Berkeley / Haas - 06-02-2021 | Clear Admit ApplyWire

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June 2, 2021 5:15am ET

Applying: Berkeley / Haas, Duke / Fuqua, MIT Sloan, Northwestern / Kellogg, Stanford GSB, UPenn / Wharton, UT Austin / McCombs

Intake Year: 2022

Pre-MBA Career: Corporate Strategy for an EdTech Company

Post-MBA Target Industry: Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship Companies: Other

GRE: 330

GPA: 3.6

Years of Work Experience: 4

Post MBA Location: TBD

Notes:

I want to stay within my current industry but pivot to working at an edtech venture capital firm or a start-up (or maybe even start my own company). I firmly believe that education can still be a true vehicle of social mobility and want to help reduce inequities within the confines of our current educational structure.

Like (1)

Show Comments (4) Last: June 9, 2021

anon71350 Likes Earned: 2 Adding an addendum because I didn't realize how in-depth I was supposed to make the notes section! For the past 3.5 years I have worked at a mid-size education technology, research, and enrollment services firm located in Washington DC. I started in the research organization, was promoted twice, then applied internally, and was accepted, to a position on our corporate strategy team. At my company I have worked on a myriad of product and go to market strategy projects including, designing a new K12 focused product and bringing on the first 10-12 alpha partners, re-designing our sales and go-to-market strategy in the K12 space, leading research and delivering presentations to clients on topics ranging from teacher recruitment to special education services, and more generally, researching and talking to CEOs at companies in emerging markets, think mental health technology for education, bootcamps, video assessments, to identify candidates for acquisition. I want to pursue an MBA to position myself advantageously for a role at a socially conscious, edtech focused, venture capital firm. Outside of work I pursue a variety of volunteer opportunities and extracurriculars. I volunteer at an organization that pairs private sector employees with non-profits for 4-6 month consulting projects, road bike and run, maintain a garden, and am a die hard New York Mets fan. On top of this, my girlfriend and I work at the same company, we're on the same team, and are both applying to school for admission in fall 2022, and ideally want to attend the same program (she wants to work in edtech product management post-MBA). Curious as to whether the schools I am interested in attending are truly best aligned with my post-MBA goals, if my edtech background will help distinguish my candidacy, and if our joint-application will have any influence on our likelihood to be admitted. Thanks! (1)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1674 Pivoting to a VC firm will be challenging, so make sure your goals are plausible. It sounds like you’ve had good impact at your firm, needs backing up by strong recs. outside of work, the volunteer project might be interesting, I’d focus more on that, if there’s opportunity to increase involvement. Numbers are good. Nice mix of target programs. As long as your partner isn’t a dud (assume not) then it can help (if one is super strong, the other is admissible, then one can help the other, but if one falls short of being admissible it won’t help, shouldn’t hurt). (0)

anon71350 Likes Earned: 2 Really appreciate the feedback and all the awesome work you and Graham do! My partner is definitely not a dud (I think she's a more impressive candidate than myself) so it's good to know that applying together might help and won't hurt us. (1)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1674 This candidacy is featured in our 100th episode of Wire Taps: https://www.clearadmit.com/2021/06/episode-166-wire-taps/ (0)