Mr. Techie Teacher

Hi there! It’s Stephanie Horn, Master Consultant with the MBA Exchange and recent Poets and Quants “Top 10 Admissions Consultants”. Mr. Techie Teacher, I love your passion. You have excellent grades and strong test scores. I also like that you are very involved in your community. The potential area of weakness for me is your leadership ability. What you’ve described here as your work experience — developing analytical tools — doesn’t give me enough information to know whether you are being given tasks and fulfilling them, or whether you are participating in strategic planning for your department, building a strong team environment with your peers, and actively looking for leadership roles where you can demonstrate your leadership style. I have the same question about your extracurriculars — you are doing the necessary grunt work to help your non-profits be more successful, but are you also participating on a strategic level, as a leader? You will need to make sure your essays, resume, and letters of recommendation paint a full picture of your abilities. Your target schools are competitive, but within reach. I would recommend adding Kellogg, Haas, and UCLA.

Hi, it’s Nisha with mbaMission. You have very strong academics and very meaningful passions in the area of education and empowerment. In order to assess the professional part of your profile, I’d need to understand more about your software engineering role. Have you been promoted in the 3 years you’ve been there or gained increasing responsibility? Additionally, have you had a chance to take on any leadership roles (such as conducting trainings and mentoring incoming engineers?) Since you are relatively early in your career, you’ll need to be able to show early indicators of your strong potential, as will your recommenders. So, I recommend assessing this – if you feel there’s still opportunity to develop more leadership skills/responsibilities at work, you might wait a year to apply. Additionally, see if there are leadership opportunities you can pick up within your volunteer roles as well. Hope that helps!