Thursday, May 26, 2011

And the winners are ....

Thanks everyone who entered our first giveaway. I wish everyone could win. Soooooo the lucky winners are "Mbalady" and "Moving forward".  Congrats to you both. Please send an email fortune800mba@gmail.com and we will reach out to you with more details.

-Fortune800Mba Team

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Wednesday, May 25, 2011

How to feel a Little better about the GMAT

Source

Back in 2010…when I took my first GMAT diagnostic test, I was devastated by the results. So I called a good friend to re-cap my failure and the friend told me check out the GMAC reports online and that it’ll make me feel better.

I wasn’t sure what she meant, but I checked it out here.

And then I dug deeper, and checked out the profile of GMAT candidates here

Immediately I knew what she meant, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I looked at every breakdown. I looked at the avg for men, women, every ethnicity, every country and any other demographic that the GMAC broke down the GMAT statistically. Basically my ultimate conclusion was that…most people don’t do relatively well on the GMAT. There’s totally a reason why a 700 is considered 90 percentile and why ~550 is 50 percentile. Yes, thats a somewhat DUH moment, but it's nice to know only 10% of all testtaskers are getting over a 700, makes me feel a wee bit better about my own performance.

Therefore, pat yourself on the back and keep it going once you've reached your GMAT threshold.

Reason #2 why I feel slightly okay with a mediocore GMAT score is that a certain top 10 business school had a GMAT range posted that went from 550 to 700+. There’s someone at this AWESOME school right now probably beginning an internship with a 550. I’m not knocking him/her but what I think is great is that that school thinks that that person is more than a number. And that’s basically the whole point of this post is to remind MYSELF (and hopefully you) that YOU ARE MORE THAN A NUMBER.

So with that said…back to my books and happy GMAT studying to everyone!

-Motown

PS. Don't forget today is the last day to enter our giveaway!!! Winners will be announced tomorrow.

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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

MIA

So lately I have been living under a rock. I have so much on my plate with studying for the GMAT, design classes, a newly 3 year old, and work, that I haven't had much time to write any posts. 


Recently I had a quick consultation with one of the founders of Admit Advantage. The main take away that I got from our conversation was that I needed to take some business classes so that I can create an additional transcript to go along with my undergraduate transcript. My undergraduate GPA is not in the range of any of the schools that I am looking at, so I need to do something. Along with taking some additional classes, such as finance, accounting, statistics, and economics, he recommended that I look at some additional schools within the top 50, which I am ok with because I need to go back to school next year. 

Well I hope to catch up soon. Back to studying and homework.

-mads mom

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Friday, May 20, 2011

If Only Money Grew on Trees

I came across a good article talking about the cost of grad school and if it's really worth it. I think the article stated it the best "Graduate degrees are becoming like tattoos: you should think hard before getting one." I believe going to grad school is a wonderful investment on your future but at the same time you really have to look at the cost of everything. Say I attend B-school and rack up $80,000 in debt.  What will my loan repayment look like? I found this loan payment calculator online that will give you an estimate of your loan repayment. I'm not sure how accurate this is, but to pay off a $80,000 loan in 10 years the monthly payment would be $880.15 @ 6.8% interest. Yes, 10 years lol.  I don't want to look at students loans for the rest of my life. I realized that cost is somewhat of an important factor for me when choosing schools. Do I sacrifice a good school because of price? It's a hard decision.  I want the branding that a top school brings butI don't want the debt. Anyway first things first, let me get into a top school, then I can worry about $$$ later . In the meantime, anyone want to give me small portion of their trust fund lol.



-Ms. HR

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Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Giveaways!

We are giving away a book, The Power of Story.   To win book just simply post "I want it" in the comment section. We will use random number generator to select a random number and the corresponding post will win it!  Only two rule, (1) shipping address must be in the US (2) Must enter by May 25th.

Good Luck!!


-Fortune800Mba Team

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Tuesday, May 17, 2011

GMAT Math Trick

There are a lot of math tricks out there to help improve your quant score but who knows them all?  I had the chance to have some tutoring sessions with one of the co-founders of the gmat coach .  This guy had the best way to solve problems. I LOVED his approach to problems. If only I would have found him earlier. Sadly, I found him 1.5 weeks before my exam but during the time I worked with him, the tips helped out a lot!!
This is one of the tricks he showed me. 

How many of you all can do all these problems in less than 30 secs? Go ahead take a moment and try. When I first saw these, I wanted to say "really sir, you joking right". I had memorized a few of these but there was no way I was going to finish the calculations in a 30 secs or less.

Well here is the trick to quickly solving squares that end in 5.  I'm assuming everyone knows that 5^2  is 25.  All numbers that end in 5 that are squared will end in 25. Now to get the begining numbers, take the first number multiply by the next consecutive number. Join those to numbers together and you have your answer.

Yea, its hard to understand math with words right? lol .... lets do 15^2 as an example.   1*2=2, join 2 with 25 and you get 225.  Now lets look at 25^2. 2*3=6 now join that with 25 and you get 625.  Lets go ahead and do one more, 35^2.  3*4=12, now join 12 to 25 and you get 1225. Now try and complete the rest in 15 seconds.

Brilliant right?!? 
The gmat coach showed me a better way to approach problems. With his approach I began to find myself solving problems faster which allowed me to spend more time on the harder problems. His tutoring sessions were well worth the money. For those who are starting their gmat prep or for those who are looking to raise their quant score,  I would seriously consider checking him out. His approach makes everything so simple!!!


-Ms. HR

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Friday, May 6, 2011

Guest Post: Harvard Lives Up to its Name

Hi everyone!  My name is MktgBadger. I’m a 2008 graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (GO BADGERS!!!). Upon graduation, I pursued a career working for a large conglomerate doing corporate finance. After 3 yrs, I’ve realized it’s time to get my MBA in Fall 2012 to jumpstart a career switch to marketing.  I am loving Fortune800's posts… I find them insightful, helpful, and motivational!  So I was excited when Motown asked me to write about my recent visit to HBS.

With the GMAT out of the way, I’ve started to really hone in on school selection and making sure I go ‘preview’ the 6 figure investment that is my future. With that said, I recently took advantage of my locale and visited the Harvard Business School with a friend who attends (after leaving the same company as me lol).

First let me start off by saying…WOW. From the perfectly manicured gardens, to the amazing buildings, Harvard’s campus is nothing short of immaculate. The weather was perfect, the birds were singing (or was that in my head?) and I felt like I was in la-la land.

And this was just my walk to the class.

I had the opportunity to meet some of my friend’s peers and they were refreshingly down to earth & welcoming. They told me the class I was about to visit was a treat and that I had picked a great lecture to visit. It probably also helped that they were all very excited to go to Rhode Island for the weekend for their ‘prom’.
I visited a class called BGIE (Business, Government & the International Economy) and the topic was Brazil & the WTO. The lecture was enthralling, the professor was phenomenal...and the students were engaged the entire 80 min lecture.

Key takeaways:

1) Age/Diversity: The class was relatively young…this wasn’t a surprise to me, HBS is known for having a relatively younger class than some of the competing top schools. The class (80 students) was relatively diverse and had about a 60:40 male/female split.

2) Participation: Aside from the professor singling out one student to kick off the class, each student was eager to participate (part of their grade depends on this) and HAD SOMETHING INSIGHTFUL TO SAY. Now I understand what admissions advice means that you need to be able to convince the school how you will contribute!

3) Case method: Bottom line…blew me away. The class was a debate, but yet, I learned so much from one study. My friend said the first two weeks of b-school is ungraded so that students can learn the case method of learning in a (relatively) risk-free environment

All in all, the trip to HBS was definitely worthwhile… it was really great to see the student life firsthand…I left eager to start the process! Check out the website and see if HBS is worth a visit for you!
Hope you found this informative & helpful. Thanks!

-MktgBadger

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Thursday, May 5, 2011

Recap of Kellogg Student Interviews


Everyone Loves the Smell of my Armpits
Fun, Creative, Marketing, Student Run were all the words that came to mind during my Kellogg student interviews.  One student told me to find “Everyone Loves the Smell of my Armpits”, another told me about the work she did in Africa and another told me about an AMAZING internship she had with the government.  And basically, I was sold.

To clarify, This video, Everyone loves the Smell of my Armpits, is apart of a huge Marketing competition that is across the entire business school.  This is how one group marketed their product. 
Kellogg here I come....to visit at least.
Recently, I interviewed three different students at Kellogg, all of whom really painted a solid picture for me.  I wasn’t really sure what Kellogg stood for outside of its marketing reputation.  
Kellogg has a quarter system so they have the opportunity to take so many classes, travel and have multiple concentrations.   I really like this because I’m really interested in Kellogg’s Social Enterprise Program, SEEK , yet I’ll still have a opportunity to explore my other interests.  Furthermore, there were several indications from examples of student orgs and curriculums that Kellogg truly is a student run campus. 
The students were really candid and open and didn’t just give me the standard answer of “I just love the people here,” story.  Although all the students mentioned that, I felt like I got a better picture of what Kellogg has to offer.
Oh the last and final takeaway is: KELLOGG IS MORE THAN MARKETING!!!!
To Learn more about Kellogg click here
Anyone visited Kellogg?  Thoughts on it?
-Motown
P.S My favorite line of the Youtube vid  is “I sweat so much I make it rain” lolololol

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Monday, May 2, 2011

The Knees!

So a little background on the title.  I have to take it back to 2008 when a group of college homies and I spent New Years in ATL. It was there the phrase "knees" was born lol.  Instead of giving you a formal definition of "knees", I'm just going to give you examples of things that can "throw you to your knees".

  • A dilemma
  • Stress
  • To many things on your plate
  • You have no control in a situation
  • Embarrassing situations
Needless to say, in ATL the whole group experienced 'knees' at a certain point. The things that have me on my knees right now are:
  • The Gmat! I'm getting closer and closer to test day and there is so much to do and so much to look over. Everyday I'm trying to learn something new to help improve my score. Last min tips from anyone?
  • Vacation. This will be the first year I won't be taking a vacation. If your thinking who cares?! I CARE lol.  Traveling is my passion! It's a way for me to relax and get a break from everything but I realize that this summer is going to be an important time for me to get things in order before I apply this fall.
  • Vacation Days. I need to make sure when Fall rolls around I have enough paid time off. It's really hard to plan when I'm not sure how many days off I will need.
  • Bschool Budget. A new cost seems to appear every month :/ but its a investment I'm happy to make for my long term goal.
  • Narrowing down schools. There are lot of schools to choose from and I need to find a good match for me. If only I could have one day to visit each school I'm thinking about applying to.
I can't solve all my knees today.  So for now I'll just work my way down this list. GMAT here I come!

-Ms. HR

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