Sorry for the delay in posting this. There’s been too many things happening too soon to me.

On the 14th January 2009, I made my way to the Taj Gateway Hotel in Bangalore and as usual, I had budgeted for heavy traffic which wasn’t there so I ended up a bit early. There was some confusion at the hotel as the reception didn’t know that such an event was happening. But then I decided “Hey, its a coffee chat, so should be in the coffee bar at the hotel”. I checked the reservations and they said they didn’t know of any MBA event, but a gentleman had booked a table for 10. I decided that must be it and waited there, preparing my notes for the chat.

At around 06:15 pm, I had another person join me. A fellow applicant, a doctor from Kerala who ran his own family hospital, looking to go to Haas for an MBA with focus in healthcare. We were having a chat when Vijesh and the rest of the pool arrived. At the end we were exactly 10. That’s what I call planning 🙂

Mr. Vijesh Unnikrishnan is an NRI, brought up in Kerala (that’s where I come from) and Tamilnadu and been working in the US for quite some time, I think about 8 – 10 years. He is a Mechanical Engineer by education and worked at Guidant Corporation, a healthcare company part of Boston Scientific.

We went through introductions around the table, a healthy mix of men and women, most from IT, but also banking, healthcare and in family-business. Vijesh was very genuine and enthusiastic in his approch, one he said is the hallmark of Haas. The chat was very informal and soon he was been bombarded with a ton of questions.

Referring to my notes, here were the main traits that came out:

  • Haas really shares the California Spirit. A laid-back approach but not sacrificing excellence or competitiveness.
  • Haas seems to big in Healthcare (something I didn’t know). Vijesh spoke a lot about it. Well it might also be because of his background.
  • Haas is in the top 3 Net Impact chapters in the US, along with Ross & Yale.
  • He spoke of the “Entrepreneurship Bug” at Haas and how there are umpteen number of ways you can get involved…
  • Vijesh is really active in Net Impact, Entrepreneurship Association, DMEC & Heatlthcare. He is the VP of Career Development in Net Impact and a Board Fellow sitting on the board of a non-profit. He also helps out the Healthcare club because of his backgrounds.

An interesting point he made about South-Asians at Haas

In his batch, South-Asians (India + Pak + Bangladesh + others from SAARC) form about 20% of class. Of this, a lot of them are American Citizens with South Asian ethnicity and others are Non-Residents. Only about 30% of them, i.e. 30% of 20% = 6% of the class = 10-15 are from South Asia and lived there most of their life. Hmm… Interesting!

Vijesh also spoke about the points and bid system at Haas for bidding for electives and how International Business Dev is a popular but costly (in terms of points) elective. How you need to manage the points to make sure that you cater to your needs and interests as an individual. I quite liked the approach, management in practice at the school. Managing your meager resources… Sweet!

And there were a couple of funny/tough questions that Vijesh had to answer:

  • Why do the school ask you to make up your mind about a career, when most people discover new avenues and make career choices right at school? 🙂
  • Compare Stanford & Berkeley… Oops! 😀

But, I was really impressed by the way in which Vijesh dealt with the “Stan Vs Haas” question. He acknowledged that Stan was a good school, so was Berkeley. The major difference is that Stan is a private school with deep pockets, while Berkeley is public. The way he spoke, I could hear the Golden Bear growling at the Cardinals. He made sure that the “Big C” trumpeted loud and clear over its traditional rival. Reminded me of the time I was in Stan in 2006 and how the Stan grads talked about Berkeley. 🙂

Here’s a video Interview of Vijesh that I did after the chat… My Flip acted up, so I had to turn to my E71 to do the job. The audio is feeble as there was too much disturbance in the hotel lobby. I will try to post a processed audio link below it soon:

* this is not an official Haas Video!

Thanks Vijesh, Thanks Haas it was a great night. Had fun, made new friends and cemeneted my reasons to have Haas high on my list. Now for “fingers-crossed” time 🙂