For context: this blog has been dormant for a while, because I recently left my equity research job to pursue my MBA at the Yale School of Management (SOM). Think of this not as a full reboot, but just a pilot light check.
When I was thirteen, I felt confident that my unique path (from misanthropic homeschooler to a freshman at a very average public high school) would produce an interesting story. So I wrote that story: first in a daily journal of those formative four years, and then in a 230,000-word colossus that I finished a week after high school graduation. God willing, this monstrosity will never see the light of day until several generations after I am gone.
It is again the “back to school” time of year, and my first August as a student since 2018. Again, I feel compelled to reflect along the way. In this series of posts, I’ll cover different aspects of the MBA timeline, from preparing and applying to knocking the socks off of school when it starts.
Bear in mind that MBA candidates are a wildly diverse group, and that my experience will be, in part, a product of my background. I applied almost entirely to schools in my home country, and my decision considered both my professional goals and the needs of my wife and kids. International students and students without families will almost certainly have very different experiences, and my path will be much less of a guide as far as that is concerned. Where possible, I’ll mention anecdotes from my classmates.
Finally, the installments of this series will likely be unevenly spaced over the next two years. Forgive me—I’ve been a little bit busy.
In this post, I’ll cover applications, admissions, and making your decision.
Making Application Hay
In my view, a well-prepared application starts about 12 months before you actually plan to submit applications. This gives you time to do a few things:
- Take the GMAT/GRE
- Find your “why”
- Determine your target schools
- Start living with applications in mind
Slaying the Beast
I’ve written in the past on my experience with the CFA exams. The GMAT and GRE are different animals entirely. While the CFA is a difficult test that covers a large body of knowledge, the GMAT is a sentient computer-based organism that seeks to suck the confidence out of ambitious young professionals.
I took the GMAT, so I can’t speak to the GRE. My understanding is that the GMAT is a more quantitative evil beast and the GRE is less quantitative. From what I’ve heard, the GRE is a bit more pleasant.
My first GMAT test was in March 2020, after a couple weeks of very casual practice-testing. I took it about as seriously as I took the SAT in high school—I expected to do well just by showing up. I did okay, but not what I expected: a 690/800, roughly top 15%. I waited a few years before trying again in 2023, at which point I invested in a Manhattan Prep class—I qualified for their “advanced” prep class by virtue of having gotten a 650 on a previous test. With this prep and a more rigorous study approach, I got a 760 (top 1%) on my second attempt.
There wasn’t any rhyme or reason behind waiting three years before retaking—I just wanted to finish my CFA in the meantime. GMAT scores are valid for up to five years, so you have a bit of a window before you need to retake it.
As far as the prep goes, I recommend the advanced prep if you can qualify for it—and if you’re aiming for a top-notch score, it might even be worth taking the test a couple of times to qualify for it. The basic prep spends a lot of time reviewing the high school math and grammar concepts that the GMAT appears to be about. The advanced classes go a layer deeper and unpack the fact that the GMAT is really a puzzle. You can pick up a few points just by knowing how the test works. This part of the preparation is where I felt the courses added a lot more value.
So far, we’re about $1,500 in the hole–$250 or so each for the GMAT exams, and $1,000 for the prep class.
Why Bother?
It may seem obvious, but you need to have a sense for what you’re trying to get out of an MBA: what career goal will it help you achieve, and is an MBA the best route for that goal? If you’re switching careers, it can open a lot of doors—if you’re trying to level up in your career, it can help you find the next rung on the ladder.
In recent years, it’s become popular for some so-called opinion leaders to trot out the idea of “don’t hire MBAs”. In a sense, I agree, because the value of an MBA is very dependent on where you go to school, what career you apply it in, and the connections you develop while you’re there. But in another sense, many firms do not agree. Some firms explicitly require an MBA for advancement; others do so implicitly. Leading consulting firms and investment banks hire plenty of top business school graduates. Might this come to an end someday? Perhaps, but we are still nowhere near that point.
Make no mistake, an MBA is expensive, and full-time programs come with the added opportunity cost of your foregone earnings during those two years. It’s an investment. Make sure you know why you’re investing before you commit.
My thinking on this has been: an MBA makes sense in two cases. Either (1) your employer is paying most or all of the cost of a program, whether full-time or part-time, or (2) you have the chance to attend a top school with a global brand. A few lucky individuals will get the best of both worlds. If you are getting the best of neither, take a hard look at your decision and make sure you’re comfortable with it.
I went into the application process without a crystal-clear idea of what I wanted to do—I just wanted to make ungodly amounts of money. You don’t necessarily need to map out your career plan just to get into school, but you at least need to articulate where school fits into your trajectory.
What Places to Go?
The rule of thumb is to apply for five to eight schools. I overshot a little bit and applied to eleven. But how to decide which places?
Part of this depends on your “why”. For instance, take my alma mater, the University of Washington. The business school is good, but what makes UW a great school is the medical and computer science departments, not business. But it’s still the leading MBA program in the state—based in a city full of big employers: Seattle. The evening/weekend MBA program at UW’s Foster School of Business is full of early- and mid-career folks at the likes of Boeing, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. From my Boeing experience, the company is willing to pay for your part-time program if you commit to staying at the firm for at least two years. As a result, Boeing is awash in MBAs. And why not? The cost is no longer measured in dollars, but in weekends. If you want to advance within your organization, it’s a clear path.
If you want to switch careers entirely (say, from engineering or litigation to investment banking or consulting), a top-tier program is likely to open more doors. To name a few, schools like Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Columbia, Chicago Booth, MIT, Yale, Dartmouth, Northwestern are in that camp. Outside the U.S., schools like London Business School and INSEAD are very highly-ranked as well.
There is some value to prestige: it is one determinant of the caliber of classmates you will get to rub shoulders with. But in my experience, it isn’t a sufficient standalone reason to select a school.
Here are the eleven schools I ended up applying to, in very rough order of preference, along with why I applied.
- Harvard: It’s freaking Harvard! Literally did no research beyond this.
- Stanford: It’s freaking Stanford! Also, was on the west coast, which definitely appealed given that’s where I spent most of my life.
- Wharton: I was born in Philadelphia when my dad was at Wharton, and I knew the school had a great finance reputation. I thought my dad being an alum would give me a boost in applications, but that matters more in undergraduate admissions than graduate ones.
- Chicago Booth: A great balance between strong finance school and good location for the family—Chicago had lower cost of living and yet a lot of employment opportunities within the city.
- MIT Sloan: Highest average salary upon graduation of any of the top schools (for class of 2023).
- Michigan Ross: Always had a soft spot for their football team (not a rational reason to pick an MBA as most Ivy League football teams are pretty bad), and a great location for the family.
- Yale SOM: I had originally planned to apply to only five or six schools. Yale and the others below it were ones I added, thinking that a full ride to Yale (based on my strong test scores) would probably compare favorably to paying full freight elsewhere. Although Yale SOM doesn’t have the same finance-specific reputation as other top schools, the university name is one of the strongest brands in the world. I’ll speak more later on about why I chose to attend Yale.
- Columbia: A great fit with my value investing experience given their unique Value Investing Program. Warren Buffett and Ben Graham both went to Columbia. Balanced against this: I was not about to move to New York City with a young family.
- Dartmouth: Dartmouth is in a very out-of-the-way location in upstate New Hampshire. While remote and difficult to get to, this forges a very strong bond with the members of the class. People who’ve gone through the MBA program at Dartmouth are bonded for life.
- Virginia Darden: I saw some pictures of the campus and fell in love with it.
- INSEAD: The only international school on my list. The fact it was a one-year program appealed to me (for cost reasons), and I thought a year in Paris with the family would be kind of cool.
Application fees generally run $200-$300 apiece for these programs.
While You’re Waiting
If you’re over-prepared, you will have a sense for your target list at the latest by January or February of the year in which you plan to apply; applications will open in the summer and be due throughout September, for admission to the following year’s incoming class. You can then spend time thinking through your own profile and assessing your areas of strength and weakness.
My wife and I developed a saying for this: “Making application hay”, based on “make hay while the sun shines”. Making application hay refers to collecting experiences or factors that you can highlight to showcase either the depth or breadth of your profile. I’ll give a couple examples from my experience.
For breadth: I was able to mention some of my writing experience (both my novel and this blog). I didn’t have much volunteering experience, so I went out of my way to serve as an ambassador for my employer at on-campus recruiting events in my area. Bam. Volunteering.
For depth: I spent a couple minutes reflecting on and quantifying my contributions at work. How many investment ideas had I presented? How many were acted upon? These are good resume bullet items. The content will of course vary based on your field of work, but it’s good to have some perspective for your performance.
And finally, it’s never too early to start writing your essays, especially if you’re applying to a lot of schools. I started writing mine in March, based on the essay prompts from the previous year’s application cycle. The implicit bet I made here was that the questions wouldn’t change that much from year to year—and for about half the schools on my list, I was right. This is a double-edged sword, though. I wrote these essays with a very strong focus on my own profile, interests, and goals, and didn’t do enough to incorporate the “why” for each school on my list. Plus, it’s tempting to avoid revisions when the essay questions do change, and this was definitely a mistake I made.
I would recommend concentrating your bets a little bit more than I did, and focus more on what specifically is drawing you to each school. This should yield better results than a “spray and pray” approach. Admissions officers will be able to tell whether you’ve actually done your homework on the school—so do it.
Are We the Waiting?
“Are We the Waiting?” is a great Green Day song, if you’re looking for a funky off-beat drum line.
The post-application period was the hardest part of the entire process for me. I submitted all eleven applications in Round 1 (mostly because I wanted to maximize my time to prepare for the program once I made my decision, and because I expect a lot of positive admissions outcomes). This meant that my applications were all done by August, and I could expect final decisions before Christmas, with interview invites or peremptory rejections sprinkled throughout the fall.
The MBA interviews are not hard. You can find resources online listing commonly asked questions for each program. Being prepared for these will go a long way to doing well. Beyond that, just don’t stress yourself out. Going into the interview authentic and relaxed is as important as being prepared. I know for a fact that I laid it on too thick when getting interviewed for my top choice schools; it definitely lived in my head.
What is difficult is setting realistic expectations for yourself and accepting that there is an element of randomness to the process. Put differently, do not get too full of your own shit.
To illustrate: I applied to eleven schools, expected to get into nine of them, and receive significant scholarship funds from six of them. I had already played through the scenario where I would get Harvard’s admissions team on the phone (after getting my stellar scholarship, of course), telling them that Dartmouth had offered me $70k, and I wanted Harvard to match the offer.
Not only had I played that scenario in my head, but as the first wave of rejections began to roll in, I realized that I’d placed a lot of my own self-worth on being the kind of person who could breeze his way into half the Ivy League. Falling short of that (very unrealistic) dream was a tough pill to swallow. The fall of 2024 was a time of high anxiety and low self-esteem for me.
Learning to handle rejection without taking it personally is a critical skill. Without it, decision season will leave you a basket case (another Green Day reference to close this section).
Where To Go?
Ultimately, where you choose to go will be a function of where you get in, and which schools pass the vibe check. I picked Yale for a couple reasons: I didn’t get into Harvard, and Yale passed the vibe check with flying colors.
My application portfolio was very backward-looking. I allowed my profile’s breadth (which I’d considered a key strength of my candidacy) to become a weakness. My mind in 2024 was full of blog ideas being written and yet-to-be-written, and I certainly overweighted these in my essays and interviews. As intellectually interesting as I found the idea of “estimating the holistic costs and benefits of green energy subsidization from a philosophical lens”, it certainly sounded silly from someone whose knowledge about energy came from books and podcasts, who could in no way claim expertise. I likely came off as someone who lacked focus and was full of more ideas than I could ever possibly pursue. While in some ways this was an accurate reflection of me, it wasn’t going to get me a free ticket to business school.
This was a key reason why my admissions outcomes missed my expectations. But that said, why did I settle on Yale?
Yale SOM was, without question, the least conventional application process. The essay questions asked more about values and personal challenges than professional humble bragging, and every week I’d get emails from their admissions office with genuinely helpful application tips. It was easy to write this off (in my more cynical moments) as a high-maintenance admissions team, but it eventually grew on me as an indicator of the school’s culture. Students at Yale SOM were collaborative and respectful of each other, and those qualities took precedence over competition in the recruiting circles. A weekend on campus reinforced that vibe. New Haven and its environs were bit provincial compared to the cities we’d lived before, but this slower pace was an appeal given we were moving with two kids. Ultimately, it just felt right.
And in a bit of poetic justice, I had often made jokes at Yale’s expense while awaiting my application decisions. As if to underscore just how picky I was being with my list of schools, I thoroughly enjoyed telling people “I would settle for Yale, I guess”, implying that I was such a generational genius that someone like me would truly be settling by picking Yale. In fact, I am no such genius, and the application process was a painful but necessary reminder of that. Pride is indeed the original sin—and I will spend the rest of my life eating my words. But I am thankful for the opportunity, and thankful for the lessons the journey gave me.
More to come.