DAK Recap Series #2 - The Admits

The Admits

Another purpose of admits weekend is to meet the other admits and basically see if you connect with your future classmates. However, I don't think DAK was designed well for that. It might be different for those who were able to attend some of the Thursday night social events, but for the majority of people who attended only Friday and Saturday full day events, the schedule was extremely packed with talks after talks. We had a little scavenger hunt activity on Saturday but it was cut short due to my section's never ending Q&A with the section leaders (which was not at all bad~). From my conversation with several admits who also went to other schools' admits weekend, it seemed that certain schools have more free time for socializing or just admits bonding activities. I am not sure if everyone wants more time to bond with other admits (some of whom will not be your classmates anyway...), but I certainly can appreciate some more time to do that. Our scavenger hunt was surely fun! Here is a picture of how we spelled out Kellogg in the atrium :)

Our Scavenger hunt team

The bustling hallway

Admits listening to presentations

One thing I want to emphasize is that you do have plenty of time outside of the regular day-time activities to interact with people. We had a dinner, a closing reception, as well as pub time and club time. Unfortunately my energy level deteriorated with the lack of sleep and the fully packed day time activity. I was barely functioning during pub time on Friday and didn't even make it to the club on Saturday. So ya, can't comment too much on that I suppose :)

TG = "Thank God it's Friday"

@ the Keg
a dive bar which apparently is Kellogg students' hang out hot spot

So overall, I think I was able to talk to some 20-30 admits and really built a connection with about 6-8 of them? Which was not too bad. After-all, I am more into building meaningful connections than meeting as many people as possible. My overall impression of the admits is in line with the students, maybe a little shy and more low-key, but then again, I didn't make it to the club.

P.S It seems that half of the admits were set on Kellogg and half were still comparing schools. The most admits I encountered were deciding between Kellogg and Wharton or Kellogg and Berkeley. Also there were quite a few international folks who made all the way from Europe, Latin America and Asia to Evanston for the weekend. Kudos to them!

Next post: DAK - the MBA program

DAK Recap Series #1 - The Kellogg Culture

I finally completed my HBS interview, which turned out to be more conversational than a grilling one. Now as I wait for the final result which is entirely out of my control (and any last minute interview invites from Haas or Stanford), I can finally sit down and write this long over-due post on my DAK experience, which happened almost one month ago.

I don't want to recall every single event happened at DAK so I will just make a simple list at the end of this series of posts showcasing what DAK offers. I will focus my post on some key takeaways and my overall impression of Kellogg through the experience. I am also dividing it into several posts so it's not in a super long post. :)

The Kellogg Culture

I think the best part of any admit weekend is that you really get a sense of what the students are like and have a taste of the culture. Although at DAK, you don't have that much socializing time due to the packed schedule, you do get a sense of what Kellogg is about. Two things stood out to me: the student-run culture and the down-to-earth students.

DAK is a entirely student-run event, and I have to give a thumbs up for the DAK team's organization and execution. Given the 300 something students and significant others, there were definitely possibilities for some chaotic moment, but I didn't really experience any. Every time I stepped out of room, there were always some students in the hallway with the DAK shirts, directing people where to go. From KPW to DAK, everyone I met at Kellogg was easy-going and genuine. Sure, there were a few that I probably wouldn't become close friends with due to certain personality differences, but I have yet to meet an arrogant or bad-attitude Kellogg student, which says a lot in the MBA world.

What I really loved about DAK was my section leaders. The admitted students were divided into sections named in a similar way as the real Kellogg sections. Mine was called "Jugheads" which was the junior name for "Bucketheads", go figure. Each section had 5-6 section leaders who were current students, both 1st and 2nd years and they pretty much ran the break out sessions and answered any questions we had. My section leaders were a group of really down-to-earth, fun-loving folks who were very honest in answering our endless questions and went out of their ways to help us. I felt very comfortable around these folks and could see really see myself being apart of the community.

My Awesome Section Leaders

The very pretty Kellogg glass

The not so impressive DAK sign outside of Jacobs :P

Next Post: DAK - the Admits

Haas oh Haas~

It's been very quiet on Haas front~ Super Saturday is coming fast~ and I still haven't got that coveted interview invite. I kept going back to my folder and read and re-read my Haas application. The fact is, I still love every word of it. Ok, maybe not every word, but it's certainly one of my strongest applications. So I keep being optimistic as I wait, although the time is running out...

To those still waiting patiently for Haas invite out there, best of luck to all of us!

p.s DAK post will be coming soon~ just need to focus on HBS interview prep right now~

HBS interview invite

Last Friday, HBS released about 800 interview invites to R2 applicants. I was lucky enough to get one of them. Since I was attending DAK at Kellogg, I was perfectly distracted from worrying about the invite. In addition, after R1, I was more realistic about my expectations and was psychologically prepared to not get an invite from HBS. So when I signed into the Kellogg wifi with my admit account(I thought that was a nice touch for Kellogg), and saw that invite sitting in my email, I was pleasantly surprised.

I felt honored to be selected by HBS to move on to the next stage in this almost cruel admission process. At the same time, I plan to continue staying humble and grounded, because I know there are so many applicants out there with amazing achievements, great aspirations and big hearts who didn't make it this time. And I am by no means better than them.

I also want to continue through the process with a realistic expectation. After-all, about half of all interviewed applicants don't make it in the end. Most applicants do well in interviews and a lot of time it will come down to factors outside of our control at this point. Therefore, all I aim to do is to try my best at the interview and be ok with whatever the final result would be.

btw, I had a great time at DAK. It was exhuasting but extremely informational and very fun. I will write a detailed post later this week with pictures!

Hope you had a great valentine's day or/and Chinese New Year! :)

DAK here I come!

I thought I would have plenty of time to write blogs once application season finished. Reality proved otherwise. In between work, social events, running, snowboarding, cooking and volunteering, I somehow ended up with no time to write a decent blog entry! Just imagine how hectic life can be in b-school! Hopefully I can keep up with blogging then!

Another reason I haven't written many entries lately is because I am experiencing a little bit of a writer's block. I have been writing basically just about anything that came to mind. As much as I like reflecting on my random thoughts, I also want to improve the quality of my post and have a more defined focus. It's just that I haven't found it yet.

So in the meantime, please allow me to ramble on~ (as you can see this entry has already deviated far from the title...)

I am meeting a group of Gmatcluber tonight and will be leaving for Kellogg to attend DAK with bf tomorrow. I have been bombarded with emails from DAK section leaders and Kellogg student club leaders about all sorts of social gatherings during the weekend. Looks like the weekend is shaping up pretty well! The real challenge of this weekend to me is the weather. Living in soCal, you don't experience canceled flight or road block due to bad weather that often. I am renting a car due to the location of my hotel and it will be interesting how that would pan out...thanks Jeremy and Orlando for the weather/driving advice btw.

As far as DAK goes, I am really looking forward to it. During KPW, I had a great time, and that was when I was still an applicant :) This time, I will bring a camera, take lots of pictures and report back with details! Until next week, ciao!

p.s. I know I promised to write an entry about interviews. After thinking more about it though, I realized that I need more time to really come up with content with real values without repeating myself or information you can find elsewhere online. So I am going to wait on that.

(picture courtesy of Kellogg website)

The forever Mac and PC debate

image taken from http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~jshersh/

My poll on "Mac vs. Pc" has been interesting during the past days. The competition started out neck to neck in the first few days, occasionally one took a 1 vote lead, but the other always quickly caught up. Yesterday, Mac was leading by a solid 3 votes and seemed to be eying for the triumphant finish. But guess what, it's back to 50:50 again!

I am actually very interested in your opinion on this. Is a MacBook or a PC laptop better for b-school students? Let me give you a little bit of background. I am long overdue for a laptop. My current HP pavilion is 7 years old. The hard-drive had been swapped out and so was the powerjac. It runs as slow as surfing online on a dail-up. And some of the side buttons haven't been working for long time. As a long time PC user, I am ready for something new, refreshing, reliable and fast. The main problem I have with PC is the windows system. It runs super fast when it's new, but the speed usually drops pretty significantly once you start using it for awhile and run more programs. Recently my two year old windows mobile system on my cell phone started acting up strangely, and I don't even surf the web or use any programs other than sending text messages on my cell phone!

Of course I see the upside of buying a PC for b-school. With all the excel and statistics programs that we are supposed to use in b-school, PC is probably a better choice for compatibility reason. Plus I do have a tiny bit of knowledge about how to troubleshoot a PC gone haywire~ (although sometimes that becomes the problem...).

But MacBook is so tempting! From what I heard, it's just a superior operating system, in addition to all the "cool" features that come with it. I can see myself picking up making video projects in school if I have a MacBook. After all, having a "fun" machine might just take away a little bit of the boringness navigating through spreadsheets :)

And then there is the price difference. I have been used to using large screens and am a little hesitant about a 13" MacBook. The 15" MacBook though, drives the price gap bigger between my two options.

So what's your opinion? I would love to hear from a converted Mac user about their first-hand experiences comparing the two operating systems. I am more concerned about mid to long-term performance. Given that I will be broke after bschool, I am not looking to buy another laptop anytime soon after this purchase! Thanks in advance guys! :)

More waiting on MIT ~

After an unproductive day constantly staring at my phone, I opened up the MIT online application expecting to see a rejection letter~ turned out I was deferred to R2 for decision. I know this happened to some R1 applicants without interview, so now it's my time to join the club.

I am a little disappointed I guess. I haven't got a chance to visit MIT when school was in session and sit in a class. I was actually looking forward to doing that if I got admitted. There are a lot of aspects of Sloan that I am excited about~ too bad I don't get to explore it more in the R1 decision time frame, since R2 decision deadline is in April and Kellogg's deposit is due end of March...this deferral just made life a lot more complicated...

So with three interviews, one admit, one rejection and one pseudo-waitlist, my R1 concludes in the most diverse possible way~ I feel extremely thankful for Kellogg offering me an admit so early in the season so that I had a great holiday (despite not doing much but writing essays) and a peace of mind while waiting for Wharton and MIT (was still pretty anxious though, waiting is never fun). Looks more and more like I will be heading to the wind city~~~