Meet Harvard’s MBA Class of 2017

Olufunke A Faweya

 

Harvard Business School

Hometown: Lagos, Nigeria

Undergraduate School and Major: University of California, Berkeley

BS Chemical Engineering

Employers and Job Titles since Graduation:

Procter & Gamble – Plant Engineering & Capital Project Management at Iams

Procter & Gamble – Global Manufacturing Systems Design at Febreze

Procter & Gamble – Technology Leader, North America Supply Chain Redesign

Recalling your own experience, what advice do you have for applicants who are preparing for either the GMAT or the GRE?

1. Invest a lot of time in understanding the test itself and researching strategies for doing well on it. An example would be letting go of hard questions if you can’t solve them in 2 minutes vs. slogging through and taking time from other questions. The test will only get harder if you take this route and then you will have less time to answer even harder questions leading to a poor result. Another example is that missing multiple questions at the end of each section can reduce your score so keep your energy up for a strong finish.
2. Regardless of mastering test-taking strategies, you need to know the material you are being tested on. Start early and without the distractions of the application process. I recommend at least two hours daily for three months. I’m actually not really a fan of practice tests so I didn’t do any. I believe that as long as you can solve each problem in under two minutes and can keep alert for the duration of the test, you’ll be fine. Focus on learning the material, mastering test-taking strategies and maintaining a can-do attitude.
3. Don’t waste practice problems, especially the official GMAT ones. Keep an error log to help you understand which problems you struggle with and why. Then pinpoint these areas for further study. If needed, engage a private tutor (if it’s within your budget) or online classes. Find alternative explanations to problems if the official GMAT ones aren’t making sense for you.
4. Practice, practice, practice to ensure you understand the various ways the GMAT can test the same concepts. Retake the test if you feel can do better. I really believe you can improve your score regardless of your perceived level of intelligence or current preparation.
5. On test day, just let the hard problems you can’t solve go. Things can get ugly very quickly if you don’t.
6. I know that this isn’t very helpful, but reading a lot is probably the best preparation for the verbal portion of the GMAT. Though I read a lot, I used test taking strategies to help me slow down during the test and systematically eliminate wrong answers.

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? Know why you want to go to business school and be brutally honest with yourself about it. Is it a checklist item in your career progression or are you looking to switch careers? Are you looking to transform yourself and meet a different caliber of person? Do you just want to learn about business in general or you are desperate to change the world? Is fit important to you? It’s likely a combination of things and not just one thing.

Then think honestly about the likelihood of your target business schools helping you achieve your goals with commensurate effort from you. I think you should do this based on uninformed opinion (brand, perception), informed opinion, and actual facts. You don’t want to have to convince a future employer that XYZ school really did prepare you for the job for which they’re hiring. So do online research, talk to alums and current students, and visit if you can.

For example, I plan to return to Nigeria shortly after graduation, so a business school with a strong emerging markets focus that wasn’t lip service and a strong alumni network in Sub Saharan Africa was important for me. Not every top business school can offer this. However, if I had been looking to switch into marketing at P&G and work my way up the corporate ladder, I would have selected different target schools.

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?

1. Realize that the entire application needs to tell a compelling and coherent story about who you are, what you’ve done, where you are going and how that particular business school,and what they claim to offer fits into your narrative.
2. The problem, of course, is that most lives are rarely this linear and thought out far in advance, so you have to take 20 odd years and fashion them into this compelling narrative using essays, short answer responses, and stats. My advice is to develop a compelling brand – not something like, “Here is Funke, a hardworking engineer from Nigeria.” That is neither memorable nor compelling. However what most people remember about me is how gutsy and driven I am, so this is what I showcased in my application. Yours might be that you’re not afraid to challenge the status quo (for all the right reasons, of course). Develop a memorable, compelling brand, and then you can showcase the events in your life that support this branding and also show growth.
3. For interviews, understand why the question is being asked. I think there is always a superficial question and an underlying one trying to understand how you think and your reasons for doing things. For instance, in response to the question, “Why this particular major?” – A lot of Nigerians might say my parents told me to do it or I thought it would pay pretty well. This can suggest you can’t think for yourself or you care only about financial rewards. A better answer would provide better context and also fit in with the overall narrative of your application and your personal brand. Again, make sure you help the interviewer understand the reasoning behind your answer and give illustrative examples! Show, don’t tell. Don’t say your leadership style is inclusive and leave it at that. Illustrate what you believe inclusive leadership looks like with a past event.
4. For recommenders, pick the highest level person you know who understands you, your story and your goals intimately enough to use their recommendation to round out or add depth to your story. Rarely does anyone in my peer group at work go to business school full time, so I had to provide literature on the importance of telling stories using the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Result) method to back up fluffy adjectives and the importance of structuring the stories to compare me to my peers. I think that makes it easier for the adcom to say why me and not this other person with a similar enough background and work experiences.

What led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA?

I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity to attend HBS over the next two years. I chose HBS because what if offers matches what I’m looking for out of a full-time MBA program. I truly want to be a leader who makes a difference in the world, particularly in Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa and I believe HBS is the best business school to help me do this. I am also really impressed with the wide range of services offered by the Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, and I believe the skill set the case study method provides will be invaluable to me.

What would you ultimately like to achieve before you graduate?

1. I’d like to learn how to better communicate my ideas and thoughts to people and spur them to action in the process.
2. Inspire friends and classmates to achieve things they previously did not think were possible.
3. Make a few great lifelong friends.
4. Launch my own business with an amazing team behind it.