The beginning and the choices

I remember that my interest to business started with CNBC. I was in high school back then. One day after school, after throwing my bag to the corner of the room, I opened the TV and started zapping. Then I stopped at CNBC (It was number 9 on our remote) in an effort to understand what were those symbols and numbers passing from the bottom bar. The speaker was talking about the current news and their effects on the stock market and the country. First time really listening to what they're saying, I was really impressed with the correlation among things and with the fact that it is completely understandable. Before that, I had the idea that they are all functions and assumptions with vague conclusions.

Studying business management after high school was present in my choices, however, the lack of supervision and career support for high school students caused me to follow the trend of being an engineer. There was such a primitive idea on people's minds that if you are among the most successful, you should choose engineering. We were brainwashed with this point of view. Even some of the teachers were scaring us by giving examples from people who chose other professions and now hardly paying their rents. Since my parents are both opera singers, they only had superficial knowledge about business world and different professions, so no help from this side of the story as well. 

Almost 10 years from that moment, now, I feel the change coming. I'm fixed to the target and I feel enthusiastic about the journey of change and the rest of my life. Despite the fact that I still have lots of questions on my mind, after more than 1 year of research about business schools and programs, I narrowed down my options to 6. My almost final choices are as follows (no specific order):

- INSEAD

- IMD

- SDA Bocconi

- Duke Fuqua

- UNC Kenan-Flagler

- Cornell Johnson

The criteria I used to choose the programs were several; including rankings, faculty, location, careers, curriculum, financial aid (loans especially), alumni/current student comments and admission criteria.

Hello world!

Yes, hello and welcome. In this blog, I'm planning to write about my efforts to be admitted to a top MBA program. I hope this blog will be a good milestone for my business education adventure.

In my first post, I want to give an introduction about myself. As it can be understood from my blog's title, I'm a Turk living in Russia. To be more precise, a Turkish guy living in Russia for the last 22 months. I am currently working as a project manager for a mid-size construction project.

As for my background, I previously worked abroad in two other countries (Actually, except my internships I never worked in my home country). I graduated from university as a civil engineer with a formidable - read 2,20- GPA. I may get in to the details of the several reasons of this rock-bottom GPA later.

I'm planning to pursue an MBA for thousands of valid reasons. Although I'll pass this subject because it would be a shame to spoil it all for the adcoms by writing them all here.

For the time being, I can tell that I started my GMAT preparation almost one month ago. The first 15 days of the preparation lacked serious concentration but then I got myself together and managed to study everyday at least for half an hour. My study method is rather contemporary than conventional. One day I solve 15 questions, the other day I read a random article online and write down the words that I don't know, the other day I repeat my vocabulary list and so on... My math is quite strong, so I don't spend much time on it. I can even say that my quantitative practices are limited with the quant sections of the practice tests actually.

I actually took the GMAT almost 5 years ago, just after my graduation and got 680. One month ago, to mark my GMAT preparation start-point, I did a CAT and again got 680(It seems like not much changed last 5 years). My current aim is to try solving one practice test per week. I want/need it in order to improve my meager concentration and to monitor my improvement. My test scores till date are as follows:

- 15.08.11 GMAT Prep2           Overall: 710 Quant: 50 Verbal: 36

- 21.08.11 GMAT Prep1           Overall: 710 Quant: 49 Verbal: 36

- 30.08.11 Manhattan GMAT    Overall: 730 Quant: 50 Verbal: 40

It seems like the preparation starts to pay off. My aim is 770 by the way. It is a stellar score and I feel like it can minimize the current disrepute that I have because of my lovely GPA.

Well, that's all for the first post. I guess I already wrote more than I should for the introduction. In the following posts I want to give more detail about my MBA targets, to talk about the challenges I experience through my studies and to compare the GMATPrep and MGMAT.

Bye for now!