journey of a jat, the warrior

After quitting my job, I packed my bags and took a 14 hour direct flight to reach India last week. It's great to be with family and friends after quite a long time, and I am enjoying it. I was also down with food poisoning for some time. Per our doctor, it was due to a sudden change in food habbits. I am doing better now and my stomach has fully adjusted to great home food. I am planning some traveling in next few month and will blog as time and web access permit.

Meanwhile, Clear Admit announced the Best of Blogging 2006-2007 results this past Tuesday. I am happy to find myself in top 10. Rungee, Iday and Juggler are top three and deservingly so. Congratulations, guys! And thank you Clear Admit for maintaining such a useful site and for highlighting all these great blogs.

I was over at Tuck from April 12th to 15th for the Admitted Students Weekend and had a wonderful time. The weekend was full of back to back events - students panel, alumni panel, dinner with students, wine night etc. There were parties and there were after-parties. All in all, we were kept busy. We were hit by some bad weather, but it really didn't dampen the spirit of the event.

ASW also gave me an opportunity to meet and make friends with my potential classmates. Boy, I can vouch that I am gonna be among a very impressive bunch. What amazed me was that an overwhelming number of attendees were already decided on coming to Tuck. There were a few deciding between Tuck and Harvard/Stanford/Chicago/Sloan, but most of those guys were leaning towards Tuck as well. I guess this speaks of the self-selecting applicant pool Tuck attracts.

Highlight of the event was an interesting speech by Parthenon Group's CEO, Mr. Bill Achtmeyer, who is also a Tuck alum. He made no secrets of his strong bias towards Tuck, and really entertained the crowd with some funny reasons why one should come to Tuck and not go to Harvard/Wharton.

The event confirmed that the biggest strength of Tuck is its strong alumni community. They really are CLOSE-KNIT and are always keen to help. There were quite a few of them present at the event and they shared their experiences. Tuck CDO (Career Development Office) shared the story about how difficult it was to place students in job-scarce 2001. CDO sought out help from alumni and requested them to hire at least one student. Per CDO, they were overwhelmed by the response to their appeal, and every student was taken care of even in year 2001. Really impressive! I look forward to being part of such a strong community.

I am glad I could go, and I certainly drank green kool-aid (and quite literally too). August can't come any sooner.

Prospective students may find following info useful (disclosed over ASW):
- 13% increase in applications this year; over 2600 applications.
- 165 admits have already accepted; class may be larger than usual.
- 715 average GMAT of the applicants admitted so far.

For past many days, I have been doing quite a bit of research on the financial aid. Here's a snapshot:

Federal Stafford loans (subsidized):
Best option for US citizens / PR's. Government pays interest on the borrowed amount while you are still enrolled in school and during grace period (six months after graduation). Low fixed interest rate of 6.8%. Internationals don't qualify. Up to $8500/year.

Federal Perkins loans:
For US citizens / PR's with exceptional financial need. Interest does not accrue until repayment period, which begins nine months after the completion of all education. Love fixed interest rate of 5%. Up to $6000/year.

Federal Stafford loans (unsubsidized):
For US citizens / PR's. Interest accrues while you are enrolled. Low fixed interest rate of 6.8%. Up to $18,500/year minus subsidized loans.

Private loans:
This is what most of us need to look into with a magnifying glass. US Citizens/PR's will borrow from private loans what they couldn't finance through federal loans. And for internationals, this is pretty much the only option. Most of these loans require a US co-signer, increasing the difficulties of internationals. However, most of the top schools offer this kind of loans themselves without requiring a co-signer. They don't come cheap, average interest rate hovering around 9.5%. Most lenders (including schools) offer variable rates based on LIBOR (5.32% currently) or PRIME (8.25% currently). You can find the current rates at www.bankrate.com.

Apart from your school, you can also check with CitiAssist, Salliemae and your local credit union. There are some, very few in fact, non-school lenders that offer loans without a US co-signer. You still need to have a positive credit history in the US. Two of these that I have found are Access Group (requires three years of credit history) and Global SLC. Always look at loans offered by your school before checking out outside lenders. For e.g., Tuck offers a very competitive DELC loan to internationals with a positive US credit history. I couldn't find an outside lender that could beat this offer.

Imp: Many lenders try to entice students by offering various loan doscounts, for e.g. 0.25% APR reduction if you make 48 consecutive on-time payments. These discounts may look good on face, but they don't always work out as you expect them to. Finaid is an excellent source of valuable student loan information. Check out their take on loan discounts.

I resigned from my job today and I should be free to do whatever in about two weeks time. I expected to have a difficult conversation with my current manager (I have recently changed projects and my new manager wasn't aware of my bschool plans), but it went quite easy. As it turned out, he himself is looking to do an executive-MBA at Wharton. So for the most part, we discussed about MBA and his game plan.

I have already booked my flights, and I am looking forward to seeing my family and friends after two long years. I am excited about playing with my cute little nephews and nieces. I also wanna travel a bit in the summer. Four months before the school starts, and I wanna make the most of them. What's everyone else planning to do in the coming months?