June 15 2006: Its 1:00 am on and Im riting my blog about the day that just passed. This blog wouldn’t get posted till 24^th as I don’t want to disclose at the moment what Im about to write now.

I applied for a full time MBA Program at Institute of Business Administration (IBA) and cleared my entrance test and had an interview today. I didn’t prepare much for the test but luckily I cleared it and got an interview call for today, June 14^th. My reporting time was 10:30 and I was pretty nervous about it as IBA is one thing I really want to get into. The interview was scheduled for 11:00 and I arrived at the IBA City Campus at 10:30 just as they had instructed. All those who were supposed to be interviewed for the MBA-MIS program were asked to report to room 3 and wait there. My name was first on the list of those whose interview was 11:00 and I was expecting that it will start by 11 if not maximum by 11:30 but boy was I wrong. My turn to show them my previous educational mark sheets came at 12:00 and it went pretty smoothly, they just asked me to show them my BCS (Hons.) degree, transcript, intermediate and Metric mark sheet which I did and they simply noted down my GPA and percentage. After this another person there asked for the grading policy of PAF-KIET which I gladly did by simply showing him my transcript which had it all written in it.

Once the educational degree part was done I had to wait for I think around 15-20 minutes and they than asked all those who had passed the phase, which I just described to move to the next phase. I thought it was going to be the interview phase but infact it was the Group Discussion phase. There were 20 of us in the GD and they gave us a topic. The topic was “Will Automation help the in making the life of a common man easy in Pakistan”. For someone like me coming from a Computer Science background and working in a software house, automation seemed an abstract topic and more than that I had trouble classifying the Common Man. Anyways they gave us the topic and told us to gather our points in 1 minute (we weren’t allowed to write them down). After that they gave us each a minute to speak on the topic and it started in ascending order based on our seat numbers. The first guy spoke very well on it and after that if was hard to do better. I always believe that the first one to go at it is at an advantage because you don’t have to worry that the points you are going to raise have already been raised by some one else. My turn came after around 5 more people and I believe that I didn’t do to well on it however I did raise a very important point and that was about the infrastructure required for automation and mentioned the ease a common man will feel with automation and especially when he doesn’t have to carry all his documents for every damn thing from passport to driving license, etc. I spoke a little to fast a finished what I had to say before the minute was up and this was one of the first mistakes I made. After that people raised their views and when every ones turn was up they gave us all 10 minutes to debate among our selves over this topic. Everyone wanted to score and wasn’t waiting for his turn and was going around in the typical Pakistani fashion. I continuously kept my hand raised but when that didn’t get me anything I joined the crowd and started speaking in between, cutting other off. These 10 minutes were very confusing and I guess all they were looking for was the confidence which I had shown before this phase started by requesting that the fan behind me be turned off as its making a lot of noise…hehehe… After the open debate they us all a sheet of paper and 5 minutes to summarize what has been discussed and again I ran out of time as I was writing it in paragraph form when I should have written in bulleted form. With bulleted form you cover more in fewer words. That was the end of the Group Discussion phase and they took us to the computer lab and were asked to wait our turns for the interview.

Out there in the lab I started mingling around with others and read the online edition of DAWN as I had nothing better to do. From time to time those who went for the interview came back down to tell their friends what was asked in the interview. I noticed that those without work experience and computer science degrees were asked a lot of technical questions like: What is polymorphism, isomorphism, etc. One of them was asked to write a code in C# and I guess he was probably asked that cause he gave the impression or took the interviewer there. Anyways my turn came at around 14:00 and was taken to the room where the interviews were being held. In that room there were 4 tables and 4 interviews were being taken simultaneously by different persons off course. My interview was taken by Dr. Shams the head of their Center for Computer Studies (CCS). And one more guy and a lady. My interview went pretty well and they asked me about my life at PAF-KIET and I told them that it was very good and that when I started there it was a new university, the faculty was good and supported us a lot. I also told them that after we completed our degree requirements they even helped us in finding good jobs and make a name for ourselves in the industry. After that they asked about the teachers that thought us and I mentioned a few of mine. They then asked me if our Dean ever thought us anything. They asked me that cause our Dean used to be the Director of IBA CCS. I told them he didn’t teach us any course upon which they enquired if he teaches any. I told them that he do teaches from time to time and I guess we weren’t the lucky ones to learn from him… lolz…After that they looked up my place of employment from my form and asked if I was currently employed and I told them yes upon which they asked if I’l leave my job for the studies. That was the question I knew they were going to ask for sure and I told them exactly what I had thought of that, Education is my first priority and I’l quit my job for it. Im working at KalSoft and it has made a name for itself in the industry so they didn’t ask much about it. After that the lady asked me if I read newspaper and which sections. I told her that I do and usually read the front, back, international and editorial pages and there is always the sports section as Im into sports a lot. They asked me which sports are u in currently following. They thought I was going to say football but I told them that till last week it was tennis and Im now switching towards football and was infact watching Brazil vs Crotia match last night. Upon saying this the other guy (not the director) asked me what were my views about it and I told him that everyone says Brazil’s team is the best and they are going to lift the world cup again, but 1-0 wasn’t a very convincing win. I was trying to be cool and passed occasional smiles and all and I could see that they noticed it and passed a few back once in a while. The guy also asked me who I thought is going to win the world cup and I told him that I’l still side with Brazil. The guy also asked me what sports I play and I told him that I play cricked and used to play Basketball till school. Upon this the lady interviewer asked me which school and I told her that it was in Sharjah. She asked for the name and when I told her that she has a smile on her face I didn’t get to know why till after a minute. She asked me the year I left school and how was the standard at that time. It may seem a strange question but hold ur horses Im getting to that point. I said it was pretty good and she than told me that she studied from the same school and back in her time the standard was also very good. Now what are the odds of that, I haven’t met anyone who went to same school as I did since I came back from Sharjah and when I finally meet what I time it was to meet that person. She had all praises for the school and I agreed with her. This school thing took a few minutes of the interview. After this came the final questions, the lead interviewer, Dr. Shams asked what an MBA-MIS degree would do for me. I simply told him that I don’t plan on changing my field and will probably be doing something related to computers after I graduate. I told him that I need an MBA degree to climb up the hierarchy and with my technical background, an MBA degree and a work experience in a CMMI Level 3, Microsoft Gold Certified Partners company would be a plus point and organization will prefer me over others. I think he agreed on it and didn’t press on the subject any further. That was the end of the interview and they said with a smile that your results would be announced on 24^th and so will this blog get posted aswell.

Im very optimistic after the interview and feel that I will make it into IBA and InshaAllah I will.

June 24 2006: The final result is out and thank fully Im on the list of selected candidates who will start their MBA in August 2006. The only thing left to do is pay up the fee. So I guess I would be resigning from KalSoft on Monday. Lets see how it goes.

ah finally I get to blog from my new Laptop... my bro came back from Saudi Arabia last week to spend his annual vacations at home with us and I was shocked to c what he bought for me... he bought a Laptop for me... Iv been dying to get a laptop and thats what I got... he didnt actually bought it for me he bought it for him self but since he also got one from his office so he decided to give his personal laptop to me... :)

ok get ready to hear the configuration...

its an Acer Extensa 6600 series with a$ 1.6 GHz Intel Mobile Centrino processor, 512 MB RAM, 60 GB HDD, Wi-Fi, bluetooth, etc. However the thing I liked the most about it is that it came with a DVD RW Drive...cool

i spent the first week installing the OS and other stuff on it as it came with a Windows XP Home Edition and who needs that when u have the XP Enterprise edition. Installing Windows was a piece a cake but I made a huge blunder during it and formatted the drive which contained the original Windows Home Edition installtion CD and the laptop drivers... as soon as pressed the format button I remembered what Faraz Mahmood wrote in his blog about it (he has an even cooler Acer Ferarri Laptop) and it was a second too late... so here I was searching for its drivers online and it didnt took long to find them but it took a long time to download it at the sucky speed we get here on Dial Up... I could have downloaded it from my office but FTP is blocked there and the download link on Acer's website used FTP.

anyways everything up and running now, have even tried out the Wi-Fi at a friends place and its really hmmmmmmm convenient ;) no more wires getting in your way and mobility is no longer an issue... I think Im going to get myself one of those wi-fi routers