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One of the first clients I worked with had several aspects in
his profile that, at an initial glance, were going to
present major obstacles as he attempted to gain admission to an MBA
program.
He was an engineer with impressive quantitative
skills but no obvious experience indicating leadership
potential. He was already in his mid-thirties and had
much more work experience than candidates for full-time
programs usually do, which meant he risked being
perceived as "too senior" for the program he was
interested in. He said he couldn't mention any
interesting things that he did outside of work, partly
because in the country where he grew up and went to
university, extracurricular activities don't exist. To
top it off, because his personal situation made it
impractical for him to relocate, his MBA options were
limited to one top school in his area of residence.
Despite these obstacles, the client also had many things
going for him. He had a clear and logical idea about why
he needed an MBA and what he would do with it after
graduating. His communication style was articulate and
affable, contrary to the stereotype of a number cruncher
or engineer. And he had a stellar GMAT score.
We talked about his situation and his options. The
obvious alternative
to a full-time program,
and where he
might be a better fit, was the EMBA program at his
target school. But that was not an option for him
because his employer would not sponsor him or give him
the time off needed to attend classes. So we were faced
with the challenge of how to overcome the aspects of his
profile that made admission to the full-time MBA program
a bit of a long shot.
But I knew that people
usually have more going on in their lives
than they're aware of.
That's especially true of
people
who have already attained a degree of
professional
success and who could
safely remain in their careers but
who are inquisitive and driven enough to get off the
treadmill and seek ways to further develop themselves.
So I approached this client to see what was going on
backstage that we could draw out and present in his
application. Was he more than a bright engineer with
quality work experience and intellectual
accomplishments? Had he demonstrated leadership
potential in any situations at work or in other
activities? And surely he must do something
outside of work that made him a well-rounded person…
As we talked, it became clear that the client had many
more strengths than he realized. For one thing, he
actually had excellent experience to list under 'extracurriculars,'
although it involved activities he did not think of in
that way. This client had lived through his home
country's transition from communism to democracy. During
that time, he started an import-export business and even
ran for public office. Although the client didn't
consider these to be extracurricular activities, they
certainly demonstrated his initiative, leadership, and
his involvement in the community. This of course is the
kind of thing that admissions committees are really
looking for when they ask about extracurriculars – it's not just about community service!
It turned out that the client had continued to be active
in politics after he came to the U.S. I think he had
hesitated to mention that on his applications because he
had grown up under circumstances where it wasn't smart
to indicate your political participation or affiliation
on something like a
school or job application. But he
didn't have to mention his particular political
affiliation on his application
in order to explain his
community involvement, anyway. The important thing was
to convey that he was a person with a lot of initiative
and that he was involved in the community.
Now we were beginning to see that we had good raw
material to work with for the essays. As he wrote, these
started coming together up until he got to the question
that asked him to speak about an accomplishment. The
topic he had chosen demonstrated how he resolved an
extremely challenging quantitative problem. This of
course simply restated abilities that were already
evident from his transcript, GMAT score, and professional
background. He
needed to write about something that highlighted his
other strengths.
We talked about the fact that he had been
put on a management track at work. Of course, that's a
huge accomplishment – and it showed that his
employer believed he had managerial potential. They believed in his managerial potential because
they had seen him succeed in a situation where the
problem-solving involved motivating members of the team
to work together on an important project. So I advised
him to re-write his essay to highlight that achievement.
He came up with an essay that did much more to
support his application than the original one did.
I've got to say that I wasn't really surprised when this
client was accepted to his target school.
Once I got him
talking about his background and interests, it was clear
that he had so much going for him in addition to his
obvious intelligence. It was just a matter of digging a
bit below the surface to discover the additional
strengths that would make him an attractive candidate
for a top MBA program
and helping him
understand how he could draw attention to those
qualities in his b-school application.
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Contributed by
Senior Consultant Cristina Freeman. Cristina holds a master's degree from New York University. She made thousands
of accept/reject/waitlist decisions as an admissions
officer for IESE.
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