GMAT OG 12 RC Review

The changeover to the 12th edition, 45 problems and 7 passages were removed, leaving 113 repeated problems and 20 passages (including all Diagnostic problems and passages). 43 problems and 7 passages were then added, bringing the total to 156 questions and 27 passages—almost exactly the same as in the 11th edition

As in the 11th edition, GMAC clearly caps its word limit for Reading Comprehension passages at 350 words, whereas in the past, passages could extend as long as 460 words. The takeaway? Look for shorter, denser passages and an increasing emphasis on unique question types that require less of a "word search" technique, and more of a nuanced understanding of what is being asked. Slightly more than 10% of the 12th edition's Reading Comprehension questions fit the "Function" variety taught in Veritas Prep classes, in which the reason why the author cites a specific detail is of prime importance, not just the detail itself. Our analysis confirms that the proprietary Veritas Prep STOP strategy is the perfect strategic approach to attaining Reading comprehension mastery. STOP emphasizes a structural understanding of each passage, helping the test-taker deduce the author's intent and more quickly identify where pertinent details will appear. Furthermore, nearly half of the Reading Comprehension questions in the 12th edition fit into Critical Reasoning-style categories, reaffirming the value of the logical approach introduced in "Arguments", the opening lesson of the Veritas Prep program.
Reference : Veritas Prep

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The Final Countdown

In those 10-odd months before I began the application process, I had been through enough literature on an international MBA to last me a few years. It was time to make a decision. My rather complex database and evaluation model threw up the suspects:

USA: Anderson (UCLA) and Stern (NYU)

UK: Said (Oxford) and Judge (Cambridge)

Europe: RSM (Rotterdam) and HEC (Paris)

Australia: AGSM (UNSW, Sydney)

Singapore: NUS

With this eclectic mix of eight schools on my target list, I braced myself for the next phase -- figuring out the details of application and funding.
Prospective students, if the foregoing ramblings make the rigmarole seem like a labyrinthine process that presents a risk of getting more entangled rather than a solution to getting sorted out, do not despair! As you immerse yourself into it, you will realise that several options have a tendency towards self-elimination because of the sub-conscious bias or preference you have towards certain attributes of a school. The true test comes only after you have arrived at your target list of 6-10 schools and must decide which ones to dedicate application resources to. Until then, you may as well bask in the attention when a colleague or peer taps your knowledge bank for advice on deciding which B-school to choose.

Author is Maithilee Shirgaonkar, who has done her MBA from Said Business School, University Of Oxford.

Reference; rediff,testfunda

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Why an MBA from abroad?

Some of the main reasons why people decide to do an MBA abroad are:

They want to work in a particular country -- employers are keener on MBA graduates who have studied in the country where they operate.

They want a brand name that is recognised globally on their CV.

International MBA classes tend to have a more diverse population in terms of nationalities, backgrounds (educational and professional), genders, etc, which enhances the quality of the environment and the learning.

International B-schools tend to have a more global coverage of topics in their syllabi.
International B-schools are more likely to have access to a wider base of resources such as alumni network, faculty, guest speakers, libraries, employers, etc.

Some schools offer shorter duration formats such as a 10-month/ 16-month MBA, allowing candidates to return to work quicker

Almost all the reasons applied in my case. To future MBAs , I recommend that you come up with reasons that resonate most with your aspirations and the kind of experience you are looking for. If this will be your second MBA, then it will be imperative to articulate the thinking since you will most likely be asked this question in your interview.

It is all right to continue to fine-tune this reasoning during the process of MBA prep, but ensure that there is a consistent thread in your story. I cannot emphasise enough how critical your belief in this story will be and how many times this belief will be questioned during and after the process.

Reference : rediff,testfunda

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Why MBA?

I needed to answer two questions: why an MBA? And, why abroad? These remain important for any candidate.


Why MBA?

So, why did I do an MBA? When faced with this question, I put myself through the 'ART' test. The test asks three questions of a candidate considering doing an

MBA:

Do you want to Accelerate your career in the current industry?
Do you want to Rotate to a business/ corporate function within the current industry?
Do you want to Transform your skill-sets to change to another industry?

An affirmative answer to any one question is, superficially, sufficient reason to want to do an MBA. The important thing for me was to identify exactly where this career move was focused. I decided that A -- Acceleration resonated the most with me.

I was working with a group of bright, motivated individuals. My superiors provided me with learning opportunities now and then. However, I had reached an invisible hurdle beyond which growth demanded an additional set of skills, which I felt an MBA would address. Now that the toughest part was over, the next step was to elaborate and justify this answer with valid reasons.

It is completely acceptable for you to want to achieve more than one of the above objectives through an MBA. But a careful drilling-down into the story is critical.

Acceleration
This could be in terms of the number of steps of the hierarchy that the MBA will help you to jump and/ or the amount of money it will enable you to demand in the job market. It could also mean an accelerated career path, a fast track, which your organisation can provide you with by virtue of your MBA degree.

There could be environmental factors, such as a dynamic industry scenario or a downturn, that warrant different skills and techniques to successfully handle business realities. As a middle/ senior manager or as a businessperson, you may feel the need for an MBA to ensure that you maintain or increase the pace of growth of your business.

Rotation
You have made good progress on your career path, obtaining a promotion every year or two, handling greater responsibility with each, and drawing a larger pay packet at each level. However, the growth is unidirectional, with a greater volume of work supervised at each level, but no additional faculties being developed. You wish that you could gain a broader perspective of business and contribute in a wider spectrum.

What you really want is to have a cross-functional understanding of your industry and carry over the learnings from one role to another, thereby adding to your set of skills. The MBA will help to provide you with the tools and techniques to comprehend and assimilate nuances of the various aspects of running a business.

Transformation

There may be a better word for this route, but an MBA is based on the premise that you will use the learning in the programme to transfer the skills you developed in your career pre-MBA to the role and industry you move to post-MBA. Hence, what you want to achieve is a transformation of your skill-set, through a set of frameworks and techniques learned in the MBA, which will help you to contribute, to a new role, in a new organization, in a new industry.

You could well want to be your own boss, fan that entrepreneurial fire burning inside, but know that you will have enough of a business perspective to create a successful venture. You essentially want to change careers, without having to start at the bottom of the new ladder, and be taken seriously in the new role, based on your past work experience and the new skills developed through the MBA.

Another way of checking whether you have nailed the reasons is by asking yourself whether any other route will help you achieve the same results. For example, if you believe that you have sufficient experience of the marketing and project management areas but find yourself wanting when it comes to financial concepts, then you may want to consider a short-term course that provides you with basics in finance.

If, however, you want to be the finance whiz kid, then consider a Masters in Finance or a Chartered Financial Analyst programme. It is important to understand the level of specialisation you desire. An MBA is usually oriented towards general management, with some scope for specialisation. In my case, I was quite certain that I wanted skills that were tangible across functions and industries. No specialised course could have addressed that requirement.

Why am I emphasising the need for this reasoning so much? Because the Admissions Committees stress on it. The reason that Admissions Committees are extremely keen on understanding your motivation for pursuing an MBA is a significant investment in your development. They want to ensure that the candidates they recruit to the MBA class are mature professionals who have weighed the benefits of the MBA adequately before making the investment decision. Additionally, they want to be certain that when you graduate, you will have gained something tangible in line with your expectations, and, thus, will be a confident brand ambassador for the school.

The thought process that I went through in this stage of my MBA prep was tested several times during the phases leading up to the admissions -- when I decided which B-school to apply to, when I took my GMAT, when I wrote my essays (especially here!), when I was arranging for the funding, and when I appeared for my interviews (probably the deal-breaker). So it helped tremendously to have clarity in advance.

Author is Oxford Alumni
Reference: rediff, testfunda

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Indian B-school students can beat MIT-ians

Prof Bala V Balachandran, former chairman of Kellogg School of Business Management, is currently spending bulk time in Chennai as the founder and honorary dean of the Great Lakes Institute of Management.
In 1967, Balachandran went to the US and was with the University of Dayton. In 1971, he moved to the Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, where he taught management courses and also worked on his doctorate. In 1973, he joined the Kellogg School of Management and was with the institute for 34 years before retiring recently.
In an exclusive interview to Shobha Warrier, Prof. Balachandran spoke about his association with MDI, Gurgaon, Indian School of Business and his plans as the dean of the Great Lakes Institute of Management. Read on. . .
How did you get involved with the inception of ISB in Hyderabad and then Great Lakes in Chennai?
My association with Indian management schools goes back to the 60s and 70s. I was a visiting faculty at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, when it was taking shape under the leadership of Ravi Mathai.
In 1991, I was the chairman to the Strategy Planning Committee of Kellogg.
Its rank then hovered between 9 and 11. Our goal was to attain the top position. As I planned to find out what it takes to reach the summit, I gained tremendous experience. And soon we became number one.
I started serving as a consultant to Dr Manmohan Singh when he was the finance minister.
In October 1991, we were ready to train 25 faculty members of MDI, Gurgaon, on how to teach experienced hands at PSUs. Between 1991 and 1996, I brought the entire faculty of MDI in batches for three months to Kellogg.
That was when my involvement with India reached the highest level.
Rajat Gupta of McKinsey and I shared close ties. He came with the idea of setting up a business school in India. We created a committee comprising Indian industrialists like Anil Ambani, Jamshed Godrej [Get Quote], etcetera.
I was in charge of recruiting the dean and the faculty (in fact the first eight faculty members were recruited by me at Kellogg) and I also designed a curriculum for ISB. Then, I inducted a friend of mine named Jitendra Singh from Wharton. Later, London School of Business also became a partner of ISB.
I became the chairman of the dean search committee and faculty recruiting committee. I also taught at ISB from 2001 to 2004. Pramath Sinha became the institute's first full-time dean.
Why did you choose Hyderabad for ISB?
Mumbai was our first choice, followed by Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad. But then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Chandrababu Naidu took so much interest in the project that he came to the airport to welcome us (Rajat Gupta, Anil Ambani, Jamshed Godrej and me)! He gave us a 200-acre plot and a single-window access for all clearances. That was how Hyderabad became the seat of ISB.
What motivated you to start your own business school, Great Lakes, in Chennai?
After we set up ISB, J Jayalalitha, then chief minister of Tamil Nadu, and industrialists N Shankar, Lakshmanan (Rane group) and Srinivasan (India Cements [Get Quote]) wanted me to start a business school in Chennai as I hailed from that place.
That is how Great Lakes came into being. I thereafter cut myself off from the ISB and started working on my new project. Rajat was not happy with my decision. I told him my first child is MDI, Gurgaon, ISB my second and Great Lakes, the third. C K Prahlad, Raghuram Rajan, myself and some faculty from Toronto, Cleveland, etc, are on the shores of Great Lakes. We decided to start the school in a rented building before constructing our own.
Has it not taken you long to have your own building?
Not at all. This is only the fourth year of Great Lakes. It took ISB 7 years to have its own building. Even IIM Ahmedabad didn't have a campus for 10 years. At Great Lakes, in the first year itself, we had 100 per cent placement -- a unique achievement so far. It is often said that ISB has stolen a march over Great Lakes.
That is not true. The first batch of ISB came out in 2001. The plan started in 1997. Great Lakes started in 2004 and in 2009 January, our campus will be ready on the ECR in Chennai.
How can anybody compare ISB with Great Lakes? How can you compare a 14-year-old kid with a 4-year-old baby?
As for me, I don't like any comparison. For, both are my children. How can I say one child is better than the other?
What are your plans for Great Lakes?
The building is getting ready.
The campus is one of its kind in the world. It got platinum rating for its energy-efficient and eco- friendly design. Even though we oveshot the budget by Rs 4-5 crore (Rs 40-50 million) while building, we decided to go for an eco-friendly campus at any cost. Right now, we have a PGPM course and a two-year executive MBA programmes at the institute. We have customised executive education for the Murugappa group, India Cements etc. We have generic executive programme as welll for marketing and sales, mergers and acquisition, financial delivery, etc.
We have 164 full time students and 35-40 students for executive MBA programmes at the moment. Other executive programmes have 25-40 students.
When we shift to the new campus, we will have four sections of 65 students. We will have 260 full-time students.
How different is Great Lakes campus going to be other than being energy-efficient?
My style is Gurukulam where the faculty and the students live together. The two should get a chance to mingle outside the classroom as well. At Great Lakes, not only faculty but guest faculty and visitors are to have quarters too. Even alumni will be allowed to stay and take classes. It will be like one big family. That is why there I am called uncle Bala and not dean Bala or Prof. Bala!
Do you feel there is a disconnect between industry and academia in India?
Yes, in general, there is a disconnect. But now, IIMs and IITs are in for change. In 5 to 10 years, the change will be all- pervading.
In what way are you ushering in change at Great Lakes?
We are for business-relevant academics at Great Lakes. Right from the beginning, our core competence will be the merging of the two.
I will use the words academic elegance and business relevance in this respect. That is why Ratan Tata is our chairman; he is our role model. He comes and interacts with the students. Other corporate giants too are in constant touch with the students.
For example, Venu Srinivasan gives a lecture here on total quality management. At least six professionals, who are business leaders, teach at Great Lakes. Then we have former bureaucrats taking time out to teach. T N Seshan (former chief election commissioner) is a full time faculty here teaching business, society and government along with N Vittal (former central vigilance commissioner) and Dr V S Arunachalam.
At our institute, HR groups of various industry houses comprise a part of the admission process. Where do Indian management institutes stand in the global scene?
We have a long way to go.
Management schools in India get the best students. They are good enough to get admission in the best business schools in the world. Students of IIM Ahmedabad can go to MIT, Harvard, Kellogg and Stanford and can beat any student there. That brilliant they are.
But is the faculty in the schools good enough? I don't think so. The faculty is paid less. And if you pay peanuts, you will only get monkeys. One cannot blame the faculty. Their salaries are poor and there is no incentive to do research. Quality research and publishing papers are extremely important to develop a good faculty.
What factors can make a management institute in India at par with the best in the world?
Three factors can make it the best: best students, best faculty and a quality curriculum. In my opinion, all the IIMs, XLRIs, SP Jain institutes etc have the potential to be the best institutes. However, except for ISB and Great Lakes, no other institute is of the global standard.
What makes a good manager?
A good manager has to understand that change is inevitable. You have to keep a constant vigil on how the world is changing and be prepared to reinvent yourself consistently.It is generally said that the money offered to fresh management graduate is obscene. Do you feel so?
Nothing is obscene. If you don't pay them, somebody else will from some other country. Why do you want to lose them when they are trained here with Indian money by an Indian professor on Indian soil?
Where do you see Great Lakes in five years?
I will spend more time here as the honorary dean -- at least five months a year -- and the rest of the time in the US.
I want to initiate an MBA programme here exclusively on energy management along with the University of Houston because they have the best business school for energy management.
I also want to introduce an MBA course in agriculture management with, say, the University of Illinois.
I want to see Great Lakes among top five business institutes in India in the next three years. In the next seven years, it should be among the top 20 in the world.
Source: rediff

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