Kellogg Decision

I won’t keep you guys waiting, I’ve been anxious to type this all day. I received a call from Dean Katie Smith today after lunch to let me know that I’ve been accepted into the Kellogg School of Management MBA Class of 2016!!!

Let ’em know Jose… let ’em know

After letting that bomb drop, she proceeded to change my life even more by letting me know that I would be getting a substantial scholarship package! I don’t have a .gif for how huge that is… we’re all going to have to use our imagination. If you have a good one for this occasion, leave it in the comments!

LBS Decision

I was surprisingly calm last night and this morning, keeping myself plenty busy ahead of the noon EST notification deadline for The London Business School’s Stage 1 decision. Then noon came… and went, with no email. Of course then my mind began to race on what that could possibly mean with respect to my application. Thankfully I only had another 45 minutes to wait until I got my decision email…

… waitlist.

Is it what I had hoped (read: dreamed) for? No, but it’s also not the end by a long stretch. With a new re-revision date in hand I am going to play this all forward and come up with a solid waitlist strategy. I’ll be discussing that here as well as the progress on my next round of applications.

In the meantime, Kellogg’s decision comes next week. Congratulations to all my fellow bloggers on their admit decisions!

Hurry Up and Wait

Hurry Up

Last week I completed what was a very fun and informative interview for The London Business School. I ran down what the process was going to be like in a previous post, and made sure that my preparation level was a right blend of knowing my story without being rehearsed.

I’m glad to say that the interview went very well. I was what I like to call “Grade-A-Me” throughout all of the behavioral questions, and feel really solid that I communicated the spectrum of why MBA, why now, why LBS, and why me in a good deal of depth while simultaneously gaining a good level of rapport with my interview. It didn’t hurt that my interviewer was already intrigued with my application (remember, LBS interviewers read your application beforehand), and I was able to cover more ground on what makes me a good candidate outside of what I was able to put into my essays.

The part of the interview that seems to throw many people is the impromptu presentation. First off, I was lucky to have an interviewer who wanted to save that for after the behavioral questions. I can only imagine coming in from the cold and being asked to present a topic, without being able to at least warm up the vocal cords. I can also see how a “weak” start with the presentation could throw off the rest of your interview. Luckily I didn’t have to deal with this.

Like I said above, I had already built a decent rapport with my interviewer before we delved into the presentation. For example, I could tell that this person enjoyed thought processes and new ideas, so I made sure to sprinkle some into my presentation. I found that the few minutes given to prepare were ample. All they want to see is your thought process; and with just a few minutes to prep there honestly wasn’t time for much else. I did come up with some winning ideas for my case, and I could tell those impressed.

All in all, the interview lasted about 2 hours. Of course in hind sight I see missed opportunities to have mentioned one thing or another, but overall I feel particularly strong about this interview. Now it’s on to the waiting game… maybe.

And Wait?

I originally thought that I would take the time between this most recent interview and Thanksgiving to clear my mind of anything MBA related and just, you know, be. A couple of days of that and I realized that wasn’t going to cut it for me. Like any sane person who applied to tip top schools in Round 1, I’m prepping myself mentally for the worst case scenario. The LBS invite is indeed a strong sign; my application was interesting enough for the top international business school in the world to want to interview me. In the same token, Kellogg and LBS are highly selective programs where even the most qualified can be spurned. And that is why I’ve decided to just roll on into the next process and put my best foot forward, even if I never have to click submit.

And, truth be told, this new frontier is exciting me! Through The Consortium I have access to an incredible member list of schools. Interestingly enough, after I made my GMAT score available for schools to search through GMAC along with my demographic info, I’ve had wave after wave of emails and mailings show up in my various inboxes. Some of these solicitors are Consortium schools, which does my heart some good.

Through the Consortium, you can apply to up to six of their member schools in one application. I think my six that I’m prepping for are:

• Cornell University, Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management
• Georgetown University, McDonough School of Business
• New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Kenan-Flagler Business School
• University of Virginia, Darden School of Business
• Yale University, Yale School of Management

The shared application means that I don’t have to fill out the same things numerous times, however I still have to write essays for each school. Now before you say that I’m crazy for thinking I can get this done by January, I broke ground on a bunch of these essays way back in the summer (Consortium essay topics released relatively early in the season). I’m definitely not starting from scratch.

There remains the possibility that I’ll get some good news in December and that all of my additional writing will go to waste. I can live with that. It beats the alternative of counting down the days.

Would You Like Another Interview?

After an extended weekend in Chicago, I finished the final piece of my Kellogg application. No time to rest, however, as the interview details for LBS were sent to me, and now it’s off to prepare for what I predict to be a wildly different experience. More on that in a bit.

The visit for Kellogg’s Diversity Preview Weekend was well worth it. Apart from the standard visit day/weekend fare, Kellogg made this weekend unique. They ran the Diversity Preview Weekend concurrent with the Black Management Association Conference. This gave us prospective students a chance to see one of Kellogg’s fabled student organizations in action, which is an entirely different dynamic than having members of organizations sit on a panel during lunch or what-have-you. I came away with a more refined sense of what the student culture was like on campus. I was very impressed with the caliber of speakers that the student group was able to draw, and their networking events also left nothing to be desired. Cocktail party on the 99th floor of the Willis Tower, anyone?

Apart from the fun, I did have an important bit of business to attend to. My interview was also held this weekend, right in the midst of the conference and events. It was a bit helter-skelter, having to turn my mind from the topics being discussed towards getting my interview-level focus together. All in all though, I am happy with my performance. Of course in hindsight I tend to nitpick and wish I emphasized on strength over another, but that’s only natural I suppose.

On the same day that I interviewed with Kellogg I received the contact information for my LBS interviewer and a deadline to get the interview done. After sending off the email for scheduling, I naturally took a peek at LinkedIn to see what type of person I’ll be speaking to. Suffice it to say it’s someone at a very high level, at a very large multinational corporation. I felt a twinge of nerves that I would be talking to someone so “big”, but that quickly gave way to a sense of excitement. This person went to LBS, got a job in the states, and now has a high level role. I’m interested to pick their brain; maybe just a tad less than they are to pick mine, I’m sure.

A bit about the LBS Interview. It’s longer than the normal MBA interview, clocking in at somewhere between 1-2 hours (sometimes up to 3 depending on who your alum is). This gives the interviewer a chance to really delve into the reasoning behind your decision to apply. You can’t simply gloss over “Why MBA?”, you have to be able to talk about your passions at length. In addition to this, the interviewer will be able to assess you based on whether they would’ve wanted you in their own LBS class. So fit is of the essence, as well as making sure they know you are more than capable as a student. By being extended an invite to interview, that means that the admissions committee is interested in me as a candidate, and that they want to know more about me. This is a major opportunity.

The most daunting part of the interview is a brief case discussion. The interviewer will give you 2 minutes to gather your thoughts on a particular business topic or statement, and then will give you 5 minutes to present them. Obviously, they’re not looking for you to have an intimate knowledge of the topic, but the way to reason and structure your argument can give them a good insight into the type of thinker that you are.

As you can see, there is much to prepare for. So my apologies for keeping this post short, but I must get to it.

My Weekend >>>

To put it simply, this weekend was great.

Interview

On Friday morning, I had my interview for the Fisher College of Business. I had a great flowing conversation with an adcom, lasting about 45 minutes. The interview was mostly behavioral-focused, as one might expect from a school that values intimacy and collaboration. I only got one unexpected question: describe a current newsworthy topic in the business world that you are following. In hindsight, I think that the adcom was trying to ascertain how “plugged in” I am to the business world. Fair question; it makes sense to wonder whether an engineer is truly engaged in this new world I’m trying to join. Thankfully I stay up on the Financial Times and numerous podcasts so I was able to pick an interesting story that directly related to my long term career goal – stating that it would be something I’d have to watch in terms of career prospects. I think she was impressed.

The Max M. Fisher College of Business

LBS

You may also remember that Friday was the day for London Business School to send out their interview invites (or the dreaded ding). Thankfully my mind wasn’t tormented by constant email checking: I was too busy and engaged with the Fisher interview to be on my phone. When the day’s events were done, I swiped down to read my missed notifications. Some work email, a few text messages… and there I saw it. Subject: “London Business School Stage 1 Decision”.

Second fist pump was after making sure that I read it correctly.

I must admit, when I saw the words “delighted to inform you”, I raised my hands to the heavens and let out a primordial yell. And then maybe another. This was sweet, sweet validation that A: I wasn’t setting my sights too high, B: I wrote a strong application, and that C: This could actually happen. What wonderful icing on a wonderful day. I had to refocus myself in short order, however, since day two at Fisher was yet to come.

The Fisher Season Premiere

59 fellow prospects joined me on campus for two days of events which included mock case discussions, lunch with faculty (who came in on a Saturday to talk to us – nice touch), career management talks, and socials/dinners with currents and alums. It also happened to be Halloween weekend, leading to some current students invited us to their Halloween party. Fisher students know what they are doing (read: it was a blast). I was very impressed with the students, both prospective and current. These people were incredibly sharp. During Professor Anand’s Global Strategy mock case discussion, great ideas were flying in left and right. By the end I realized I picked up just as much insight from my fellow prospects as I did from listening to the professor. The currents and alums that I met just about all were interning/working for a Fortune 500 (Columbus is HQ for 17 Fortune 500s). There was definitely a Midwestern sense about the program, and the career management people talked about how they wanted to establish themselves as elite in their backyard and grow from there. All in all the weekend solidified some of what I already knew about Fisher (elite facilities and career management, in a vibrant city) but I also picked up some new information. Fisher is a really cohesive and engaging place; the staff and the faculty really love what they do and you can feel that energy coursing through the halls. Fisher definitely took a leap forward in my eyes.

Onward and Forward

The admissions train does not stop. Fresh from everything this past weekend, I’m preparing for my trek to Evanston for my Kellogg interview and for the Diversity Preview Weekend as a whole. The interview will be a blind one (interviewer won’t have read my application materials in advance), which changes the dynamic a bit. There’s also a ton of activities planned for the weekend, which I’m really excited about.

I’m also constantly scanning my email for my LBS interview details. I will probably be interviewing with an alumnus in DC/NYC/CHI, but having a date and location confirmed would be nice to have. London’s interview process is wildly different from most schools… but more on that later. I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

I still have some business to attend to this weekend first and foremost.

Let’s Catch Up

​Hello all, if any of you are still out there.

The blog has been silent for a few months, corresponding to some of the absolute craziest months of my adult life. A shiny new role at work, family weddings (which are jobs themselves for us Africans), the GMAT day of reckoning, submitting R1 applications, looming interviews and interview decision days… you get the picture.

Along with any semblance of a social life, the blog became one of the casualties of this spike in activity. I am sure many of you former/current applicants who are reading can attest to this, but the admissions process goes from agonizingly slow and anxious to incredibly fast and tumultuous. Once you hit submit, you regress to that slow feeling and exchange the anxiety for anticipation. That is where I stand now. In the next month I will know if I am done with the admissions process, or if I have to prepare for R2/3.

Finishing Touches

To start, let’s backtrack to what I affectionately call The GMAT Day of Reckoning. I had a great buildup to the test, flying through quant problems with pace and scoring typically high in verbal. I crossed the 700 mark in practice exams before my appointment, and was full of confidence going into the testing center. I ended up with a score that places me firmly within the ranges of my target schools, and scored high in the IR and AWA sections as well. Being the first time I took the GMAT, I felt good enough to proceed with submitting my applications and won’t be taking the exam again… unless it is a precondition to gaining admission.

Post GMAT, it was all applications. The first decision I made was to revise my R1 strategy. I couldn’t write the level of essay I wanted for such a large number of schools, and since I sat for the GMAT relatively late in the game the deadlines were quickly approaching. So I picked my favorite schools from the bunch, and curated every detail about my application for them. I submitted Round 1 at the London Business School and the Kellogg School of Management.

New Strategy

If you have a particularly good memory of my original target list, you may wonder why I dropped HBS. While my GMAT score was strong, I don’t think it was the score I needed to be a competitive applicant at HBS, especially in light of an undergraduate GPA that wasn’t going to “wow” anyone. This was a tough decision rooted in practicality. I had to make a choice based on the reality of my situation, and I think I made a good one. I still face an incredibly uphill battle for Kellogg and LBS, but a few factors give me a better chance in my eyes. For one, Kellogg has a video component to their application and interviews every candidate. This gives me more of an opportunity to put a face to my candidacy, which bolsters my chances as someone who is comfortable in those settings. LBS is an international school that views candidates in a very holistic sense… which is reflected in their class profile.

This new application strategy is also derived from my decision to apply R2 via The Consortium – which works towards greater diversity in management and offers a common application process to some of the nation’s elite business schools. I was already targeting some of the schools partnered with The Consortium (Kenan-Flagler & Johnson), and the other schools on the list are very impressive (Darden, Yale SOM, Stern, Tepper, and more). I made my GMAT score available to schools looking for applicants via GMAC, and since then have received very warm emails and phone calls from Stern, Tepper, and others inviting me to apply. It seems I have plenty of research to do, but I can’t help but get excited about some of the brands available through The Consortium.

Interviews and Invites

I have an admissions interview tomorrow (!!!) with the Max M. Fisher School of Business at The Ohio State University. This interview was extended to participants of the Fisher Season Premiere: a welcome weekend for prospective applicants to the school. Apart from the interview I will be participating in mock classes, career services discussions, and a few social events. Fisher offers something unique that no other school can offer for me. I live in Columbus, and one of my recommenders recently asked me to attend school locally and continue working for the organization. In exchange, they would pick up some of the tuition cost and offer me a flexible schedule. All in all, I don’t know if I will submit an application to Fisher just yet. My experience this weekend will figure heavily into that decision.

I’m also excited to announce that I’ll be interviewing at Kellogg next weekend, having registered for the Kellogg Diversity Weekend. The situation couldn’t have worked out any better. I get to visit one of my front-runners and give my interview on campus, reconnect with some of the people I met on my visit in May, and learn more about Kellogg’s efforts in promoting diversity. It is also a three day weekend, with plenty of fun stuff to do in Chicago following the visit.

The London Business School will be making their interview decisions this Friday. I submitted the absolute best application I could, and luckily have been too busy to think about it since. With the date approaching, however, my anticipation is building. Let’s keep our fingers crossed for good news.

Phew. I think I’ve caught up. The next post will discuss how my interview/day at Fisher went, any news I got from LBS, and turn an eye towards Kellogg’s Diversity Day. It feels good to be back.

Happy Halloween!

Essays!

So is it just me or does it feel like the calendar moves a little faster after your target schools’ essays begin to drop? Suddenly September doesn’t seem so far away…

So far from my target school list that I revealed earlier, only HBS and Keenan-Flagler have released their essay topics (or in one case, topic).

Keenan-Flagler has opted to go with 3 required essays and 2 optional essays. Essay one is your standard current/future strengths essay, while essay two gives you 500 words with which to outline your short and long term goals. Essay three is a little more flexible, and deals with your life experiences and how they’ve prepared you for business school. The first optional essay gives you an opportunity to speak on low standardized test scores or coming from a non-traditional business background (Hello, that’s me). Essay five, also optional, is left open ended for you to speak on anything that you feel you haven’t been able to discuss in your application.

I’m excited. The prospect of writing 4 (for sure) essays for one school may be a bit daunting, but this is the part of the process that I’ve always been most excited about. A chance to put some polish on the ideas that I’ve been kicking around for the past year. Keenan-Flagler has posted a R1 application deadline of October 18th.

HBS, on the other hand, made some waves in the MBA community with their decision to go down to just one essay. It’s prompt is simple: You’re applying to Harvard Business School. We can see your resume, school transcripts, extra-curricular activities, awards, post-MBA career goals, test scores and what your recommenders have to say about you.  What else would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy? (No word limit)

Wow. What an incredible opportunity to differentiate yourself in a way that’s not as formulaic as other prescribed essay topics tend to be. For those of us that can keep a steady ship while doing so, you have an opportunity in this essay to tie many different application threads around and present a holistic picture of yourself to an adcom. For me, I see this as a chance to have the admissions office point to this essay as the central theme to my application. The other pieces provide the instruments, and the essay will show what I can do with them as a conductor. I’m pretty excited about it, as you can tell.

That’s the sunny image of this essay topic. I can just as easily see an otherwise strong application come up lacking here, due to a lack of cohesion. I’ll have to be very careful not to get too wordy, to keep things precise and compact while still keeping a button undone to let some personality show through. This essay topic definitely favors a strong writer who can hit non-prescribed topics while keeping a clear direction in mind.

Of course there are so many more variables than just the essay. It takes a special candidate to gain admission into HBS, and that goes for all of the schools that I’m considering.

HBS has posted a R1 deadline of September 16th.

The early-bird phase is most definitely over. Hopefully all of the prep-work that I’ve done will come in handy during application season.

Accepted.Com Interview

Recently, I was interviewed by Accepted.Com as a part of their MBA Admissions Interviews series. After receiving the interview request I poked around the site a little bit, and they have some great resources available to not only just MBA applicants, but to anyone who is going to be dealing with admissions. They’ve been a great resource for me, and have proven to be a valuable resource for MBA applicants everywhere. Check out their website!

That’s all from me for now. I hope to post more frequently in the coming weeks as my target schools are beginning to publish their essays for my recruiting cycle.

She Said Yes!

No, I don’t mean marriage. Earlier this week I secured my last recommendation writer, and it comes from someone who I highly respect within my organization.

I already have a commitment from my supervisor from a while back, and have been dragging my feet in asking for another recommendation from someone within my organization. The supervisor is a no-brainer for most MBA applicants, as they’re the person that tends to know the most about your work efforts and what you’ve been able to accomplish for the organization. I wanted my second reccommendation to come from someone who can speak to how my work has impacted decision making way up the food chain.

This is not to say that I am pandering for reccomender that wields a big title. I have friends who have gone that route and came back with dull, uninspiring letters that didn’t really speak past generalities and dramatic overtures of how great they are. So it’s a delicate game: looking for someone high enough that they can demonstrate how your work has an impact, but also someone that you deal with enough to where they can speak about you in detail.

In my particular situation, I changed many job functions recently with a sizeable promotion which landed me in a different office (with a different organizational structure above me). Knowing that this MBA application trek was fast upcoming, I began networking like crazy trying to get to know people. For those of you that don’t know, this can be an AGONIZING process in the engineering world.

Luckily enough for me, my work did the work for me. After driving alot of our Big Data initiatives here, I’ve gotten alot of face time with executive leadership. Side note, Big Data is the current buzzword on the lips of management across the country. My new division head is a regular at these meetings, and we got to know each other pretty well from a working perspective.

So I settled on asking my division head, who leads my division statewide and sometimes operates as the third in command of the entire organization. We share many things in common, and through some casual conversations I found out that she was an MBA herself, and is very big into the “spread your wings” methodology of career-making. It was perfect.

She’s very enthusiastic about my MBA process, and has already offered me some incredible advice having gone through it herself. It feels good to have a great recommender on my side, as well as someone who is rooting for my success in general. I’m now crafting a very thorough document for my recommenders on what each school is looking for and how they can help me the most, as well as all the information that they will need on me. I also am looking to have more casual sit downs with them so that they can get to know me even better, which hopefully will reflect in the essays.

Kellogg Visit

This past weekend I had the pleasure of visiting the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Geographically, Kellogg is one of the closest MBA programs on my target list. Apart from that I wanted to visit Kellogg first because I have more connections there than any other school. I’m happy to say that I left with even more. The student population at Kellogg makes a concerted effort to introduce themselves to those lost looking folks roaming the halls wearing purple “visitor” tags. Most of the great connections I made during my visit day came from chatting with students in between their classes and at the weekly “TG” meetup (more on that later).

Backing things up a bit though, Evanston is a picturesque college town that happens to be situated 20 minutes from one of the country’s major cities. That push/pull setup with Chicago works perfectly for an MBA program. The students can insulate themselves within the bubble of Evanston and also are a single “L” train away from the nation’s third largest city. Oh and Evanston also has a Pret A Manger downtown, which, hell yes.

The Kellogg School of Management traditional 2Y (two year) program is located within the Donald P. Jacobs building. Admittedly, this isn’t the most gorgeous building to look at either on the outside or the inside. That wasn’t a big issue to me; my engineering buildings in undergrad all shared the same “old school Midwestern college building” vibe. That is to say that they’re ugly, but functional. Kellogg is however designing a new building that is due to start construction this summer but wouldn’t be completed until after I plan to have my MBA in hand. Facility looks mean less than nothing to me. After spending an entire day in the Jacobs building I’d be more than happy to call that home for two years. Moving on.

When you first set foot into the building you get the sense that the students run everything at Kellogg, and that was reiterated by every student I spoke to. From the conferences, to the visit days, to the student organizations and everything in between Kellogg is truly its students’ school. This means that to get the most out of the “Kellogg Experience” you have to be ready to flex your soft skills. There is no formal structure to getting involved, and with as large of a class size as they bring in it is very easy to fade into the background without any of your other students catching on. I’m a people person (my fellow engineers chafe at this every opportunity they get) so I don’t anticipate any problems in this aspect.

My day started with an informal building tour given by a current first year student. There were no admissions personnel on hand during the tour, which let the prospective students get acclimated to their new surroundings without feeling we had to be on our toes in front of adcoms. The building tour pretty much evolved into a walking Q&A session with the student, which was great. I mean, once you’ve seen one class/study room, you’ve seen them all.

After the building tour was a lunch with several current students, including a second year who was able to answer more questions on what career recruitment was like at Kellogg and how he got his gig at a Top 3 Consulting firm starting in the summer. He also happened to be the president of a few clubs and an all-around social butterfly, so once people started floating some “extracurricular life” questions we got insight into just how much fun Kellogg kids have with their limited downtime. This is also where I heard about the “TG”…

After the lunch there was a gap built into the agenda allowing us to roam the halls. I used this time to meet up with a few of my friends who currently attend Kellogg and catch up with them. They in turn introduced me to more great people (noticing a trend here?) all of which offered themselves to help me through my application process. The Kellogg focus on admitting good people was evident throughout the visit. Granted I was only there a day but I didn’t come across any of your typical “alpha males” (or females for that matter), and almost to a person I was greeted with a smile and a “good luck with applications!”

Following this break in the agenda there was a formal information session with an adcom. I noticed that a bunch more prospective students showed up starting here. Makes sense, most people want to get in touch with the admissions folks. It was your standard info session followed by Q&A. The adcom did a great job touching on stuff that you in particular might be interested in from the school. For me she really did a job on pushing the JD/MBA program to me with my government background, and I’m going to have to look into it. I’ve always seen a law degree as something I’d get later on in my career…but why not now? Food for thought.

The undoubted star of the show was the class visit. I had heard tall tales of this amazing professor at Kellogg that goes by the name of Professor Gad Allon. Luckily enough, one of his classes (Operations Strategy) was open to visit that day and I made sure to register myself for it nice and early. Don’t know how else to put it but Professor Allon is a superstar professor. He was recently named to the Top 40 Professors under 40 Years Old by Poets & Quants, and I can see why. He was incredibly engaging with his students without it becoming a distraction to the flow of the class, and his practical real-world examples served to root the sometimes pie-in-the-sky concepts in Decision Sciences. I’ve heard people say that these career professors can’t get into the meat of things because they’ve never been in the field…but with Professor Allon he always tied big points into his advisory experience with various companies. It was really fascinating stuff and I’ll be sure to look up his work for some further research.

I’ve been teasing Kellogg’s weekly “TG” meetup throughout the post. TG is short for TGIF, which is short for Thank Goodness It’s Friday. Every Friday at 5:00 PM (after the last class of the day lets out) the school puts on a social in the atrium complete with beer, finger food, and usually a visiting company to talk to. There were a few hundred students there scattered around the atrium and the surrounding hallways. All of the prospective students had at least one or two current students chatting them up, it was very easy to meet people and exchange contact information. For the current students, think of it as a Friday unwind time, and the jumping off point for the, erhm, Kellogg Weekend. The TG typically leads nicely into Friday night fun in Evanston/Chicago, which I definitely partook in :D.

All in all it was a brilliant visit. I continually tried to remind myself that I haven’t been to any other schools yet on an official visit and so I have nothing to compare it to, but I couldn’t help but get excited at the thought of potentially becoming a Kellogg student. I can truly picture myself there, it meets all the criteria I outlined in what I want out of a school and it’s vibe and curriculum matches my interests. But let’s keep in mind that I still have to manage to get in!

Hope you guys enjoyed my visit breakdown. I’m hoping to get some more visits into my target schools over the summer months and at the beginning of the school year. For now it’s off to the tailor, it’s wedding season! And no, it’s not my own 😀