The Second Round Ding Report by: John A. Byrne on February 14, 2014 | | 142,194 Views February 14, 2014 Copy Link Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email Share on LinkedIn Share on WhatsApp Share on Reddit Ms. Tech Product Marketer 710 GMAT (47Q/41V) 3.65 GPA Undergraduate degree with a double major from HYPS Work experience includes two years in product marketing at a major tech company, plus various tech and journalism internships in college (tech companies include Facebook, Apple, start-ups, and the journalism experience includes CBS and Seventeen Magazine) Extracurricular involvement acting and producing plays in college, a peer counselor at sexual health center, teaching fellow, director of huge charity event that attracts 40,000 people, research assistant in two departments, and peer mentor, but limited post-college as a part time film actor, occasional involvement in company’s philanthropy initiatives, occasional speaker at career days for underprivileged children) Goal: Entrepreneurship (particularly interested in how principles of psychology are applied to growth hacking) “Still waiting to hear back from Stanford, MIT, Haas” 24-year-old female Sandy’s Analysis: Good luck with Stanford, MIT and Haas. If those don’t work out, my strong suggestion would be to “de-ditz” this story, both how your present your past, and especially how you structure this long-term goal idea: “Entrepreneurship (particularly interested in how principles of psychology are applied to growth hacking)” WTF does that mean, not that the schools totally care but in your case, with a story that has elements of journalism and acting, it just leads to cynical thought that you don’t want a boring business career and instead want to use B-school for some cool script ideas. You currently have a great job in PRODUCT MARKETING. That is where creative people who are interested in business wind up. When you reapply, tell the B-schools that that is what you want to do, and you want to head the marketing department of innovative companies like X, Y, and Z where the marketing will be key to exploding the disruptive products into new brands, blah, blah, blah. Can you do that? That story, told with a straight face, might get you into HBS as a reapplicant and would make you very competitive at Kellogg, Berkeley and other top schools. Previous Page Continue ReadingPage 6 of 14 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below. Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.