Meet Washington University’s Olin MBA Class of 2017

Markey Culver 

Washington University, Olin Business School

Hometown: St. Louis, MO

Undergraduate School and Major: Furman University, 2008 | Communication Studies

Employers and Job Titles Since Graduation:

2008 – 2009	Legislative Aide, Texas State Rep | Austin, TX
2009 – 2010	Law Clerk, Spivey & Grigg, LLP | Austin, TX
2010 – 2012	Volunteer, United States Peace Corps | Rwanda, East Africa
2012 – Present	Founder & Director, The Women’s Bakery, Inc. | Rwanda, Tanzania, USA.

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

Let’s be honest: Both exams are horrid. My non-traditional, humanities background compounded my difficulty with the exams. I took both. However, because I was focused on an MBA only, I submitted my GMAT to schools. As a disclaimer, my case is not a normal one and I, frankly, loathed to GMAT. No part of the exam came easily to me (except writing and even that was dubious), so I exhausted every resource to help me get through it. My advice is start early – much earlier than you think – to help you master and retain the necessary test-taking skills. Because that’s all it is, right? How well you can take a test. I recommend starting at least 3-4 months in advance. Routine helps, so I woke up at dawn every morning to study for 2 hours before I started my day. I used GMAT books with detailed explanations of solutions and took 8 practice exams. And my happy ending is Wash U.

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? I based my selection process on four factors:

• Strength in entrepreneurship and social enterprise programs and presence of local, incubative startup ecosystems.
• Leadership manifestations in business & society post graduation.
• Applied learning opportunities, especially internationally.
• Top 25

I was advised to choose schools whose average GMAT scores mirrored my own. I ignored that advice. Why not aim high? My advice is to start with school programs that distinguish one university from another. How do programs shape the school’s community? How will these programs hone or build upon your skillset? How can the programs help you launch a career? I also focused heavily on the alumni – what kinds of leaders are these schools producing? Is there a trend in leadership style? Often there is, which is what makes a particular school’s programs so compelling.

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?  Keep with it. Everyday. Break your essays down into buckets – what is each question looking for? Breaking the questions down makes them accessible. It’s much easier to start small and build. From my experience, most of the big essays are why and how questions. Not necessarily who you are, but why you are the way you are and how you became that way. The simple stuff, right? But, it’s not simple. It can be taxing because how often do you reveal your innermost whys to total strangers whose job it is to judge you? Once have your various answer buckets, you may find that some answers apply to other questions, not entirely, but the nexus of ideas is there. I typically wrote my essays at night with a glass of wine, and edited in the mornings when I was fresh.

As for letters of recommendation, choose those people who know you well and can attest to your best qualities. For interviews, look up typical interview questions online and film yourself giving answers on your computer. That way, you can critique how you look and act.

Last, find an accountability partner, someone who can walk alongside you through the application process to ensure you’re clearing each hurdle well. I attempted to apply to business schools two years before now, totally unsuccessfully because I didn’t have an accountability partner. I attribute much of my admission success to my accountability partner.

What led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA? I imagine I was a rather atypical applicant to Olin, coming from 4.5 years of living and working in East Africa and starting a social enterprise in Rwanda. My background was unconventional at best and while I had business experience, it was in my own business. Still, I chose to apply to Wash U because I seek to fuse the non-profit and for-profit sectors and Olin’s programs merit such fusion by embracing, incubating and launching entrepreneurs of all kinds. Olin’s robust entrepreneurship platform, too, is supported by a city (St. Louis) with an ever-growing, collaborative startup scene. Moreover, Olin puts emphasis on cultivating the business leader through holistic leadership training, i.e.: sharpening “soft” skills to enhance “hard” skills.

What would you ultimately like to achieve before you graduate? I would like build the foundations for another business prior to graduation. I would also like to sit as a student judge on the panel for the startup competitions at the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Oh yes, and I would like to master my core classes.