She Got Into 4 Of The Top 5 U.S. MBA Programs — While Planning Her Own Wedding

She Got Into 4 Of The Top 5 U.S. MBA Programs — While Planning Her Own Wedding

Estefania Diaz Escamilla and her husband Eduardo on their honeymoon earlier this year in Australia. Both will attend Wharton in the fall. Courtesy photo

Q&A WITH ESTEFANIA DIAZ ESCAMILLA

Poets&Quants: You applied to four schools that are among the toughest in the world to get accepted to. Was the application process at any one of the four harder than the others, or was it all equally difficult? Did any of them stick out as a little more difficult to you?

EDE: I think that the most difficult, in my case, was Stanford, because the essay was very introspective. And for me, I didn’t know exactly what my story was at that moment, and I have never asked myself the question, “What matters most to me and why?” Even if for me the true answer was my family, I knew that answer wasn’t going to get me in. So I had to come up with something that was unique.

I think the key for all my essays was that my story had to tell that the next logical step for me is to do an MBA. And so I have to build a story since I was very young until now, and how all my life has been preparing me to be at this day where I applied to the MBA, and why it is the next logical step. For me, that was the most difficult. But I think that if I give any advice on the essays, it will be to make it that way — that the MBA looks like the next logical step on your professional career.

How long would you say you worked on your essays, overall?

Oh, it took me a lot of time. I’ve heard of people that they do it in two days or weeks. No, for me it took six months.

How long did you take to prepare for the GMAT?

I think that took me one year because I wanted to go with more than 700. And so even though I already had a good quantitative score, like most Latin American test-takers and probably all the people for whom English is not their first language, I struggled with the verbal. So, when I did well on the verbal, that was what really took me above the 700. In the end, I did it three times and my final score was 710.

In terms of interview prep, Wharton is famous for its team-based discussion interview style. Describe how that went for you.

She Got Into 4 Of The Top 5 U.S. MBA Programs — While Planning Her Own Wedding

Courtesy photo

I remember I did a mock interview, which I nailed. My mock interview was very good. I think every year they do almost the same interview, but you have to prepare a track with your team and you have to choose a country. In my mock interview, it was Mexico, so that gave me the advantage to give good ideas and to participate.

However, in the real interview, I didn’t feel that I had good participation because I was struggling to be heard. On my team, everyone wanted to talk, of course. And it was a little bit difficult to make myself stand out. But at the same time, I think that also helped me because the other members also noticed that I wasn’t talking so they gave me the chance to express myself. So, they were like, “Hey, Estefi, what do you think of this?” and I was able to participate. So, I think it was good that I wasn’t stepping on the feet of my team and they also worried that I was able to express myself. Because in the end, no one can get all the attention in a team-discussion interview. So, I think it doesn’t matter what happens, there’s someone always who will try to give you a word because they also look good if they notice that someone is not participating.

But in my case, I wish I was the person who was giving the word to someone else.

Do any of your other interviews stand out for you? Were you super confident after, say, your interview with Booth or Harvard or Stanford?

With Harvard, it was a different interview because it’s very psychological. I thought that I had to prepare myself on “why an MBA” and what I wanted to do next, but all the questions were regarding how the things in my childhood have made me the person that I am. So, I didn’t have the answers to many of the questions. And I think that also was something good because the answers I ended up giving were very honest.

For example, one question that an interviewer gave me in the Harvard interview was about tennis. I played tennis a lot while I was very young so at least half of my essay was how tennis has helped me to be the person that I am today. And so in the Harvard interview, they asked me how tennis had influenced the way I teach, because I was also a teacher assistant. And that was a question I never thought about because I thought that it didn’t have an impact, because they were very separate times of my life. So, during that interview, I honestly started thinking how, and I think that I came up with answers that were very honest and in the same process I was telling my interviewer, “I have never thought about it. Let me think. And I think that it did it this way …” So nothing was over-rehearsed.

For me, my Stanford interview was the hardest because I work in investment banking and I had slept two hours before that interview. I was super, super tired and I didn’t tell my interviewer, but he kept asking and asking and asking: What was my motivation? Why did I want to …do an MBA? I told him I wanted to do an MBA because I wanted to go into private equity and help eliminate corruption in Mexico. And he said, “But why?” And I said, “Because I would like to help other people.” And he was like, “But why?” And I’m like, “Because that makes me feel good, being able to help others,” and that was not enough. He was like, “But why? Why does this make you feel good?” And he pushed and pushed and pushed until I eventually said, “Okay, this might not sound very humble, but maybe it’s because I have a desire to transcend.” And he was like, “Okay, that’s like a good answer, and that is what I wanted to hear.” But again, it also helped me that I hadn’t prepared, and he noticed, and that’s why he pushed and pushed until he got something.

Did you do all of your interviews by Zoom? Did you visit any of the campuses?

No, all my interviews were on Zoom. I wanted my HBS interview to be some weeks after my return, in-person, however all the good spots were taken in the first minute! It literally took me 3 minutes to schedule my interview and at that moment I was more afraid of not being able to schedule a virtual interview at all.

Did your wedding planning come up during any of your interviews? It’s a pretty impressive thing to talk with adcoms about!

No it didn’t — that is actually one of the reasons I wanted to tell this part of the story. I always received the question at the end of the interview: “Anything else you would like to add?” But I always tried to use that question to cover some aspects of my CV that weren’t mentioned in the interview or to make a smart question that showed my knowledge of the program. Ha ha, looking back, I wished I could have said something like, “By the way, I slept 3 hours a night for a year because I work in IB and I am also planning a wedding and a honeymoon!”

Did you work with an admissions consultant?

Yeah, I worked with an admissions consultant. I recommend it to my friends because maybe in the U.S. it’s just that the culture, I feel, it’s different than here in Mexico. This is something that my advisor helped me a lot with. I’m not used to bragging about myself. Like if I tell of an accomplishment, I usually always tell the story as a team and not as my accomplishment, but my role in the team that made the accomplishment. And so a lot of the things that I had to work on while I was doing the essays was to find the things that I added value to and to always talk in first person, and just to learn how to tell a better story.

You can say like, “Oh, yeah, I planned a social service and all the office participated.” But it’s not the same if you say, “I investigated 10 projects of which five were not suitable for the office. Of these other five that we chose, we voted in the office, and then I organized a team of 20 people to come to visit this school to give classes.”

You really need to know how to tell the story in order to sell yourself, otherwise you’re just not going to be as good as the rest of the competitors. Because in the end, it’s super, super, super competitive and you can be very, very good candidate, but if you don’t know how to tell your story, you won’t get in.

We love to give our readers examples of great success stories, and we ask those great successes to lend some of their wisdom. You’ve done a lot of that already over the conversation, but do you have any other words of advice?

I think that if I will give any advice IT will be on the GMAT, because for me, it was the most stressful part. Because I see the GMAT as an exam that it almost doesn’t matter how much you study, it’s a skill that you have to develop. It’s a skill of learning how to answer the exam. And if it’s like the CFA, for example, which is a finance exam, you can study, maybe you don’t pass it the first time, but if you continue studying the material, eventually you will learn the material and pass. For the GMAT, I didn’t feel that way.

And my advice would be for everyone to not give up, because I thought of giving up several times. And my husband, also, he thought of giving up, but we never did. And in the end, we got good scores. I got a 710, and my husband got 760 on the fourth time he did it.

But we were already thinking of trying to apply with a score less than 700. And he said, “Well, I will do it one last time,” and he was able to do it. So, literally, the advice is: Don’t give up, just keep trying.

Something else I want to say, and this is a question I get very, very often. When I went to the Harvard Day and I was talking with other people who also got accepted to the same school, I had already made my decision to go to Wharton because I honestly don’t think that the case study method is for everyone. But I was feeling so much pressure to accept Harvard just because it’s Harvard. And I feel like I talked to other people that also got accepted into Harvard and Stanford, and they were having the same dilemma as I was, accepting a school just because of the name. And I think it’s very difficult to go against the flow, but in the end, it’s best for you to choose whatever suits you the best. So, for me, I personally don’t like the case method for all my classes, but I also wanted to be near New York, that’s why I chose Wharton and I didn’t choose Stanford.

My message for everyone will be don’t be afraid to go against the flow.

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