What a day. I took the day off to complete my application for Tuck. I submitted the appliation three minutes before the deadline. Although I could have used more time on two of my essays, I am pretty happy with my application package. I think I represented myself well and gave the AdComs a pretty good idea of who I am as a person. I know that on paper I am pretty strong candidate, but with a one in five acceptance rate I'm still pretty nervous about getting in.

While biding my time until the February 2nd decision date, I'll be working on my applications for Yale SOM, Kenan Flagler, and Johnson. If I had scored better on my first GMAT, I would have already had my applications in to Yale and Cornell and would be turning in UNC's tomorrow. Instead, I'll be submitting applications for all of these schools in the first week of January. Actually, I'll try to submit them as soon as I am done with them. I am just about done with Yale's application (which is by far the easiest app I have seen). I definately don't want to get down to the wire like this again. With the GMAT out of the way though, all I really have left to do are the essays, so I don't think that should be a problem

Good luck to all the other Tuckiewannabees out there.

--Chris

For those of you interested in the Private Equity and/or Venture Capital side of the world, an industry that is notoriously difficult to break into if you don't have any experience, you should keep tabs on the "Internship Rodeo" over at PEHub.com

I took the GMAT for the second time this morning and could not be more happy with (or surprised by) the results:

I honestly was not expecting to score this well. To the contrary, I was worried that I wouldn't even be able to improve the 660 I earned on my first try. Perhaps the reason I did so well was that I was consigned to doing poorly, so I just focused on doing the best I could and let the cards fall where they may. I never imagined they'd fall like this.

I believe a big reason I performed so poorly on the quant section my first time around (a 38) was twofold: I didn't sleep well the night before and I second guessed my work. The first caused me to make some really stupid math mistakes (like 2*5 = 7 type of stuff) that you'll do when you are tired, and the latter caused me to spend way too much time on each problem. I literally rushed through the last third of the quant section on my first try.

Over the past month I really focused on my pace. One strategy I employed that I think worked out well was that if a problem looked too hard, I just took a guess and moved on. No sense in working on a problem for four minutes just to get it wrong. Today there were probably 2 or 3 questions on the quant section that I really didn't know how to approach, so I made my best guess and moved on. I ended up with 90 seconds to spare on the section.

I'm not sure which makes me happier: my score, or the fact that the GMAT ordeal is behind me. Please, if anyone ever catches me acting superior because I got a 770 on this, give me a swift kick in pants. The GMAT is challenging, but all a high GMAT score demonstrates is that I can score well on the GMAT. I guess that may come in handy if, after business school, I own my own business which has one machine that produces 15 widgets in 30 minutes, and another machine that produces 33 widgets in half the time it takes the first machine to make 80 widgets....

--Chris

No doubt, the MBAs set to graduate next Spring will likely have some of the most lucrative job offers that b-school grads have seen in years. However, for those of us applying right now, what is the economic outlook for the graduates of 2009? Well, one investment consultant is using HBS graduate placement statistics as a long term equities indicator, and things aren't looking good.

--Chris

Ok, here is something that I hadn't heard about: Farmers are being treated like meth dealers for selling raw milk directly to consumers. Spending money to conduct sting operations to stop farmers from selling unpasteurized milk marked as "Not for Human Consumption" seems pretty asinine to me. It's legal to buy it. It's legal to consume it. Seems like society would be better served by ridding itself of cigarettes and Michael Bolton music long before we worried about milk.

So remember, the next time you feel like doing something "bad", go ask a farmer for a glass of milk strait from the cow's teat. As far as the government is concerned, you might as well be asking him for crystal meth, but it's much better for your teeth.

--Chris

A few weeks ago, I signed up for my new account on SmugMug. It had been a goal of mine to actually write my own Open Source, Java based gallery software and host my own gallery. However, with my recent decision to pursue an MBA, I realized that finding the time to devote to writing such software was simply never going to happen. Being a big fan of the Web 2.0 "Software as a Service" concept, I figured I should walk the talk. I did/do have a Flickr account, but two things kept me from using it full fledged: Advertising, and nudity. SmugMug has neither of these. The price, though, is a price. $39.95 a year, although I got $5 off by searching the internet for a coupon code.

Why pay money when you can get it for free? Well, for one, I am really striving to not have any advertising on my website. I don't criticize those who do, but it is my personal decision. For one, it clutters the site, and frequently annoys visitors (all five of you!). Second, I really don't want to have to worry about being affiliated with products or companies that I don't like. Flickr is a great site, easy to use, free, and has just a minimal ammount of advertising. My problem with Flickr is it's pretty much unrestricted content policy.

SmugMug won me over for being ad-free and family-friendly, but also because I just liked how you can customize the galleries, i.e., the "Themes". It's just a very well done site. The fact that content is backed up to multiple servers, and you can easily order your own backups was also a nice "piece of mind" feature. I originally signed up for the 30-day free trial, and that was enough time to realize that really like the site.

That doesn't mean I don't have any complaints, though. Most of my complaints stem from the fact that I'm the type of user that tends to use something like Flickr. In other words, I'm a blogging power-user, and SmugMug really caters more to "family" users, and also seems to be fairly popular among professional photographers who create their entire website through SmugMug. One thing that I really wish SmugMug had was "bling" for my website. Notice the SmugMug badge to the right? Well, it isn't. That is the flickr badge code that I hacked to work with SmugMug pictures. I had to hard code the images instead of having it randomly pull images like the Flickr badge script did. SmugMug needs to come up with one or several pieces of bling for geeks like me to be able to add to their websites and blogs if they really want to attract this type of user. The other funny thing was how hard it was just to get that little SmugMug logo at the beginning of this post. It's like SmugMug doesn't want free advertising! I ended up finding that logo image through a Google image search that led me to a web article on the Wall Street Journal. It shouldn't be that hard. SmugMug makes heavy use of CSS, to include an image filter, to display their own logo on their own website. Go try and steal their logo from their own site and you'll see what I mean.

All in all, though, I think SmugMug has done a fantastic job. I do wish they had a different pricing model that would allow me to purchase just the features I need. For instance, I would pay extra to be able to use my own domain name, but am not willing to upgrade to the pro package just for that feature (and that is the only pro feature I want).

This also means that you should see more active uploading of gallery images from Mr. and Mrs. Kerns, although we do need to upgrade our digi cam though (I have my eye on the Canon SD600). I also hope to start scanning in old 35mm pics and start adding those to the gallery. That's pretty time intensive, though, so it will be a slow process, and there is no "Software as a Service" for that.

--Chris

My wife and I took a trip out to New England last week for my interview at Tuck and to visit Yale SOM. We combined that with some sight-seeing in Boston. We called it our "Ivy League Tour, 2006", as we also strolled about the Harvard campus while we were in Boston. All in all, it was a great trip.

We had a lot of fun in Boston, our first time there, even though the weather was pretty horrible when we arrived on Saturday. Sunday afternoon we drove up to Hanover, New Hampshire, feeling quite proud of ourselves for making it out of Boston without any damage to the vehicle. We checked in to the Holiday Inn Express in White River Junction, which I would recommend as a nice and affordable location, and headed into Hanover for dinner. From our trip in August, we knew that Murphy's was the place to go, so we enjoyed a great dinner there. The plan was to hopefully link up with my Tuck Connections contact at Murphy's, but our schedules didn't quite match up. After dinner it was back to hotel for a little more interview prep and a good night's sleep.

Monday was beautiful clear day; a perfect Fall day for a visit to Tuck. I was a little early, but not the first one there. My day at Tuck consisted of sitting in on the fist day of the Capital Markets class in the "Fall B" term, having lunch with some first years, getting a group tour of Tuck from a 2nd year, a Q&A session with admissions, then my admissions interview. After the scheduled part of my day was complete, I finally managed to meet up with the 2nd year I met through Tuck Connections and he gave me a lot of personal insight to the program over a cup of coffee. All in all, it was an excellent day, and I really enjoyed my entire time at Tuck, despite being fairly nervous. I pretty much felt like I was on a first date the whole day!

My wife had decided to go shopping in nearby Woodstock, Vermont while I was touring Tuck, but she was back on campus by the time I was done. We stopped in a few shops in Hanover, then drove over to Norwich to see what that was all about after hearing a few comments about it during the day, then hit the highway and headed south to Conneticut. We arrived at the New Haven Hotel around 9 or so, had a few drinks in the hotel bar, then turned in for the night.

The next morning was also quite nice. We checked out of the hotel then drove up to the parking garage by the Forestry building. I was quite happy that SOM gave you a pass code to get into the parking garage for free. From there, we strolled down the Hill House and I checked in for my class visit and tour. Elizabeth went to the museum of natural history (she's got a thing for dinosaurs, so that worked out well) while I was escorted over to the Competitive Strategy class. After class, is was back over to admissions where Elizabeth met back up with me, and then we went on a tour of SOM and had lunch with two first years and one second year. After lunch, Elizabeth and I strolled down to the old campus to see what historic Yale looked like, then it was back in the car for our trip up to Boston.

Once we finally managed to figure out how to actually get to Logan by car, we found out our flight home had been cancelled. Midwest Airlines put us up in the Hilton for the night, which worked out beautifully because we were checked into the hotel and back on the "T" headed back downtown for dinner by 7:30. We really didn't mind the extra night in Boston. Unfortunately, though, our 6:35AM flight the next morning didn't actually leave until almost noon, but we ended up with two free round-trip tickets each out of the ordeal, so that certainly took care of any disgruntledness we had.

Both Tuck and SOM impressed me as schools, although we weren't really that thrilled with New Haven. When it comes to charming New England towns, though, Hanover is pretty hard to compete with. The students and staff at both schools were very friendly and helpful. I learned a great deal about both programs, and also learned that a campus visit is an essential part of the process.

Oh, I also got to meet, very briefly, MBA Gladiator, and MBA-Benny, so that was pretty cool. I wish I had had more time to hang with those guys. They were both visibly busy, as you would expect from any 1st year!

I'll post a few more specifics on my interview at Tuck in the next few days.

--Chris

I think this speaks for itself...