Johnson Interview Request

I just (about 10 minutes ago) received an e-mail from Johnson about scheduling an interview. I would say that this is not exactly a coincidence, as I just e-mailed back and forth with Randall Sawyer this week about coming up to campus, but I would like to think I could attribute some of this to my own merit. Needless to say I am thrilled about this and I am furiously trying to come up with a day that I can interview, while giving myself a chance to prep for the interview. I am really excited about this and I am pretty pumped to see what Ithaca has to offer. Bring on the cold, bring on the snow, I am on the march!!!!!

Charity Day Pictures

Danika – Looks evil and unhappy in this pic, but she is very pretty and very nice

Boomer & Jim Nance – Probably talking about Tiger and Mark Sanchez

Carlos Beltran – Looking sharp!

Jack – The Golden Bear confirms a trade on the bankruptcy desk

Annika Sorenstam – Just hanging out enjoying being the best woman golfer ever

Arnold Palmer – Nicest Charity Day guest. Little story about him: while signing someone’s hat he noticed that Jack Nicklaus also signed it and he said, “I could still kick his ass!” Brilliance…

Jon Bon Jovi – a cool customer when confirming a trade on the bankruptcy desk

JT – Working the phones on Charity Day…not exactly the best outfit from him today

The Big Guy Himself – it was very hard to get close to him, so the pics are not the best, but they will have to do.

He is so big that he get 2 pics!

Charity Day Celebs

The build up was killing me, but the list doesn’t disappoint! Here they are:

1. Arnold Palmer
2. Annika Sorenstam
3. Billie Jean King
4. Jon Bon Jovi
5. Carlos Beltran
6. James Nantz
7. Jack Nicklaus
8. Danica Patrik
9. Omir Santos
10. Boomer Esiason & Craig Carton

The list is a sports lovers dream….being from NJ and having a mandatory love for Bon Jovi I am super excited to see him today, Nicklaus & Palmer…who cold ask for a better pairing? Remember make all those trades through us today, even if you are only making one a day at this point. Our slogan is every trade counts and that is the truth! Pictures tonight or tomorrow…

7:23 update: Rumor floating around that we could have a very special guest joining us today. The secret service was apparently scoping this place out last night for a high-profile political figure from the 90’s. I am not allowed to say anything, fearing the wrath of the government, but I think you can put together who this past president might be. He has a charity, he might live somewhat close to the area, he might have a wife that wants to send him to Afghanistan….I will update you as the day unwinds.

3:16pm update: Well he is here…Bill Clinton is on the floor ladies and gents. In other large news, Justin Timberlake made his way onto the floor in a hysteria that swept the female population and left them incapacitated as though they all had swine-flu. Pictures galore tomorrow!

ICAP Charity Day 2009

I work for a company called ICAP. If you don’ work for a bank, or are not a trader, you probably have never heard of us. We are the self described, “world’s premier inter-dealer broker.” We are basically brokers to other brokers. The reason I tell you this is that our Charity Day is coming up tomorrow and all the proceeds from trades done go to various charities. There will be celebrities here to “confirm trades” and talk with traders, while also raising money for the charity they represent. The list of celebs has not been revealed yet, probably not until late this afternoon, but I can tell you that NYC radio personalities Boomer & Carton will be broadcasting live from our trading floor. I will post a full list of celebs when they become available. I will also try my best to harass those who come here to take a picture with me. Hopefully those will be posted on Thursday. This is an international event, with our parent London office running the show across the pond, so no excuses people!

I suck at gambling…

So, the title of the post pretty much sums up my weekend. I invited to Atlantic City this weekend to celebrate a friend’s brother’s 21st birthday. It was a great time and I got to see some of my friends from high school, which was great. We stuffed ourselves at Carmine’s in the Tropicana (great food) and then hit the tables. It was actually pretty crowded and we had to wait about 20 minutes before we (fiancee & I) could snag a spot on a $25 minimum table. I threw my $200 down at the blackjack table and the evening was under way. My luck started off middling as I was waffling around break-even for about 30 minutes. After that the dealer changed, and with her went my money.

The new dealer was named Steve, and I took that as a sign of good fortune. apparently it was not…30 minutes later I had $0 left. What was terrible about it was that it was just a slow bleed. I didn’t lose it all in one hand or a few hand, but over the course of many hands during that 30 minutes. The bell tolled for me when I drew a 13 vs a 4. Everyone at the table stayed with their hands and the dealer turned over a 7 and then a 10, giving him 21. OUCH!

I felt even worse for my fiancee, though, as she lost as well. She was doing much better than me until Steve showed up. She was actually winning and was one hand away from walking away from the table. She had an 11 and doubled her bet and drew only a 3 (not good). The dealer was showing a 6 and proceeded to flip over a 5 and then a 10, giving him 21, again. The dealer would go on to make 4, yes 4, 21s in a row! Needless to say my fiancee was out soon after. We went to sleep only to find out that my friends who had stayed at the tables had won over $700…kill me.

I compounded my misery by betting that the Cowboys would win and the total score would be under 45.5. Well, the Giants won and the score was over 45.5. Completely wrong! I then bet the Vikings -3 over the Cardinals, and they lost as well. I am in that dark place where gamblers sometimes find themselves….denouncing gambling as an evil, evil thing that I will never do again. The only solace is that I know I am a better gambler than this guy, who managed to lose $145 million last year!

On a completely unrelated note…it is December 7th, which is a day that will live in infamy. I am speaking of course about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I have had the great pleasure to visit the site and it is truly remarkable. Never forget the men and women who keep us safe everyday. Especially on days like today!

Hope everyone had a great weekend…

Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole….

USA, USA!!!!!

Fantastic draw for the US in the World Cup. The only other teams that got off easier were the Mexicans (Booo!) and the Frenchies (Handball much?) Brazil, Ivory Coast, and Portugal should be a great group to watch and certainly the “Group of Death.” At least this will take my mind off of “Snooki” from Jersey Shore!

Jersey Shore

I don’t know what to say about this other than it has to be the dumbest thing ever on television. While I appreciate the stereotyped NJ guido, these guys are just too much for me. This is the bias that I have to fight being an Italian from NJ and this doesn’t really do anything to help me. Don’t waste your time watching this and hopefully it will just fade into the abyss…but have a look at the clip for a laugh

more about “Jersey Shore “, posted with vodpod

Johnson Rewind…

I went to the Johnson information session last night and decided to give you the low-down on what happened, so without further adieu, I give you, THE REWIND…

If any of you read my blog regularly, then you will now that I am habitually early, so true to form I showed up at the 6 o’clock event at 5:30. Not to worry though because my neurosis was also shared by fellow blogger XLick, who showed up around the same time. We met in the lobby and started talking about all things work and MBA related. It was the first time we had met and it was good to talk with someone who is going through the same process. No one was in the room yet, so we hung downstairs until about 5:50 and made our way upstairs. I am terrible with estimating these things, but I would say that there were 75-100 people there, so the turn-out was pretty good. The first 1/2 hour was what you would expect from one of these events (hand passed appetizers, drinks, and mingling).

After that, we took our seats and listened to four Johnson alumni and Randall Sawyer, the excellent Assistant Dean of Admissions for the Johnson School. Said it before and I will say it again, if you think you might want to go to Johnson, go and see Randall speak and he will “close the deal.” He is very engaging and you can tell that he really believes in the product that he is selling. As I have been to these events before, I don’t think I learned anything new, but I did take this opportunity to speak with Randall. I asked him about my low GPA (2.9), upward trending though it may be, and he assuaged my fears about such things. He told me that undergrad GPA was the thing that gets looked at last. This obviously made me feel a whole lot better about myself and my chances. He also told me that he hoped to see me up at campus for an interview. I agreed and told him that I would want to have a cup of coffee with him when I was up there. He was really excited about that and seemed into the idea. Hope I get the chance to deliver on that offer!

After the event XLick and I walked to the subway and took the V (maybe it was the F) downtown to 34th street where I got off and headed back to the PATH, Jersey bound. XLick was a great guy, and we definitely need to hang out again (budding bromance?!?). Speaking of him, he has a much better recap of the night than I put together, so just go and read his. Best of luck to him and to the rest of you on your applications/interviews. One last thing of note from the night was that Randall told us that the committee is through alomst all of R1 applicants and have just now started to look at R2, so don’t be alarmed if you haven’t heard anything yet from Johnson.

Austin Powers and Thanksgiving

Musician: What’s that?
Willie: [squints] Well, that looks like a huge…
Colonel: Johnson.
Radar Operator: Yes, sir?
Colonel: Get on the horn to British Intelligence and let them know about this.

I am not going to lie…I sat here for a long time trying to work Johnson into a title or a joke, but I figured I would just post the genius that is the Austin Powers quote. The reason that I am looking for a Johnson quote was because I am attending an informational session at the Cornell Club in NYC. I am pretty excited about it because Randall Sawyer is running it and the 2 times I have seen him/talked with him have been great. He brings a lot of energy and belief in his program, so hopefully he will be on his game tomorrow.

 

I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving, as mine was filling and relaxing at the same time. It was a nice way to recharge the batteries after a tough couple weeks at work. I have not posted as much as normal recently, with less to discuss and more work it is hard, but I will try to post more this week. All for now, but I might have another post up later today about MBA diversity.

What have I learned?

After the craziness of last week and this weekend, I have finally had time to reflect on what my experience has been like and what I taken from it. So, here….we….go…

 

GMAT

Practice makes perfect, but test day is its own animal:

No matter how much I practiced, nothing seemed to prepare me for the test day atmosphere. I took practice test, after practice test and I would say that my math score was always high on test day and my verbal score was always lower. One of the reasons I think this might have happened is that I always felt like I was doing terribly on the Quant section, and maybe I was in a bad state of mind for the Verbal section. If I had a piece of advice to give, it is be like a quarterback. A quarterback is always told to forget the play that happened prior, as the next play is always the most important. Having a short memory on the GMAT is certainly something that would help you.

You are going to get questions wrong:

This isn’t a test in high school or college where if you are getting questions wrong, your score is going to suffer tremendously. It only matters what difficulty the questions are that you get wrong. I can tell you that I missed quite a few Quant questions (I think), but still managed a 48. The problem was that I  panicked when I started getting questions wrong. You have to expect that some questions are going to be too tough for you, as the point of the adaptive test is to find a level where you are getting 1 question correct and then 1 question wrong.

 

Applications:
Recommenders:

This should be pretty obvious to most people, but choosing a recommender who you can work closely with on the recommendation is very important. You are not going to write it for them, but giving them ideas or answering questions for them will be a pretty big part of your interaction with them. Getting a great recommendation is very important, so choose someone who can speak highly of you, but also someone who is intimately familiar with your work. General statements, such as “He is a really hard worker,” are not exactly what adds value to a recommendation. The recommender should be able to cite specific examples which should highlight your strengths.

 

Essays – I am going to leave these for tomorrow, as I have been trying to finish this post since 9:43am. I thought this was supposed to be a quiet week…