The applications have been submitted. The holidays are over. It’s a new year. And I find myself in the same spot I was last year. Waiting…. Again!
I have nothing profound to say that hasn’t been said already, so I’ll just close this note by wishing everyone a successful 2011. May the MBA Gods shine upon you.
Hello world!
How are you soon to be b-schoolers faring this year? I hope things are looking up after last year – a super competitive year for any wannabe MBA. Like many of you, I am a reapplicant, targeting R2.
Applying this year was a little bitter sweet. Not really used to failure, being dinged last year, was a bummer. Especially in light of the fact that my girlfriend made it to a top 5 school and decided to move across the country. I thought long and hard; should I apply to many business schools, or just focus on the ones that I really like?
It was a turning point, one lonely night, a decision was made. No matter how much analysis I did, it became a question of what I could fit into my life, when I wasn’t working 12 hour days or flying coast to coast.
Fast forward today, I’m applying to a small selection of schools, two to be exact: Columbia and Wharton.
My basis for picking these schools? I just loved visiting them. When you’re at the point I am in my career, a two year MBA doesn’t make sense unless its at a school you love.
That’s very risk seeking, you say. Plan B, you ask. Well, there are always other options including the 1-year programs at many US and international schools, and executive MBAs. If I had to have an MBA, I would probably go that route.
So lets see how things pan out this year fellas. Hopefully, I’ll get it right this time.
I am annoyed by people who decide to put quotes in their signatures, but once in a while something comes along that makes you go “wow”.
"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." – Aristotle
This quote came through today, I liked it – it echoes my personal philosophy that I ought to do the best I can, everyday. Thought I’d share it with y’all.
Last week my company posted two new openings. By Monday we had received over 500 resumes for each position. This is unprecedented. Even during bad times that followed the dot-com-bust in the early part of this decade, our company didn’t receive more than a hundred resumes for any position, my manager quipped, as he proceeded to give me a stack to filter for potential hires.
We’re hiring an intern and a FTE. I had to look through the intern resumes that had already been prescreened by HR. In this pile, I am found a lot of MBA candidates from the Class of 2011. Some of them have impressive backgrounds and are from top-tier schools (in the top 10).
In all, I have over 71 such resumes that I counted this morning. This exercise was bitter sweet – I felt bad that these guys had to struggle so hard, and I felt good because I wasn't one of them and had the security of a well paying job.
While doing this, I recalled that two weeks ago I was at my friend’s engagement party and his father in law, an former Goldman executive, shared his outlook on the economy, and employment. His take was that the economy will not add jobs, the well paying jobs that MBAs want, until late 2011 to early 2012. Businessweek’s article “MBA Intern Hiring Is Slow to Recover” made his analysis more plausible as did accounts I’ve heard from some friends at Stanford, HBS, MIT and Duke.
I’ll share something that a friend from Stanford said this weekend on a phone call - “Everyone is getting an internship, but most people have to settle for something that they didn’t imagine doing when they started their MBA”, continuing further to share that he will be doing a marketing internship at Du Pont in Tennessee. He wanted to break into healthcare finance. His PoV is echoed by a bunch of people who I have talked to in Cambridge at HBS and MIT.
Such a situation affects not only the top schools, but also the mid-tier schools and is in stark contrast to the the assessment that business schools had made only in February of this year. See BusinessWeek’s article titled “MBA Job Outlook Improving” published earlier this year.
So, while I realize that the information I may be sharing with you is anecdotal, and that there are huge differences between internship and fulltime hiring, I also see a silver lining.
Perhaps I’ll get in next year and graduate at a time when MBA hiring is strong. Perhaps, I won’t have to regret spending hundreds of thousands of dollars without a commensurate return on my investment. Perhaps not getting into b-school this year was a blessing in disguise. Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps… =P
I have been nominated for the Clear Admit Best of Blogging applicant blog for 2009-2010. I am humbled, yet proud that I am in the running for this award and wish all the nominees bon chance!
As you can imagine, I’ve been pretty busy at work. However, I intend to post regularly in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!
You can only connect the dots looking back. I didn’t say that. Steve Jobs, one of my favorite CEOs, said that in 2005 at while delivering Stanford’s commencement speech.
“Stay hungry, Stay foolish,” he reminded us.
And that's the question I’ve been pondering about a lot recently. Would applying again this fall be foolish or an act of steadfast persistence that will yield dividends? I wish I knew, but I don't. What I do know is that if I don’t give this another shot, the “what if…” will haunt me for some time to come.
So, here I am, ready to brave the cruel b-school admissions process again this fall.
Let the games begin!
PS: Thanks for the encouraging emails and comments fellow b-schoolers. I have a feeling that we’ll crack it this fall :)
Fellow business school applicants. The road has almost come to an end. My results for the 2010 application season are known to you (summarized below) for you if you’ve just landed here.
R1: Kellogg (Interviewed/Dinged) / Booth(Dinged) / MIT (Interviewed/Deferred)
R2: Fuqua (Interviewed/Dinged) / HBS (No Interview) / Stanford (No Interview)
It has been a long, arduous journey; one that I hoped would end in at least one business school admitting this now forgotten soul. Alas! They have not.
Some will win, some will lose, some will live on to sing the blues. In my case, I will be spending the next few weeks giving serious thought to whether it still makes sense for me to apply again this fall. You’ll know, as soon as I do.
To all me hearties, I wish ye good luck. And if you get bruised on the b-school trail this year, maybe we’ll celebrate victories together next year.
Au revoir!
