The email below is a follow-up email from a reader that I replied to a while back. He actually sent this second email back in February, but told me to respond to others in the queue first because he’d already gotten some of my time. You know, i find that really cool of him because I’m more used to people trying to rush me to respond. It’s a nice change of pace to see someone willing to fall back in order to let me help some others with their queries. He’s got a lot of questions for me here, some of which I can’t really answer, but I’ve tried to give him some general advice that might be helpful.

———–
PS wrote:

“Hey Marquis, First off let me take the time to thank you for all of your advice, either your blog posts or your direct answer to my email. I’ve got to say that not a lot of people in your position take the time to help others reaching out to their goals, I wish that more people followed your example.
In a more personal matter, I thank you again for what I thought to be great insight and advice on how to proceed from this difficult point in my professional life, I really felt like your advice was useful and right to the point. I am not saying this because it is polite on my part, I really mean that I relate to your path and take your career and advices as a form of inspiration, you’re someone that I look up to. That said if you have the time I would like to reply to the last e-mail with some additional infos and/or oppinions. Please reply to others before taking the time (if you can) to answer me again, because I’ve already had some of your advice/time, so others are probably more deserving by now. Again if you do not have the time to answer me again I will understand.
So, first of all I’ve already applied to a business analyst position in [your employer's] Lisbon offices, after I finished my MSc. At the time (6 months ago) I passed the written exams but failed the case interview proccess, I guess mainly because I had no experience and/or significant preparation for the interviews at the time. It wasn’t my main goal (I wanted to come back to Rio de Janeiro) so I guess that I learned the hard way that I need to prepare myself better. Knowing this, I can’t try to get in for at least a 2 year period in Lisbon. I considered trying out the Madrid chapter of [your employer] but I feel that I should pursue the MBA first and then decide my career choices, I need more profound knowledge about the world of economics, including its different areas, because consulting might be wrong for me, I feel like right now I would be doing it for the status/proudness of being a [member of your firm], and not for the consulting life at all. I took some marketing classes and I really liked them, so I feel that I should study more on those subjects before deciding for a career change right now. Also the MBA process should be great in opening my eyes and showing me what the different paths of economics have to give me. Does this feel right to you?
Second I only have one year of relevant work experience. Although I have worked with research during my academic period, I don’t think that the b-schools will take that fact into so much consideration. So my question is how many years of experience would you consider before applying for an MBA? I know that schools often request 2-3 years minimum work period, but I was wondering if this is a rule or a recomendation, what is your insight on this. Also do you think it is better for me to stay in the same company and grow as an engineer, etc or to try and get some other work experiences? Keep in mind that I work in a startup telcom company and that I get a lot of responsability, they actually hire third-party software companies and I act as a project manager understanding the requirements and walking through the development process of their projects. I’m currently responsible for three different projects.
Third of all, there’s a pretty generic question, in which I’m hoping that you can help me. I’ve read tons on the different b-schools, I’ve browsed through both forbes and finantial times’ list on top b-schools and I still haven’t come close to any conclusion. You might have guessed by now that I’m hoping that you can give me some advice in which schools to apply to. I’ll sum up my curriculum in bullet points so that you may give more advice on how to make it better and try to guess what kind of schools should I go for:
My graduation average was in the top 10% percentile and my MSc was in the 5% best percentile;
I’ve worked with research, though never published during grad/msc programs; I currently still work with research/college laboratories;
I have one year of relevant work experience, half as a crm IT consultant in one company, and the other half as java software engineer, managing projects in this company;
I’ve done some community work with orphan children (being an orphan myself I loved it) in Rio de Janeiro, I’m about to take your advice and doing some extra work with them;
Been working with student body councils (elected president in high school) and affiliated with a political party where I had some significant roles;
Played soccer and rugby;
Travel / read a lot;
Have lived (and in fact still live) abroad, in a different continent.
I was looking at IMD (Switzerland) and Insead (France) as my first choices, but I think that with my curriculum they are unrealistic ones, I’ll let you be the judge of that though. I would also like to live in a different continent again so I was more keen on getting into an american or asian b-school, though american would surely be my first choice because of the reputation (I’m guessing that your advices will focus on the american b-schools ..).
Fourth and final, recommendations wise: how many recommendation letters should I have? I have two solid letters in mind, the managing partner in my current firm (I work on a daily basis with him) and a phd in my university which was both my teacher and my tutor in a research department. My brother is marketing manager for pepsi in eastern europe, I could get one from him too but he’s never worked directly with me so I’m guessing that it is not a great idea.
Thanks again for everything and I hope that everything’s going well with your job and everything else in your life right now! Hope that mckinsey leaves you with enough time to actually have a personal life .
Best regards, PS”

———–
My response:

PS,

I know it’s been a while since you sent your email, but I went ahead and responded to some other emails in my Inbox before hitting your newer questions. Now that it’s been a while, I thought I’d follow up with you. You’ve asked me some pretty specific things and I might not be able to give you the exact type of answers you’re looking for, but I hope they’re somewhere close to being helpful.

You asked me a lot of questions here, so I’ll just number them out and respond to each of them in order. Let me know if I left anything unaddressed:

1. [Should you pursue an MBA before applying to consulting positions] –> You started off your email by giving me some context about your past application to my employer, but I won’t comment on applying for a position there. I can give you some commentary about your choice to pursue an MBA before trying again though. You’re still ptretty early in your career, so you could possibly apply for a business analyst type position at a consulting firm and transition without skipping a beat. But, an MBA sounds like a major part of your plans and you seem to be ready to jump right into it as soon as you can. Given your development/learning goals, you could focus on B-school applications as your immediate goal and put off applying to consulting firms until you finish. That way, you can strengthen your business acument and be even more prepared to make another run at getting that consulting gig that you’re interested in.

2. “How many years of experience would you consider before applying for an MBA?” –> My quick answer to this question is that you should apply to business school whenever you’re ready. I’ve never heard of schools officially requesting 2-3 years of work experience from applicants, but that could be considered a decent benchmark to use. I know several people who attended top-tier business schools right out of undergrad, which proves to me that younger applicants do have a shot of getting admitted. In fact, I’ve got a link to a collection of blogs from a group of younger MBA students on my site and I bet they could give you a lot of advice on this point. Let me use myself as an example…I had five years of work experience when I started at Stanford and, in hindsight, I wish I’d applied 1-2 years earlier because that’s when I was really ready to head off to business school. You’ve got to think long and hard about when the right time to apply based on what feels right to you and then go with it. If it doesn’t work out the first time around, figure out what you need to work on and then try again later. You’ve got a great job right now and are picking up some strong work experiences, so develop that as far as you can and then integrate it into your MBA application story. you seem to be on the right track and are concerned with the right issues, so now you should take it from “thoughts” to “actions” and chase your education and career goals.

3. “Advice on which schools to apply to” –> This is another question that I have a hard time answering because the choice of business schools should be a personal one. I recommend that you do some more research on the schools you’re considering and possibly do some on-campus visits to get a feel for them. This way, you’ll be able to make your own informed decision about it all. You gave me a decent list of your characteristics and all of them could qualify you for any number of schools, which is why you’ve got to make this decision for yourself based on what you’re looking for. You might want to look into Stanford GSB and HBS because I’ve heard that they’re a little more open to younger applicants, but that doesn’t mean that other schools won’t give you a fair shake, as well. I know that I haven’t given you exactly what you were looking for with this one, but that’s because I shouldn’t be the one telling you what to do on this one.

4. “How many recommendation letters should I have” –> I’d recommend lining up three or four solid people to write recommendations for you, depending on the number of schools you’re applying to. Most people only bring in two people and expect them to write something for a laundry list of schools, but this is a quick way to get them burnt out. I’d recommend adding a couple of more people to that list and distributing your requests for recommendations across them. Also, it doesn’t sound like your brother would be a good person to write a recommendation for you because he’s never worked directly with you. The key to picking a good recommender is finding people who can write about you in a context directly relatable to what admissions offices are interested in. Your brother might be able to vouch for you as a good person, but he probably wouldn’t be able to vouch for you as a strong MBA candidate, so you should search through your list of colleagues to find another suitable recommender.

I hope what I’ve said here gets you close to what you’re looking for. You seem to have your mind pointed in the right direction and it’s good that you’re asking some great questions. Good luck with in the upcoming MBA admissions cycle.

-Marquis