Recently, I was contacted by the founder/host of MBAPodcaster.com, who wanted to do a phone interview with me to contribute to a podcast on helpful words of advice for business school applicants and students. Anyone who has read this blog for more than 5 minutes knows that that’s my “hook”, so there was no way that I could turn that down. I just found out that the final product has been posted. I haven’t listened to the podcast with me in it yet, but I did read the transcript and the host did a good job of editing in the parts from our phone interview. If you’d like to check it out, the link is: http://www.mbapodcaster.com/podcasts.asp. It turns out that one of the listeners of that podcast was drawn to this blog and left the following question for me:

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Nafeesa wrote:

“I actually just finish listening to MBA Podcaster and thought I would check out your blog. I am coming from a nontraditional undergrad background in fashion design/graphic design, currently made a switch to brand management. About me: 26yr African American Female living in NYC (so I understand what you were saying about that cold weather!). I am currently taking a English course, intro to stats, and plan to continue with adv. stats and calculus, and more writing courses at the local BMCC preparing to apply in the fall. Would you mind recommending courses that would help me get thru the program? Also do you know of any scholarships for MBA students or programs other than the consortium? Any advice would be appreciated.
By the way, how is ATL so far?

Nafeesa
NYCCOFE- Networking with a Purpose
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/NycCOFE/”
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My response:

Nafeesa,

Thanks for checking out this blog. I’m going to give you a rather quick answer to the question about what sorts of classes to take to prepare you for business school because I’ve answered it several times before, including within the past month or so. Given your background, you’ll likely need to focus on classes that will show your ability to actually do the math you’d face in a business school classroom. Taking those stats and calculus classes are a good start and I’d advise you to take an accounting and/or economics (with calculus-based content) to further prove that your quant game is tight. Aside from that, you should also be studying for the GMAT if you haven’t already so you can get it out of the way over the summer.

In terms of MBA scholarship programs, it’s difficult to give you a good list without knowing more about your background, but you could do a Google search for some and a long list should pop up nowadays. Two that immediately come to mind for you are the Forte Foundation and Toigo Foundation fellowships. The Forte Foundation provides funding to women who are about to start their MBAs and the Toigo Foundation does the same for matriculating minorities who have a specific interest in Finance careers. In addition to these, you also qualify for the National Black MBA Association’s local and national scholarships, but those get a TON of people applying for them and are pretty hard to get.

Life in ATL is going well so far, but I’ve still got a long way to go to get myself acclimated to being there. I didn’t know many people in the city when I arrived and, because of my travel schedule, I still know very few folks outside of my coworkers. It isn’t necessarily a terrible thing, but it is a little strange that I’ve been there for 6 months and still feel like a newcomer. It’s a great city to be a young, educated professional though because the cost of living is low and, if you’ve got a decent job, you can settle down and immediately be a big baller. At this point, I can definitely see myself being there for a few more years.