Success Story Part 7: "My! What a distinguished fellow..."

(This is the seventh 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, Part 5, and Part 6 to learn Julie's whole story.)

There I was, in the middle of my own personal—albeit geeky—soap opera. I imagined in the televised version I would be some tortured blonde, and CEO of DeLoyd Industries. Three dashing men have been asking for my hand in marriage. I choose the witty, sophisticated suitor who could make me scared and excited all at the same time. He treats me well. Then all of a sudden, my old flame comes sauntering into my board meeting! He starts to tell me he's been thinking about the good ol' days, how our ideals were so in line. We were so good for each other… I already have my wedding dress all picked out, and now I’m having second thoughts about a man who is only dangling his potential interest, but isn’t willing to commit.

--In Haiku form--
To put it simply,
Chicago Booth, scholarship
Stanford, waitlist. (Ugh.)

At some point I started thinking about the advice I'd gotten before my wedding, that is, my real-life wedding. A friend said once you pick the dress, stop going to bridal shops and trying more on. I felt this analogy worked for choosing schools as well. I needed to decide, and let the potential Stanford outcome be left alone. I decided to withdraw my name from the waitlist and allow myself to be excited about Chicago again.

My contact in the Booth admissions committee had told me during my admit phone call that there were still fellowships to be awarded. The admissions committee, I discovered, would nominate applicants for fellowships, but ultimately a faculty panel would decide the recipients. She said there was also a process for self-nomination and recommended that I write a short essay for each fellowship I thought was a good fit for me.

Some fellowships were based on an area of study (e.g. marketing, finance), whereas some were more interested in supporting certain minority populations (e.g. Women, African-Americans, Hispanics, etc.) One outlier was a large fellowship meant to attract the all-around superstar applicant. I found five or six fellowships dealing with marketing, entrepreneurship, and diversity initiatives that applied to my situation, if only tangentially and I decided to write a statement for every one.

While I was researching Booth fellowships, I started looking for outside scholarships as well. Several websites listed tons of scholarships available to undergraduate and graduate students, but very few applied to me. The few I did find required completing extensive applications and committing to large projects during the school year for a very small financial return—often less than $3000. I ended up applying to one external fellowship for gay and lesbian students that had a slightly larger budget and could fill in my tuition gap. They had awarded very few scholarships to business school students and had never awarded one to a lesbian MBA candidate.

I started crafting my fellowship essays. At first, my essays came across like a "greatest hits" of my MBA application. It wasn't working. With a total lack of inspiration, I began an exercise in freewriting and found myself writing about my mother. She died when I was a teenager and I can clearly connect my current drive to succeed with having her as part of my life, however brief it was. I wrote a very honest, personal essay that ended up working for most of the fellowships (with some minor tweakage). I realized the Booth fellowship committees would already have access to my full application, and the outside scholarship would already have my resume and test scores. It felt like a risk at the time to write such an emotional essay, but regardless, I knew I had a $40k scholarship in the bag.

The outside scholarship for "the gays" selected me as a semi-finalist (the application process was ridiculously multi-tiered) and I began putting together the second part of the application—letters of recommendation, transcripts, official test scores, etc. Though at first I was excited to be selected as a semi-finalist, I got an email a few weeks later with some interesting news that redirected my efforts.

As part of my Booth fellowship search, I had sent an essay in for consideration for several $20,000 fellowships for diversity or marketing. Ultimately, I found out that fellowship money only replaces money from merit scholarships—it doesn’t add to it. So most of the fellowships I applied to wouldn’t have helped my financial situation (though most of them would have provided some valuable mentorship opportunities). The only Booth fellowship that awarded more money than what I’d already been given was called The Distinguished Fellows Program—the one geared towards the superstar applicants. This was the only fellowship you couldn’t self-nominate for. The title of "Distinguished Fellow" would be bestowed on 4-5 incoming students and would accompany a full-tuition fellowship with a $20k annual stipend as well. (Insane, right?) Additionally, this fellowship would provide a personalized leadership curriculum and interactions with a broad range of notable guests (from the business world and far beyond). When I originally read this description, I thought, "Wow. I want to meet whoever gets one of these fellowships. They must be incredible..."

During the last few weeks when most of the Booth Business Week forums were saying the fellowships had all been given out, I received an email from the deputy dean at Chicago. I had been invited to interview for the Distinguished Fellows Program.

I can’t tell you how many times during this whole application process that I felt like I was only moments away from waking up from what had become a delicious dream. This was another one of those moments. I had begun a cordial relationship with Booth’s incredible Director of Admissions, Rose Martinelli, and I spoke with her briefly about this new opportunity. She was genuinely excited that I had been chosen to interview (only one of ten-to-twelve chosen to do so, I discovered). She told me a little more about the two faculty members whom I would be speaking with and I continued the research on my own, knowing that Rose was cheering me on.

I was interviewed twice during Admit Weekend. The first time, unknowingly. The first day of Admit Weekend, I was invited to lunch with a few of the current fellows. Though this was pitched as a chance for me to ask questions about the program, it turned out they were evaluating me as well. Though I was meeting many new people that weekend, these few students were some of my favorites. I hoped they enjoyed my company as well. The next day, when I met with the deputy dean and the professor in charge of the program, it appeared that I’d gotten the stamp of approval from the current fellows. During this 45-minute interview, I started feeling like I wasn't in an interview, but rather part of a conversation. We all talked about our pasts and, oddly, business matters rarely came up. When the conversation was over I had no idea if I'd impressed them or not.

The next day the deputy dean found me during a housing fair and offered me a spot in the program, if I was interested. I immediately accepted! When I found Rose a few moments later, she screamed and gave me a huge hug--the hallway full of admitted students quieted down to see what the fuss was about. It was a lovely moment.

At this point any hesitation I
d had about my choice to attend Chicago Booth completely disappeared. In addition to this unreal fellowship opportunity in a financial sense, I was really excited to be part of such an incredible, close-knit group of students. I haven’t found any other fellowship like it in any of the top MBA programs. It’s strange to know as I attend school over these next two years, I'll be one of only ten people getting paid to get my MBA. It's an incredible honor and opportunity.

NEXT UP: The Final Episode! The Final Days, and the Takeaways.