A Lurker Visits The MBA Tour

mba tour 2“I’M FEARFUL OF THE GMAT” 

Kellen Brenner and Nicole Robbins, friends who live in San Francisco, are also planning to make big career shifts. They had always talked about the fact that they should get MBAs, and they’ve finally decided to do it (though not necessarily together, they say quickly).

Both Brenner and Robbins want to attend top 20 programs in big cities. “Where you live is important,” Kellen says. “That’s why we live in San Francisco.” So far, their biggest fears have less to do with the odds and more to do with the work involved in submitting applications. “It’s more an undertaking than a fear,” Robbins says. Still, she adds later: “I’m fearful of the GMAT.”

Brenner, a redhead wearing a collared shirt, is currently a financial analyst at Littler Mendelson, a large law firm. Having caught the tech bug (it’s hard not to in San Francisco), he’s applied to some tech companies in the area, but he’s had no luck so far. He thinks an MBA might open a door or two to a hot Bay Area startup. After getting the degree, he wants to help a smaller company grow, or maybe even start his own.

Robbins, a brunette in a green blouse, is in a marketing role at a large consumer packaged goods company. (Robbins asked me not to name the company she works for; Brenner said he really didn’t care.) She’d like to stay in marketing, but she wants to focus on strategy. She could see herself being a Chief Marketing Officer. Fittingly, her parting words to me were “make us look cool.”

A SHIFT IN WHAT THE MBA LOOKS LIKE 

Tyre Ellison and Dwight Smith—the former in a suit and dreadlocks, the latter in jeans, a blazer, and a neat beard—represent a growing group of MBA applicants: aspiring social entrepreneurs. The way Smith sees it, social entrepreneurship is for people who, instead of making six figures, want to promote positive change in the world and make six figures. Does that mean MBAs aren’t just for selfish people anymore? “It’s changing,” Smith says.

Smith, who graduated from UC Davis in 2011, works at Net Impact, an organization started by MBAs. It has chapters in schools all across the country, forming a community of people interested in tackling social and environmental problems throughout their careers. Beforehand, Smith participated in the Coro Fellows Program in Public Affairs, a leadership training program for college graduates. That’s how he met Ellison, a UC Berkeley alum (and social welfare major) who just completed the program; he’d interviewed him.

As you might expect, Ellison and Smith have similar goals. In 10 years, Ellison would like to lead or start a social impact-driven organization. Smith echoes Ellison’s sentiments, though he adds that he’d like to address inequality in society—racism, specifically. Still, he knows this is all hypothetical: “I would give you a different answer tomorrow, honestly,” he says. After all, people now switch jobs every three years instead of every 15.

MEET THE ALMIGHTY KEEPER OF SECRETS

The two do have different ideas of where they’d like to end up. Ellison is thinking about Stanford, UC Berkeley, the University of Southern California, and UC Davis; he wants to stay in California. Smith’s dream school is Stanford because of its collaborative, team-based environment—but he quickly adds that Harvard Business School would be pretty hard to turn down. He’s friends with Casey Gerald, a Harvard MBA who co-founded MBAxAmerica; the organization aims to connect business school students with entrepreneurs all over the country. To Smith, this movement, which puts a premium on real-world experience, represents a shift in what the MBA looks like.

Nevertheless, the business world is still largely rooted in tradition. This much became clear when I popped into a talk from a Stratus Admissions Counseling representative. As he gave tricks of the trade, he came off less like an advisor and more like The Almighty Keeper of Secrets. Some takeaways: A resume is not an autobiography. Crafting a two-page resume is the height of arrogance. Use digits for big numbers and percentages for small ones.

The audience hung on to every word. Why? Because serious applicants know that being a successful applicant is often less about what you’ve done and more about how well you can speak the language of a business school.

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