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Follow-up: College student asking about deferred enrollment at the GSB and HBS

by | Aug 6, 2014 | Bschool admissions, Business, Business School, career, Education, mba, younger applicants | 0 comments

In my last blog entry, I posted an email from a Brazilian college student who reached out to ask for my thoughts on his chances for get deferred MBA admission at Stanford and Harvard. Having never worked for the Admissions Office of either school, I gave him my read on his profile with the caveat that he shouldn’t take that as the gospel on whether he’d get in.

In response to my email, he sent a thank you email with additional questions about the application process. My longtime readers know that I have a policy about not sending replies to follow-up emails, but I put that aside in this case because the kid’s questions were so short.

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FR wrote:

Hi Marquis,

I would like to express my deepest gratitude for your help. Sharing your knowledge and experience to help people out, without asking anything in return, is truly admirable. Examples of people like you inspire and motivate me to act similarly towards everyone around me – so thank you for the example.

As I fulfill the missing components of my applications (essays, GMAT, recommendations), would it be possible for us to re-discuss my application? Don’t worry, though, it will take from 5 to 6 months, so I won’t be spamming you 😉

I’ll try to fully digest each part – and discuss them with other people – before asking you anything. Does it sound doable? If not, please tell me, I don’t want to disturb you.

Could I profit from this email to also ask you three very quick questions?

  1. I’ll start by writing the essays of the previous admissions, as spontaneously as I can. Is there a chance they will keep them for the next year? (Derrick Bolton said we should write them as if we wouldn’t turn them in.)

  2. I’m one of those people with a low-income family background, raised by a single mother. The reason why I studied in good schools and participated in the selective joint degree program is that I had several excellence scholarships. My mom passed away just before I went to France, which not only caused my grades to drop substantially but also makes me fully responsible for my younger brother, alongside my father (I live with him since my mom’s passing). My first BCG salary will be invested in a good school for my brother (in Brazil, public schools are awful). Is this kind of information worth conveying through the application?

  3. You said other applicants will have much more work experience than me. I believe the reason is that in Brazil people with good education tend to only intern/work in their senior year, differently from the US, I guess. Just a ballpark estimate, how much work experience do other applicants have?

I truly hope it won’t take much of your time to answer these questions.

Have a good weekend, thank you very much and take care.

FR

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My response:

Hi FR,

I’m glad that you found my advice to be useful. My main goal is to be as helpful as I can to people for as long as I can.

I guess I could charge people for my advice, but the people that I’m trying to help couldn’t afford that (at least, I couldn’t afford it 10 years ago when I was applying). Knowing that people like you appreciate it is payment enough.

I usually don’t answer additional questions for people after I’ve sent them a response to one of their emails because it isn’t really fair to the other people in my queue waiting for responses for me. I can make an exception in your case because your questions are so short:

  1. Schools don’t change their admissions essay questions very often, so writing drafts of essays from past years makes a lot of sense. In fact, I used the same approach when I was applying to ensure that I could get the strongest essays as possible in order to meet the Round 1 deadlines.

  2. You should definitely incorporate elements of your life into your MBA story for your applications. My background is similar to yours in that it isn’t the traditional background for someone from a top MBA program. As I wrote my essays, I sprinkled in elements from my life history to show the Adcoms that I’d succeeded despite all of the roadblocks that I faced and I’m confident that this distinguished my applications from others. That approach could work for you, as well.

  3. For the top global MBA programs (especially the ones that you’ve targeted), the average age of students is 26-28, which would imply 4-6 years of full-time work experience following college. While some applicants have been able to gain admission right out of undergrad (there were ~10 in my GSB class), it is pretty rare to do so.
I hope that you find the above responses to be helpful. Take care and have a nice weekend.

Marquis