Berkeley / Haas - 07-21-2024 | Clear Admit ApplyWire

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July 21, 2024 9:47am ET

Applying: Berkeley / Haas, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, Northwestern / Kellogg, Stanford GSB, U. Chicago Booth, UCLA Anderson, UPenn / Wharton

Intake Year: 2025

Pre-MBA Career: PhD in Engineering, MBB Consultant, Education Non-Profit, Small Entrepreneur Side Hustles

Post-MBA Target Industry: Entrepreneurship

GMAT: 655

GPA: 3.3

Years of Work Experience: 3

Location: Southern California

Post MBA Location: California but open to returning back to the east coast

Notes:

I am a 31-year-old Hispanic male. I studied at public universities in top 20 mechanical engineering programs for both my B.S. and Ph.D. degrees. After graduation, I started working as a consultant (at the MBA level) for MBB. MBB was an amazing experience, but I felt significantly behind my peers in both business acumen and work experience. After being dropped from MBB, I worked with the C-suite of a mid-size education non-profit (~$200M in revenue) to support their initiative of spinning off a new non-profit as employee number three. During our first year, we grew to 20 employees, realized $3M in revenue, and are projected to make $10M in revenue next year. This experience solidified my desire to one day start my own company.

The main reason I want to pursue an MBA is to support my efforts in one day launching my own startup. I feel like I am lacking the educational foundation that I would need to pursue my own startup (everything I know is a result of Googling and trial and error). I also do not have a network to tap into for co-founders, investors, and entrepreneurial mentors, which I feel the MBA would provide. While I still do not have a solid idea in place for a company, my interests lie in commercializing research, consumer products, or some idea that can help improve Mexico's economic prospects. My plan for B-School is to take full advantage of all their entrepreneurial resources and programs.

Other elements I could highlight are that in my pursuit of building my entrepreneurial skill set, I have flipped two houses as a self-funded real estate investor and I launched a product on Amazon ($9K in revenue in the first 3 months).

I would really appreciate your guidance on how to best position myself in my applications. I am not sure if I should highlight my failures as an MBB consultant, if I should talk about my side hustles, and how to best explain the work I have been doing with the non-profit. I acknowledge that my situation is not typical for someone pursuing an MBA since I have already done the job you get after an MBA and my current title is a Director. I just honestly think getting an MBA from a top university will open unknown doors and it is my best path forward for self-growth and to give my start up ideas the best chance for success.

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Show Comments (9) Last: August 1, 2024

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1676 “Dropped from MBB” was this after your two year analyst program? Were you part of a larger group, exiting MBB? Just trying to get clarity. Best to be transparent about the transition, and use the issue as a key reason why you want to pursue an MBA now, after moving forward in your business career, since MBB? Your pathway is a little unorthodox, but the key will be to show impact and growth at work, especially more recently.

Curious about your PhD, and how that fits with your overall plan and pursuing an MBA?

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rubenacevedo03 Likes Earned: 4 Hi Alex - yes let me clarify. I was in MBB not at the analyst level but at the consultant level, the position you get hired on after an MBA not undergrad. I worked there for 1.5 years. At MBB it is an up or out system. These are rough numbers but essentially 20% of a cohort are not on track for promotion and are asked to leave. 20% are on track but decide to leave for other opportunities and 10% leave soon after being promoted. Unfortunately, I was in the 20% that was not on track for a manager promotion and was transitioned out. Essentially this is a normal tenure for the people that do not get promoted to the manager level. The company is designed to not have everyone become a manager and requires 50% attrition between cohorts. That being said, while I do not think I was an exceptionally bad consultant, I do feel that my lack of formal business education and work experience made it more difficult to compete with my fellow M7 grad peers. In terms of my PhD background, I feel like I am well suited to create a start up that has a focus on commercializing research. One of the ideas I would like to potentially pursue during the MBA is to take what I have been learning in the classroom and work with my old PhD advisor to spin off a company from the research being done in his lab. Our research focused on soft robotics and nano 3D printing where we can print 3D objects at the size of red blood cells. There are a lot of potential applications for medical devices using this technology. (1)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1676 Ahhh, makes better sense now. Are you discussing these ideas currently with your PhD advisor? That sounds like a really interesting post MBA pathway. Re MBB, I don’t think you need to explicitly state which segment of leavers you fell into? But regarding the “why MBA” you can discuss how you saw this gap between you and your peers at MBB, or something like that? (0)

rubenacevedo03 Likes Earned: 4 Yes he has approached me with an idea but it is still unclear if the research is far enough for commercialization. That being said, we have a great relationship and he updates me on the current state of the research being done in his lab. I was planning on having him be one of my letter of recommendations. And thank you for your advise on how to speak about my MBB experience. Ironically I can turn this situation into a positive by having it be a point toward why MBA would be a good fit. Do you think it would be helpful to talk about the various side hustles I have been engaging with or will that just come across as noise with me having a lack of direction? (1)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1676 I wouldn’t really highlight them, honestly, unless they come up naturally as part of an interview dialogue, or a small part of an essay describing learnings from these activities, scratching your entrepreneurial itch? Or something like that? (0)

rubenacevedo03 Likes Earned: 4 Thank you Alex! This was really helpful (1)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1676 More details on this candidacy in this episode of Wire Taps: https://www.clearadmit.com/2024/07/mba-wire-taps-370/ (0)

rubenacevedo03 Likes Earned: 4 Thank you Alex! I was very excited to hear the commentary when the episode was first released. (1)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1676 Great! Hope it was helpful. (0)