Profile Evaluation

[hill.ryand]

My profile:

-White American Male
-Age: 27

-730 GMAT (96%); Q48 (78%) V41 (93%).

-Undergrad degree from private liberal arts university.
Major: Biblical-Languages; Minor: English.
GPA: 4.0; Graduated in May 2007.
Received multiple merit scholarships and awards (not sure if that is relevant)

-Master of Divinity degree from a seminary in the Boston area. Seminary was part of consortium of theological schools in Boston so I also took graduate seminars at Harvard Divinity School and Boston College (though these were not my actual school).
GPA: 3.97; Took all my electives in ethics classes, so ethics is sort of an unofficial concentration. Graduated in May 2011.

-Work Experience: really varied.
First year out of college (2007-2008): research assistant to three ministers and server at a restaurant.
Second year out of college and first year in seminary (2008-2009): Assistant manager of 3 Oreck Vacuum franchise stores.
Second and third year of seminary (2009-2011): Minister at a church in the Boston area.
June 2011-March 2012: Associate/Analyst role at boutique wealth management firm.
March 2012-Present: Working with the capital market team at real estate investment and development firm.

Community Service: a good amount of community service working with homeless, at risk families, low-income teenagers, and other groups. The community service was in college, seminary, and up to the present. Was a leader/co-leader in some of these roles and was a normal participant in others.

Goals: Realized during seminary that I didn’t want to do full time church ministry but wanted to pursue business because I felt like I could help others just as much through business as I could through a church. My goal would be to work in (or maybe one day start) a company where what I am doing is not just for the purpose of earning a profit but also because it has a social value to it because it furthers the good of others, helps employ people, produces an excellent product, etc. Essentially, I see business as having a lot of social value and I want to go to business school to gain the business knowledge I lack and then combine that with the soft skills (public speaking, counseling, leadership, etc.) that I developed in seminary/ministry. However, at this point, I am not interested in working in the non-profit world but look more to people like Bill Pollard (former CEO ServiceMaster), John Tyson (Tyson Foods), etc. as examples since they are a part of extremely successful for-profit businesses but try to combine their work with their moral/social values.

I am unsure how adcoms will view my educational background and experience. I could see them putting me in that poet/non-profit group, or just thinking I’m kind of an odd candidate and writing me off. I also want to figure out how to refine my story to tell a connected narrative that links my past experiences/education with my future goals.

I would love to get into a top 15 program. Sorry this is long. Any advice?

[mili]

Hi again,

Very interesting background! You are definitely a bit of a non-traditional candidate, but that is not a bad thing, and you should use that to your advantage.

Academics: your undergrad and seminary studies demonstrate that you are intelligent (very high GPAs) but your coursework was all humanities (non quant). Your overall GMAT score is really strong, but you're a bit weaker on the quant side (78%). Something to be aware of: given that you have such a strong non-quant background, and your GMAT leans towards verbal, the ad com might be concerned about your quant/analytic capabilities. Hopefully your career transition will help compensate, but make sure your recommenders highlight this as a strength

Professional experience: I think you'll want to exclude the odd jobs and focus your narrative and resume on your church work and transition to investment/wealth management. There isn't a whole lot of consistency in your profile, so you'll want to be very careful about how you position your career narrative - I think the social enterprise goal makes sense, but how can you relate that to the capital investment type work you've been doing over the past year or two? the narrative does need to be logical.. right now I think the biggest risk is appearing like someone who is lost and is trying to find their path through business school, versus someone whose experiences have led them to understand their future goals and how business school fits into them. Make sense? You'll need to be really thoughtful about this and build a logical story. That's something that I could help you think through in a deeper discussion. It'll also be important that you demonstrate organizational leadership capacity through your professional experience, which may be difficult given that you've only transitioned into the business world recently and may not have had the opportunity to demonstrate leadership yet...

Community work: I think you'll be fine here given what you say below. There should be enough powerful stories to draw on.

Extracurriculars: Not seeing much in the way of personal passions/activities and non-work leadership. Think about this area and see if you can come up with some things to bolster your profile and add to your dimensionality.

All in all, I don't think it's impossible for you to get into a top 15 school, but I do think a lot hinges on how you position your career moves in the context of your future plans. If you can weave a strong narrative, then great. If you come across as a wandering soul, that won't be as strong/competitive an application.

Just some things for you to think about - sounds like you are already thinking along these lines. Unfortunately I can't really offer you an answer on what your career narrative should be without knowing more about you. That's something we do with our clients as part of our standard services though.

Hope this helps!
Mili Mittal
Senior Consultant
http://www.mbamission.com

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[hill.ryand]

Thank you for your thoughts. I agree about the odd jobs. Do you consider the odd jobs to be both the server/research work my first year out of college and the assistant management job at Oreck, or just the server/research work the first year out of college? If I leave a year of work experience off the resume (they will see I graduated in May 2007 and if I list the Oreck job as my first job it will not start until May 2008), will that be a red flag?

Oh, also, you said "social enterprise." By that, did you mean social entrepreneurship type work in terms of a non-profit/NGO, or just having a social goal/motive behind my business work?

I also agree about the career narrative. Since I realized I wanted to go into business, I felt like I have had an internal plan but my experiences don't always line up with that since not a lot of businesses are in the market to hire seminary graduates. Therefore, I just pursued every opportunity I could find and when a door opened, I took it since I was trying to transition into business and I knew not many opportunities would be available for me. Both the wealth management and real estate company are pretty lean in terms of staff, so I've worked closely with the company owner (at wealth management firm) and managing directors (at real estate firm) so that I haven't just been plugging numbers into spreadsheets but have learned about how/why they run the organizations the way they do. So, I'm not just learning about financial/real estate markets but also about organizational development/management through their mentoring. Is that something I should try to communicate?

[hill.ryand]

Also, I signed up for the free 30 minute consultation with your company, so I'm sure they will tell me more about this, but what services would you recommend if I was interested in them? My resources are somewhat limited but I'm also only applying this year and don't have any interest in waiting and reapplying next year, so I want to give it my best shot this one time. I feel somewhat confident in my ability to write a coherent essay once I have a clear direction, but, as you said, I probably need help thinking through how to connect all the dots in narrative.

[mili]

I would consider Oreck an odd job, but I do agree that a year gap is not the best thing to imply either. I suppose I would leave it on there, but not give it too much real estate.

A social enterprise is a for profit company that has what is called a double or triple bottom line. This means it's a company that is responsible for generating both financial returns and social impact (social and/or environmental). A good example would be Newman's Own or Tom's Shoes.

As for the career narrative, certainly you want to communicate that you understand the businesses fundamentally. But I guess what I was getting at earlier is that it could be difficult to explain the transition from the wealth management to real estate company so quickly... makes your story even more haphazard. But like I said, we just need to weave the right narrative so that it seems less...random/lost :) It's doable - just requires creativity!

As for our services, I'd usually recommend the start-to-finish package given that your story really requires a fair amount of brainstorming and careful selection of stories. However, if you're confident in your writing abilities and really just want to work with us on brainstorming, (and want to save money), you might opt for the hourly option and focus that time on brainstorming and essay selection. Did you happen to sign up with me? I'd love to continue the conversation with you! But any of my colleagues will offer perfectly great advice, too. Let me know how it goes!

Best,
Mili

[hill.ryand]

Thank you again for your thoughts!

I signed up with someone named Rachel Beck. She was available on Monday, which was the earliest day anyone was listed as available, so I took it. It said that it didn't matter who I talked to because if I decided to go with the services, they would match me with the counselor who best fit my background. I'm sorry :-(, it would have been enjoyable to continue this conversation with you.

[mili]

Rachel is wonderful! No need to apologize at all - it is very true that it doesn't matter at all whom you speak with for your free consult :)

Have a great week,
Mili