Harvard, Stanford & Wharton All Say ‘Yes’ To This Inspiring Applicant

Fulton is a frequent motivational speaker. Courtesy photo

Poets&Quants: You wrote your LinkedIn post about the deaths of your parents and shared it with people for a reason. I’d love to talk about your reasons.

Jerome Fulton: Yeah. So the post actually is a continuation of something I wrote two years ago. So I made a post that was pretty much cut-and-paste, I just redacted a little bit and took out some earlier stuff, because when I posted it two years ago, I said “2019 and beyond, there’s more to come” — that was my last bullet. So, I just went ahead and I found it, I copied it, I tweaked it and I posted it because I wanted to let individuals know that anything is possible. You don’t have to have this cookie-cutter upbringing or experiences — anything is possible.

I’m a pretty transparent person, I do speaking and I do a lot of panels and I talk about my story and different things that I’ve experienced. But I want to paint a clear picture because I look perfect on paper, with getting into every place and the GPA, and the CPA, and the (University of Florida) Hall of Fame, and work at these great companies. But I really wanted to demystify that and show people that it’s like the iceberg; LinkedIn is such a polished profile where everything looks good and you post your highest moments, it’s like a highlight reel. But there’s more than meets the eye. And that’s what inspired me to repost it and add onto it and just show my journey and the different things that I’ve experienced.

It’s an incredible journey. Is it still painful to share some of these things?

It’s not necessarily painful because, I mean, it’s who I am, it’s a part of who I am.

It’s not the only part of who I am, which makes it not as painful. Because I think a lot of times when people are still sitting in that pain, it’s harder. But because I’ve had life experiences and go to therapy, I’m able to process the different things I’ve experienced. I have triggers and I have days, but overall, I’m a go-getter, upbeat person. So, I don’t stay down for too long.

Posting this, sharing your story and talking about it, that’s going to help other people, for sure.

And it helps me as well.

Ideally you want someone, or many someones, to read this and say, “I can do it too.” Right?

Absolutely, that was the whole purpose. I really wanted to touch people and let them know that no matter what you’re going through, no matter what you’ve experienced, it gets better later. You just have to stay the course and continue to fight, and pivot as needed. But as long as you tap into your resilience, you ask for help, you persevere, it’s going to be fine. And that’s what I wanted people to take away from it.

So, you’ve got an already super impressive CV. I got to ask, why business school? What was the spark? And go back to the beginning of when you first started thinking about business school, was it all the way back to undergrad, or before, or what?

I remember being in elementary school saying, “I’m going to get an MBA by the time I’m 26.”

I’ll just say that, I didn’t get it by the time I was 26 (laughs). But when I was at college, I was the only one about to get an MBA, because I knew I was going to do business, and that was the kind of thing to say, because I had already manifested it. But when it became more realistic is when I went to JumpStart Undergrad, it’s a program founded by John Burt and Elton Ndoma-Ogar. They were two Black men that went to Duke Fuqua. They created this program for high-performing minorities to get access to jobs that you didn’t really hear about, like in investment banking and the consulting and all that good stuff.

And so, when I saw them in 2014, I was like, “OK, this is actually possible, this is what an MBA can do for you, this is the type of impact you can have.” I think John worked at BCG and Elton did investment banking, he worked in finance. So I just became super inspired and I was like, “All right, I’m definitely going to get my MBA one day.”

So, they just gave me a tactical roadmap to say, “This is how you do it, these are the people that are going to help you do it. And I also knew several people that went through the Management Leadership for Tomorrow process, they always raved about “the network, the network.” And I applied to MLT back in 2018, because I was actually going to start business school in, I think, 2020, but I ended up deferring. I just got a new job and all that good stuff.

Every year we talk to a handful of people who get into all the top schools, like you did. Obviously they’re all super-impressive people, but our readers never get tired of hearing about how the acceptances rolled in. So tell us, what was it like? It’s grueling just to apply to one business school.

It was tough because I was studying for the GMAT and I was like, “I want this score. I got to get this score.” You know, because I’m a competitive person, I always want to bring the best version of myself to anything. And so once I had finished the GMAT and I started applying to schools, I would say I’m a decent writer, so the writing was easy for me. But the “why business school?” story was kind of the challenge at first because I want to do so many things, I want to be a motivational speaker, I want to impact people.

So I had to find a role that made sense with my profile to tell a story, and be able to still communicate my passions. Once I was able to get over that hurdle and get my “why an MBA?” down pat, that was fine. But applying in like December, Christmas, everything’s going on, I’m leaving the day after Christmas to go to a workstation to write my essays. I read my work about 20 times out loud. At see point it was just, “Forget it, I’m just going to submit it.”

The hardest one was actually Harvard. So, I thought the HBS deadline was at 11:59 p.m. A friend of mine texted me at 10:30 and said, “Oh, when are you going to submit it?” I was like, “I was going to submit it tonight, I’m already done.” He says, “Oh, no, you have like an hour and a half.” I started freaking out, my computer started freezing. I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m not going to be able to shoot my shot.” And luckily I got it in, maybe an hour before the deadline, or 30 minutes to the deadline.

I did Stanford last. But I remember the first acceptance I got was Columbia. And I was happy, I was like, “Oh, it’s a great school, Columbia, I love it, it’s in New York, it’s amazing.” All of us in MLT, we’re posting like, “I got the interview, I got this, I got that.” And after a while when I would post, everybody’s like, “Of course you got it.” I believe Wharton came in next, and I got the Howard E. Mitchell Fellowship from Wharton, a full-tuition scholarship to Wharton. So that was a super special moment because Wharton was like my dream school from undergrad. I have a picture standing in front of Huntsman Hall, and to get in, that was amazing.

And then I believe Yale was next. I got into Yale and I got the Consortium Fellowship to Yale, which was amazing. And then I get a Columbia fellow later on, maybe a month later, and I got a full-tuition scholarship to Columbia. So now I’m like really on a high, things are working out, this is crazy how everything has come to fruition. Like I can’t believe it. And then HBS comes. And I actually drove from Charlotte to Atlanta to be with my family, so I can experience my acceptances with them. I could not sleep that entire day. And I’m up, I can’t sleep. And so, one of my friends says, “Watch the college admissions scandal so you can feel better about yourself — to know that you didn’t have rich parents to pay for it, you did it on your own merit.”

I’m literally watching it and it’s interesting, it was taking my mind off of the decision, but it’s still college-related, so I’m still thinking about it. I’m an only child, I’m my parents’ only child, but I have first cousins that are like siblings, so I call them my sisters. So they were in a room with me when I checked it, we recorded it. And it says, “We said, Yes,” and we jumped up and hugged, and it was just like a great moment. That was at 12:00 p.m., and around 5:00 p.m. I get a call from a Northern California number. I got into Stanford and Harvard on the same day. And it was amazing. So, my friends took me out to go get seafood, I love seafood.

So, it was just a joyous occasion to get into the schools that I’d never even imagined that I would go to, coming from where I come from, and experiencing the things that I’ve experienced. And so now, not getting into one (Ross), but pretty much every top school that I applied to.

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