonishing piece of information to share. I got myself an INSEAD Quarterly journal, and I can say that this is my most valuable acquisition from this event (I scanned it through, but didn't have time to read).

Today I read all those post of LBS students that I couldn't read in last two weeks. It feels different reading them now, after the school visit. So real and vivid. And my next post at last will be devoted to my LBS visit :) I'll try to post it till the end of the week.

My visit to World MBA Tour

2005-11-01T16:39:00.000+03:00

I was yesterday at World MBA Tour Moscow. All in all: partially useful.
First of all, I came too late (2 hours after the beginning) to attend any speeches, since they were already said, and to collect any materials, since they were already handed out. But I didn't plan to do all that.
I wanted to talk to London Business School, Oxford Said and Cambridge Judge. None of them were present. Harvard and Stanford were not present either.
But INSEAD was there! I talked to alumni and adcom and arranged to visit a special INSEAD presentation scheduled tonight. It has limited admission, I found out about it from a friend, and talked my way to attend it. Disappointing information: INSEAD alumni told me that it is very difficult to get a loan or a scholarship for Russian citizens there now.
Then I talked a bit with IMD and Cranfield. And established in my decision not to apply to Cranfield yet (I'm too young for them, since the average age of full-time program students is 32).
Summarizing (a friend of mine who was there):
I don't really have any questions about the schools, because I have already asked all I wanted to know current students, alumni and adcoms online. Second, all questions I've heard so far at the tour, have already been answered numerous times online, and replies don't change. If you receive a new answer, it means you haven't researched the school properly. The only question I was interested in is loans and scholarships. When I ask it, they all say: have a look at our website.
Of course, it is also interesting to look at alumni and those who want to apply :)

I am alive :)

2005-10-31T12:43:00.000+03:00

Dear readers,

I'm still here. But I was extremely busy, because:
1) I submitted my application for Chevening Scholarship
2) I submitted my application to London Business School
3) I went to London and saw the school, the people and the city (and it was great!)
4) Tonight is MBA Fair in Moscow and I want to go.
So... more about everything later. This week, I promise.

Stay tuned!

What to do with a writer's block?

2005-10-08T20:56:00.000+04:00

You're in the middle of application process, but your inspiration has evaporated. Don't worry; even professional writers have this little problem. I'm not that kind of advisor, but I have three receipts that may help the desperate ;)

First
Read a lot. Articles, MBA diaries, books. You may even choose some fiction literature. You know, that 20% of information you need are outside of your industry? Well, that means that 80% are inside, so if time is scarce you better read articles about leadership, involvement, marketing and all that. Anyway, read.
Second
Go out and talk to your friends. Better if they are business friends that can show you some insight (they maybe your recommenders!). Talk to relatives about yourself of course and your future plans. Do it only if you're sure that they will support you.
Third
Have in mind the topic you're stuck with and do something with your hands. Paint, cook, knit. Do some housework. Go to gym. You will be surprised how many ideas you'll get while jogging (take a dictaphone) or swimming!

I heard this method from one mathematician, who said he always got brilliant ideas while washing the dishes.
OK, I'll go and wash it now :)

INSEAD recommendation: what they ask your recommender about

2005-10-04T19:15:00.000+04:00

I’ve submitted everything for INSEAD and decided to write a bit more about recommendation process.
Unlike LBS, INSEAD doesn’t post draft for recommenders, which you can look at beforehand. You have a link - you send it.
The good thing is – you don’t have to see your recommender. He (or she) can be anywhere near the Internet, and you’ll have your recommendation.
But there is a minor point also: your recommender has to know English!

I’ve decided to highlight the INSEAD draft for recommenders for those who are applying in R2 and R3.
--++--
Details of person completing the form
Relationship to the candidate (check): Professional, Educational, Personal
How long have you know the candidate? Define your relationship with the candidate and the circumstances whereby you met.
I. How do you rate candidate on the following criteria? (check)

II. How do you rate candidate’ potential for becoming responsible and successful manager in international business compared with other students or employees whom you have known in a similar capacity? (check: excellent, very good, above average,…)
III. Please give your answers to each of the following questions
1. Comment on the candidate’s career progress to date and his/her career focus.
2. What do you consider to be the candidate’s major strengths? Comment on the factors that distinguish the candidate from other individuals of his/her level.
3. What do you consider to be the candidate’s major weaknesses?
4. Comment on the candidates potential for senior management. Do you see him/her as a future leader?
5. Describe the candidate as a person. Comment on his/her ability to establish and maintain relationships, sensitivity to others, self-confidence, attitude, etc. Specifically comment on the candidate’s behavior or skills in a group setting/team environment.
--++--

Writing essays to INSEAD

2005-09-24T22:10:00.000+04:00

I'm working hard on my INSEAD essays, as the deadline (5th October) is approaching fast. I'm glad with essays, though some of them are very condensed because of word limit.
How to write an essay about career in 250 words? I'll tell you.
First, write everything you want about your career, sounding as logical as you can. This will be 600-900 words.
Second, structure this brainstormed draft and underline point, which you cannot throw away at any rate.
Third, condense every part as much as you can: rewrite every sentence, shorten your phrases. Be a surgeon. No regrets.
You have to have about 350 words by now.
Forth, eliminate any articles and comparisons you have (if you can).
Fifth, read it aloud and eliminate or rewrite anything that sounds bad.
You're done :)
And after it (paraphrasing a famous Russian anecdote about tea), throw away everything you've done - and write yourself a proper essay. :)

[UPDATE: Famous Russian anecdote about tea.
An old Georgian man, Head of the family, who was the one to know the secret of making wonderful Georgian tea, - is dying. The whole family gathers around him and asks for this secret not to be carried to his grave. And he tells them.
- First, take a thin-walled tea-pot. Pour some boiling water into it and stir for 30 seconds counterclockwise. Empty the pot. Then take finest Georgian brewing, put it in the pot and pour hot water upon it. Mind you, the water should be very hot, but not boiling! Close the pot and cover it with a towel for 5 minutes. Then take this crap away and make yourself good Indian tea.]

Two scholarships

2005-09-24T22:09:00.000+04:00

Talking about money and scholarships... Chevening (that's a scholarship for 1-year study, up to 20,000GBP with the deadline at 20th October this year) would not apply to LBS. So if I don't want to miss the chance of getting the money, I have to consider such options as Cambridge and Oxford. And perhaps, Cranfield, Bath and Warwick+ Will I have time (and recommender's) to cover all these this year? I'll think about it tomorrow, as Scarlett used to say.
I've also found a great scholarship program (I'm not eligible for). You can be eligible, if you live somewhere in the regions (I work in Moscow, and it is considered as I already had my chance') and you are poor, but smart. Not for MBA though. This is IFP (Ford Foundation International Program), web-site, deadline: January, 17th. It's a kind of offer you cannot decline (dream one), but as I said, alas, it's not for me and it's not for MBA.

And yes, I've bought 'Peopleware' in Russian! Some guys have already translated and published it (in May, 2005), so my dream has come true. No I have a long queue of friends, relatives and colleges, to whom I advertised the book and who are longing to read it.

Education exhibition

2005-09-24T22:06:00.000+04:00

Today I've been at the 7th Exhibition of British Education in Moscow. And I decided to write about this experience, though to my mind it was the least useful event I've visited so far (considering education, of course). Mind you, there were no top-tiers there: no Oxford, no Cambridge. They don't need participating in such events, people will apply to them anyway.
Reading admission chats, articles, talking to students and alumni, - I gather the inspiration to work on my application. But this exhibition was, in fact, disappointing. The first man I told about my age, degree and work-experience (he was MBA-adcom from some university) asked: Are you kidding? How did you manage all that? You are too young to do everything you're talking of'. Conclusion: I should provide more information about I'm so awesome, I can do many things at once' in my application in order to clear this to other adcoms+ Or maybe people like me never apply to the school where he was an adcom? Well, I think I won't - the school doesn't even ask for GMAT.
Mind you, I don't need any reassurance that I have a chance of getting admitted, because I truly believe, that I won't find this out until I apply. The major obstacle, as I am being told, is age. The obstacle that will vanish in some years, but at that time I may already have a husband (with an owning character) and children+ so the next time I would probably think about MBA again - age would certainly be a problem, but this time, irretrievable :)
A short time ago, I've quitted talking with my friends about me-wanting-to-study-in-London, because the first question they ask where have you found money?' The question, which, I hope, I will answer when time comes. Not now. First aim - get admitted.
Well, I think it's good that people keep telling me the things I do are just impossible. Any other person (probably my rival), would have stopped. So I'm going be the one who actually applies :)

Some photos from St.Petersburg

2005-09-18T17:43:00.000+04:00

As I promised, I'm posting some photos we took while in Peter.

Sunset at Finnish Bay.

Firework in Peterhof.

Spas-na-krovi church

Russian Museum.

This is the spirit of Peter: scaffolding and luxury side by side.

One of four famous horses of Klott on the Anichkov bridge.

Trip to St.Petersburg

2005-09-14T21:43:00.000+04:00

All God’s children need traveling shoes…

I was going to write the post a week ago. But I managed only today, because I had no time at all since that. So, to the news.

I’ve got my transcripts all nice – translated and notarized so they look very impressive now. I did 4 copies of transcript and diploma and it cost me about $100 at Hors (http://www.horos.ru/, I can recommend this notary firm). Not cheap in my opinion, but I haven’t searched, so I can’t compare.

I’ve also prepared documents for my visa. That was not such a short process as it sounds. And tomorrow, Aeroflot airlines begin to hand out cheap tickets to London and will continue till 24^th of September. I’m not sure whether it is wise to buy the ticket while not having visa yet, but… Well, I still have some time to think about opportunities of getting the ticket now and paying $150 or getting it after getting visa and paying $400+.

I’ve started drafting essays for INSEAD (describe-your-whole-life-in-no-more-than-250-words) and having problems with word limit. I guess everyone has, so I’ll think about it later, because first I need to brainstorm the framework.

Talking about life not connected to business school: I’ve gone to St.Petersburg (or as we call it: ‘Peter’) on weekend with my friends. And that was a trip!

Walked along Nevsky (5 times)… check

Been to the fountains of Peterhof and seen the greatest firework I’ve ever seen (Peterhof was celebrating its 300^th birthday)… check

Gone to tour around the channels on the boat (well, that was freezing!)… check

Been inside the Spas-na-Krovi church (fantastic mosaic!)… check

Drank coffee and eaten the famous Peter’s apple ‘shtrudel’ (sorry, ‘apple pie’ is not the exact translation, and the dictionary cannot help)… check

Taken lots of photos… check

That were the most interesting points of my check-list. I checked them all!

And we were very lucky the weather was wonderful.

I strongly believe that Peter is the second ‘must see’ city in Russia. The first one is, of course, Moscow. I’ve been to it three times and I really enjoy going there. Architecture, museums and cuisine – three foundations of the city. It has also been considered as the most ‘polite’ city of Russia, but I don’t know whether it still upholds the reputation.

Maybe I’ll post some photos as soon as I get them from my friends :)

Ah! As for shoes – my new blue Sketchers turned out to be great: my feet didn’t ache at all in spite of all those long walks around the city!

And I’ll have to finish a project till the end of the week, so I’ll be really-really busy.

Good luck to everyone who is preparing for exams and gathering documents! The road is long, but interesting, and you meet a lot of great people along :)) Nd find yourself good travelling shoes first (even a towel is not that important!)

Irish stew: transcript translation, exhibition, recommeder's presentation

2005-09-06T15:49:00.000+04:00

...the advantage of Irish stew: you got rid of such a lot of things.

Today I went to the notary about my transcript. I was told: you're not the first, lady, and we do not need your own translation, no, thank you. Anyway I gave them my translation and my money, because I don't really care about the price now, I care about getting everything done on time. So I hope to receive the translation on Thursday and will tick another mark on my list (and will write about the outcome later).

Yesterday I visited some event called Business Education Exhibition (description here in Russian). It was mainly devoted to Russian business schools, executive and on-line programs, so I was not hoping to get anything useful. But actually I did: I found a great journal - 'Harvard Business Review' (russian site, american site - american is better, because it has some articles online for free and not only abstracts). I'm reading a September copy of it now and I think it is the most interesting one I've read lately (including 'National Geographic', 'Playboy', 'Company' and 'Money' ;)).
Just for reference I checked how much the journal costs (I got it free - as a visitor). Well, it costs a whole lot, I even stop to think before buying a book for such sum! (about $14 a copy, while other journals mentioned here cost from $1 to $4).

Presentation for Recommenders. That's not required, but I feel myself better with it, than without :)

I used the following sources to gather thoughts:

1. "Recommendation letters too?" (Accepted.com)

2. Mave's posts about recco-letters: 1 and 2

3. A number of Articles form businessmajors.com starting with this one

4. Posts by ClearAdmit: 1 and 2

5. Presentation of some guy from McKinsey

If I missed something important, please, share in comments :)

Busy schedule

2005-09-02T17:02:00.000+04:00

You had a bad day... (Oh.. Holiday..)

I have my transcript in Russian signed and stamped (great thanks to a friend of mine, who went to the University three times to catch right people!). I even have done the translation. So all I need now is a notary.
I've also drafted my presentation for recommenders.
But it's a pity I cannot find time for my essays (though I have an idea what I will write in that "culture-shock" insead one - I've had it a week ago, actually).
I thought I will be free this week, because I've finished one project and my regular activities were not so urgent. Two next projects were due at the end of September, so on Wednesday I was going to work with such a happy face (probably) that people on the streets kept asking me what time it was.
Naive and happy girl!
All of a sudden I'm at a client (another one) and we are resqueing with a friend of mine a part of the project - like Chip & Dale - for the next 2 weeks. In the evening I'm so tired, that the only thing I can do - is have some supper and go to sleep.
This weekend I was invited to a barbeque and the next one I'm going on a trip to Saint-Petersburg with my friends. I wonder, how I will manage everything on time?
But I believe, that everything is happening on purpose :)

Searching for scholarships

2005-08-22T23:27:00.000+04:00

You know, it is better to look earlier than later, so today I've been browsing through different sites and looking at available scholarships. And I've found lots of staff... which I'm not eligible for *sigh*.
So I'll post the most interesting two here, maybe it will help anyone ;)
1. Great fellowship for women, who want study in the US - at aauw.org (deadline 1th of December, 2005, amount $18,000)
2. Motorola contest for current students - all about seamless mobility (deadline 15th of November, 2005, amount $10,000)

Oh, and if you see any relevant scholarship (Russian, female, want to study at LBS) - please, let me know :)

Mostly transcripts

2005-08-20T15:57:00.000+04:00

The future is yours, you hold the key
and there are no walls with freedom...

It's easy to say "I'm starting". But this week I got a brand new project, so I'm sitting at a client and no internet, just work, work and work. Not complaining, because that's really the job I love to do, but no internet when you need it - ah...
So deadlines and essays are out.
I decided to widen my list of schools with INSEAD: read the blog of willy-nilly, thought that if I enter, that would be great: French cuisine, revive my French, just a year - so no point in saying long goodbye to friends and family, etc. Yeah, but the first deadline to INSEAD is the 5th of October! I hope this will accelerate me and give me time to practice, before I really start doing essays for LBS. And no suprise there - great topics (I mean at LBS, because at INSEAD... this "culture shock" topic... I'm nonplused).
I know, that it difficult to start, so I decided to do the easiest thing - find out what 'transcript' is - and I found this article (text in Russian, but transcript example in English). I did myself a form in *.doc, I'll print it next week and take a take a day off on Friday (I hope I'll have the chance) and go to my alma mater (and I hope there will be someone at the university already). If I'm lucky, I'll have the course marks written out and stamped, if not, I'll ask one of my friends to do this for me the week after next. So then I'll need to translate that paper into English and sign and stamp again at some notary.

Phil Collins will give a concert in Moscow on the 20th of October - I definetely want to go there!

Inspiring

2005-08-15T21:43:00.000+04:00

I’m here again!

Enough rest for now, or people will keep asking me about my sunburn. Let’s return back to computer and to my normal greenish face color ;)

I decided to write some inspiring post, since the last one was of a ‘useful’ kind. Maybe this will, too.
Anyway, from time to time since I decided to take the first step on my way to MBA, I (and everybody else, perhaps) have a kind of desperate mood like ‘I won’t be able to’, ‘I’m not fit’, ‘Who do you think you are, Trump or Einstein?’, ‘I’m too young (too old)’, ‘enter-your-fear-here’. This is very dangerous mood and it is essential to get out of it as soon as you can. So here is my recipe:
1. You are smart, you know? Or you won’t figure out how to decipher M.B.A. and got thus far. So remove all doubts about your brain functions.
2. This MBA-game is not a point in life like get it or die. It’s just a moonlit path: if you look hard for it, you’ll find it. If not, it doesn’t matter, cobbles are not that big at night. When you spend time on preparation - you don’t lose it even if all this effort won’t bring you to a place of your dream - because you are growing, you are thinking, you are finding your way and you are investing this time in yourself.
3. Don’t take this too serious – it’s your great adventure!
4. Why don't you better go and do something useful like write an essay?
Cook your inspiration with these 4 ingredients and add your own to taste.

I'm thinking about coming to London at the end of October. How do you think - will they let me to attend Sundowners? ;)

GMAT done!

2005-08-10T10:17:00.000+04:00

So, I’ve made a frame for my picture - and I’m absolutely content with it. Now the time comes to think about brushes and paint ;)

But before I’ll go thinking about transcripts, recommendations, scholarships and all the other things – I have a pile of promises to fulfill (I’ve done some already – cleaned the flat, for instance, or written this blog entry) and a heap of books to read. I decided to give myself a week of a free life. But after it, I’ll make a plan for myself and will start fulfilling it.

So, how did it go? ;)

First, I should say, that I’m not a native speaker and I have never lived somewhere in an English-speaking country (that helps when you pass the test, sure), and I’m afraid this ‘backfired’ at my Verbal. I have spotted that if I see an easy problem, I understand it and do it in English all right, but as soon as I face a tough one, I have to translate it in Russian, so I lose time or answer wrongly. I checked that idea with a friend of mine, to whom I sent some of the toughest ones’ – when he translates the problem with a dictionary, he does it right, but under time-pressure he sometimes misses the point. I just wonder, how it is to pass the test for a native.

Second, I have a strong background in math, so Quant was no problem for me – it was important just not to forget the words like reciprocal, factor, multiple, range or gross profit… because I know what to do, when I see them in Russian, but if I don’t remember the translation, it won’t help me.

Third, I was lucky with AWA-topics – they were about job-candidates and some company crashing – so I had a lot to say. Well, AWA-results will tell.

Anyway, I know I could have done better, if I devoted more time to preparation (I began looking for books in May, started doing Official Guide in June, but have done only half of it or even less before passing the test). Yes, I have a lot of excuses for myself such as work, friends, family and the famous law of 20/80. But I said to myself, that I would be content with 650+. I actually got over 700, so I’m feeling glad.

AWA Tips (for non-natives, like me, mostly)
First, don’t worry about AWA. It won’t count towards your score and many AdComs don’t pay attention to AWA marks (or so they say). But there is still a possibility, that they will check your style – to be sure, it was you who wrote your essays for school and not some highly-paid consultant.
I have downloaded all the 280 essays from Scoretop.com forum, written in quite a good quality and read about 1/3 of them (I devoted a whole week to this). I have made a template for myself and practiced it with 8 essays (4 Issue, 4 Argument), until I felt confident and words like ‘furthermore’, ‘similarly’, ‘in addition’ spread all over my texts. You can see, I’m still writing close to template with all those ‘first’, ‘second’ and ‘third’ ;)

Quant Tips (for 48+)
Be sure you know all the words concerning math. Check tough questions at GMATClub.com forum (or any other forum of your choice). Understand the strategy that underlies probability and evaluation problems (they are usually appear as the top ones). Practice DS questions.

Verbal Tips
SC – there are a lot of guides and strategies about this one on-line, and it’s important to learn all about parallel constructions, apples and oranges and the rest. My strategy for difficult sentences is to use some sort of ‘bubble sorting’:

1. Eliminate as many chances as you can. Don’t panic if you see nothing to eliminate at first.

2. Compare A and B (if they are not eliminated, of course). What is worse? Why? (it’s very important to know ‘why’) Chose ‘the best one’.

3. Compare ‘the best one’ with the next one. Is the latter better? If yes, make it ‘the best one’

4. Continue until you have only one choice left, which is ‘the best’ :)

CR – practice to understand GMAT logic. Kaplan disc helped me a lot – they have some useful tips about finding the better choice if you have two left: try to refute both – which undermines argument most – is the answer.

RC – I’ve read a lot about strategies for this one, but I don’t use them, because I have no time to draw maps, etc. I do the following. As the text appears I read the first question. If it concerns some special part of the passage I read that part and answer the question. By the time I have a general question in front of me, I have already read and understood about half of the text.

Preparation for test-day

If you take test on Saturday, take a week of holiday at work. Revise your error log on Monday and Tuesday, do a ‘real test’ simulation on Wednesday (revise errors) and another one on Thursday. Don’t prepare on Friday – go for a walk, swim in the swimming pool, clean the house. If you definitely want to practice, revise some concepts for SC and read a bit of AWA essays.

On the test-day, have a good breakfast (if you love pasta, fried potatoes or roast beef – cook it in advance and get up with a feeling of ‘Vienna-waits-for-you’). Take with you a bottle of cold tea with sugar (your brain will need it during the breaks).

Use ear-plugs. Even if you’re alone in the test room, there will be a lot of distracting noises around - don’t let them get you out of your flow.

Have a good mood and a winning mind. There’re lots of people who did it and who did great. Even if you don’t do it now, you’ll make it a month later, so there’s nothing to worry about.
So, that’s it and enough of GMAT. I’ll write my database with all resources on a disk, sell all prep-books next Monday and forget about it for the next 5 years.

As soon as I wrote that, I remembered how I got my driving license: I passed the test when I was 19, got the document, valid for 10 years and… stored it in a box at home, since I didn’t have a car. I nearly bought one this spring, but changed my mind: I decided to leave the money for my business school, so I’m still commuting by metro ;)

Women and MBA [versus children & family?]

2005-07-30T17:07:00.000+04:00

I’ve been trying to put down the thoughs about this subject for quite a long time, but I finally wouldn’t do it if so many people hadn’t asked me to (well, they actually didn’t know what I was going to write about so the blame is mine, of course ;)). And though I try to devote as much time as possible to my GMAT prep, I decided not to postpone my blog-activity further.

A number of people are interested in the question “what the meaning of life is” (yeah, I know, 48 ;)), but I guess, many women have an ultimate answer for this one – children. Most men won’t share this point of view, because they traditionally assign the meaning of life to career, power, or simply “good life”. And I’m sorry for those women who think that children are silly and annoying rascals (but yes, they can be, like anyone ;)).
I’m reading blogs of MBAs and future MBAs for some time now, and as I have spotted, approximately 1/2 of men have family (and/or children), while most women do not. Wives and girlfriends are easily following their partners, but if a girl wants to go for an MBA, she usually leaves her partner (or her partner leaves her). The only exception, I notice, are men, who have (or going to have) an MBA themselves. Seems really like you cannot eat the pie and have it. It’s a weight on my mind, even though I know the reason for their behavior. Correct me if I’m wrong (or maybe two-year full-time students are just a wrong sample? ;))
My mom used to say that the higher education a woman has, the fewer children she’s got. And – the higher you go, the higher standards you have for men whom you can marry :) I won’t try to refute the latter, but as for children… Well, it seems impossible to prepare, study and then work (to pay back the loan) – and have kids simultaneously. Kids are out of question for… 1-2-3… 5 or so years. Or not? Any success stories about husbands leaving everything and going with their wives or babies at lectures? ;) [Obviously joking. But there is only a part of joke in a joke: my family says that I already have 2 diplomas – my mom was going to have me while she was doing hers.]

I guess that is why there are fewer women in B-Schools that men, and not for any other reason: it's difficult to handle one or more 20-year-projects (bringing up a child) and do anything serious along.
Opened America, as usual ;)

[UPD: I've found an interesting article on MBAJungle.com about families and MBA]

New GMATPrep tool and a cool T-Shirt

2005-07-21T15:07:00.000+04:00

I’ve downloaded Limited Summer GMATPrep Software from this link Dave posted on his site. And it looks rather different than those I did a month ago (and math seemed a bit tough to me yesterday night – but maybe I was just exhausted?). It seems the test is going to be the same - since I'm going to take money-back version by Person Vue – that’s great to know in advance, many thanks to Dave.

One of these days I’ve seen the boy in a T-shirt which said: “Good boys go to heaven and bad boys go to London”. I want that T-shirt! ;) (better change ‘boys’ for ‘girls’ though)

UPD: Yes, I've bought myself this T-Shirt half a year later :)

A bit more about books

2005-07-15T16:31:00.000+04:00

Things tend to happen all at once. For example, you receive an offer from a business school and on the same very day you receive a job offer you always dreamed about. Or you schedule an appointment with a friend and at the same very place (city with millions of people, thousands of places to eat) you meet another friend of yours. I call this luck. I am fascinated with it.

As I have said, it’s a pity that the book Peopleware is not translated into Russian yet – I would like to do it, but – alas! – don’t have time. I live with that idea for about half a year, but after pronouncing it aloud (writing actually :) ) – is there someone above us listening to such things? – yesterday I came across an interesting publishing company: there are three men, who read books in English, liked them and thought it’s a pity, that people can’t read them in Russian (just like I did). And they came up to an idea to start a company, buy rights of translation and publish books. They have already published a couple of books and wrote some books of their own. So I sent an e-mail to them about the wonderful book of DeMarco and Lister and in two hours received a reply from one of their directors: at the same very time he was writing an ad ‘Offer-Us-A-Book’ for their site, encouraging people to come up with the books, that were not yet translated, but were worth it. And here came my letter (what a coincidence!).

So I gave him a copy of Peopleware and we agreed, that we’ll get in contact after he reads it (and decides whether it is worth publishing). Maybe I’ll even participate in the translation (that’s the thing I like), though I don’t know if I am reliable because of my GMAT-essay-transcripts-project-work-and-so-on :)

Enough of Peopleware, there’s another book I’d like to talk about. I’ve just finished Michael Dobbs Whispers of Betrayal. It’s a wonderful book, that I would advise for light-reading to anyone. It is funny and good (don’t believe in words that are written on the cover, the make it sound like some kind of thriller which it is not).

It is about good Army soldiers, that ‘were retired’ and decided that they want an apology from politicians (because they were politicians who forced those cutbacks in the Army). Soon this ‘matter of honour’ transformed into a kind of war, in which soldiers made fun out of politicians and politicians made fun out of themselves. The right book about broken lives and clever men. It is impossible to get a happy end in a book like this, but the author manages it somehow. I enjoyed the Whispers of Betrayal very-very much.

And I also know, what I will be reading next week ;) – Harry Potter comes out tomorrow, so… Voldemort beware! :))))

Some useful links to DaRaverLA posts (GMAT & Essays)

2005-07-12T15:50:00.000+04:00

...Doesn't live here anymore.

I'm sorry that's all there is to it...

I came across a very interesting blog of DaRaverLA. He's not there anymore, but he has some really valuable posts. I would like to provide links for them here, because I think they will be useful to anyone, who's starting the Journey (like I do):
1. GMAT Math tips
2. GMAT Verbal Tips
3. More GMAT Verbal Tips
4. Very good advice about writing application essays
5. Just a funny post about math in different business schools

Grief and sorrow

2005-07-08T14:04:00.000+04:00

I was shocked to hear the news about terrorist attacks in London. Shocked, but not surprised… I feel awfully sorry for victims and their families, I feel sorry for people, who were stuck in transport and couldn’t get home, I feel sorry for relatives and friends, who lost nerves trying to get through the lines to hear anything from their beloved – in order to get sure everything is OK… And I feel sorry for the feeling of insecurity that many Londoners now have. I know this feeling, I live with it every day.
New York, London, Moscow… to be continued, I’m sure…
In today’s world, nobody anywhere can feel secure, because the most violent animal on Earth is MAN. I think, we made a mistake somewhere along the way, and it is considered normal to sell weapons to those, who are not ready for them (yes, that is illegal, but it happens everyday); or give ideas to the minds that are not ready and use those ideas for evil purposes. Let’s imagine, we had no money, but had just an equivalent of karma – like many forums and communities have now in the Internet: you express your ideas, you behave politely, you help others – you earn karma and people respect you. You become not ‘a man from the street’, you become ‘one of the top ones’. And now imagine, there would be some fast (cheat) equivalent for getting this karma (for example, kill a man - get his karma)… this will make all the system down. In our real world, money was supposed, perhaps, to be something like this karma – you work hard, you get it, you are able to exchange it for what you want. But they don’t show you are good, or you can be trusted, or anything… Like I said, we made mistake somewhere and we are now paying for it…
I think that it is important to live for the future (else: why go to the University if die tomorrow, yeah? Why spend the whole day at work, when the weather is so good?). But there is also a good advice to live every day like your last one. As I understand it: love your beloved today, when they are with you, alive, and not tomorrow, when they become a memory (it is easier to love and appreciate and feel sorry for a memory, I know), do the things you want to do today (go buy a pass to fitness center, begin to learn Italian, etc.), because you may not be able to do them tomorrow.
Every cloud has a silver lining, if you look hard for it, or so they say.

Books must read

2005-07-06T18:30:00.000+04:00

I'm gonna get dressed for success...

I have a credit card now, I have registered for GMAT and I can order books from Amazon. So it’s time to talk about books :)

I’m a books worm – I love reading. Commuting to work for about 2 hours a day, I have time to read (what else to do in a tube?) – and I use this time :) I also read books before going to bed (not now, now I read GMAT textbooks and do GMAT problems…)

I read both in English and in Russian (cannot say I read in German, because it was just one book so far). I like fiction and I also like good business books – the latter I’m going to talk about.
I’m not going to tell you about books in UI-design and eXtremeProgramming – if you are an IT-professional, you may know more than I do. If not – then it won't be interesting to you.

I’d like to talk about finance books, project management books and the like. Any comments about these are welcomed – I’m going to spend some money at Amazon ;) Pre-MBA reading lists are also welcomed.

Let’s get it started… yeah…

Project Management

Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, Peopleware – is a definitely ‘must read’ book.
Ed Sullivan, Under Pressure – is about project management in small and medium IT-company.
Edward Yourdon, Death March – great book. And I read exactly at the time of participating in some kind of ‘dead’ project. You will get to know how to survive in them without this book (you'll have to), but this book gives all the necessary guidelines in painless way.

General books (just for a start and if you think of becoming an entrepreneur one day)

Bill Gates, Business @ the speed of thought – this is a kind of book, that tells you: "What, you are still sitting on you a**? Go and grab that opportunity NOW!"
Jim Collins, From good to great – another good book about why ordinary companies become great and why others don’t
Jonas Ridderstrale & Kjell Nordström, Funky Business and Karaoke Capitalism – both books are short and extremely motivating

Finance books

I was advised to read David Bach, Smart Couples Finish Rich and Suze Orman, The Laws of Money, The Lessons of Life, so this is where I’m going to start.

Fiction, but business-related

Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged - I wrote a post dedicated to this book here.
Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister, Deadline - a president of some country decides to make a great experiment: he launches a number of software projects to create rival products to software bestsellers. He also asks the manager to try different approaches with different teams (3 teams are working on one project in parallel) and see which one is better.
Eliyahu Goldratt & Jeff Cox, The Goal - This is a theory of constraints described in a captivating way. A manager of a plant tries to make his plant work. He has 3 months to make it profitable. Day-by-day, week-by-week... will he succeed?
Michael Ridpath, Final venture - this thriller combines four areas I am keen on: the hero is an MBA grad, works in a VC on the high tech and healthcare start-ups. Someone has killed his father-in-law and he needs to find the killer quickly or else the police is going to accuse him.

So, that was really a short list, but I think, it will grow larger (with your help too).

Some tuning: Want to be notified about new messages in blogs?

2005-06-29T13:57:00.000+04:00

Here by the ocean waves carry voices…

Last month I read in Guillaume’s blog about getting notified about recent blog entries by e-mail. I decided, that this is a good idea: not read the blogs from time to time, but be notified as soon as something new comes out.

So, I didn’t want to change my mail-client to Mozilla Thunderbird (by the way, I already have a lot of mail in my mailbox and don’t want another huge pile there!). And I didn’t explore the opportunity of Bloglines, where you don’t need to install anything, but can acquire everything on a single browser-page (correct me, if I’m wrong). Instead, I searched for some programs, that collect blogs, and came across RSS Bandit, so now I have a smiling yellow face in my tray ;)

I’m notified not only about MBA’s blogs, but also about entries in ClearAdmit (it was not easy to find their atom feed!) and Ed Brill’s Blog. Maybe I’ll add some more blogs to my list later :)

Clubs at LBS

2005-06-28T14:29:00.000+04:00

Mickey Mouse club

We'll have fun

We'll be new faces

High! High! High! High!

One of the essays in Application Process this year was “What type of student club or campus community event do you envisage yourself initiating?”. I am not sure, whether there will be the same essay next year, but I’ve been thinking for some time about clubs I would join (or organize). I was searching for LBS Clubs and by chance found this link with all clubs, present at LBS.
I would like to ask LBS MBA2007 (KV, Suzy, rsr.pt), what kind of clubs are you going to organize (if it is not yet a secret)?
I wish (in future) I could join Swimming Club (to swim for MBA Olympics - I love swimming and go to swimming pool at least twice a week) and Women in Business (naturally, why not?). I’m thinking about Italian Club (I love Italian food ;)), Snow Club (not surprisingly for someone, living in a country, which one third of the whole year is covered with snow :)) and, perhaps, Tennis Club (been playing tennis since the age of 7… ah, tennis rackets were so heavy then, I had to hold mine with both hands…). And I also have an idea about organizing a community of my own, but I won’t disclose the idea yet :)

GMAT resources on the web

2005-06-26T18:05:00.000+04:00

I decided, that I will name my posts with a proper title and the words with “©” place in the epigraph. Else it will be too difficult to find anything here after some twenty posts.

I will not provide a full list of GMAT resources here, but I will write some, that I found quite useful. All the resources listed below are free of charge (or you can receive some useful info in them for free, and pay for additional info or course).

Forums

GMAT Club - good forum with lots of materials and help (available to registered users). You can pay for some materials, or you can receive them for free if you contribute a certain number of posts to the forum (a big number, I should say). There are a lot of good advice there, for example to keep your error log of every single error you make in order to revise them before your exam. Then, it's a wonderful community, which can help you prepare for the exam: post your questions, get explanations, help others - explain what they don't know.

Test Magic - also a great community around GMAT and other tests.

ScoreTop - another forum with lots of information. For example, you can easily get 3000 of additional RC questions (registration not needed), or pass a timed quant test on-line (registration needed) or find Kaplan Workshops and GMAT+ or download all AWA essays. (Thanks to Forrest Gump for this link!)

Software

POWERPrep Software - direct link to the practice test download (registration needed).
You can also download AWA topics from that site.

Books

I haven’t found a single free of charge complete book worth of reading in the net, but here is a link for some CR problems from Official Guide.

Strategy

GMAT Tutor has good plans of preparation strategy (you can also find such plans on the forums above. Many people, who score high, post their strategies in forums), a list of idioms, tips and tricks.

GMAT Study Strategy from Dave - this is a very useful resource together with Dave’s blog. A single grade list of easy-hard questions in Official Guide is lot more you can gain from many other sites. Dave devoted a lot of effort to prepare this outstanding piece of advice about strategy and books, and all other stories.

Strategy for CR (and other sections) - not very long but quite useful guide for all GMAT sections.

Questions on your e-mail

DeltaCourse - a new math question every day, both easy and hard ones.
Manhattan GMAT - a difficult math problem every week.

These are the links I have found most useful (I know there are a lot more out there - but we don't have time to explore them all. After all, we are to pass the test, not to enjoy the process, aren't we?)

As for myself - I have read through strategy sites, done POWERPrep tests (if they are computer adaptive, then they are adaptive in a different way, than that we are told in textbooks), receive questions on e-mail and do them. I keep track of errors I make in an error log, and I also arranged a database for myself, where I put all links, articles and other materials, which are related to MBA. ;) It is a good thing to do, because you will not worry, that you’ll miss or forget something.

As for epigraph - it's easy to get lost in all these data, you find in the net :)

Choosing the School and searching for GMAT Literature

2005-06-24T14:21:00.000+04:00

Hey Joey, c'mon tell me 'bout your dreams…

STEP 2. CHOOSING THE SCHOOL

In March I came across a contest, - organized by some good Russian newspaper – the winner of which would be awarded a place at Durham School of Business. I began searching for articles and essays to get the idea “why MBA, why now”, I searched the Durham site and found out that the place was awarded in distance-learning program… what a pity!

I appreciate distant learning and all the advantages of Internet, but I still think, that it is better to study full-time and in person, because, first of all, you can devote all your time to studying, second, you have face-to-face contact with staff (I have always preferred vis-à-vis exams to written or test ones, because I’m not able to use my charisma during the latter *joking*) and finally, get to know your classmates, build you personal network, which is the next (for someone even the first) big thing apart from the education itself.

So I didn’t take that chance, but I started thinking about MBA.

Then I came to a presentation, organized by British Council, about getting master degrees in UK (that was a really helpful one!), found out about ratings and resources. Going through those resources I surfed to LBS site and registered. They sent me their catalogue (surprise!) – and at that point I began to think about LBS seriously. I read through the catalogue, then the website, then began searching about LBS in BusinessWeek-Forums and eventually came across these blogs. :)

I already knew, that there are also Oxford and Cambridge MBA programs (not forget about Durham) in UK and INSEAD in France (and a lot of other great schools, like IESE, but they won’t put me closer to UK). I feel that I’m missing something, having not researched them properly, but I like to focus on one important thing and do all my best about it. And then – I’m lucky, I know that, I usually do it from the first attempt.

STEP 3. LITERATURE FOR GMAT (useful for Russians!)

When I was preparing for IELTS, I have found all the materials I needed in the Internet, but I couldn’t find the same thing for GMAT. It seems to me, that this test is not so popular among Russians as IELTS (many people pass this one for immigration to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and they tend to help each other).

So I found out that in our major bookstores (in Moscow) and even online ones there are no books for GMAT (except for Barron’s, but it’s the same as “no”). I went to American Center (Nikoloyamskaya, 1, metro Taganskaya) and found a great variety of books for GMAT, SAT, GRE, TOEFL, but they don’t give them home. Stay there and study… Although my trip was not in vain: they gave me phones of shops where the books may be:

Anglia, (095) 299-77-66. They usually have Princeton Review (great!), Arco and Barron’s
Angliskaya Kniga, (095) 928-20-21. May already have something.

And in a week or two I decided to phone MBAConsult (the company that prepares for MBA) and it turned out, that they also had books! (Official Guide, Princeton and some of Kaplan’s)

I found out, that most GMAT-takers in Moscow order books from Amazon (you must have a credit card anyway to pass your GMAT – else it will be very difficult to register) and wait for them for about 4 weeks. Amazon is also a great source of discovering whether the book is worth buying or not.

And at last - it’s possible to buy second-hand books (I will sell mine when I pass the test :), but it’s a game of chance: you need books quickly, but they maybe no one wanting to sell.
I don’t know how people in other cities of Russia manage to get books, it seems an impossible task, really :)

STEP 4. GMAT ITSELF
Well, I’m preparing right now. Quant is nearly easy (I get more than 90%), but Verbal seems impossible. I cannot really master the logic of it.

So I’d better go and study and post some good web-resources a bit later.

*Little bit more about HSMP

You can get a HSMP without MBA – first of all, you must qualify, then you have to gather a lot of documents, wait for 2-7 weeks about the decision and finally you must find job in UK. But with MBA from TOP50 all you have to do, is provide your diploma – and you get the visa (it will be definitely easier to fing a job ;).

Where to go, what to do - a bit about myself

2005-06-22T16:36:00.000+04:00

She was the first girl on the moon...

No, not first, really. I know, that there are some people from Russia (or better to say Russians or Russian-speaking-people, because they may have lived anywhere, prior to coming to school) who graduated from LBS. I don't know them in person, so they are like a phantom example to me. Most people here, in Moscow, are eager about American schools. I don't, in fact, understand why: I see advantages in American schools, but I also see disadvantages in America. So I will not look in that direction (at first) and focus on European schools.
I'll make myself clear - I'm not admitted anywhere yet, because I'm just starting my Application Game and keeping fingers crossed to finish it next year :)

PREVIEW
I always wanted to have a chance to live and travel in Europe: it is a set of small (comparing to Russia, mind me) countries, with different languages, different cultures and long-long history, - already fascinating, isn't it?..
Europe is near and America&Australia are too far away: it will be to expensive to visit my friends and family or to persuade them visit me ;)
I have always been specially interested in UK: reading books about ("Oak roots" for example, though I don't think it was translated into English), reading English authors (Conan Doyle, Stivenson, Tolkien, Rowling, Pratchett - wow! - and it is not the whole list!), loved music, films, was interested in people, culture and history...
English language is the one I know best of all European ones (additionally studing French and German and hope, someday they will be as good as it).

STEP 1. IELTS
Short time ago, I have done IELTS: not yet knowing, what for - simply to test my knowledge of language, which I studied for so many years. I got 8 out of 9 and was pleased with myself :)
Immediately after it I began researching where I can go in UK to continue my education (I believe, this is the best investment in myself I can make).
...I am still thinking about applying to some Master Program in IT or Usability Course in Holland... Maybe it will be my backup if I fail in GMAT. But I'm bewitched with the idea of MBA (had been bewitched and reading about it at the age of fifteen, but then it was just a dream, really).

I found out, that all MBAs from TOP50 can get a HSMP Visa in UK, and this is great. Also a person, who had a Master degree at Scotland can have a work permit (for two years, as my sclerosis tells me) in Scotland.

to be continued...