A Sign or a Gasp? Good News: An Invite to Interview From Chicago Booth

I would like to bring good tidings to MBA Applicationland! This afternoon, an otherwise terrible [work] day was salvaged by a very unexpected but welcome email I received from Chicago Booth: “Dear MBA Boy, Congratulations! We have evaluated your application and are extending an invitation for you to interview with us in the next phase of our admissions process.”

And with that, I breathed a sigh of relief (or was it a gasp of exhilaration, I cannot remember); my first interview invitation had finally arrived. Moments later, I remembered that I was actually in the middle of a terrible workday so there was little time to celebrate.

The Chicago invite is welcome news because of my first-round rejections by both Stanford and Wharton. Between getting rejected from Wharton first and dealing with some health issues, I had been subtly entrenched in a nice little rut. Receiving my first rejection has definitely tempered the optimism surrounding this entire application process and made the remaining applications seemingly harder to complete.

Fortunately, I know I had been in a rut (because the worst kind of rut is the kind you can’t even acknowledge) and have so taken measures to combat it. Being someone who draws energy from being others, this pretty much means hanging out with people even during the [increasingly frequent] times when I feel like burrowing in my room and working on applications.

Although the Wharton rejection seems to have played a role in sending into the doldrums, it’s actually among the many things I am thankful for. It’s helped me maintain perspective (on what is really important) and humility, among other benefits that will probably become more evident with the passing of time.

During Christmas, I finished all of my other applications to Columbia, Booth, Tuck and Harvard, sweated out another last-minute recommendation, and interviewed at Tuck in mid-January. Alas, I am still waiting on that ever-elusive first acceptance letter, but hopefully it shall arrive in due timing.

In the meantime, I will be telling fantastic tales about meeting three application deadlines in six days, dealing with the recommender who has gone MIA in rural India, and learning (in the worst way possible) that there are actually multiple bus routes in Hanover, NH. I’ll also throw in a book review to make up for my prolonged absence.

Before I get all giddy over my Chicago interview, I must scurry off back to work.

This post is adapted from MBABoy, a blog written by an investment banker and anonymous MBA applicant who has a GMAT score of 760 and is targeting Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT Sloan, Tuck, Columbia, and Chicago Booth.

Previous Posts on Poets&Quants:

Introducing MBABoy

Telling Your Emotionally Volatile Boss You’re Applying to B-School

Meeting Stanford’s Round One Deadline. Phew!

The Sting of the Ding: A Rejection from Wharton

 

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