MarquisParker.com // Business Strategist, Speaker, Advisor, and Coach

The message below was sent by one of my Platinum members who has emailed me a couple of times before. He’s a Spaniard who is looking at applying to business school this year and, up to now, he’s been focused on applying to schools in the United States. In the message below, he informed me that he has won a prestigious scholarship to attend a business school in Shanghai, China and asked for my advice on whether to accept the scholarship or not.

Instead of telling him whether to take the scholarship, I offered him a quick framework that he … Read the rest

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The email below is from a reader who reached out to me regarding the possible impact of an unbalanced GMAT score on his MBA application. He has a strong score of 700, but his concern is that the score is heavily weighted toward the quantitative side. He is aiming at Berkeley and Stanford as his top choice schools and is wondering whether his profile would make him competitive for top-5 programs in the United States.

As I’ve mentioned on here before, I’ve never worked for an admissions office before, so my opinion on someone’s application profile is just that…my own … Read the rest

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In today’s entry, I’m presenting another edition of the “Conversations” interview series with Iain Lopata as our featured businessperson. Iain is a former Partner at Accenture who left Consulting a few years ago and moved on to launch a couple of businesses, including one called The Consulting Bench that kicked off in November 2010. The Consulting Bench offers services that are intended to help professionals and students looking to enter the industry or current Consulting professionals who are looking for a chance in employment (either to another Consulting firm or outside of the industry).

Iain reached out to me recently … Read the rest

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A couple of months ago, I started to become interested in the wide range of journeys that people had taken in their careers, particularly in the business world. I’m sure that we’ve all heard that there is a “right way” to be successful in business and I find it cool when people don’t go the “right way” and still do well. In response to this interest, I posted a few entries about some of the non-standard paths that well-known people had taken and received some good feedback on those postings.

After that, this notion continued to dwell in my mind … Read the rest

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For the past few years, I’ve noticed that I’ve developed a strong following of people who view this blog from India. I’ve received many emails with questions from Indian natives who are considering pursuing MBA degrees or business careers, but have concerns because of their academic or professional backgrounds. This blog entry is a prime example –The story of the pigeonholed techie. While there is a lot of general MBA applications advice available on the Web, I have yet to come across anything specifically developed for the Indian applicant segment…That is, until now.

Given the unique profile and … Read the rest

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The message below comes from a reader who is considering job offers in management consulting and investment banking, which is a common dilemma for candidates coming out of business school. Unfortunately, the reader didn’t give me several pieces of key information, including whether she was in undergrad or graduate school, which would have influenced my response to her question. Despite this, I tried my best to give her a decent response. As mention in my message below, some more detailed thoughts on the consulting vs. i-banking issue appear in some of the entries in the archives.

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MS wrote:

Hi,

… Read the rest

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In this edition of the “Conversations” interview series, I’ll be speaking with Jesse A. Mejia, Founder and President of MBA Catalyst, an MBA admissions consultancy based in the Washington DC area. I’ve known Jesse for a couple of years through a mutual friend, but this was the first time that we ever spoke face-to-face. As you’ll soon see, we had a lot of fun with the interview.

Jesse founded MBA Catalyst back in 2004, soon after finishing up his MBA at Georgetown. He also has a “day job” working in Corporate America with a focus on risk management, but, … Read the rest

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