The email below is from an MBA applicant who is seeking advice on whether to mention his involvement in massively multiplayer online games (or MMO; “Worlds of Warcraft” is an example) during his college years in his applications and, if so, how he should do so. Really interesting story, right? I can honestly say that this was a brand new issue for me to think about, which is unusual after all of these years. At first, I planned to take some time to think through some key points and write up something detailed that might prove helpful to this reader and others who might be in a similar situation but reluctant to ask anyone for advice on it. Then, things went a little off-track…

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HA wrote:

“Hi Marquis,

I stumbled onto your blog while searching for information about Stanford MBA students! I was impressed by how open you’ve been and how well written and straightforward the blog entries have been. I have a specific, targeted question about a point on my application and hope that your background in computers – and your knowledge of Stanford’s students, diversity, and admissions process – might give you a more informed viewpoint to suggest what I should do.

My undergrad picture shows a shaky GPA of [GPA deleted] while also showing I aced organic chemistry and then was specially requested to teach it the following year. I’m torn over whether to mention that this was, in part, because I was leading an organization of over a hundred people through a competitive game with challenging content.

I spent a good portion of my early undergrad in college playing MMO’s (and working full time, and taking aikido, and singing in two groups, etc etc etc – I did not lack for things to do and I literally took one vacation in six years!) and some of my greatest self insight has come around leading groups of people that have no material incentive to follow me to victory. I took a guild from 12th place to 3rd in the course of a year and a half – increasing efficiency, improving member quality, managing personnel and policy disputes, etc… after I ‘retired’ to focus on classwork in my latter years, when I came back the top guild snatched me up on sight based on my reputation alone – I was quite honored, as their organization is extremely dedicated and competitive and I enjoyed tackling content on a server or world-first basis with them for the next year.

My post-college work record has been, I believe, competitive for a stanford MBA applicant – [overview of his professional profile]… but I worry that if I leave out my gaming experiences, I will have a *major* hole in my undergrad activities and the admissions council will consider me a deadbeat that did nothing with his time – I have never been one to sit around and dither away time!

I’ve asked several friends who are in other programs, and almost all of them have recommended I leave it out. I have an excellent work history, great recommenders, and a suitably high score [deleted GMAT score] on the gmat to be competitive. However, I worry that my undergrad will appear to have a large gap if I leave gaming out – and as an activity, I certainly understand how it can be regarded as highly trivial, yet I am extremely grateful for the management and politics lessons I learned in MMO’s – they have been _hugely_ helpful in my corporate life!

Do you have any insight into this? I worry that the admissions council will literally laugh me out the door!

Thanks,
HA”
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When I read the email above, my first thought was “WHOA! This is one of the most interesting questions I’ve ever received”…and it was an especially cool story for me because video games were one of the things that motivated me to major in Computer Science in the first place. My mind immediately came up with several ideas that I could put into a reply to this message and I thought it could have been a fun response to write. Then, I got a follow-up email from the reader above and things kinda-sorta went left. I’ll just let you read through the follow-up email yourself before I say anything else on it…

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HA wrote:

“Hi Marquis!

Apologies for hounding you a bit, but I’m settling to submit on Stanford (and a few other schools) by the end of this week. Do you have any further insight into my situation? Personal email is fine… I’d actually prefer not to have it blogged about.

I’ve been back and forth over whether to discuss in depth my undergrad… Stanford, in particular, seems the most likely school to be open to it, but at the same time it is a tremendous longshot. A friend (typical Harvard undergrad/fast riser) who is applying for her EMBA at the same time looked at my transcript and said, “yes, you have to explain this” … but my explanation is most likely to be poorly received by any top adcom. I don’t blame them, although I maintain running a top end organization was an outstanding experience. Again, I’m not concerned with my professional achievements being competitive – in addition to excelling at my day job, and teaching every new analyst for the past few years, I’ve brought Enterprise 2.0 to the company and rolled it out to the tune of [figure deleted] hits/month and potentially $[figure deleted]/saved in employee time per year, and I intend to spend this year making that figure skyrocket. Professionally I’m very satisfied – and even if I don’t get into any of the MBA programs I’m looking at, I’ve already informed my management I’ll be leaving to pursue that career come September one way or another. We have an amazing environment at [work], I’ll definitely miss it!

Thanks once again for your time, and for your blogging. It has been great reading your updates! You actually inspired me to blog my application experience, and I’ve been blogging since the beginning of August (anonymously).

-HA”
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Some of you might think that it wasn’t a big deal for this reader to send the follow-up email above, but it struck a nerve because it went against several boundaries that I’ve set in terms of how I interact with readers (which i’m sure I’ve mentioned on this site before). Part of me was pretty salty when I received the follow-up, but, instead of just deleting it, I figured it could be a good time to give him some feedback (and send out a “word to the wise” message to the rest of you at the same time) along with a very quick response to his email. I hope my message didn’t come across as mean, but, sometimes, the words just come out of my head the way that they’re meant to come out. The reader sent me a really nice reply to my email below, so I’m sure he understood where I was coming from…but, given some of the other emails I’ve gotten from readers before, there’s no telling how the rest of y’all will read this.

All of this tells me that I HAVE to make carve out time in my schedule to make my preferences known to y’all at some point. One of these days, I’ll post up something about it, but, until then, I guess I’ve just got to address it one by one and hope that others who read these post get the picture.

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My response:

HA,

I hope your don’t take this the wrong way, but, with this email, you’ve basically hit several of my pet peeves in dealing with my readers that I may or may not have mentioned on my blog over the years, including:

- I hate when my readers contact me through my personal email address unless I’ve explicitly given them the green-light to do so. I set up that external email address for my blog for a reason…to separate that stuff from my real life. I do sometimes accept Facebook and LinkedIn invites from my readers, but I never intend for any of them to use it to contact me outside of that external email account to follow-up on emails they’ve sent me.
- I never give full responses to people who say that they don’t want my responses to them posted on my site. Given the time I put into responses, I’m only willing to give in-depth informative replies if I can post them to share with the masses. When people make that sort of request, I just reply saying that I can’t help them on that sort of one-on-one basis.
- It REALLY annoys me when send me follow-up emails as a way to rush a response out of me…and, I’m SERIOUS when I say this. I know I’ve mentioned how long emails and millions of questions bother me, but having someone try to rush me truly ticks me off. I’ve mentioned on my blog repeatedly that I work by my own timelines and, if someone needs something by a certain date, then that likely won’t work for me due to the volume of emails I get. Whenever this has happened in the past, I’ve moved the person who does it to the bottom of my email queue.

The funny thing is that your original email was actually the next one in my queue and I was planning to write a thorough response later tonight. Your situation is probably the most interesting one I’ve been emailed about over the years. I spent some time thinking through your situation over the weekend and was ready to throw down on a great response…that’s not going to happen now. Instead of that, I’ll just give you a quickie reply to answer your question at a high level. It should still give you my opinion/insight at a high level, but it won’t be as detailed as I had planned.

In answering this question, you should understand that I’ve never worked for the Admissions office at Stanford or any other business school and don’t claim to be able to vouch for what the GSB Adcoms might think about your profile. That said, if I were in your shoes, I would DEFINITELY mention the experience with MMO’s in my application. I understand your hesitation in mentioning it, but the fact is that it’s something to which you devote a large portion of your undergrad time and some significant lessons came your way as a result. So, you could turn what seems like a negative into a big plus. I think the key will be the way that you position the MMO thing in your application essays. If you simply say that your GPA took a hit because you were playing video games, then it’ll sound trivial and a waste of time that you could have spent studying. If you position it as you did in your email to me (i.e. an interesting way to develop leadership, management, and communications skills), it could come out looking like a great non-school-sancitioned extracurricular activity. Based on my time at the GSB and what I know from attending admissions info sessions, the Admissions office is looking to create a class full of people with diverse experiences and I doubt many other applicants will describe anything like your times as a big baller in the MMO world. Furthermore, your MMO experience showed some early signs of the leadership traits that you seem to have exhibited thus far in your early career. So, that’s what I’ve got on your situation. Remember that I’ve never worked for a business school admissions office before, so take this as only my own opinion. You should consult some others and then make an informed decision for yourself.

I hope my read on your situation has been helpful. As I said above, it isn’t as detailed as it could have been, but I wouldn’t call it a terrible one. You seem to have a great profile and have demonstrated great leadership over the years, so I’m sure you’ll do fine in the MBA application process. Just make sure you own your MBA story and don’t feel like you have to apologize for any of your past experiences, even if you think someone in an admissions office might consider it friviolous. Good luck!

Marquis