From Homeless To Harvard Business School

TWO YEARS LATER, TWO TIMES BETTER?

At the end of his FedEx opportunity, Blackett applied for and landed a senior communications specialist position at the company. And he kept the same mentality. “Just keep my head down, stay humble and work hard,” he explains.

Blackett began to get more interesting projects, all the while continuing his side-business of interview coaching. After a year in his new role, Blackett decided to apply to B-school again. Except this time, he’d be much more prepared. “I wanted my application to be at least twice as good as the first,” he says.

He took the GMAT again, had new recommendations and projects to highlight. And this time he applied to HBS, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, all in the first round.

‘YES.’

He got the Harvard interview. When the December ding day approached, Blackett asked for the afternoon off. “I knew whatever the decision was, I wouldn’t be able to work the rest of the day,” he remembers. He anxiously sat through a meeting that he can’t really recall now. And when he went to check his email, nothing was there. After a couple of frantic “refresh” clicks, still nothing. He had to log in to his application account to read the result.

“Yes.”

Blackett printed the page, ran outside and immediately drove to where his mom and aunt were. He didn’t get an interview at Stanford but was accepted to Wharton. But it didn’t matter. “I had gotten into Harvard,” he says, relief still in his voice now, two years later. “I was done. It didn’t matter how much money any other school offered.”

Not even a last-minute all-expenses-paid education would keep him from Harvard this time. Blackett enrolled at HBS in the fall of 2014 and will be graduating with his MBA this spring—about 13 years after he promised his mom he would.

He’s also officially launched his interview coaching business, called Magnetic Interviewing. He plans on continuing it full-time post-graduation. “There were two women who saw something in me before I saw it in myself,” Blackett says of his mother and grandmother. “And my way to pay tribute to them and what they did for me is to pay it forward to other young people. Sometimes things in life can change very quickly—good or bad. And maybe I can help somebody change their life for the better.”

And as for how Blackett is doing now?

“Thanksgiving 2015 was a lot better than Thanksgiving 2010,” Blackett says.

DON’T MISS: HOW I GOT INTO HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL or WINNING ESSAYS OF HARVARD MBA APPLICANTS