Ivey Mba

MBA
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p2here Says
Whats your profile? I believe Ivey gives much importance to profile...

GMAT 700 2.5yrs IT experience
including (1.5 yrs in Indian Life Insurance client sites)
extra curr avg , academic avg , however given
1-2 proffesional certifcations in Life Insurance domain .
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In some industries prior experience helps (Tech, IB), in other industries they are looking for intellectual horsepower and impact irrespective of past experience (Consulting), in other industries they are looking at your ECs more closely(Non-Profit). I can be more specific, if you choose an industry but there are different factors that make you more competitive to get the interview depending on the industry.


I've been following the posts in this thread and I have a couple of questions. Im currently working in a tech firm and planning to move to tech consulting, biz analysis or biz dev with a focus on IT. I'm interested to know what attributes companies look for in a candidate, given my areas of interest?

Can you also let me know how the consulting firms view candidates vying for pure play mgmt consulting jobs vs candidates for their IT consulting divisions?

Thanks,
Prasanna
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Hi Everyone:
I have a Spring09 admit to Ivey (thought I'd register and get some feedback , have been a lurker lol)
I am wondering if there is anyone with a business background? Do you think that the Ivey MBA will focus your career choice and provide the value added, considering a some of the things taught might not be new to someone with a business background.
Also, I am wondering if there is anyone else who is in the process of looking for housing etc. If you already have a place, what was the process involved?


Tango:
Sorry, I thought I replied to this already - but it looks as if there were some issues on the site, thus my response did not post, so here we go again:

1) There are several people in the program with a business background and the overall sentiment is that there is A LOT of uncharted territory that the Ivey MBA covers. For example, I have friends that came from Investment Banking that learned a lot from the core Finance course which is a real testament to the quality of the program. In general, unless you've learned predominantly via the case method before - I can guarantee you will still learn a lot.

2) There is a 'Managing Your Career' course that is actually integrated into the curriculum within the first module. Students in the program found it really helpful to go through this thorough level of introspection - and it actually changed a lot of people's minds on the career path they wanted to follow. There are not many opportunities in life to actually do this and I found that the Career Management at Ivey is a true competitive advantage.

3) Regarding housing, I would suggest contacting the student ambassador email: [email protected] - They can put you in touch with the current Essential Services senator who deals with housing. Personally, I found my place from a graduating student that was posting on the Facebook group.

Ivey MBA Student Blog
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Hey Dizzy, great to have you in this forum.
I will be starting at Ivey this spring. Planning to arrive there by the 2nd week of April.


Congratulations demandez!
There is an overap of a few weeks with the May cohorts so I'm sure I'll meet you when you get to London.
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I had my SECOND round of interview with Karen in Ivey Ad-com on 10-Feb-09 (yesterday) and now waiting for their verdict.
Suppose, I get a reply in Feb-last or March-2st week, definitely it will be tough for me to arrange for Finances/Loans.

In this case, will Ivey accept my request to defer the admit for a year? Has anyone (who has got admitted) done so or tried to do so?

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I've been following the posts in this thread and I have a couple of questions. Im currently working in a tech firm and planning to move to tech consulting, biz analysis or biz dev with a focus on IT. I'm interested to know what attributes companies look for in a candidate, given my areas of interest?

Can you also let me know how the consulting firms view candidates vying for pure play mgmt consulting jobs vs candidates for their IT consulting divisions?

Thanks,
Prasanna


Prasanna,

First and foremost - since you are looking to go into tech, it REALLY helps to have some tech experience (which it sounds like you have). Furthermore to make the hop to tech consulting, it helps if you've made use of the 'Consulting Cycle' (Issue Identification->Analysis->Synthesis-> Recommendation -> Implementation) in your job before either via Internal consulting or project work.

If you're targeting the firms that have a more strategic focus with an IT practice (for example McKinsey's BTO practice). They will look for the exact same things that they would for a generalist Strat associate but with the addition of some tech experience. So things like the following are crucial:

1) Marks to date in the MBA program
2) Impact filled work experience
3) GMAT score
4) Impact filled extracurriculars in/out of school
5) Quality of resume / cover letter
6) Passion for the company

In fact, with McKinsey specifically, the generalist and the BTO candidates were interviewed with the exact same cases in first round. In either case they are looking for Super-intelligent, impact oriented people.

Other firms like Accenture or Deloitte will have completely different hiring cycles for their tech candidates. But the process will remain the same where the attributes they are looking for are the same with the added 'need' of some tech experience.

Hope that helps!

Ivey MBA Student Blog
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One more thing - to spread the propaganda ;). We just won First Place in the Financial Post's Annual Portfolio challenge.

Ivey ekes out a slim victory in MBA contest

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I had my SECOND round of interview with Karen in Ivey Ad-com on 10-Feb-09 (yesterday) and now waiting for their verdict.
Suppose, I get a reply in Feb-last or March-2st week, definitely it will be tough for me to arrange for Finances/Loans.

In this case, will Ivey accept my request to defer the admit for a year? Has anyone (who has got admitted) done so or tried to do so?


Yes they do usually accept deferrals. There were several people in my class that deferred from earlier years.

Ivey MBA Student Blog
229

Thanks Dizzy! Appreciate your thorough response.

I accepted the offer and am looking forward to joining Ivey this May.

I have another question for you, regarding my GMAT score. My post-Ivey career focus is Mgmt Consulting and I have a 650 GMAT score (first attempt). Do you think I should try to retake it, understating of course that recruiting firms will look at a lot more than just a GMAT score.

I spoke with an alum regarding this and she said I should just relax in the time before I start in May.
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Hi Guys

I am applying for the full time MBA course at Ivey (fall 2009)

Had a few queries regarding transcripts

1. Apart from the engineering marksheets which documents are expected as part of transcripts.

2. I am a software engineer from Mumbai University,India. I am sure my University won't send my transcripts directly to ivey. Is there an alternate way to send the transcripts.

I shall appreciate advise in this regard

Thanks

Adi

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Hi Guys

I am applying for the full time MBA course at Ivey (fall 2009)

Had a few queries regarding transcripts

1. Apart from the engineering marksheets which documents are expected as part of transcripts.

2. I am a software engineer from Mumbai University,India. I am sure my University won't send my transcripts directly to ivey. Is there an alternate way to send the transcripts.

I shall appreciate advise in this regard

Thanks

Adi


1. Transcript will be only thing that is required by University at this moment. (Apart from GMAT/TOEFL scorecard)

2. As University will not send it directly 2 college address, get the sealed envelope containing your transcripts from the college and that you can send to Ivey Ad-com.

Hope this will help..
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Dizzydogg Says
One more thing - to spread the propaganda ;). We just won First Place in the Financial Post's Annual Portfolio challenge.
Dizzy, needed some info on how the Ivey MBA is suited for a career in General Management... Do you have any pointers?

Cheers
233
Prasanna,

First and foremost - since you are looking to go into tech, it REALLY helps to have some tech experience......


Thanks for your response Dizzydogg. With a 660 in Gmat, Im planning to apply this year(hopefully with a significantly improved score).

Expect more questions as I dig in deeper to understand if Ivey is my 'kind of' school and more importantly, whether I'm the 'kind of' student Ivey looks for 😃
234

Finally got the call last night at 9:00PM on my mobile. I'm pumped!! HAHA. :)
I'm typing this Saturday morning, and havent seen an email from the comittee. It is late night London, CA time now. Anybody else get their offer email late?

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Congrats Dingathon! and to all other May admit ppl! 😃

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How long Ivey Ad-com takes in responding for the final result after 2nd round of Interview?

I have been interviewed (for 2nd round) on Feb-10th and waiting to hear from them...

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hey congrats dingathon....is it for the spring intake....?

are you in bangalore now... keep in touch... me and demandez ( arun) are all set now...

Finally got the call last night at 9:00PM on my mobile. I'm pumped!! HAHA. :)
I'm typing this Saturday morning, and havent seen an email from the comittee. It is late night London, CA time now. Anybody else get their offer email late?
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2Phere: It took them 5 weeks to get back to me. They did say 4-6 weeks.
Satya_351 - I'm on the fall cohort and still in bangalore. I'll PM you separately.

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I didn't get a chance to write about my experiences from the start of applying until so now so here goes.
- I applied to R2 on November 6
- Informed that I was selected for interviews on Dec 11. I was asked to give preferred dates the first week of Jan and I gave Jan 7th

- Interview 1 ( Adcom member)

1. Pitch to join Ivey in 60 seconds.
2. Example of Under Pressure.
3. Person you admire - why? What don't you like?
4. Describe a situation where someone did not agree to your suggestion.
5. Tell me about a news item you read recently.
6. What is your anti-resume?
7. What kind of people do you like to work with?
8. If you were cold called in class about 3 issues that plagued your industry today - what would be and why?
9. A few questions about my extra curriculars.
10. You graduated 12 years ago, why do you want to do an MBA now?
11. Which other schools have I applied to?

Over I thought I did average - wasn't too crisp with my answers and tended to ramble a bit and also I may have come across as a little over eager (important to not sound desperate)
The interview lasted about 30 minutes in all.

- My next email was Jan 13th informining me that I was to have an interview with a relationship manager (career management and adcom) and was told that I might have up to 3 interviews.
The interview was scheduled Jan 22.
Typically from my experience interviewing, the reason a person would undergo multiple interviews might be due to either getting different perspectives when the interviewer wasn't sure that the candidate was a fit.

- Interview 2 - I resolved to be ultra prepared with this one (took the day off) and did a lot of reading about current affairs and putting down questions to be asked.

1. Why MBA
2. Why Now
3. Why Ivey
4. Walk me through your resume
5. Describe my goals post MBA
6. Describe my job post MBA
- I got good tips from Demandez about how to make the correlation between my experiences and the type of work I expect to be doing. I was very specific speaking about the type of company, how long I would be doing what and what my longer term goals were like.
7. I had at least 5 questions.

the interview lasted 75 minutes ( It was a slam dunk for me) so I felt good that I gave it my best shot.

- Informed Feb 3 that I was missing a recommendation from 1 referee!! ( Ivey's admission forms have no way of letting you know that!)
I quickly scrambled and got my peer manager to write one for me a few days later and send it directly to the adcom member who mailed me.

- Feb 20 - Received a call on my mobile that I was selected

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Hi, sorry that I am not an Indian, I am from Hong Kong, but I have been following this thread for a while and really did get a lot of help. So in return I think I would post some additional things for interview... I am a late applicant and I just had the interviews today... the questions are more or less the same, but I got some key differences in the interview with CS dept...

You may get questions prompting you to comment on latest financial news headlines, something related to the financial turmoil and whether a particular action from an institution or a government is doing the right thing... etc... I can't be very specific as I am afraid if friends here really revise the exact questions i encountered but got different ones and then get dumped it would be bad... so better keep your eyes on latest financial news, formulated your own points of views... and one more thing... the questions may not only be related to governments or central banks, may be some organizations or firms related to your profile... anyway take care my friends in India!