Kristen Smirnov

One semester to go! …Before I go to a new school.

Phew! This was one very packed semester. I was managing four classes and an independent study (which I’m about to begin running a survey for), studying for GMAT improvement, and doing school research to figure out which universities would be the best fits.

The four classes were a class on international-level economics and managerial analysis, human resources management, negotiation theory, and conflict resolution methods. Between the four, I think about sixty pages were written on those various topics (on top of smaller assignments and non-essay tests). I am veryvery happy to be hitting the long winter break.

As for GMAT study: I took the test twice. My first attempt, on November 4^th, saw only a small improvement over my very first, pre-MBA try. That score was more than fine for MBA work, but I wanted to improve it rather a lot to make my PhD apps look more appealing. So, November 2^nd through December 3^rd saw me working problems until my vision went blurry. A big payoff came on the 4^th, when I pulled a 720. Yes, that’s good.
As for the schools I’ve finally decided on, in a vague west-to-east order:
- University of Oregon
- University of Utah
- University of Alberta
- University of Colorado at Boulder
- University of Wisconsin at Madison
- University of Toronto
- University of Pittsburgh
- Cornell University
- Syracuse University
- University of Rhode Island
- McGill University

Several schools from the last round were written off as I studied housing costs over a few months. It would seem that I would have to be engaged in some complex form of international espionage to afford a place in Boston (or, gasp, have a roommate), and despite Penn State’s absolutely beautiful new business building that blows away everywhere else I looked, the town itself seems to consist entirely of small apartments with brown shag carpet that would have frat boys as neighbors on both sides.

I also wrote off another Toronto university, York, when I began the application process and saw that they wanted four letters of reference and a US$125 application fee. Um, no thank you. I’m not sure exactly what that’s a sign of, but it can’t be anything good.

So! That is what I’ve been up to since the last posting.

Oh, and I also added a couple of wishlist links to the homepage.

Yes. Shameless.