ISB - A last moment hitch in submission

I never thought it would take me so much time to finally freeze my ISB essays. I gave myself the target of 15th August to complete the first version, which drifted to 22nd, when I wrote my last “yippie” post. Then my reviewers sent over comments, and I incorporated them. I myself didn't like few parts and rewrote them completely. And it was today i.e. 29th morning 6am, after editing my essays whole night, I was completely satisfied with them. I was all set to submit my application by today evening.

I completed the other sections of the application and uploaded all documents, to realise in the evening that I don't have scanned copy of my latest salary slip, but thankfully had a hard copy in my Visa documents folder, writing which makes me realise that I never posted about my US B1 Visa which I got stamped last Tuesday only. I should have blogged about it ya! Okay, then I got my salary slip scanned and uploaded it. I asked my reviewer to go through the entire application once for spell check, and though she was dead tired, she did that will as usual enthusiasm. It was 10:30pm and my ISB app was all set for submission. I was so happy that the first time I would submit my application not on its last day of submission i.e. 30th Aug, but seems it was not meant to happen.

I clicked on the last page and there was something new, “Upload scanned signature”. What the heck, it was never there before in any of the applications I submitted last year, it was totally unexpected. I somehow managed to get the scanned signature, and then the worst happened. I tried several times, but I am not able to upload it. It says saved successfully but when I go back to the screen, I am not able to see my uploaded signature and hence not even able to submit my application. Just wrote a mail to ISB and will call them tomorrow morning.

Just imagine if today were the last date, as it was last time when I was rushing through my app to submit it at 11:54pm, just 6 minutes before the closing window. Thank God this time it is not, but my excited feeling to submit my app before deadline date is vanished.

Lessons learnt:

1. Check all the sections of your application very minutely and try to complete them much before deadline, best even before you have started your essays.

2. Your targeted date to complete essays would definitely be missed, how hard you try to meet it. So always keep some buffer days for essays completion.

I’ll follow these lessons,

A

How I managed to upload signature?
I'm not able to post comments from my office system due to some weird reason, so I am updating my post itself with steps I performed to upload signature.


1. I signed again on a clean A4 white sheet.
2. Scanned it in 150dpi in jpeg format.
3. Changed its attributes using MS paint to 150 * 50 pixels. But this didn’t work and I was not able to see my signature.
4. Then I undo the same, and cut the piece around my signature, and saved only that piece as a new image.
5. Open this image and resized it to 150 * 50 pixels. This time it worked. Note: This time did not changed attributes but I actually resized the image.
6. Uploaded it successfully. You will see a link “click here to check uploaded signature” under the browse button, which would open a separate window with signature on top left corner, which means you are done.
7. Said “Thank God!!” and submitted my application.

It's kinda weird, but it worked for me. All the best!!