maths

This saturday I had gone to berkeley to give my Math waiver exam for MBA. The questions were very calculation intensive. e.g. if after 15 years the value is 50k what would be the principal if the interest if 3% compounded annually. So this is an easy problem to solve but to get the exact answer you will need to compute hell lot. So after much trial, I figured I should take the calculator that was available. So I went to the exam co-ordinator got some funky looking calculator and did my maths. And, wow the answer were weird. I then tried testing some other stuff, 2+2 etc and it was always strange. Sometimes it seemed to work; sometimes not. So I thought it might be faulty caculator. I exchanged the calculator and weirdly this was funny too. So instead of giving the exams, I now was focussed on figuring out whats wrong with the calculator. There was manual also available; but I had to learn for myself.

After much fight and 30mins I realized it was postfix calculator. So 2+2=4 would need to be done as "2 enter 2 +". What a revelation. I was so amused with my finding that I did all things that I could do without calculator even with calculator.

sigh of relief

Yesterday night, I submitted my application for weekend MBA program at berkeley. This ends my one month ordeal of preparation.

I decided that I should get admission to MBA program in early Jan. I had only 6 weeks to give GMAT, TOEFL and write my application. In these 6 weeks, I must have bought all crash courses remotely GMATish on web.

My scores during preparation were:

• KAPLAN: 580 - 620


• 800score: 630 - 650


• GMACTESTPREP: 650-710

I liked 800score the best.

I had also take princeton review crash course and kaplan crash web course but I would recommend for people with short time as me to just concentrate on getting as many CAT tests. There is no new concept or style to learn; practise, practise and more practise is the only way to success.

My final score was 660, way less then I was expecting.

Then, I had to write these four essays:

1. What is your favorite quote, and why is it meaningful to you?
2. What are your intermediate and long-term professional goals?
3. Describe the professional accomplishment of which you are most proud.
4. Please tell us about yourself and your background. What makes you unique compared to other MBA applicants? (500-1000 words)

Wonder there was no SOP. Till last minute I was editing the essays. Finally 10:00PM PST I submitted the application.

can I be cartoonist?

everyday I see newspaper I wonder how the cartoon strips are written. Think of it, somebody is observing the world everyday and for everyday he will be painting a cartoon strip. For me somedays are blank, there is nothing exciting or new about these days. What will be the cartoon that I will paint that day?

Then I think maybe writing cartoons makes you see the color in the sameness, a different color everyday. The blank is no longer same blank maybe. So I think making cartoons is an art in living. An exercise in seeing things in colors, different everytime and then I want to be cartoonist too.

I begin

blogging is like waking up early in morning, you need a great deal of discpline to start it. I have never been able to gather myself up to think aloud on blogs. Partly because I have found myself reading more then commenting and partly because I have this theory that invididual thinking is a function of group thinking and so someone around me is anyways going to write my thoughts down in some blog because its never me as individual who is thinking but collection of us.

But that was yesterday. I begin a new quest today.