Written by Sameer Kamat

In an interview with MBA Crystal Ball, MBA admissions consultant Paul Bodine shares some tips on how to tackle MBA applications and get into the top business schools.
Paul is also the author of several popular books: The Perfect Phrases series (Perfect Phrases for business school, law school and medical school acceptance), Great Applications for Business Schools.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Entrepreneurship as a career figures high on the preferences of many. Compared to regular corporate jobs, the nice warm feeling of knowing that you’ll get your monthy salary is absent, but there’s a whole lot more to compensate for that. Freedom, flexibility and a tremendous sense of job satisfaction.
Tepper MBA Vikram Narayan is the founder of BookBuzzr, which provides authors with a unique online marketing platform for their books. An extremely down-to-earth guy, with no airs about the success that he has managed to achieve, Vikram shares with us his entrepreneurial journey that started from Carnegie Mellon University and has brought him back to India. During the phone interview, I picked up quite a few ideas from him.

Read his views and suggestions on bootstrapping a startup. Inspiring!

Written by Sameer Kamat

The Indian film industry or Bollywood as the Hindi movie making machinery is popularly know, has been an interesting case study – not just for movie fans but also for the business-world. It has managed to transition across cultures and countries and reach almost every part of the world with very little formal (if any) marketing. Tejaswini Ganti, an Associate Professor of Anthropology at New York University, is an expert on the topic.

In this interview, Tejaswini shares insights about the Hindi film industry in India and why it is unique. She also has a few suggestions on how Bollywood can tackle some of the challenges it faces today. If you are interested in the business, commercial and operational aspects of the Indian film industry, this is a must read.

Written by Sameer Kamat

The Richard Ivey School of Business in Canada offers something special for international MBA candidates that many of top schools in the US and Europe can’t – the Post-Graduation Work Permit Program. This allows MBA students to convert their study visa into a work-permit immediately after completing their program. This allows an additional 1 year to stay back in Canada. That’s a huge pyschological advantage.
We recently caught up with the Associate Director of MBA Recruiting and Admissions at the Ivey MBA, Jenni Denniston and Julia Michienzi, Communications Officer. Instead of the regular questions about the MBA applications, essays, interviews and the case study approach that Ivey MBA is well-known for, we thought we should focus on 2 other aspects that may be more important for international MBA students – financing the MBA program (including scholarships) and getting post MBA jobs in Canada after graduation.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Dual degrees like the JD-MBA offered by the Kellogg School of Management and Northwestern University’s School of Law can be a great way to learn about two disciplines that have more overlap that we generally assume.
However, compared to the regular 2-year MBA programs, these longer and more expensive joint degree options can seem more mysterious than they are. Apart from the data available on the school websites, there’s not much information about JD-MBA programs.
Jeremy Wilson had a very eclectic background – engineering, politics, consulting, startups, archaeology – before he decided to attend the JD-MBA program at Kellogg. In this interview he answers many of the frequently asked questions about the program.

Written by Sameer Kamat

These are the vague, mysterious and confusing interview questions that get thrown at you when you are trying to get the best management consulting (including the top tier strategy consulting firms) and investment banking jobs. Or for that matter MBA interviews as well. They make you feel that the tough technical questions you got for your first few jobs were so much easier in comparison. At least there was a right or wrong answer to them, and after the interview you’d know if you fared well or not. With situational interviews, most candidates are unsure of how their performance will be judged by their future boss.

Written by Sameer Kamat

The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIMA) offers a one year MBA program called the Post Graduate Program in Management for Executives (PGPX) that is unlike any other in the world. Exaggeration? Not really if you consider the profile of candidates targeting the program (average age of 34 years, average work experience of over 10 years with 4.5 years internationally) and the extremely competitive selection process (average GMAT score 713). None of the global programs can match that combination.
We found the perfect alumnus (from the first PGPX batch) to tell us more about the program. Vivek Joshi had a Chemical Engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai (IIT-B) and a Masters degree in Chemical Engineering from USA. He placed his trust in the PGPX course when the course was just launched, did amazingly well academically and took up a job in Private Equity. He is currently an Associate Director at

Written by Sameer Kamat

NUS Singapore’s MBA program has been quite popular with Indian applicants, for reasons that we covered in an earlier article on NUS Singapore MBA. Many months later when we shared the article with Alan Chua, responsible for marketing and admissions at NUS Singapore, he felt it was a ‘very interesting and independent take on the program‘.
We asked him if he’d be interested in an interview with MBA Crystal Ball. Over the last few months, Alan has been travelling extensively, attending MBA fairs, meeting prospective candidates. Despite his super-hectic schedule, he agreed to answer our questions and we really appreciate the gesture. In this tête-à-tête, Alan shares with us key aspects of the MBA program at NUS, what applicants need to keep in mind.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Mention the Darden MBA program at the University of Virginia to any MBA applicant, and what is it that first pops into their mind? Top ranked MBA program, case studies, management consulting industry, competitive admissions process, will I land an internship, what about MBA jobs?
Recently when I had the opportunity to interview Wendy Huber, Associate Director of Admissions at Darden, those are exactly the topics we talked about. And Wendy was kind enough to share her thoughts. If you have been confused with all the information on discussion forums and blogs, here’s your chance to hear directly from someone who’ll read your MBA application soon and decide whether you’ll be eligible to attend the Darden alumni events in a few years.

Written by Sameer Kamat

Guy Kawasaki has been there, done that, several times over. He shot into the limelight in the mid eighties as the evangelist for Apple’s Macintosh. After a brilliant track record there, he moved on to become a successful serial entrepreneur launching technology businesses ranging from databases (4th Dimension) to content aggregating websites such as Alltop.com. Guy has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.

When he’s not thinking of innovative business models to launch, in his venture capitalist avatar at Garage Technology Ventures, he funds other businesses that catch his fancy. His Midas-touch mantra is unconventional – “Whatever is gold, Guy touches.“