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(This is the fourth 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, and Part 3 to learn Julie's whole story.)
Since the time this business school idea first occurred to me on that Texas highway, the GMAT had been my main concern and the only real hurdle I had anticipated. Now with that hurdle behind me, I realized there was a whole new challenge ahead. Choosing schools, and writing essays upon essays upon essays…
My sister, my wife, and my best friend all applied to law school at the same time. I watched them all study vigorously for the LSAT and witnessed the collective sigh when it was over. Just one personal statement to write and they were essentially done. This one statement goes to every school, and once you send your information to a central clearinghouse, all the details are forwarded on to your schools without any further effort on your part. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly from MBA admissions, but I noticed pretty quickly that the experience would be very different from that of law school admissions.
After a few days of walking on air after getting my 770 (though still secretly thinking that a letter was coming to announce there had been a technical error), I started discovering that even with a 770 GMAT, and a 3.8 GPA, my admissions journey to an MBA would be decidedly more difficult than it was for my law school friends. For MBA admissions, your GMAT is just the sales pitch that gets you in the admissions door; the essays are the substance that will determine whether you get admitted. If you can’t really sell your “story” then admissions can find someone else. I’ll admit it. I resented this.
I signed up for admissions coaching through Veritas and spoke to my consultant before I took the actual test. At the time I was scoring 670 on my practice tests. Because I was interested in marketing programs and social entrepreneurship, she gave me a list of great programs: Haas, Kellogg, Michigan, Harvard, Wharton, Chicago, Yale, and University of Wisconsin at Madison. My wife had a job waiting for her at McKinsey in Chicago, so the Midwest was a big draw for me. With a little reading from a Peterson’s guide to MBA programs, I basically chose the top 5 schools that had some geographical appeal as well. In order of my excitement: Kellogg, Harvard, Michigan, Chicago, Wharton – and I added UW Madison at the end of my list hoping that I wouldn’t need a back-up school. (Their marketing focus is on market research, and that wasn’t really my bag.)
After I took the GMAT, I called up my Veritas admissions consultant again and she told me that if I wanted a safety school, I could apply to Yale. This blew my mind a little. So my list of schools changed again to include another top school I hadn’t even considered before. My list now included: Kellogg, Harvard, Michigan, Chicago, Wharton, and Stanford. I didn’t really expect to get into Stanford, but I figured it was worth a shot. I also wanted to apply Round One because I was worried my musician background might be seen as a weakness in my application. I wanted to take advantage of the best possible odds for admission and also financial aid—as I only made about $15k/year as a musician, money was a major concern.
I took my GMAT in July, and though I had my list of schools set, most of the applications wouldn’t be available until late August or September. Over the next few weeks though, many of the essay topics started being released (as you likely have been reading about in other Veritas Blogs recently). Once I started looking at the long list of different essay questions for each school, I once again envied my law school friends. I also started to rethink applying to SIX schools. I ended up taking Wharton off my list, because I knew Philly wouldn’t work for me. So I now had 4-5 essays for each school… essentially meaning I would have to write 20+ essays. Oy.
I began to craft my story, choosing to accentuate my entrepreneurial experience and frame myself as more of a record label owner instead of “just” a musician. I also picked a few choice examples of instances in which I paired my musical endeavors with my political ideals, particularly around environmentalist causes and domestic violence issues. I knew that I’d be telling a different story from most because my background was in the arts, which isn’t typical for MBA candidates.
The other unique aspect of my life I tried to develop in my essays was how my identity as a lesbian would be a strength in the classroom and in my future career. (Though most minority recruitment is focused on race or gender, the percentage of lesbians in business school is incredibly low. 1 for every 150 students is a generous estimate. In the general population, it’s estimated we make up 1 out of every 16 women.) I knew this would add another unique element to my application, and had a few admissions people specifically talk with me about this aspect of my application. If any other GLBT applicant were wondering whether they should come out in their application I would strongly encourage them to do so.
Now, if I could do one thing differently about my application process, it would be to have visited more of the schools before I started applying. For the essays asking “Why MBA? Why Now? Why Here?” I found myself terribly lacking in finding an answer to the “Why Here?” question. I generally knew reputations, but even when I went to the websites to do more research they all seemed to say the exact same thing: “We’re a school focusing on leadership and innovation!” …which essentially means nothing. If all schools have the same pitch, then how can you use that information to differentiate why you want to go to a particular program? I became very frustrated.
Part of me thought that putting in too much research and emotional energy into places like Harvard or Stanford was just setting myself up for disappointment. I figured I’d do the real research once I got in and had to decide between schools. Unfortunately, my finances were such that I couldn’t visit most schools unless I happened to be touring through already. I didn’t end up going on admissions tours or day-in-the-life programs until I got interview requests, so it wasn’t until the end of the admissions process that I really had some good answers to that “Why Here?” question. If I could have begun my school search the year before, I would have been at a distinct advantage.
If I had taken my own advice, I’m pretty sure I would have changed the list of schools I applied to as well. After more research I found that Harvard was a TERRIBLE fit for me. The only thing I liked about it was that it was Harvard, but the do-gooder/environmentalist/musician/artist/weirdo in me didn’t feel at home with the culture there at all. Surprisingly, I ended up falling in LOVE with Michigan, whereas Kellogg (my top choice initially) turned out to be a disappointment. Going through this process the idea of “fit” became all too clear. What might have been a great fit for someone else, wasn’t for me. I discovered a lot about myself through the application process. I discovered what I truly wanted out of an MBA program.
The biggest surprise came when I started doing more research into the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business (then known as the GSB). Because I had been relying on reputations, I had Chicago (the-“quant-heavy”-Trekkie-antisocial-GSB) way at the bottom of my list. I didn’t want to go there, even though it was IN Chicago, which is where I wanted to live. My mind began to change when I first read the Booth essay questions. First was the traditional 3-Why’s essay (but with a longer word limit so you could actually explain yourself, instead of having to figure out a way to make your intentions fit into a haiku…). The next was an essay asking, “When have you gone against the grain?” (which I could have easily written an autobiography on). The final “essay” question, my favorite, asked for the applicant to create four slides explaining who s/he is. At this, my artsy side started to do a little white-man boogie in my head. I created my four slides in just a couple of hours and loved doing them. I appreciated the chance to express myself in another way in which I excel (i.e. graphic design). This was my first clue that Chicago wasn’t as square as the reputation had foretold.
The essay writing was endless; I pretty much wrote and re-wrote my essays every day for six-weeks until applications were due. Once again, I thought the hard work was over. But I’d never before had to go through the waiting game of MBA admissions. It was an adventure unto itself…
NEXT UP: The Wait
