Back to school

• My first recommender submitted his letters to Stanford and Wharton and will very likely submit recommendations to Chicago and Harvard tomorrow. I still have to check that my second main recommender and my colleague (the third recommender for Stanford and Harvard) are making it in time;
• I am swamped with avalanche of letters from Canadian and European business schools arriving in Moscow in next two weeks for MBA Access and MBA World Tour events. The schools organize brief info sessions and tete-a-tete interviews;
• I have reorganized the outline of my application strategy. I will limit the list of my first choice schools by three names: Stanford, Wharton and Chicago. Instead of hurrying up with Kellogg, I am going to challenge Harvard in Round 1. I am not ready with Kellogg, and still I will try to be in time, but now I am comfortable about keeping Kellogg for Round 2. After info sessions with Chicago and Stanford I am confident that these two schools together with Wharton are my targets. A pity I have no Wharton people around to learn about their first-hand experience, but for me Wharton is #1 and needs no apologetics. P.S. Why Harvard, all of a sudden? Mechanically :) The school is so apart from others that challenging it is sort of making a wild shot - if I am lucky, I will be glad about trying, if I am not - I will not feel sorry even for a second.

My deadlines:

• October 11: Harvard
• October 12: Wharton
• October 18: Chicago
• October 25: Stanford

P.S. What about Columbia? Guys, thanks God Columbia has rolling admission. Otherwise, I would rather submit an application by regular mail. The online system is very unfriendly to me; despite all my attempts, each new registration ends in being unable to login. And judging from experience of GuyMBA, my recommenders are very likely to experience the same problems. I would better wait for a while and see if technical issues will dissolve :)

# posted by Nat4mba : 7:06 PM