Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC)

I think this is a great opportunity for anyone even remotely thinking about stepping into an Entreprenuers role . This year SCU is hosting the Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC). I am new to this and don't have all the info but stay tuned while I gather more details and post them here.



PS : If you are thinking of partnering with someone, then I am looking for some one serious. I have a great idea that might work :- )

“A YouTube for Data”

I came across this interesting blog in the Freakonomics Blog : “A YouTube for Data”

which is quite interesting. Given the fact that I am taking Statistics this quarter and the core topics such as Linear regression, Normal distribution etc is still fresh in my memory, I though this idea of developing a site where anybody could upload their data and generate graphs seemed very impressive. Is there use for such data ? I think so. I can track the page views of my blogs and upload it to swivel and put a small piece of JS on my site that can show the number of page views. Would I want to do that ? Not unless I have a huge readership base. If it's just me my firend and my dog reading :) then I wouldn't want to do it. But the point is there is some need for such representation of data .



Now this opens up another question. Now I have a way to present the data but how do I get the data in the first place ? Hmm, May be I should think of a swivel++.

Attitude tune-up

We all need an attitude tune-up sometimes or rather may be quite frequently. I recently came across this book (an audio book) by Keith Harrell that was not only very entertaining but quite motivating. Keith does a very nice job of explaining why we should have a attitude tune-up. I am trying out the positive attitude approach that he preaches and boy.. its tough... it needs practice and I am not giving up. That's positive attitude! Go hear it if you get a chance! It's a great CD to listen to when you are driving!!!

So what's my take from this book ? I now keep saying to myself that I can handle all three effectively and efficiently, my work, my family and ofcourse my school homework!!!

Amazon.com: Attitude Plus Self-Confidence: Books: Keith Harrell

Business Week names Holly Schroth as one of the Favorite professors

In a business week article titled Mind games , professor Holly Schroth was featured as one of the Favorite professors amongst students. Professor Schroth teaches mainly at Berkeley but she also teaches a few classes at SantaClara university. I took her MGMT501 class during the spring of 2006 and it was fun. I agree with a lot of fellow students and would say she is one of the best professors. Her notes are basically one pagers. They are nothing but the subject headlines from her power point presentation. She also uses a custom made textbook that has hand picked chapters from various books that is very boring to read. She has another book that has all the case studies and this one is the meat of the class. The cases in this book are discussed in almost every class. Her tests and grading are fair although I should warn you that you better understand her expectations on how and what you should answer. (You should have known by now since she taught you how to set and understand expectations in the class :-) )

If I ever get a chance to take her Negotiations class, I would definitely do so. Her real area of expertise it seems is *Negotiations* .

Winter registration has begun

Fella students,

The Winter registration has begun. If you are new and didn't know what, when and how, then follow these steps.



1. Login to ecampus. On the main page towards the center right of the page, you'll see an Enrollment section. This will indicate when you can register for the classes. Hurry! and don't waste time. High demand classes go away very quickly. So grab one if you have an early enrollment date. I don't know how the school decided on who gets to register when but in the last quarter my turn came almost toward the end and this quarter its towards the beginning of the registration period.



2. Keep a list of a few classes that you can do handy so that you can select one or the other because the classes might have already been filled up by the time you get your turn. Use www.schedulaid.com/ to plan on your courses. Before the scheduleaid was in place I prepared something like this that helped me.



3. Make sure you drop the courses before the deadline if you have enrolled for more than the courses you would like to take in a given quarter. The deadlines are all available on ecampus when you login.

Phew! Accounting midterm just over

Phew! Just crossed one hurdle. I just finished my ACTG midterm and oh! boy feels like I have just climbed Mt Everest. Caught between heavy office work and a demanding professor, it definitely feels like I am doing my MBA. My test was on a Tuesday and I had 6 chapters for the test. By Sunday evening, I had completed working on all the chapters but I never feel confident unless I do a complete revision on the previous day. Hence I used Monday evening and Tuesday early morning to do a complete revision. Finally it was time for the test and to my surprise it didn't feel that bad. I liked the test because the expectation was correctly set. We were told that the paper would be lengthy and we would have to manage our time well and so I did. There were some tricky questions that I wasn't too sure about but overall it was good. Finally it's time to catch all that lost sleep.



Some tips on preparing for the ACTG exams from Paisley

1. Do your homework and understand them.

2. Listen to the class. A lot of true/false questions can be answered if you just pay attention in the class.

3. Manage your time well. Don't just sit there and think.. move on.

4. Grading is on a curve.. So you are competing against the brightest student on a difficult paper. Don't loose heart. If the problem was too difficult, you may not be alone.

5. If you have a recording of the lecture, try listening to it. SOme of the concepts can be understood well if you listen to them after reading the book.

Hey! My Fall quarter begins...

What's so cool about it ? Hmm, I am taking ACTG301 from Chris Paesley. I had heard that he is very good..O boy I got to tell you that he is fantastic. He keeps the class captive with interesting related incidents and stories from his career. He is cool!!! You got to take him..but wait... he gives a lot of homework and scares you too. So be brave and charge ahead!!

What else is happening...hmm, I am also taking OMIS353 with Homi Fatemi. He is good too and have received some good feedback from people. The worst thing is I just did a Stats course from Deanza last Winter for 5 credit units and SCU did not give a waiver on this course. Soooo, I am just going to become a stats expert :-) .

I love the professors and the effort they put in teaching etc but the administrative offices be it Bursar or the Cowell Health Center.... ahhh geez hopeless. They don't even return your calls. Forget returning their voice mail boxes are full. I had to make a personal visit to Amanda Kippert's office to get the health insurance waived.

Thoughts on my first quarter

My first quarter which was the spring quarter of 2006 was a good learning experience. I had taken two subjects; Macroeconomics and Management. Both were quite interesting in their own ways. Macroecon was shedding light on how the world's economy, especially the US economy operates. It talks about inflation, interest rates, GDP etc...These are all the terms that you hear in your everyday life. This course helped me understand these terms in depth and how they affect our economy. For e.g. what the Fed does to control inflation..(this is a hot topic today because of rising inflations). The Management subject is treated by some folks as a "general" theory that usually is "known" to all. Well, if you look at the course, it is "General" stuff that is supposed to be known to all "managers" but in reality that is not true. I have not had a management background and this has helped me immensely. The prof Holly Schroth conducted some interesting case studies that got the whole class involved. Towards the end of the quarter there was a day long workshop called the Silicon Valley Technology workshop (SVT) that was meant to be chaotic and simulate the real world company atmosphere. Although I must say this one was more chaotic than is usual in any workplace. Each student is assigned a role ranging from the company's president to the Manager and handed over a bunch of emails. Everyone is suposed to sift through the emails (in printed form) and identify the goals to be accomplished and carry them through out the day. The idea is that the president should raise to the chaotic occasion, set goals and prioritize items and the VP's should communicate these goals down the chain etc... Oh boy! can you imagine the chaos and the struggle for power ? It is a fun exercise and also helps you understand your strength and weaknesses. in conclusion my first quarter was an interesting experience and I really enjoy doing my MBA! Drop me a line if you have any thoughts..

Want to do MBA but don't like GMAT ?

If you answer 'yes' to this question, then you are not alone. A lot of people that I have spoken to have the same feeling especially people who are already working but want to pursue higher education. After defering my plans for about two years I finally gathered the courage to sitdown and prepare for my GMAT. GMAT as you may know is mostly objective, except for the two essays. I blew my first attempt and scored only 530. This score could only get me a seat in San Francisco State University (SFSU) or Sanjose State University (SJSU). I was not happy with my score and I believed that if I was going to invest a lot of time and money in an MBA programme then it might as well be the best possible programme that could yield a higher ROI. So I decided to take it again after a month and wooo I scored 670. I didn't expect this honestly ; but there was something significantly different that I did during my second preparation. I spent about three months preparing before my first atempt. I must say that I had been out of college for 10 years when I attempted my GMAT. So I had to brush up a lot and in GMAT time is of essence. I didnot go for any classes because they were expensive and I didnot believe much in them. So I bought the Kaplan GMAT book with CD ROM and the Official Guide for GMAT. The editions have changed since then. In preparing for my first attempt I went through the Kaplan book and solved all the exercises. I even timed myself while solving the problems in the book. I then took the two or three tests from the Official guide. This gave me enough confidence but I didnot do a good job in training myself to manage the time well. My plan was to divide the test into two halfs and time it accordingly. During my actual test I blew on the timing. I was too slow and had the tendency to keep trying although in my subconciousness I knew that I had to move on. As a result I had to guess a lot of the questions towards the end for lack of time. For my second round I used the Kaplan CD and took the tests. WoW! What a wonderful resource and how stupid of me to have ignored this in the first place. There were about seven or eight actual exams that was a simulation of the real exam. Towards the end of the exam it gives you some statistics and you can analyze your weakness and improve on them. It was cool. The questions on the Kaplan CD are much tougher and lengthier (in the maths section) than the actual GMAT tests. I also adopted a different method of timing. I divided the section into three parts instead of two. This gave me a quicker feedback. I knew exactly how many questions I should have completed in the first interval, in the second and in the third. If I was lagging behind then I knew it much sooner. This preparation and the timing technique really helped me. I couldn't believe when I really saw my score on the screen. With a score of 670 my hopes of getting into a top Business school was once again revived. I joined Santa Clara in the Spring of 2006.

Do you have any stories on how you made the move to take GMAT finally ? Share with us ...

I thought I would put a tree of the required and waivable courses on the web so that I can share with you all on my progress. After the first quarter ( I am yet to receive grades for 1 subject) I have completed two courses meaning 6 units of work out of the required 70 units. Here's a graph of the courses and its dependencies. The rectangles with brown borders indicates the courses I have completed. Blue boxes means they have no pre-requisites.

My list of courses

I have decided to blog my experience of doing an MBA at the Santa Clara University. I am in my second quarter and I am taking a break during this summer as I have a trip planned to India. Doing a part time MBA is an amazing experience. My classes start at about 7:00pm and goes on for an hour and fifteen minutes. At half past eight a second class begins and goes on till about 9:45.pm. I personaly enjoy the busy schedule although I should admit that it gets too busy sometimes managing two kids, a work life and school assignments and group works.