QS MBA tour mostly a waste of time..but some take aways

Yesterday, I attended QS World MBA tour. It was mostly waste of time.

After having spent so much time on research, I hardly get anything new out of admission events. No gains from information perspective, but yes it could help in networking with current students.

Only top school that participated was Darden.

I met Piyush Parikh who belongs to class of 2008 at Darden. I asked him about international nature of cases in Darden. He told that about 30 % of the cases discussed are international or outside of North America. Further he also provided some info about day in life , alumni interaction, internships. About clubs, he told me that he is going to start Music club. He also mentioned that ROI for him was around 8 years.

When I asked him about current H1B crisis and about current student's plans to deal with it, he told me that career services along with alumni network is working out to resolve this issue. Currently, he told me that there is huge database of alumni network and they could search for alums located in EU / Asia and they could help students get better jobs.

There were two more students Mohnish Bahl and Roshan Shankar. Both are heading to Darden this fall. One good tip on essays they offered was that identify core skills required in the career post MBA and that relate your past experiences to those core skills. Also, the loan of amount $65,000 was approved for both. This takes care of first year's tution and living expenses.

Apart from that, PagalGuy counter was helpful. There were two students with admit from Chicago - GSB. One girl from IT (4 years of wrk ex) with 690 got through Chicago GSB. I asked her whether she wants to get into finance and her answer was no no. Deba from PagalGuy also got an admit from Chicago GSB. His tip was to do your best to stand out from the IT crowd. He's an IT guy too.I didn't get much time to talk to these guys though. There was one Wharton alum there too. But no way I am going to apply to Wharton, so I did not bother him much.

** ISB essays are out and I am finding them bit tricky...Also word limit of only 300 is cruicial. Are you guys feeling the same ?

I think I am going to lose my sleep over ISB essays...Anyways I will try my best.

Cheers..
~ Charu M.