The Second Round Ding Report

blackbelt

Mr. Black Belt

 

  • 760 GMAT (80Q/99V)
  • 3.8 GPA
  • Undergraduate degree in business and history from a Top 20 university
  • Work experience as a consultant at a Fortune 100 company, with two years in the corporate developmental rotation program and two years in a process improvement consulting role
  • Lean Six Sigma Black Belt
  • Extracurricular involvement in multiple clubs in college holding leadership roles; also led a process improvement initiative, am a board member in an associate resource group at work; spearheaded a mentorship program, and volunteer with an animal rescue organization
  • Goal: To transition into management consulting
  • “My recommend ions were written by my rotation program leader and a colleague who taught me my current job. Explained that five managers over the past 18 months prevented me from asking my current direct supervisor.”
  • 26-year-old white American male

Sandy’s Analysis: Dunno, quite frankly, but if you put a gun to my head, you may not work for one of their favorite companies, even though it’s a Fortune 100 company. It turns out that there are lots of oddball companies among the Fortune 100.

How many kids from your company go to HBS each year? That would be one question. Assuming that is wrong on the facts, e.g. LOTS of kids from your company go to HBS every year, well, assuming nothing dramatically wrong with the execution or recommendations, you just lost out to other consultants, an elite cohort. And it may signal HBS’s cooling love affair with Lean Six Sigma which has been around for a long time and kinda smells of Jack Welch and the pre-Internet days at G.E.

Viz, this great quote,

I was afraid of the internet… because I couldn’t type. — Jack Welch

You were a totally fine applicant but there was nothing driving you in, and sure, kids like that often get in, too, but they usually are gold-plated Ivy-M/B/B types, and even in those cases, as other headstones i  this cemetery show, they also sometimes get dinged.

Male, white, Six-Sigma, Fortune-100, process improvement consulting.

That is all so 1990s.

Last thought: Six-Sigma still lives at HBS, make no mistake about that. It is, I believe, a diminished cohort from its heyday and now considered a good source of upright, “prole”-type guys whose parents did not go to college. That you? If not they may have preferred some guys who fit that bill over you.

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