Scholarship decisions

I got dinged for 1 scholarship - Sasakawa something. Basically, I was asked to describe a situation where I demonstrated leadership in a culturally conflicting situation. I got dinged - thought I put in a valiant situation. The challenge is there's always that someone to upstage you no matter what you put in.

4 more to go.

Lehman Brothers pre-MBA internship

INSEAD July 2009 students can take advantage of a pre-MBA internship. It's a really unique concept that Lehman Brothers is piloting @ INSEAD.

For future students enrolling into INSEAD, it might be useful to view http://www.insead.edu/mba/careers/FinanceTraining.cfm, to get more information on INSEAD's finance stream.

Although I applied for this internship, I am not even 20% sure if Finance is the right stream for me. I aspire to become an entrepreneur and it's useful for me to understand how money is raised. I therefore value this internship.

One nice thing about this offer is the quick turnaround - within a few days the interviews would start.

INSEAD & Student Loans

Really getting squeezed dry for financial aid. Here's my list of candidates
1. Prodigy Finance - credit crunch has squeezed them dry.
2. Sallie Mae - needs US cosigner. Interest rates are pegged of the LIBOR..
3. Wachovia Bank - loans suspended until May 19th (new notice after that)
4. IEFC - suspended indefinitely
5. HSBC, Bank of America - on hold
6. BNP Paribas/BRED - 2 to 3% but they require a French Citizen to cosign. I don't know any French citizen's
7. PARAS - they charge $500 in the form of fees which are positioned with all random terms (processing fees, communication fees etc.)

Student Loans

I'm Male, Indian, Engineer and living in the US. The three options I'm looking at are

1. IEFC - needs a US citizen or permanent resident as cosigner.
2. BNP Paribas - 3% loan, attractive terms, but require a French citizen or international bank to guarantee the loan.
3. BRED - 2.35% loan, attractive terms, but have some constraints at #2.

Why would any bank in it's sane state of mind guarantee a bank loan. Why take all the risk for absolutely no gain? I guess a bank could guarantee a loan at some rate, but then the interest rates become less attractive.

I remain concerned about my ability to fund an INSEAD education. I'm praying for a scholarship :-(

Scholarship deadline

This is scholarship deadline week for quite a few folks. April 18th. The strategies should be the same - target scholarships that not too many people can qualify for. As a Male, Indian, Engineer with no major life altering tragedies, I could only apply to the common scholarships

1. Eli Lilly - Innovation - Everyone things that they've changed the world.
2. Need Based - Yep, I need it, but I'm sure there are people who need it much more than me.
3. Syngenta - I don't know squat about sustained agriculture
4. Sasakawa - I do have plans to change my home country, but so do million others
5. There was one more I applied to, but I forget..

I've never really 'won' anything major in my life. I've been on scholarships and fellowships throughout my life, but non relied on essays - It's always been quantitative. I've written compelling essays, so I'm hopeful of nailing atlteast one.

I cool thing I learnt from Zanat0S' blog is that the scholarship committee is the same for all essays so it might make sense to write something unique for each essay and not blindly cut paste stuff.

Another 2 days to go for the deadline, so I'll proof-read my essays and make sure everything's lined up correctly.

INSEAD, Fontainebleau

To do

1. Plan resignation from work - June 31st is the tentative date. I'm so going to miss the paycheck :-(
2. Figure out leasing situation for current apartment. Lease expires on May 15th... What am I going to do from May to June 31st
3. How to pay for INSEAD? Loans? Scholarships? Grrr..
4. French Visa... More paperwork...Sigh
5. Housing in Fontainbleau.. I hear its a pain in the ass..

I'm getting a mild headache :-(

INSEAD deposit

Put down the deposit for INSEAD. Thanks to a surging Euro and a plunging dollar, my deposit felt very expensive.

I'd like to recover the ISB deposit, but I don't see any good reason that I can offer the ISB AdCom. I actually feel quite lousy about doing this but if there's someone on the ISB WaitList who benefits from this, then that's great.

I think I'll gracefully withdraw from ISB and forfeit my deposit! Sucks!