Universidad Carlos III de Madrid MBA

This university is going to be my friend’s destination for the next one year. After few months of searches and discussions with alumni we end up choosing this school for her MBA. I hope this turns out to be an amazing experience for her in her life as well as her career. I would give an Indian touch to it as most of the calculations are done in Indian Rupee. This MBA is one of the cheapest in Europe and its alumni does have an interesting experience to share. The only issue for this school would be the job situation in Spain and it gets more tough for the Non EU citizens.

http://www.mba-master.net/en/index.shtml

Initial Expenses:

Tuition Fee = 12000 Euros = 7,20,000 Rs

Airfare = 40,000 Rs

Medical Insurance = 30 Euros X 12 = 360 Euros = 21,600 Rs per year

Laptop = 40,000 Rs

Spanish Class = 7,000 Rs ( in India )

Books = 300 Euros = 18,000 Rs

Monthly Expenses:

Apartment = 500 Euros max. = 30,000 Rs

Food + other expenses = 350 Euros = 21,000 Rs

Phone = 50 euros = 3,000 Rs

So for 12 months = 10800 Euros = 6,48,000 Rs

So Total expenses= 14,94,600 Rs

If we take a 7 % margin ( for unintentional expenses ) so we will need a loan of 16,00,000 Rs from the bank considering zero investment from anybody.

Assumptions included in this costs:

1. Apartment can be much cheaper if she shares with other people and most students live like that. The ex student from facebook told us that apartments can be between 250 euros and 1000 euros depending how comfortable you want ur house.

2. She won’t be earning anything during her course. If she finds a job in Madrid as a part timer then most of living expense estimates would be cut down by half. She would be free in the mornings from Monday to Thursday. But she needs to have a basic spanish knowledge to get a small part time job ( ex: waiter/ store clerk / or maybe a shop assisstant ).

So I used the Canara Bank loan calculator and she can start repaying her loan 6 months after getting a job or 1 yr after graduation whichever is earlier. She can also choose to pay it in 5 years or 7 years.I just did a quick search about loans from Canara bank and it seems the prevailing rates is 9.75% for loans upto 20 lacs and for girl students it is 8.75 .

Let’s choose 7 years repayment of the educational loan and in with the 8.75 % interest rate she would have to pay 25,539 Rs per month for 7 years. If she repays it early, then even better considering you have pay less interest. The total interest on a loan of 16,00,000 rs would be 5,45,276 Rs in 7 years. This is not at all a big amount. People pay much much more for housing loan from private banks.

The Experience in Madrid is going to change both of your’s life for sure. You will see that world is full of opportunities and you don’t have to limit yourself in one corner of your office to pay your monthly electricity bills. I guess life’s much more than buying a car and buying a house for yourself. You guys at this age should experience the world. You have time to settle down for your house loans and car loans in your future life. Still in 20′s and you guys should go for it. I have so many different kind of people over in Tokyo that now i don’t even think that any profession can be small. Even the chef at an Indian restaurant earns more than over here, i,e 2,00,000 Rs per month. His employer also pays for his two return trips to India an year. So it all depends on what you want.

All this would be possible if she takes this MBA damn seriously and makes an active effort to get it done the way it would benefit her the most. You need to work hard, learn spanish, study MBA, maintain a relationship and then party too all simultaneously. So you need to give your 200%.

Manhattan CAT -1

After like ages of deliberation I finally wrote my first practice GMAT for this attempt. My prep basically consists of one or two hours of surfing through beatthegmat forums and solve their problems and go through their discussions. I find the interactive way of helping each other and analyzing greatly influences one’s basic understanding of the simple problems of GMAT.

GMAT is to test our patience and how we prioritize our time to critical situations for example the GMAT. For most of us, it’s months of preparation and hard work which goes into that so we do expect something out of it. In the end who holds his patience wins the game. Its very important for one to concentrate on the test day and do not let your mind wander away. If it’s required do train your mind accordingly. Its all in the mind. The problems are overtly simple at times, we just need to break through the glass wall and get our answers out.

The one I took was not exactly under test conditions. I treated myself with 3 hours of nap time and freshened up between the verbal section and the quant section. Overall I am not quite dissapointed with my score.

Verbal: 33

Quant: 46

Overall: 650

I am quite disappointed with the number of questions correct in each section. It was around 50 % to 60 % so the strike rate was pretty horrendous. The time factor does gets to my nerve.  Till now I haven’t practiced much under timed conditions except this test. I am planning to take a test every week from now on till July 14.  Patience is my key issue and my mind is my major enemy. Need to capture it fast and tie it down to the computer screen for 4 hours.

I have five major books for studies but till now I have hardly covered 10 % of them. These books are more than sufficient for anybody taking the test.

1. Official Guide 12th Edition

2. Powerscore GMAT Critical Reasoning Bible

3. Manhattan Sentence Correction

4. Kaplan GMAT Premier 2010-2011

5. LSAT 10 Official Tests

Simplifying GMAT SC Problems

I digged this out of the gold mine which the BEAT the GMAT website. The author of this is an experienced Manhattan instructor named Stacey Koprince. This so well explains out the basics of attacking any SC problem in general. Find out the main verb n subject and separate the modifiers and begin your correlation between all the components of the sentence. And yes, you have to do it all within 90 seconds.
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According to its proponents, a proposed new style of aircraft could, by skimming along the top of the atmosphere, fly between most points on Earth in under two hours.

A. According to its proponents, a proposed new style of aircraft could, by skimming along the top of the atmosphere, fly between most points on Earth in under two hours.

B. By skimming along the top of the atmosphere, proponents of a proposed new style of aircraft say it could fly between most points on Earth in under two hours.

C. A proposed new style of aircraft could fly between most points on Earth in under two hours, according to its proponents, with it skimming along the top of the atmosphere.

D. A proposed new style of aircraft, say its proponents, could fly between most points on Earth in under two hours because of its skimming along the top of the atmosphere.

E. According to its proponents, skimming along the top of the atmosphere makes it possible that a proposed new style of aircraft could fly between most points on Earth in under two hours.
It’s definitely extra-tricky when the entire sentence (or most of it) is underlined. Often, these kinds of sentences will be testing modifiers and/or parallelism, and so we want to try to compare “chunks” of the sentence, rather than comparing individual words.

It can also help to visualize the problem in terms of its core vs. its modifiers.

For example, in the above original sentence, we’ve got:
(modifier), (core subject + core verb), (modifier), (core verb) (modifier)

Yuck. Okay, I’ve got an opening modifier followed by the main subject. I know how to check that! The modifier should be modifying the subject (the main noun that follows the comma). And, skimming the other choices, E has the same opening setup, so I can check E in the same way.

And, hey! B also has one of those opening modifiers followed by a subject (even though the actual words are different). So, again, I can check the same rule here.

Notice that I’m starting to examine these based upon the structure of the sentence. I’m not just trying to compare the words / look for the same words. Based on words, B looks nothing like A and E. But based on structure, the beginning of B looks just like the beginning of A and E. All three have an opening modifier followed by the subject.

So, I notice that both B and E are problematic in this regard. In B, presumably the proponents are not really skimming along the top of the atmosphere. And, in E, the proponents are presumably proponents of the new aircraft, not proponents of skimming along the top of the atmosphere. So I can eliminate both of those.

C and D both start with the core of the sentence – no opening modifier here. The sentence still must have modifiers, though, so where are they now?

C: (core subject + core verb) (modifier), (modifier), (modifier)
D: (core subject), (modifier), (core verb) (multiple prepositional phrase modifiers in a row)

Okay, C has multiple modifiers in a row. I know from experience that this is dangerous – each one should refer to one touching it, often the one before it in this kind of setup. Is that the case? No. “According to its proponents” is modifying… hours? Earth? It should be aircraft, which is all the way at the beginning of the sentence.

And we can do the same thing with D. The first modifier (between subject and verb) is okay, but the multiple modifiers in a row at the end get problematic.

And, hey, I just learned something else to look for: multiple modifiers in a row are often “dangerous.” Obviously, you can construct a sentence correctly with multiple modifiers in a row – we do it all the time – but it’s also very easy to mess up the order / relationship of things when you have multiple modifiers in a row. So now I’ve got a new structure to think about / look for when I see these really-long-underline sentences.
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GMAT Experience Recap from Dec, 2008

Life has changed a lot since my last post one and a half years ago. It’s interesting because I would have never imagined that it would change so drastically. It’s not because I wasn’t too sure of my abilities, but it is more due to the speed at which everything happened. After my last GMAT, which was disastrous in a lot of way, I would like to recount the same in a very concise way.

Quant: 47, Verbal: 28

Overall: 610

AWA: 5.5

The schools which I sent my scores were ISB, LBS, INSEAD, IESE and Harvard. Looking at these names and my score, you must be thinking that I have no knowledge about my abilities. Those allegations may be partially true but I would like to take up another attempt to prove it, even though i sincerely believe that MBA is not a requirement for success. We all running our rat races, some faster than the others. In the end we all finish the race regardless of how fast you were. It completely depends on us to relive the race and cherish its experience.

Everything was just about normal on the TEST day in Bangalore but I was never able to manage to keep my eyes and mind focussed in the Verbal section of the Test. Till now one of my major problems is the attention span. As we all know, GMAT doesn’t really tests our analytical or strong verbal skills, what it does is to check our aptitude to manage all those in the time alloted. It is a direct application of our day to day work life albeit for a much smaller duration. The Maths portion must be really free lunch for most Indians. We don’t really focus a lot on English grammar during our school days which hurts now but there is always a lot of scope for improvement if one wants to. If we treat studying for GMAT verbal as learning a new language, you would cherish it much more.

Somehow my nerves failed me that day or rather I failed myself that day which turned out to be better for me as I always thought I was not ready for school yet. After a week of the GMAT debacle and four months of joblessness (practically without a salary), I got a job where they asked me to move to Japan. I had no other option but this turned out to be extremely sweet as I fell in love with this country. Learnt very little Japanese though and still trying to master it before i head back home. I am not sure how long I would be here, but this experience would be a welcome addition to my profile. I am just 28, ain’t too old for MBA or am I?

Relaunch my MBA dreams again

After a brief hiatus after my first futile attempt with GMAT, I am back again to go for it time.

TEST DATE: 14 th July, 2010

TEST Place: Tokyo, Japan

A Month Down the lane

Things have moved rapidly around me but i intend to stay at the same place where i was before. For the starters i kept myself away from blogging for all these days. Spent a nice vacation back home for two weeks and postponed by GMAT exam till later this year. So was bit relaxed for the next two weeks back in Bangalore. I have decided not to apply for 2009 so thats the reason for postponing my GMAT. It might sound too clichéd but I am seriously in need of a profile booster in the coming year to be anywhere near success for MBA apps.

I am searching for a Job in the Mechanical Engineering Industry apart from wailing my time in day trading at the Indian bourses. So if any body have any kind of openings which requires Design Engineering experience from a well known construction equipment manufacturing company anywhere in the world, Please feel free to contact me. Have delved myself into sports big time. Also trying to hone my French Language skills again.

Coming back to my GMAT prep which i restarted today, It was quite a breezer. Started with Kaplan 800 since i feel quite comfortable with those level of questions. Did the first two sections of Critical Reasoning and Sentence Correction. Actually liked the way they have complied all the required information about SC. I am thinking of compiling all the methods and strategies they have used for my future use and probably will load them n this blog for others to use. I am extremely weak at grammar which only adds to my woes for SC but I guess with lots of practice i can unlearn what i am learned in my school.

Life just changed over night

The decision to quit this job was ever in my mind but i was never so sure of doing it without having another job offer than now. I joined this company as a graduate engineer trainee and grew along with the company for the past three and half years. Its been helluva roller coaster ride in the entire tenure. One of the first projects which i was associated with for the entire training period was a big failure with the product being improperly designed that it was not able to meet the specifications set before the project. My head was the first to roll for that. Was sent back to India and then was moved to a different division and after that big failure came a big success. Again went back to states for few months and finished an entire project in record time with minimal quality issues. Overall the management in US was extremely happy. I was never in sync with my Indian managers ability to lead a team of mechanical engineers. Well finally after lot of deliberations i did out down my papers. Began my job hunt again but with little success.

Then now i am back @ home in West Bengal with a exam looming in front of me on 26th Aug and without a job in life. The best part of all this new events in life has made me much more confident. When ever people ask me what i want to do with my life, i always end up saying that if i knew what i want to do i would have done it long back. I should have no reasons to regret the decision which i made in the last few months. Well nobody in family knew of these happenings in my life which i would like to guard with all my might.

You might wonder where the daily cash flow would come from? I do spend a lot of money on regular basis. I have made a strong decision of being an active day trader from now on. In India, It is extremely hard for an average mechanical engg to earn and save money for B school dreams abroad. I found that Day trading can exactly make you reach your goals but on the other hand its is extremely risky. Its not that my track record is extremely well in the stock markets but i am trusting my instincts and abilities and past mistakes for my success in the future.

I am also planning to postpone my Apps for another year since I am not yet ready with the kind of profile i think would make it to the Better schools. Would jot down the details of my plan of action for the next few months later. Now I am just in an elated mood of doing something which makes you feel so free like quitting a steady paying job and be jobless after 4 years.