Berkeley / Haas - 06-09-2021 | Clear Admit ApplyWire

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June 9, 2021 8:11am ET

Applying: Berkeley / Haas, Harvard Business School, Stanford GSB, UCLA Anderson, UPenn / Wharton, Yale SOM

Intake Year: 2022

Pre-MBA Career: TFA, Software Engineer, Product Marketing

Post-MBA Target Industry: Technology, Non Profit/SI Companies: Other

GRE: 326

GPA: 3.7

Years of Work Experience: 7

Location: California

Post MBA Location: California

Notes:

Love the podcast!

Biracial URM Male, majored in Philosophy at Berkeley/UCLA. Research project experience in low-income education during college. VP of major business club with 4 campus level case competition wins (not sure if this matters).

165 Q / 161 V / 5.5 AWA.

Homeless background growing up. Come from family of public school teachers (6 in the family).
Worked through college to pay my way through. Low Sophomore year grades with upward trend throughout.

Alternative secondary mathematics teaching credential transcript. 4.0 GPA.

Alternative transcript in all core CS classes and CS discrete mathematics (A) at state school. ~3.77 GPA.

Joined TFA, high impact: area complex distinguished teacher, state/regional finalist for national TFA award (top performer of apx 800). Spent last 6 months leading recruiting at two major universities with 3 direct reports. 2.6 years

Software Engineer for a year at a $40M/yr revenue smb tech firm. Worked with CEO/CIO and spearheaded migration of code from premises into a cloud Saas model. ~$1M/yr of increased revenue. Up for promotion when I left.

Joined large tech firm (Salesforce, Datadog, Splunk) in product marketing/sales function. Regularly present to clients on SVP+ level since 80%+ of F500 use this software. Changed product marketing strategy impacting ~1000 sales reps with great outcomes. Three promotions over ~1 year 7 months. Answer to director of strategic marketing, CIO two levels above me.

ECs: Mentored/tutored/acted as role model for 5 URM students I met during teaching over 5 years. Tutored from remedial math to ACT. All got into college. Mentored through college and professional development. All received intern offers at big 3 accounting firms/F500 companies.

Why MBA: want to synthesize my experience in education/tech and fill in gaps in my business understanding (e.g. leadership, finance, hr, accounting, etc) so that I can become an impactful product manager. I've noticed that the best product managers have the rare skill of leading with indirect influence and know that an MBA can help me with this.

Furthermore, I am speaking with C-level folks and I have noticed that I am missing key pieces of cross-functional information or strategic frameworks to make decisions (in over my head at times). These are all skills I want to learn because in the long term I want to change the education system using technology. E.g.. a flipped classroom system using customized technology to deliver tailored learning to individual students with the school acting more as a place to do projects and learn socialization skills. I would need the skills of communicating with high-level decision makers to make this goal a reality.

Like (1)

Show Comments (6) Last: June 23, 2021

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1677 Wow, a lot to like here. Summary: you’ve come very far, excelled along the way, have a purposeful plan for the MBA and beyond. Top programs should really be seeking out your type of candidacy. Good app execution should mean you will have great options. Show your impact, all along the way. (0)

grichmond Verified User. Likes Earned: 1245 I agree with Alex that there is a lot to like here. Just a couple of questions: 1. your 3.7 GPA is your full undergraduate GPA from Berkeley, correct? Just want to be sure I followed the education section. 2. It sounds like your mentoring (which is very impressive) has largely been informal; is that accurate? Do you have any other outside activities or hobbies that you will be bringing to the application process? Are any of them formalized (e.g. through involvement with an organization, club, etc.)? Best of luck to you!
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anon25670 Likes Earned: 2 Hi. Yes my GPA is a 3.7 and that is my full undergrad GPA. Apologies for the formatting! Yes, my mentoring has been informal but a large time commitment. I also informally lead a group of eight tech professionals (engineers and pms I first met as clients that became my friends from companies like Facebook and such) that work with me to build custom education tools for free. Impact is probably 500-600 students since we've built three tools for two schools. I've been doing this informally as well for the last 1.5 years but have deliverables to show for it...i.e. user journey documents, the actual chat bot that analyzes language usage to understand student emotional well being. Would it be worth formalizing these engagements in website form for instance? Each individual that I engage with in these ECs would be willing to go up to bat for me. (1)

anon25670 Likes Earned: 2 Outside activities/hobbies: I've played piano for 20 years. I'm an avid fisherman and have caught almost every species of commonly edible fish in the SoCal region (missing one). I lead an adult softball team of 15. (1)

clearadmitadmin Verified User. Likes Earned: 10 Thanks for providing this additional detail. All sounds promising. To the extent that activities can be documented in some way; maybe even via one of your recommendation letters, that may help. (0)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1677 More details on this candidacy in this episode of Wire Taps: https://www.clearadmit.com/2021/06/episode-168-wire-taps/ (0)