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(This is the sixth in a series of blog posts in which Julie DeLoyd, a Veritas Prep GMAT alumna-turned-instructor, will tell the story of her experience through the MBA admissions process. Julie will begin her MBA program at Chicago Booth this fall. You can also read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5 to learn Julie's whole story.)
I applied to Harvard, Stanford, Chicago Booth, Kellogg, and Michigan. By December, I’d been interviewed by Booth, Kellogg, and Michigan. As I hadn’t received any invite from Stanford or Harvard, I basically stopped thinking about my status and expected dings on decision day. (Side note: I actually can’t stand that word “ding.” Why don’t people just say “rejected”? It’s much more apt… and not as bell-like. But, I digress.)
By December, folks on the Business Week forums were posting rumors on how schools were going to start releasing decisions. The Chicago Booth admissions committee had announced they’d release results over a two-day period in December, in part so the rejected applicants still had time to apply Round 2 to other schools. The rumor was those who were accepted on the first day would be offered scholarships. For me, I had a hard time sleeping the night before that first day of calls. The prospect of actually getting in to one of these great schools was daunting enough, the prospect of having to find a way to pay for that education—in some ways—was even worse.
The call came the next morning. Sure enough it was a member of the Chicago Booth admissions committee. Not only had I gotten admitted, but the rumors turned out to be true (for me, at least). They offered me an almost full-tuition merit scholarship. The woman who called was an AdCom that I’d actually met a couple of times before, so it was a very personal phone call. More so than any other calls I ended up getting, I felt like a friend was calling to share good news. Since my scholarship wouldn’t cover all of tuition, she did mention that there were some fellowships available that I might be interested in as well. I followed up with her later on this (and will tell y’all about it in my next post).
Most other decisions wouldn’t be released until January, so once again I had some waiting to do. During this time I got more excited about Chicago Booth. The admissions director, Rose Martinelli, called me herself to check in and answer any questions I had. Additionally, she wanted to assure me there was a lesbian support network there, including a few prominent professors and administrators. She even connected me with one of these professors who talked with me on the phone for several hours on a Saturday afternoon. Additionally, Rose connected me with another current student who I have a lot in common with and who is now someone I’m lucky to call a friend. Chicago’s early decision date made it so that by the time the next round of news came in I was already finding myself with my heart set on Chicago (even though it was the bottom of my list when I started!)
While I awaited the responses from Michigan and Kellogg—though everyone ELSE seemed to be hearing from Kellogg already—I went on a trip to visit family for the holidays. Late December, I was having another night of restless sleep and I checked my email for no particular reason. I had another Punk’d moment where I looked around to see if someone was watching and about to make fun of me—but no, I’d been invited to interview at Stanford. The school I applied to knowing full well that no one gets interviewed, much less accepted. So even though my heart had grown attached to Chicago, now I went into high research mode for my Stanford interview. Through my research, I remembered all the reasons that it had been one of my top choices to begin with. Still, I tried not to get my hopes up.
Shortly thereafter, the final Kellogg decision day loomed. At this point applicants had already been hearing responses for, oh, 2 months. Tons of waitlist responses were being released these last few days on the forums, with a little smattering of accepts and rejections were in the mix as well. Still, I was pretty sure the deny email was on its way, and I didn’t much care anymore. With Stanford now on the table, and Chicago in the bag, it didn’t matter much. Surprisingly I found a message on my phone on the final decision day—Accepted.
My inner cartoon Scooby made a questioning “Rranrf?” noise in my head, but I called and confirmed. They’d accepted me. The very last possible moment they could. Yeah, this bugged me. Maybe I’d been spoiled at this point by Chicago, but it still somehow felt like I was an afterthought. I gave them a lot of constructive feedback when I ultimately rejected their offer (including the fact that their scholarships aren’t offered until you go through a whole separate process, post-acceptance).
I got the phone call from Michigan around this time as well—accepted, with full-tuition scholarship offer to boot! In this case, the director of admissions called me personally. I appreciated this high-touch recruitment effort, and felt bad knowing that I wouldn’t be accepting their offer. Really, in almost every way, I was incredibly impressed by Michigan’s admissions team. One small example? Their accepted student’s welcome packet is the best I’d seen from anywhere. Included was a Michigan Ross T-shirt (XL, which was maybe their ONE misstep), and a nice Michigan Ross binder with all of the information any incoming student could possibly need (including two pages of buildings where students commonly live--with commuting times by bike, walking, and car, as well as the pet policies for each building). Though I didn’t ultimately decide to go to Michigan, the caliber of excellence displayed in their recruiting efforts and in my fellow admitted students makes me excited to some day have the opportunity to work for or hire a Michigan grad.
At first I thought this new scholarship offer might give me a little bargaining leverage with Chicago (which had become my top choice of the three), but even a full-tuition scholarship at Michigan was worth less than the scholarship Chicago had already offered me. Though I’d have to pay more out of pocket, the tuition at Michigan was notably less expensive than Chicago’s.
Stanford’s decision was the real wild card at this point. My future was decided but for this one outlier. I started feeling like I was on a roll and maybe would actually get admitted to Stanford and have to figure out the Chicago-to-Palo-Alto commute for me and my wife after all. My record had been pretty good, so as the word of phone calls started coming out I stayed by my phone, expecting a phone call. I waited all night. (Derek makes his calls throughout the night, oddly enough.) Just as I was beginning to think that I was about to get a “deny,” I check my email to see one of the most dreaded results.
“Waitlisted.”
Now, I’m not seriously complaining about being waitlisted at Stanford. I’m incredibly honored to have been put on the list. But the wait had already been driving me crazy, and this was supposed to be Decision-Day. The official results wouldn’t be announced until the end of May. So I approached my Chicago acceptance with hesitance and another possibility looming over my head…
NEXT UP: “Distinguished” Fellow and the Stanford Decision
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