Interesting Analysis of FT Rankings

I know the cost of living in HK is higher than in Hyderabad or Bangalore or Ahmedabad, but it is not 5 times the cost of living (PPP Conversion Factor for India). This analysis explains why HKUST is still way better than the other Asian B-Schools.

http://onwardtomba.blogspot.com/2008/02/financial-times-ft-2008-mba-ranking.html

Incidentally, HKUST achieved its highest ranking ever this year (No. 6) - Check this out.
http://m.ust.hk/smartphone/news/newsdetails.aspx?newsid=163&page=1

Hump Day Drinking - Every Wednesday 9pm!!!

Wikipedia definition of Hump Day:
An English language idiom for Wednesday is "hump day", a reference to making it through to the middle of the work week as getting "over the hump."

Event: Hump Night at Unibar! (AKA Wednesday Night Drinking)
Where: Unibar
When: Every Wednesday night starting at 9pm
Who: Everyone
Why: Last few weeks before people go out on internships and exchange

Zeopane on CNN Money

I am proud of being a part of the Zeopane Team. It now featured on CNN Money Website as part of the list of teams that participated in the RICE University Business Plan Competition.

Another feather in the cap.

Zeopane - Challenge Round Winners @RICE

Zeopane and I finally has something to show for the marathon 3 month effort that really all started in the second week of January. Even though we'd identified the product in early December, we didn't get down to beginning work on it till after the Winter break.

The next two months were really an experience to be remembered. Lost all contact with the rest of the world for a few days in between. Just managed to get by assignments, exams, classes and finally ventured out for my 4 week sojourn in the U.S that started on March 11th.

Carnegie Mellon University's McGinnis Ventures was truly an eye-opener on what some of these competitions can be. The competition far exceeded our expectations. Ventures with funding, sales orders, all due-diligence complete and some even already functioning. How were we - this fictional company with no US-Experience, no-Pharma Industry experience and no funding of any sort (even my CMU Ticket was self-funded :-)) expected to compete. We got hammered and did not even make the finals. Got some feedback which read - FDA Comments Naive!!!

We at Zeopane decided to turn the tables around, did our due-diligence on FDA in US in terms of how expensive it can be, SFDA in China and turned the story around to a China Story. This clearly was a great strategy. Even if we weren't the Pharma experts, we now clearly were the China Experts with 3 Chinese looking people on the team. With me, the Technology and Diabetes expert on the team, we were almost a complete team.

At Rice, we got some great comments. Some people rated us the best presentation among all the teams they saw. We had quite a few people convinced that Zeopane microneedles was truly a great product. We had one China based VC expressing an interest in talking further with us. Another India Fund wanted to know if I wanted to explore entering the India market with this product. Need to follow up with these two and all the other contacts we've made at Rice in between catching up with all the classes and exams I missed during my 1 month vacation in US.

Overall, by the end of the Rice Competition, HKUST and Zeopane had made its impact. The most unforgettable moment was when a couple of guys (not from HKUST) went up to the Karaoke Stage and started screaming "Zeopane, Zeopane". :-)

Add oil Team USC!!!

Team USC will now be the first of many teams to go out and represent HKUST in a case competition. They will be going out to USC Marshall after spending the last month or so analyzing a case on XXX Media Co. and their windowing strategies.

I had to look this up after almost every classmates' MSN status changed to "Add Oil, Team USC". My lesson for the day to my non-cantonese readers -

add oil - It's a cheering exclamation in Cantonese. It's actually pronounced "Ka-yow"! Which in turn means add oil, not literally!

ADD OIL, Sushma, Simon, John, Mark and Sam.

And the celebration's on monday once you guys are back with the cup.

Blogger No. 2!!!

Curtis's post made me realize I hadn't introduced myself. Doing that now, although a little late might still be ok considering that we are still not too many posts into the blog. And it gives me something to blog about. And the speciality about me, even if I don't put in picture, my post can run into pages together, especially when I'm bored to death with nothing to do.

Who am I?

This is Randhir Hebbar, born in the temple town of Udupi, near Mangalore in Karnataka, brought up almost entirely in Bangalore. I did most of my education in Bangalore (Bethany, NCJ and UVCE) and worked in the IT and ITES space for about 6 years with a 2.5 year stint in Columbus, OH, USA - Mostly IT Consulting and Project Management. I've traveled all over the US, looking to exchange to London to do some Europe traveling. My biggest complaint about myself is the fact that I haven't traveled enough in India. Curtis has seen a 1000 times more of India than I. Hope to rectify that some day.

My MBA Story?

I made it thru CAT and ditched IIMs for the US Onsite trip on the advice of a few gurus (friends) who thought an MBA before you become a manager is not really worth your time. In hindsight, I really believe that is true. You can of course disagree with me and we can have a big debate over this. But that's my opinion. So if you are less than 2-3 years work-ex and you ask my advice about doing your MBA, you know what my answer is going to be. Of course, there are always exceptions.

Finally after managing a team for about a year, I realized that I just couldn't do what I or even my immediate boss was doing for the rest of my life, needed a change for the better and applied to ISB. Just doing the ISB App helped me learn my mistakes and the HKUST App was surely a 100 times better than the ISB App. And the ISB interview was fun in hind-sight. This nerdy guy trying to prove that he was better than me and that being an ISB Alumnus made him some kind of super-human. The HKUST Interview was so much more professional and to some extent so much more easier that in hind-sight, I wished it was tougher. That would have made me feel like I'd earned it. :-) You can never satisfy me, can you?

The HKUST Experience?

It's been an awesome journey so far. I've had some super experiences, learning everyday, from peers, from profs, from alumnus and lots of crazy fun times and parties here. Just meeting people from all these countries, some really special characters, working with these special characters is something wonderful.

The Highlights: All the Free lunch/dinner/cocktail parties, Mini-Olympics, ELP/RP, Case Competition, Exam-Fever (that one dreaded week in December), the past month of crazy B-Plan work and of course that hard-work paying off.

The next big event is obviously the CMU Business Plan Competition for me. Looking forward to doing well there and coming back richer (at least in terms of experience and learnings :-)). And of course, a well-deserved potential one week break in US and meeting the Columbus gang.

Directory of posts on HKUST

We will try and keep this as a directory of posts in the blogs of HKUST Students ordered by date starting from my Interview experience. Even though we don't have the numbers of the bigger B-Schools, this is a good start.

HKUST Mini-Olympics in pictures

The EIU ranking Celebrations

HKUST is EIU# 20

Gruelling second week in HKUST

Some pictures of HKUST

Decks cleared for entry

Randhir talks about his interview

Pagalguy Thread Link

Prathap and I decided to put in some effort to help out potential candidates to the next batch of HKUST as they try to find if they fit into the HKUST scene. Here is the link for those that found this site (that's rarely updated) before the Pagalguy thread

http://www.pagalguy.com/forum/international-indian-mba-schools-accepting/26693-ask-hkust-b-school-hong.html

We've had a great response so far and our response has also translated into a great number of applicants applying to HKUST. Now its upto the Admissions committee to pick the best of the lot who'll take this school to greater heights.

Pour in your questions there so next round and year candidates of HKUST can get the information they need from there.

Resume Improvements

Here are some things I've learnt about the way resumes should be (Thanks to all who helped)

• Find out what you are applying for. Remove all the trash that is not applicable. Just realizing this simple fact helped me make a big improvement in my resume. I know its basic. But keep this in mind and look at every word in your resume.


• The value of a line on the one page resume. Make every word and line in it count.


• Identify the key characteristics the job you are looking for requires and use everything you've done in your life that might help to add to it.


• Formatting is important - but not at the cost of content. Content rules!!!


• Don't get carried away by what you think are the achievements of your previous job. More importantly look at how you communicate that experience makes you a better fit for the current job that you are applying to.


• Mention clients by names - Name dropping always helps.


• What was the bottomline impact of what you did? Putting in numbers always helps.


• Don't bold too much in the cover letter. Mine was so full of bold that the normal characters were probably what the reader would look for.

My resume is a lot like it should have been before I started applying to most of the Banks. But then, since Banks are not really my focus, its better now than later I guess. I still know a few things I need to improve on it - but then will do that once I start my next round of apps. 

Why? Why?

Why was this blog created?

This blog was created to describe the experiences of 6 Indians in Hong Kong going through the most wonderful experiences in one of the top B-Schools in the South East Asian Region. The purpose therefore is to help future applicants/students of the HKUST MBA experience life@HKUST virtually. We had a tough time researching this school and knowing more about this school which is among the best on quite a few parameters. So a small step in easing that pain for future HKUST students.

Links to some of the Blogger's own personal blogs which might contain more relevant information are given below:

Randhir's Blog

Prathap's Blog

Why did I join HKUST?

Lots of reasons. Here are some of them:

+++ Rankings: Easily way above any other school in the region (41st in FT-2006 Ratings). IIMA, the only Indian school comes in at 98.

+++ Best Finance School: One of the best in finance. You should just see the number of finance junkies from across the world who come here either on exchange or for the full time MBA to believe it.

+++ Diversity: Our class alone has 21+ (not sure of the exact number) countries represented and there are only two people in a batch of 76 that come from the same company. Hard to imagine this sort of diversity in an Indian School. Just meeting so many different people and experiencing the cultures helps you grow as a person.

+++ Hong Kong: The financial hub of the SE Asian Region provides lots of opportunities and openings post the MBA

+++ English works: Don't believe people who say that you need to know Chinese to work here, etc. Yes, you need Chinese to work in China or maybe even in a China related consulting company. But there are lots of other opportunities here. In fact, I'd say that your English is actually an advantage here in a way.

+++ Exchange programs: HKUST has some of the best exchange programs with schools across the world including the top schools in the US.

These were some of the top reasons for my coming here. So far, so good.