April 2009 Archives

Well, strike two in my applications. This one I am somewhat upset over. Mostly because I know I didn't take the UC application seriously enough and probably could have been accepted at Berkeley if I had been as persistent with them as I was with Columbia. Berkeley really would have been the best school for me to go to considering its close proximity to San Francisco and its national rank. These next two years are going to be so important not only academically but also professionally that I worry if living in Davis, CA is really the best place for me to be.



I am toying with the idea of writing an appeal letter to Berkeley in hopes that my most recent grades will be reviewed and as a way to reveal more about my background. Though, the process can take six weeks and we were hoping to have moved by then. I don't really know right now, I'm just a little bummed out. Everyone I speak to says that your undergraduate school is not that important but I am really more concerned about being out in the middle of no where with no ability to network and build professional relationships that will be paramount to acceptance at business school.

This past weekend I took a road trip up the coast to San Francisco to attend a "Master Class and Information Session" for the INSEAD MBA program. To recap, INSEAD is an international MBA program located in Fountainebleau, France. It is recognized as one of the top MBA programs in the world. It has a sister campus in Singapore and a working agreement with the Wharton School of Business.

I still have a year or two before I apply to business school but I thought it was as good opportunity to get started on the process now to figure out how to be the best applicant.

It was a good experience. Unfortunately, the presenters laptop was broken so we did not get to the view the power point presentation but I still leaned a good deal about how to be a competitive applicant.

The two most important things I learned was A) Leadership qualities are highly important - this is true for Harvard too, and B) Work experience is far more important than undergraduate experience. This second point made me reavaluate my desire to attend Columbia University over a University of California school. Namely because Columbia will cost three times as much and take me almost three times as long.

The most important thing I think I can do at this point is to finish my undergrad degree in the quickest and cheapest way possible and then work in the business world for atleast one year before applying.

You can read more about INSEAD and all its benefits at their website: INSEAD

UCLA has been my first rejection so far. I have to admit I really was not smart about applying to UCLA. When I applied, I knew that Economics was a highly competitive and impacted major so I decided to chose a major that I thought would be less difficult to get accepted into, namely Economics/International Area Studies. However, I did not see this statistics page on the UCLA website:

Profile of Admitted Transfer Students by Major

If you scroll down to Economics/International Area Studies you will see that it has the LOWEST acceptance rate (13.73%) out of any major in the College Letters and Sciences. Given my poor academic performance years ago and the only one semester of CC classes, it is not surprising that I did not get accepted.

But, it is okay. I have been saying for a long time that I have wanted to leave Los Angeles and now that has become a reality. I find out about Berkeley in a few days.

So there is this theory on the web forums that there is a way to see if you have been accepted to UCLA ahead of the official notification date. It revolves around whether or not your Financial Aid information has been loaded in your UCLA account (everyone who applies technically has a UCLA account).

Now this is not a definitive answer for everyone as I assume FA info is updated on the same rolling basis as admissions decisions. Also, seeing your FA information is not a true indication of being accepted, however, according the the highly used College Confidential website no one who saw their FA information last year was rejected.

This is how to check.

1. Log into the Admissions Decisions website at UCLA and write down your UCLA Student ID# (top right side)
2. Goto UCLA's Records System Access, aka URSA, and "Create UCLA Logon/Password".
3. Go through the steps choosing "New UCLA Student (including admitted applicants)" when it asks you to select what type of UCLA Login you are creating.
   
4. Once you have a URSA login, go ahead and login to the system using the above link.
5. When you have logged in, click the option that is located in the center column that says "View Financial Aid Awards and Summary on URSA"
6. Choose 2009-2010 and click submit.
7. If your FA information shows up, this means you have most likely been accepted. Congrats!

Currently, my info does NOT show up. Though I have not lost hope yet.

Columbia sent me a letter outlining how many credits I would receive in transfer credit. The max they will take is 60 and they have indicated that 59 are transferable. This is good news because that means I would only have to take 65 credits to graduate AND I qualify for the higher Stafford Loan amounts of $12,500 ($5,500 max subsidized).

Now, I'm not sure if all 59 of those credits will match up perfectly to Columbia's "core" so I still may need to take more then 65 credits. All this credit counting is important because each credit costs $1,270.



I need to start outlining my degree requirements and matching to my current courses in order to get a good idea of what EXACTLY is required for graduation. Need to do this for all schools I've been accepted to so far.

Okay, so it looks like it was a combination of me, Phpmyadmin, and Movable Type that were to blame for lasts night screw up. Hopefully, everything should be working again. If you notice any issues please email them to me at info@harvardorbust.com. Thanks.

Well I should have left well enough alone, but instead I took Movable Type's advice and upgraded my blog engine to their newest version. However, it all went very badly. I really haven't liked Movable Type from the beginning and especially hate their major lack of documentation. None the less things are not working properly, mainly the inability to 'Search' and leave comments. I'm rather annoyed right now as I have to basically rebuild most of the backend from scratch. Luckily, I was able to salvage most of the posts and design...

So I know this is a "Harvard or Bust" blog, but I do obviously have to keep my options open to all possibilities. Hence, I am going to San Francisco next weekend to attend the INSEAD MBA Master Class, Information Session, and Networking Cocktail event.

INSEAD is an intensive top ranked international graduate business school that is located in Fontainebleau, France with an alternate campus in Singapore. They also have a strategic alliance with the Wharton Business school.

I was drawn to this program as it places a strong emphasis on the international business market. INSEAD also incorporates the case-method style of learning that originally drew me to the Harvard business program. International business development is an area that is only going to continually expand and offer alot of exciting opportunities. I also have a great deal of my family who live throughout Europe (as well as the rest of the world) and my wife and I have talked about moving to France possibly in the future.

I am a little nervous honestly about attending the session since I feel slightly inadequate having only just finished up a year of community college classes. I am expecting all these seriously competitive, uber-smart, finance wizards to put me to intellectual shame (note to self, work on self esteem), but I think it will be a good training excercise. It will also be a great opportunity to ask the admission committee their opinions on my choice of schools. Hopefully by then I will have heard from UCLA.

Either way it will be a nice weekend away from Los Angeles, spring time in SF is just perfect.

I received an email today with a questions from someone who is in a similar situation to me. Since not much is happening academically right now (since I am just waiting on acceptance letters) I thought I'd share his email and my answers. Here is some initial background:

Rus: I've also been out of school (high school) for ten years, and I'm going to start college in the fall, with the intention of getting into Harvard Business School for my MBA.  Out of high school, I started a construction company instead of going to college.

This is a similar situation that I was in except I had taken a couple years of school before I dropped out.

Rus: Did you have any troubles getting acclimated to being in an academic environment after many years?

Harvard or Bust: Surprisingly, I didn't have as much trouble acclimating to school life as I thought I would. The first semester I went way over board in terms of studying and diligence on tests, especially considering I was in community college classes. Though it did secure me a 4.0 that semester which was very important.

Rus: I'm most concerned with math since it is more "developmental" than other subjects. Did you take any straight math classes, or are they not required?

HoB: Yes I did. I took Probability and Statistics and I was worried that since I had been out of math for so long it would pose a problem, however, math has always been a strong suit of mine as I completed third level Calculus in my previous college years so I did not have any problems with the class. If you want to pursue a MBA degree Calculus and Statistics are highly important.

Rus: I'm debating between community college, a state school, and a small liberal arts college. Did you have that decision process as well or did you just decide on community college right away?

HoB: If your plan is to go to an Ivy League school (you mentioned Columbia and Yale in your email) then I would say you would most likely need atleast a solid year of either a traditional school or community college first. You "may" not need this for Columbia's School of General Studies since I believe they focus more on your life experience then your academics, however, a summer semester or especially this coming fall will not hurt your chances.

Rus: Did you find it easy or difficult to obtain recommendations (for Columbia) from your community college?  Did you have extracurriculars?

HoB: I had a great English teacher my first semester at CC that wrote a solid rec letter for me. As for EC's, I think people like you and I who have been working successfully do not really need to worry about EC's. I assume you have hobbies? I think those are sufficient. When you are in college, however, any leadership positions you can obtain will help with possible MBA applications, but again, it's very subjective.

Rus: When applying to Columbia's School of General Studies how much importance do they put on your business history?

HoB: None really. They don't ask for specific information above and beyond any other school you'll apply to, expect to explain WHY you are a non-traditional student and WHAT you have been doing out of school. If you have been running your own construction business then I'd imagine you have plenty of "business" experience when it comes to apply to an undergraduate degree.

I hope these responses are helpful, remember I am not an admissions counselor by any stretch, these are just my opinions. Be sure to chat with admissions counselors as much as possible to ascertain your best plan of action. Thanks for writing!

Just saw that I have been accepted to UCSB as an Economics major. That's three down, three to go. UCLA and Berkeley acceptances will be out in three weeks. Gonna be a long three weeks...

Davis made a mistake, I do not qualify for the Federal Pell Grant. That's what I thought, but it still sucks.

Anyone out there wanna give me $30k?

So I had to followup with Davis as my FAFSA was selected for verification and before they can release any aid decision I have to send in forms and tax returns and such (kind of a pain in the butt). Anyway, when I was speaking to them they checked my file and said I had been awarded a $5,350 Pell Grant. I was pretty surprised because I know the Pell Grants are aloted for students who have high financial need and my EFC was $20,000. So I'm hoping there hasn't been a mistake because $5,350 is more then half a year's tuition at a California school and I'm pretty sure the Pell Grant applies to any school I go to, so would help bring down costs at Columbia.

I'm faxing my verification paper work in today so hopefully I will know for sure in a few weeks.

I checked the Davis admissions website today and saw that I have been accepted for the Fall 2009 school year as an International Relations major. I'm glad to have atleast one of my safety schools in the bag. I was on the fence when I applied if whether or not I should declare Economics or a less impacted major considering my uncertain chances at acceptance. I probably could have gotten into Economics, but I think International Relations is actually a pretty good choice considering it will be a good mix of economics and political science classes plus inheirently built in leadership.

So far accepted to:
Columbia University
Univ of Cali, Davis

Waiting on:
Berkeley
UCLA
Univ of Cali, Santa Barbara
Univ of Toronto

I received a letter from Columbia today informing me that I have been awarded a $8400 New Student Incentive Scholarship. I have to admit, I was slightly disappointed. It's exciting to have been accepted and it's exciting to receive some type of scholarship, but $8400 is not really that much considering 24 credits at Columbia (plus fees) is $35,000 a year. I have not received the final financial aid package from Columbia which will tell me of any federal grants or loans (atleast I'm assuming that is on its way) so things could get better, but right now I am a little bummed with the thought of having to take out $26,000 a year in fees for 2-3 years. That's alot of debt.

Some have said that debt is easily outweighed by the the opportunity costs of a Columbia education, but considering I can go to a University of California school for a third of that amount (and finish in less time) is something I have to think about.

I have a call scheduled with the head of financial aid on Thursday, so we will see what I can do.