The Shailesh-tival

Being snowed in for the weekend, I had a lot of downtime. I got down the rabbit-hole of college admissions and decided to look into what applying to college even feels like today. For instance, would I even get admitted to my alma mater (my gut tells me yes, but Illinois’ engineering program has gotten far more competitive in the ~20 years since I graduated). But why just dip your toe in the water when you can dive in headfirst? So here’s my application essay for U of I.

I didn’t quite ‘stick the landing’ on this one. The end of the essay sounds kind of awkward. Still I wish I had the ability to articulate myself as a 12th grader as I do now. I could’ve saved myself hours of editing. Anyways, here it is…

My response:

When you come from a family of engineers, its tough to explain exactly when the engineering bug hit you. But as far as I can tell, it’s always been there.  My first deepdive into the world of electrical engineering happened at the tender age of two years old.  Armed with a battery, my mom’s car keys and unfettered access to an electrical outlet, I learned three important lessons that day: 1) I had not figured out how to charge batteries; 2) the doctors at Washington Adventist Hospital are wonderful people; 3) I needed formal training in the subject. Clearly, I didn’t have a great start, but my desire to tinker and build never left me. When my parents bought our first computer in middle school, I quickly took to learning to program in QuickBASIC.  As one of my prouder achievements, I built a Connect Four game on a snow day at school.  When my sister bought me a musical keychain from her alma mater, it was only a matter of weeks before I disassembled it and connected it to the home stereo, blasting her school’s fight song for most of my neighborhood. When we (and everyone else), first got internet access at home, I taught myself HTML and Javascript, and eventually used those skills to build a one-of-a-kind interactive calendar for my high school’s website. Outside of the fun side of engineering, I’ve shown myself capable in the classroom. I’ve taken every Math, Science and Computer Science course available to me at school, and I’ve excelled in them, earning AP credit in multiple domains. Between my intellectual curiosity and my academic capabilities, electrical engineering has always been a natural fit for me.

So why Illinois? In short, Illinois is the perfect fit for this amazing journey.

The engineering program speaks for itself. But it’s also a place where I can see myself getting “lost” (in a good way of course). I’m looking forward to what I will learn and do academically, but as a sports fan, I’m also looking forward to Saturdays and Memorial Stadium and Big Ten basketball.  As a musician, I’m looking forward to shows at Krannert. And as a keychain afficionado, I probably owe my parents’ neighbors a few bars of, “Illinois Loyalty,” from a rewired musical keychain.

Given the recent resurgence of Illini football, I thought I’d add my math about how the Illini can still make the Rose Bowl. It comes down to this:

1. Illinois wins out against Iowa and Northwestern, finishing at 6-3 in the Big Ten
2. Minnesota loses out against Iowa, Northwestern (stop laughing), and Wisconsin, also finishing 6-3 in the Big Ten
3. Wisconsin goes 2-1, which includes going 1-1 against Nebraska and Purdue, and beating Minnesota (as stated in step (2) ), so they also finish 6-3 in the Big Ten
4. Illinois, Wisconsin and Minnesota end in a 3-way tie for first in the Big Ten West
5. Using the first tiebreaker for a 3-way tie, all three schools went 1-1 against each other, so the second tiebreaker would be used
6. Using the second tiebreaker, Illinois and Wisconsin finished 4-2 against the Big Ten West, whereas Minnesota is 3-3, so Minnesota gets eliminated from contention for the Big Ten Championship game
7. With a 2-team tie, the tiebreaker reverts to the results of the head-to-head match-up between Illinois and Wisconsin; Illinois wins this tiebreaker by virtue of winning that game
8. Illinois goes the B1G Championship game and beats the Big Ten East winner (likely the winner of the Ohio State/Penn State game)
9. ROSE BOWL!

Go Illini!

Since Round 1 of the NHL playoffs are well underway this seemed like the most appropriate thing to talk about.

“I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.”

There’s no doubt that most people reading this have heard this quote in some sort of business context at some point, and I’m guessing the person repeating it really thought he/she was blowing your mind with insight when he/she said it. But honestly, I’m not sure if there’s a quote I hate more when it comes to corporate world. Read the rest of this entry →

Running a marathon has always been on my bucket list, but I always figured it would be one of those things I’d do when I was older. The amount of training involved means that you pretty much have to focus on running and nothing else, and I didn’t want to give up lifting weights, Tae Kwon Do and the many other things I’ve picked up over the years.

For some reason I wasn’t thinking about this on the morning of January 1, 2011 and at 9 am that morning, I took advantage of the early-bird discount and signed up for the Detroit Marathon. Read the rest of this entry →

You might remember that a while back I toyed with building my own rankings system to rank professional and college sports teams. With a little free time recently, I went back to that and revised my rankings and I think I found something better. I used data from NFL seasons dating back to 1940, every college football season and some NHL data. I also created a few custom data sets to see how my system reacted to a few things. The results are here. As a teaser though, I thought I’d share the 15 most dominating teams in NFL history (based on this ranking). Read the rest of this entry →

I thought I’d drop a quick note here about a guest piece I wrote for MBA-social, a business school blog run by Kellogg 2010 alumna, Jenn Yee. It’s about MORS 941, the sports management class I’m taking with Northwestern University’s Athletic Director Dr. Jim Phillips.

Without further adieu: What college and pro sports can teach you about management

Upon hearing about yesterday’s gorgeous weather in Chicago, Darren and I made plans to see the Cubs play last night. I bought the tickets on a ticket reselling website and other than the 30 minute rainstorm, the weather was gorgeous. The game itself turned out to be pretty good too.

Today, just by chance, I got an email from cubs.com thanking me for attending the game, which seemed kind of strange, given that I didn’t buy the tickets from the team. Of course, I’m not that naive … Read the rest of this entry →

Edit: My friend Ben sent me the extended cut of the Bart Scott interview, so I’ve changed the youtube video below.

It was an exciting weekend, and I got to watch it in northern Wisconsin with 3 college friends (more on that later), but it also marked the divisional round of the NFL playoffs, where the Super Bowl suddenly becomes a very real possibility for 4 teams. Read the rest of this entry →

Note: Someone just pointed out to me that my proposal actually violates NCAA rules.  The NCAA rule for holding a conference championship game is that the conference must be split into 2 divisions of at least 6 teams apiece where all teams will play each other within  each division.  This make my proposal a moot point, but I’m leaving it up as an interesting idea nonetheless.  Here is the actual NCAA rule:

Rule 17.9.5.2 Annual Exemptions. [FBS/FCS] The maximum number of football contests shall exclude the following:

(c) Twelve-Member Conference Championship Game. [FBS/FCS] A conference championship game between division champions of a member conference of 12 or more institutions that is divided into two divisions (of six or more institutions each), each of which conducts round-robin, regular-season competition among the members of that division;

With Nebraska moving to the Big Ten next year, there is a lot of talk about how to restructure the league to add a championship game. The controversy around all of this revolves around the Ohio State – Michigan rivalry. There are a lot of great rivalries in the Big Ten, but that one has pretty much defined its football history, and any sort of proposal will likely impair the historic importance of this regular season match-up. Read the rest of this entry →

I was all set to write a blog entry about how the Final Four is in the Detroit and nobody is paying attention.

Four years ago, I was living in Saint Louis when they hosted the Final Four and the ‘March to the Arch’ was a huge source of conversation throughout the winter and early spring in St. Louis.

Meanwhile this year I was watching basketball on Saturday when I suddenly remembered that the Final Four was actually in Detroit this year.  Going into last weekend, the Final Four had generated almost no press in Detroit. Read the rest of this entry →