Meet The Indiana Kelley MBA Class of 2017

Wayne Chou

Indiana University, Kelley School of Business

Hometown: Arcadia, CA

Undergraduate School and Major:

UC Riverside, BA in Business Economics

Tsinghua University, LLM in International Relations

Employers and Job Titles Since Graduation: China Daily, Business News Editor

Recalling your own experience, what advice do you have for applicants who are preparing for either the GMAT or the GRE? Start preparing as early as possible for the test. Prospective students might find that their strengths have changed since undergraduate school. For example, prior to the GMAT, my math skills had always been my strength. However, I ended up performing much stronger on the English segment of the GMAT after working in journalism for a few years.

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? In addition to school reputation and strengths, prospective students should list what other school characteristics are important to them (i.e. student diversity, location, etc) and also interact with the school’s career center to gauge if the school can provide the outcomes they desire.

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? Always be yourself. You might discover that a school is looking for a particular quality within a student. If you pretend to be someone you’re not, you might find later on that there is a mismatch between the school’s expectations and your expectations.

What led you to choose this program for your full-time MBA? I came from a non-traditional background and I discovered that was greatly valued at Kelley. After speaking with current students prior to matriculation, I knew that my unique skills and perspective would also be seen positively by my peers. Kelley’s student diversity significantly improved the quality of class discussion compared with the other schools that I looked at.

What would you ultimately like to achieve before you graduate? Since I came from a non-traditional background, I would like to gain confidence in my business foundations and have more practical experience in business demonstrated through internships and school-sponsored consulting projects.