GMAT done; Promotion done !!!!

Hi friends

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged about something. The last few months have been hectic indeed. More than the GMAT preparation, it was the researching for which colleges to apply to that freaked me out. So many institutes to choose from and none of them a sure-shot institute. In case you didn’t know, I am trying to gain admission for Ph.D in a US university/institute. I gave my GMAT on 25^th August, and I scored 740 in the main exam and 6.0 in the AWA section. Percentile break-up is as follows:

Section	Score	Max. Score	Percentile
Quantitative Ability	50	60	92
Verbal Ability	39	60	87
Total Score	740	800	97
Analytical Writing	6.0	6.0	91

As you can see, my scores are well balanced, spread out evenly in all areas. I guess my sun-sign helped :D Now looking at my score, one might think that it would be easy to find out which institute could be easy to get into, and which would be tough. But Ph.D programs do not have the same spread – hardly 2-3 students are selected each year for any Ph.D program in a single discipline. So looking at the mean/median/average scores doesn’t make much sense. I had to go through the faculty profiles, student profiles and study the information provided by the institute to ascertain the importance given by each institute to Ph.D programs in HR/OB. It was interesting to see that many institutes do give importance to the HR discipline (unlike many Indian institutes).

I had my promotion interview on the 26^th of August – yep the very next day!!! So soon, you might ask. After-all, it has been just 2 years since I’ve joined my current position. Well, in 2009 our corporation had instituted a Fast-Track promotion policy for professionals i.e. employees with a professional degree (MBA/CA/ICWA/LLB). Employees are eligible for promotion from Asst. Manager to Dy. Manager within two years of service in the lower scale (as opposed to 5 years for regular promotion) and from Dy. Manager to Manager within three years (as opposed to 4 years for regular promotion). Of course, being eligible for promotion doesn’t guarantee your promotion. But it gives professionals enough motivation to work hard in their initial years. I was a bit apprehensive. After all, my company is into International Trade, and the most important divisions in the company are Marketing and Finance. The next important division is the “Legal” division, as it handles matters related to the various cases from both Trade and Personnel disciplines. The remaining divisions, namely Corporate Communication, General Administration, Personnel Division, Building Maintenance etc. are the supporting divisions. I was very nervous before my interview (it being my first interview et.al) but I managed to give a very good interview. The result: Promoted to Deputy Manager, with the highest seniority among all those who joined my company in 2009 :) Pretty cool, isn’t it?

Yeah yeah, enough about me :P Next post: Non-IIM institutes or newer IIMs – the latest dilemma :)

Ciao.