Here are REAL ESSAYS for these schools: (taken from PaloAltoForAWhile & BW Forum)

Harvard: Of which Fortune 1000 company are you going to become the CEO and why would you pick that company?

Wharton: Of which Fortune 1000 company are you going to become the CFO and why would you pick that company?

MIT: Draw an ASCII picture of your favorite Lord of the Rings character and describe three lessons that today’s business leaders can learn from Lord Of The Rings.

Stanford: Why? (100,000 words recommended)

Chicago Booth: Provide a detailed statistical analysis of why Chicago-Booth is #1 in BWeek and never higher than #3 in USNews. Do the math in your head.

NYU: How badly do you need a vacation from your ibanking job, and what makes you think you will be able to get back into ibanking upon graduation?

Yale SOM: Which nonprofit organization do you plan to run, and what about running a nonprofit makes you feel important?

Columbia: In your opinion, what is the best way to sabotage the Whartonian CFO of your company and become CFO?

UC Berkeley Haas: What makes a hippie like you think you can succeed in business? Use the words ’sustainable’ and ‘green’ at least twice in your response.

Cornell Johnson: Describe how awesome being an Ivy Leaguer would make you feel.

UVA Darden: How badly do you want your ass to be kicked by our professors on a scale of 9 to 10?

Notre Dame: Describe how awesome Irish Football is, and list ten ways we can make our MBA program as well-known as our NFL training program.

London Business School: Answer NYU’s essay and use the find/replace function to replace all ‘NYU’ with ‘LBS’, ‘New York’ with ‘London’ and ‘program’ with ‘programme’.

Wash U Olin: How early are you willing to wake up to serve coffee to our medical students?

UNC Kenan-Flagler: See Notre Dame but replace Irish Football with Tar Heel basketball, and NFL with NBA.

U of Phx (pick 2 of 4): When your boss finds out you have enrolled here, how loudly will he/she laugh? Have you ever wasted a lot of money on something useless before? Would you be willing to appear on a billboard or would you rather keep your enrollment a secret? What is 5+8?

Tuck: Do you remember summer camp? How amazing was that!?!? Don’t you wish you could go to camp for 21 months? Attach a letter you wrote to your parents in fifth grade summer camp explaining how awesome it was.

UMich Ross: What was the craziest thing you did while tailgating during undergrad, and are you prepared to tailgate like a pro again? In your essay, try to include the words moonshine, goat, and anus.

Kellogg: Explain why you think good quantitative skills are not required in business and discuss the importance of teamwork in situations in which no one is skilled enough to do the job by himself.

UCLA Anderson: Have you seen that show “The Hills?” Isn’t it amazing? Discuss your strategies for getting into clubs to party with the cast of “The Hills” so you can feel important.

Duke Fuqua: What are your short-term and long-term career goals? Begin your essay with the sentence, “My career goal is to provide investment and business advice to the much more successful graduates of the Duke Law and Medical Schools.”

Carnegie Mellon Tepper: Draw an ASCII picture of your favorite MIT student and list three things that business leaders can learn from MIT.

INSEAD: List the number of languages in which you are fluent, and explain how knowing a bunch of languages and studying in one of the world’s slowest economies for ten months will make you an effective business leader.

CEIBS: Would you rather be upper middle class in the US, or rich in China? Pleeeeeeeease say rich in China!

And Cars analogy from MBAApply:

1. HBS is like the British luxury car of varying quality – Bentley, Aston Martin, MG, Rolls-Royce. They are Establishment, tophats and all. Some drivers are able to break the “unapproachable” mold and will take their cars for a bit of a joyride, but some are trapped in the pomp and circumstance of their cars.
2. Stanford is like the Italian sports car – Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Alfa Romeos, Maseratis. They are bold, distinctive, and anti-authoritarian. They aren’t the most reliable cars, but they sure look good, and they are the ultimate joyride car, risks be damned.
3. Wharton are like the German sports cars – Porsche and AMG-Benz. They combine the quality/reliability of German engineering that the British and Italian sports cars don’t have, with the cachet that rivals only the British and Italian luxury cars. However, they don’t quite have the same cachet of the British and Italian luxury cars, even though many drivers would still kill for a Porsche 911 turbo or AMG.
4. Chicago GSB is like a Volvo – the quality, performance and reliability is probably as good as any luxury automaker, but it doesn’t do as good of a job at marketing itself. It has a reputation for being a bit staid, boxy, boring. But it’s like a tank – impenetrable to any kind of criticism because its owners will try really hard to explain why its car is as good as any German car out there.
5. Kellogg is like a Volkswagen – they aren’t the most reliable cars, but they are sure fun cars to drive. They also have a very young, hip and aspirational image – but one that is within reach of many people. They are very good at promoting and managing its reputation as a “cool and hip” car to drive.
6. Sloan is like an Audi – more people have them than you’d expect, and for a German car, they are a bit younger and hipper. Particularly it’s S-series. They are mentioned alongside the other great auto manufacturers, but still fly under the radar in most discussions.
7. Columbia is like a BMW – an amazing machine that combines performance, quality and cachet, but it also attracts a disproportionate number of aggro drivers who believe they own the road, and act accordingly (blasting their music for everyone to see, cutting people off in traffic, honking their horns, etc.).
8. Tuck is like a Saab. It’s quirky, relatively small in number, but has a fiercely loyal following of aficionados. Not many people know the car, but those that do rave about it.

But where’s Bugati?

And I read a joke long time back:

What’s common between a Columbia grad and a NYU grad?

1. Both were admitted at NYU.
2. Both were rejected by HBS.

Are you sure this is where you want to be

The deserving winner at the Oscars

First Female Director to win Oscar (mirror.co.uk)

Kathryn Bigelow(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)

Glad to see the highest recognition going to a Woman (although I have not seen the movie and can’t comment on the validity but am glad it wasn’t Avatar).

Let me also mention Janet Robinson, CEO of NYTimes, who is trying to steer NYTimes in the most challenging times in history and seems to be doing a good job so far.

Janet Robinson, listed among the 100 most powerful women

hurdles, originally uploaded by Bee Photographee.

As I’ve previously mentioned, one needs to overcome a lot of self-resistance to ’start’ something. Human beings like it easy and comfortable; its not intuitive to go out of one’s comfort zone. That is why once you’ve entered a niche, it is tortuous to switch to another; once you have learned something, its very very difficult to unlearn and relearn. It is why many of my friends are still doing something that they do not adore but are comfortable doing. It keeps many of us from seeking our real interests.

I am still in process of transitioning and lose sight of the goals more so often. One thing that has helped me is to keep myself abreast of what’s happening around. Read and follow people who are in your target industry. Use blogs, twitter, LinkedIn, google reader or anything where you keep track of ‘people’. Twitter, that I once considered pointless, gives an excellent bird-eye view of things. It’s like looking down through an airplane and seeing the lights below. Lights are just lights as you take off but at some altitude, they become a city: you can see a shape. From that height, twitter gives you a quick walkthrough of what has happened. It is only possible to read so many news articles and blogs at once but not so with one-liners. Apart from that, it also helps you see who is following what. Soon, the disparate news pieces and opinions start making sense. Following things also keeps you motivated.

Anyways, I didn’t share it here but Techstars proposal didn’t take off as our plan was merely an idea. Executing ideas is the real challenge and I haven’t crossed the initial hurdle yet. Plus I am having more ideas and I need to find out more about the startup dynamics – which is what I am doing currently. Also, I am sampling different sectors and it is nice and interesting – helps me understand if I am cut out for something or not. On related topics -

• Startup Visa Act was introduced in Washington and things look good so far. I mentioned the visa imbroglio for aspiring international entrepreneurs in an earlier post and strongly support this startup visa idea. If you concur, please show your support.
• There’s a fantastic resource for fostering entrepreneurial skills and success – its called The Indus Entrepreneurs or TIE and was founded by successful Indian executives in Silicon Valley.

Final lesson: Never enter a room filled with finance professionals in anything but black. They are still in mourning. Kidding, I love black.