Meet Foster’s Class of 2017 MBAs

Elisa Yuen

University of Washington, Michael G. Foster School of Business 

Hometown: San Diego, CA

Undergraduate School and Major: B.S. Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles

Employers and Job Titles Since Graduation:

Product Test & Development Engineer, Qualcomm

Senior Product Test & Development Engineer, Qualcomm

Senior Hardware Customer Engineer, Qualcomm

Recalling your own experience, what advice do you have for applicants who are preparing for either the GMAT or the GRE? The best piece of advice I’d pass on is to realize that even the top scorers on the GMAT get about 40% of the problems wrong. To a standardized test taker who is used to being able to solve every problem, this is an important point to wrap your head around. It is more important to recognize when a problem may be solvable but will take too long to solve; instead, you should guess and move on because there is a big penalty for not finishing the exam.

Based on your own selection process, what advice do you have for applicants who are trying to draw up a list of target schools to which to apply? Factors to consider when evaluating schools could include: Ranking/prestige, cost to attend and availability of scholarships, values and strengths promoted by the school (e.g. collaboration instead of competition, entrepreneurism, etc.), focus areas offered, geographical location, surrounding business community, travel abroad programs, class size, and so on.

What advice do you have for applicants in actually applying to a school, writing essays, doing admission interviews, and getting recommenders to write letters on your behalf? Foster actually had amazing online videos and interviews explaining exactly what the admissions staff was looking for with each step of the application. I think it’s important to do some self-reflection to figure out what your exact goal is in going to business school and what your unique characteristics are that make you stand out as an applicant. It may help to talk with other current MBA students to find out why they are doing the MBA and what they like or don’t like about it so far. Once your goals and personal highlights list are clear, be authentic and let your passion shine through in your essays, interviews, and conversations with your recommenders.

What led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA? The small average class size range of 90-150 students really made Foster’s full-time MBA program stand out to me. Foster’s emphasis on a tight knit, engaged community and focus on a collaborative rather than competitive approach to success was refreshing and particularly attractive to me after years of working in the competitive corporate work culture.

What would you ultimately like to achieve before you graduate? I left a successful engineering job at a Fortune 100 company to pursue an MBA to accelerate my path to people, project, or product management within a tech company. My dream goal is to find an inspiring new career path that uniquely ties together my passions for technology, working with teams, and giving back to the community.