Pre-MBA Blues!!
Monday, April 19th 2004: Visited Leesburg, VA last weekend to attend an Information Session on OneMBA at Lansdowne Resort and for admissions interview with Angela Dickerson. It was a short trip but very eventful. It started with minor bumps but ended rather nicely. Upon checking in I was given a key to room 409, which wouldn’t work. The girls next door checking in at the same time were in a party mood. The reception desk next gave me a key to room 204. It worked! But I was a bit surprised to see the suite cases on the floor. Took a second for me to realize that they had given me a key to an occupied room. I was back at the reception desk again. I was given personal assurance that this time it would work. I checked in room 505 successfully. Relaxed for a little while and than decided to go to the bar to eat something. I was in a dilemma about what to drink since I had made a rather impromptu decision on Dec 31 to not drink for a year. Sitting in bar alone without any drinks was going to be quite awkward for me so I ordered a few martinis and had a crab cake sandwich. Heck with the new year resolution. Aren’t they made to be broken any way? It was good. While I was having my drinks I decided to do some detective work on the students who were currently attended OneMBA program there so I started a conversation with the waitress. I asked her how frequently they showed up at the bar? How much did they drink? Did they ever create trouble or were unpleasant? Did they spend a lot of time there? The purpose behind this was to understand (1) night life (2) student behavior. She didn’t have anything negative to say. At mid night I woke up to find myself a little sweaty and itchy. The heat was on and I had hives on my body. I switch to A/C, drank water and lay there till I fell a sleep again. I felt fine in the morning. The hives had almost disappeared. Was it the seafood? I guess I will never know.Next morning while dressing up for the session I realized that my maroon matching belt was missing. So after a bit of panic I decided to go with black belt and shoes. Thank god I had wore business casuals the day before. The information session was nice. Angela was very pleasant. It was nice to put a face to her voice, which sounded a little different since she was nursing a cold. She and Anne Marie Summers, director of the Weekend MBA program at KFBS were very helpful to me when I was trying to decide on the program. After doing all the research in the world and clicking on every link on the Internet that led me to OneMBA I had decided to pursue that program. I think she was happy to see me there as well.The lunch with participants from class of 2004 was nice. Appreciated their perspective of the program since they were the first class, the risk takers. The interview later at 2:00 PM with Angela went fine as well. Between lunch and the interview I had the opportunity to have a sales manager of the resort give me tour of the facility. I narrated my experience with check-in to him and he was kind enough to offer me a free
certificate of spa use for my wife and a free upgrade to a suite next time I was there. Pretty cool I say. It put a smile on my wife’s face. I walked away feeling good about my chances of getting admissions in to the program that evening. Drive home was good too.
Monday, April 26th 2004: Last weekend was quite eventful. Karin had given me the good news on Friday the 23rd that she was pregnant with our second child. If every thing goes okay, we may have our second baby before the year ends. I received a call from Angela on Saturday the 24th at 6:23 PM to confirm my admissions in the OneMBA program for the class of 2006. It was so exciting. My parents are visiting us this week so it was nice to share the news with them in person. My mom has mixed feels about this. She hasn’t received a very positive feedback from others in the Indian community who has attempted to get a part-time or an executive MBA. My father gave me a thumbs-up and my wife a nice kiss. Tonight we celebrate this milestone. My brother who is currently in India exchanged a rupee on 25th. Around 250 people were present for that ceremony. We all wished we could be there for him on such an important day of his life. He went there to gain new IT skills and ended up finding a nice girl to marry as well. The wedding will be next year in the US. I have promised my father to help him financially as much as I can and give my brother and his wife a honeymoon package as their wedding gift. Traditionally the parents of the groom do this. So I guess in theory I spend $93,000 ($85K for the MBA, $5K for brother’s wedding, $3K for preparing for the second child) last weekend.
Tuesday, April 27th 2004: Woke up around 3:30 AM abruptly and couldn’t go back to sleep. The thoughts of financing my MBA and Akhil’s wedding broke the mental silence. The brain was active again. Decided to go down stairs and surf the net and research on federal loans. Couldn’t find anywhere what an academic year meant from a borrowing perspective. Was starting the program in 2004 and completing in 2006 two academic years or three? Stafford gives $8500 in subsidized and $10,000 in unsubsidized loans annually. I bet it meant two. Would have liked it to be three. I couldn’t believe I was thinking that may be I should defer my admissions by a year to take care of the expenses related with birth of our second child and wedding in the family. Decided to go to work really early. May be I don’t need to buy a $2000 laptop. I will use the company laptop but will have to convince RMES of its use in a wireless environment. Also, I should seriously think about using ROTH IRA for my tuition expenses. But I was saving for Natalie’s education. Is it a right thing to do?
10:40 AM: I feel much better now. I was able to confirm (1) from ED that 2004-2006 is two academic years (2) I can take a distribution from my IRA for postsecondary education without 10% penalty (3) the aid can be borrowed for only the cost of the program and not for travel and meals. This means I will be able to cover substantial amount ($36,000 as of today in the account minus taxes) of tuition from my rollover IRA and I won’t have to touch my ROTH IRA. The out-of-pocket, company reimbursements and Stafford loans will cover my expenses so I won’t have to take a private loan. It looks like I will be able to manage all the expenses, without significantly affecting some of the family projects, after all. However, the challenge is going to be to recoup my costs at the rate faster than it would have grown in my IRA. MBA is an investment after all. Bring it on!
Thursday, April 29th 2004: I have confirmed that all of the money in the IRA has been put into a Treasury Money Market fund so that I can retain its value between now and the time I have to pay the fees.
Monday, May 3rd 2004: Faxed my acceptance form and paid the enrollment deposit of $750 via credit card. Spent a good deal of time yesterday trying to “figure out” how to use the combo of credit cards/loans/cash to my best advantage when paying the tuitions. The good news is that American Airlines will pretty much take me to all of my global residencies so I don’t need to get new credit cards to manage frequent flyer miles. However, I may not choose to fly AA if bunch of my teammates are flying KLM to Amsterdam next March. Anyways, it is too early to worry about this. Planning for it may not be a bad idea however.
Thursday, May 6th 2004: Did the first ultra sound for Karin’s second pregnancy. Everything looks good. Karin’s doc confirmed that there is only one baby so that certainly helps us. Karin and I were worried that next time we may have twins or more because of fertility drugs. While all the babies would have been welcomed with equal love and joy, it is will make life a whole lot simpler for us. Karin is a twin and so is her father. The due date is 27th of Dec. Fortunately there are no classes that time around. The class in Dec starts on the 10th in Chapel Hill. If she goes in a month early like last time it would be around thanksgiving and fortunately the class in Nov is on 19th. But I guess anything can happen after 8th month so I will have to be prepared for it and hopefully so will my teammates.
Friday, May 7th 2004: Spoke to Michael McDuffy about student aid. He confirmed that he had all the information necessary and would contact me next week if more was needed. Otherwise I should expect to hear from him in couple of weeks about the outcome of the loan application. I felt that absence of friendliness that I have felt from other staff at UNC. May be I caught him at the wrong time.
11:00 AM – Received the promised certificate from Lansdowne Resort National Sales Manager Greg Spiller for a free upgrade to suite, spa and golf. I wondered if he would keep his word. He did and I am impressed.
Friday, May 14th 2004: Received a Notice of Incomplete Application from Student Aid office yesterday. I was told that I needed to provide more information like Student’s Expected Income, Selective Service, Postsecondary School Attendance, and Graduate Enrollment form. At first I freaked out because the notice at the end said that since all this information wasn’t available and that I applied after March 1st deadline, the chances are that I would get the funds, if available, after the school year starts. So I downloaded all the forms as requested from the website and completed them. Called Michael McDuffy this morning and left him a voice mail to call me back as I had questions about the notice. Didn’t hear back from him in couple of hours so I figured he was busy and I called the Student Aid office. A nice lady Megan helped me out. I was able to get the forms faxed to their office and she confirmed that they had received everything they asked for and I should expect to hear from them within two weeks. I hope not to hear back from them on anything else that is missing.
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2004: Received another notice of incomplete application on Saturday the 28th. This time it asked for a documented confirmation whether my company would be paying for tuition or not. Called the office of Student Aid to inquire
why this was necessary as it was already mentioned in my initial application and why it wasn’t brought to my attention the first time a similar notice was sent. I was told that the first notice is customary and everybody gets it. I wonder why they call it “notice of incomplete application” if it really is “notice for additional information”? And make it sound as if the incomplete application was my fault. Faxed my company’s Educational Assistance Program policy on June 1st. Received immediate confirmation that faxed has been delivered successfully. Left message for Michael McDuffy on June 2nd to confirm the same.
3:15 PM – No response from Michael McDuffy. Called the Student Aid Office again to confirm if they had received the fax. Spoke to Lauran. She asked to resend the fax. Done. Called Lauran to confirm. She asked to confirm with Michael McDuffy if I don’t see a change in status of my application online by Friday.
Thursday, June 3rd, 2004: Using Student Central confirmed that the Office of Student Aid has received my fax and it is being reviewed. I will be contacted by mail if anything else is missing. I wonder what will it be?
Tuesday, June 8th 2004: Received in mail a note from CFI, the lender, about the need to sign Master Promissory Note and take counseling for the first time applicants so that we can understand our rights and obligations. Can’t believe they made me a take a test after the counseling session. The signed MPN is in the mail today.
Wednesday, June 16th 2004: Faxed the authorization form to cashiers office yesterday. This will allow them to use aid for all outstanding expenses. Lauran from the Student Aid’s office mentioned that I should do nothing with the form asking for details of outside tuition help if none was expected.
Friday, July 23rd 2004: Yesterday I moved 32% of my 401K money from a mutual fund to a managed income fund. All the news and articles about possibility of attacks in US has freaked me out a little bit. I was just done recovering my losses from the crash. Don’t want to go through that again. All new contributions go exclusively to a managed income fund. With my financial commitments, I want to make sure that for next couple of years I be careful. I also worked on a personality profile that Angela had send all of us to complete and send it back before July 31st. Its in the mail today. Got one more to do by end of July for the class. I received a letter from the US Airways that there was a slight change to my reservation. The return flight will be starting an hour early at 12:25 PM on 25th of Sept. I would have to miss some of the classes and speakers. Angela felt that it would be okay if I had to leave a little early. I personally felt that it would set a wrong tempo for the rest of the program so I decided to first take the next non-stop flight at 7:50 PM. I would find something to do at the airport. Upon talking with US Airways reservation staff I decided to use another option and that was to take a flight at 1:55 PM via Pittsburg. I still have my options open so I may change it back to the later non-stop one. On 21st, I finally bought a 200X laptop for the program from Gateway for $1441.11 at roughly 22% discount. The configuration I had chosen would have cost me $1847.57 How about that for a customer loyalty discount? Plus I felt that they were quite accommodating towards my concerns on how the order was executed.
Thursday, July 29th 2004: I received my laptop yesterday. It is pretty cool. Had to call back Gateway to confirm my credit for the “no shipping cost” deal as well as change of service plan from standard to 3 year value plus.
Monday, August 2nd 2004: Read over the weekend about a new cheap no-frills airline, Independence Air, starting from Port Columbus to Washington Dulles on August 15th. Coincidentally it is also India’s Independence Day. For first purchase I would get $25 off. I called US airways and cancelled my reservations. Booked on Independence instead for $113.20, saving me $142. I will get ground transportation from IAD to the Opening week venue. The return flight won’t start until 4:00 PM so I have plenty of time to complete my activities on 25th.
certificate of spa use for my wife and a free upgrade to a suite next time I was there. Pretty cool I say. It put a smile on my wife’s face. I walked away feeling good about my chances of getting admissions in to the program that evening. Drive home was good too.
Monday, April 26th 2004: Last weekend was quite eventful. Karin had given me the good news on Friday the 23rd that she was pregnant with our second child. If every thing goes okay, we may have our second baby before the year ends. I received a call from Angela on Saturday the 24th at 6:23 PM to confirm my admissions in the OneMBA program for the class of 2006. It was so exciting. My parents are visiting us this week so it was nice to share the news with them in person. My mom has mixed feels about this. She hasn’t received a very positive feedback from others in the Indian community who has attempted to get a part-time or an executive MBA. My father gave me a thumbs-up and my wife a nice kiss. Tonight we celebrate this milestone. My brother who is currently in India exchanged a rupee on 25th. Around 250 people were present for that ceremony. We all wished we could be there for him on such an important day of his life. He went there to gain new IT skills and ended up finding a nice girl to marry as well. The wedding will be next year in the US. I have promised my father to help him financially as much as I can and give my brother and his wife a honeymoon package as their wedding gift. Traditionally the parents of the groom do this. So I guess in theory I spend $93,000 ($85K for the MBA, $5K for brother’s wedding, $3K for preparing for the second child) last weekend.
Tuesday, April 27th 2004: Woke up around 3:30 AM abruptly and couldn’t go back to sleep. The thoughts of financing my MBA and Akhil’s wedding broke the mental silence. The brain was active again. Decided to go down stairs and surf the net and research on federal loans. Couldn’t find anywhere what an academic year meant from a borrowing perspective. Was starting the program in 2004 and completing in 2006 two academic years or three? Stafford gives $8500 in subsidized and $10,000 in unsubsidized loans annually. I bet it meant two. Would have liked it to be three. I couldn’t believe I was thinking that may be I should defer my admissions by a year to take care of the expenses related with birth of our second child and wedding in the family. Decided to go to work really early. May be I don’t need to buy a $2000 laptop. I will use the company laptop but will have to convince RMES of its use in a wireless environment. Also, I should seriously think about using ROTH IRA for my tuition expenses. But I was saving for Natalie’s education. Is it a right thing to do?
10:40 AM: I feel much better now. I was able to confirm (1) from ED that 2004-2006 is two academic years (2) I can take a distribution from my IRA for postsecondary education without 10% penalty (3) the aid can be borrowed for only the cost of the program and not for travel and meals. This means I will be able to cover substantial amount ($36,000 as of today in the account minus taxes) of tuition from my rollover IRA and I won’t have to touch my ROTH IRA. The out-of-pocket, company reimbursements and Stafford loans will cover my expenses so I won’t have to take a private loan. It looks like I will be able to manage all the expenses, without significantly affecting some of the family projects, after all. However, the challenge is going to be to recoup my costs at the rate faster than it would have grown in my IRA. MBA is an investment after all. Bring it on!
Thursday, April 29th 2004: I have confirmed that all of the money in the IRA has been put into a Treasury Money Market fund so that I can retain its value between now and the time I have to pay the fees.
Monday, May 3rd 2004: Faxed my acceptance form and paid the enrollment deposit of $750 via credit card. Spent a good deal of time yesterday trying to “figure out” how to use the combo of credit cards/loans/cash to my best advantage when paying the tuitions. The good news is that American Airlines will pretty much take me to all of my global residencies so I don’t need to get new credit cards to manage frequent flyer miles. However, I may not choose to fly AA if bunch of my teammates are flying KLM to Amsterdam next March. Anyways, it is too early to worry about this. Planning for it may not be a bad idea however.
Thursday, May 6th 2004: Did the first ultra sound for Karin’s second pregnancy. Everything looks good. Karin’s doc confirmed that there is only one baby so that certainly helps us. Karin and I were worried that next time we may have twins or more because of fertility drugs. While all the babies would have been welcomed with equal love and joy, it is will make life a whole lot simpler for us. Karin is a twin and so is her father. The due date is 27th of Dec. Fortunately there are no classes that time around. The class in Dec starts on the 10th in Chapel Hill. If she goes in a month early like last time it would be around thanksgiving and fortunately the class in Nov is on 19th. But I guess anything can happen after 8th month so I will have to be prepared for it and hopefully so will my teammates.
Friday, May 7th 2004: Spoke to Michael McDuffy about student aid. He confirmed that he had all the information necessary and would contact me next week if more was needed. Otherwise I should expect to hear from him in couple of weeks about the outcome of the loan application. I felt that absence of friendliness that I have felt from other staff at UNC. May be I caught him at the wrong time.
11:00 AM – Received the promised certificate from Lansdowne Resort National Sales Manager Greg Spiller for a free upgrade to suite, spa and golf. I wondered if he would keep his word. He did and I am impressed.
Friday, May 14th 2004: Received a Notice of Incomplete Application from Student Aid office yesterday. I was told that I needed to provide more information like Student’s Expected Income, Selective Service, Postsecondary School Attendance, and Graduate Enrollment form. At first I freaked out because the notice at the end said that since all this information wasn’t available and that I applied after March 1st deadline, the chances are that I would get the funds, if available, after the school year starts. So I downloaded all the forms as requested from the website and completed them. Called Michael McDuffy this morning and left him a voice mail to call me back as I had questions about the notice. Didn’t hear back from him in couple of hours so I figured he was busy and I called the Student Aid office. A nice lady Megan helped me out. I was able to get the forms faxed to their office and she confirmed that they had received everything they asked for and I should expect to hear from them within two weeks. I hope not to hear back from them on anything else that is missing.
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2004: Received another notice of incomplete application on Saturday the 28th. This time it asked for a documented confirmation whether my company would be paying for tuition or not. Called the office of Student Aid to inquire
why this was necessary as it was already mentioned in my initial application and why it wasn’t brought to my attention the first time a similar notice was sent. I was told that the first notice is customary and everybody gets it. I wonder why they call it “notice of incomplete application” if it really is “notice for additional information”? And make it sound as if the incomplete application was my fault. Faxed my company’s Educational Assistance Program policy on June 1st. Received immediate confirmation that faxed has been delivered successfully. Left message for Michael McDuffy on June 2nd to confirm the same.
3:15 PM – No response from Michael McDuffy. Called the Student Aid Office again to confirm if they had received the fax. Spoke to Lauran. She asked to resend the fax. Done. Called Lauran to confirm. She asked to confirm with Michael McDuffy if I don’t see a change in status of my application online by Friday.
Thursday, June 3rd, 2004: Using Student Central confirmed that the Office of Student Aid has received my fax and it is being reviewed. I will be contacted by mail if anything else is missing. I wonder what will it be?
Tuesday, June 8th 2004: Received in mail a note from CFI, the lender, about the need to sign Master Promissory Note and take counseling for the first time applicants so that we can understand our rights and obligations. Can’t believe they made me a take a test after the counseling session. The signed MPN is in the mail today.
Wednesday, June 16th 2004: Faxed the authorization form to cashiers office yesterday. This will allow them to use aid for all outstanding expenses. Lauran from the Student Aid’s office mentioned that I should do nothing with the form asking for details of outside tuition help if none was expected.
Friday, July 23rd 2004: Yesterday I moved 32% of my 401K money from a mutual fund to a managed income fund. All the news and articles about possibility of attacks in US has freaked me out a little bit. I was just done recovering my losses from the crash. Don’t want to go through that again. All new contributions go exclusively to a managed income fund. With my financial commitments, I want to make sure that for next couple of years I be careful. I also worked on a personality profile that Angela had send all of us to complete and send it back before July 31st. Its in the mail today. Got one more to do by end of July for the class. I received a letter from the US Airways that there was a slight change to my reservation. The return flight will be starting an hour early at 12:25 PM on 25th of Sept. I would have to miss some of the classes and speakers. Angela felt that it would be okay if I had to leave a little early. I personally felt that it would set a wrong tempo for the rest of the program so I decided to first take the next non-stop flight at 7:50 PM. I would find something to do at the airport. Upon talking with US Airways reservation staff I decided to use another option and that was to take a flight at 1:55 PM via Pittsburg. I still have my options open so I may change it back to the later non-stop one. On 21st, I finally bought a 200X laptop for the program from Gateway for $1441.11 at roughly 22% discount. The configuration I had chosen would have cost me $1847.57 How about that for a customer loyalty discount? Plus I felt that they were quite accommodating towards my concerns on how the order was executed.
Thursday, July 29th 2004: I received my laptop yesterday. It is pretty cool. Had to call back Gateway to confirm my credit for the “no shipping cost” deal as well as change of service plan from standard to 3 year value plus.
Monday, August 2nd 2004: Read over the weekend about a new cheap no-frills airline, Independence Air, starting from Port Columbus to Washington Dulles on August 15th. Coincidentally it is also India’s Independence Day. For first purchase I would get $25 off. I called US airways and cancelled my reservations. Booked on Independence instead for $113.20, saving me $142. I will get ground transportation from IAD to the Opening week venue. The return flight won’t start until 4:00 PM so I have plenty of time to complete my activities on 25th.
posted by OneMBA Poster at 9:26 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home