Throwing a hail mary

It's all about perspective.  In football, when a losing team decides to throw a hail mary to try and win a game, some people might see it as a sign of desperation, but I see it as a sign of determination.  They haven't lost hope and they aren't going out without a fight.

While walking down the halls at Anderson, I learned about the UCLA Anderson Commercial Challenge and after watching some of the entries, I thought to myself...can my team compete with these guys? Hell yes we can.  My application was already submitted and the outcome was out of my hands, but in a hail mary attempt to impress the admissions team, I decided I would make a video and try to get it in front of their eyes.  

Did it guarantee anything? NOPE! But was there a chance it could help me?  YUP! That 0.0000001% chance is all I needed to motivate me to crank out an unofficial submission.  If admissions didn't see my video, at least I had a new video added to my channel, but if they did see it, it could potentially tip the scale in my favor, given they share my humor and appreciate the effort it takes to make these videos.


So on the GMAT club forums, some people flamed my NYU video saying that it made me look desperate to get into the school. People have a fear of being judged all the time. Whether it be with women, peers at school, colleagues at work or friends...we are all scared of being judged and at times, this will stop us from taking risks and doing what we want. Well I'm here to share some advice with you. In the words of one of my favorite musicians, Childish Gambino, "I ain't gonna be around forever, so fuck it all."  Internet trolls will always hate and you can never please 100% of the people around you. Regret the things you did instead of the things you didn't do.  Where someone sees my video as a sign of desperation, others will see it as my determination to get into a school. I'm glad most people can appreciate my videos though and that the Debbie Downer's only make up a small percentage of the population.


Moral of the story, make your own decisions and take calculated risks.  Throw a hail mary if you feel the time is right. Don't let someone discourage you because sometimes, big risks pay off.  Did you guys see that Michigan kid that sang a song to try and get off the wait-list?  Bet you some of his classmates made fun of him, but shit, he got off the wait-list and into Michigan. If I was going to get rejected from UCLA again, I was going out on my terms and I was going to do everything humanly possible to get accepted. 


If you got a minute to spare, here is the project I put together with my awesome friends.  The challenge was to create a 60 second spot about UCLA Anderson.  I'm hoping this pass is completed for a touchdown!

Different paths up the same mountain

When my friend from USC Marshall saw that I had been rejected from school, she reached out to me to tell me about her experience.  She had gone through the same thing and had also been rejected from schools two years in a row.  After this, USC's one year global MBA program was brought to her attention.  She evaluated what she wanted from her MBA and decided it was a good fit. Ultimately, she wanted to live in Asia so she saw this as the perfect opportunity for her because more than half her classmates would be from Asia.  She would be building the network she needed and learning how to successfully conduct business internationally all in one swoop. 

She applied to Marshall's Global MBA program and was accepted even though she was already rejected from their full-time program earlier in the year. The program ended up being exactly what she needed and upon graduation, she landed a management consulting gig with IBM and had an amazing experience at Marshall.


With her encouragement, I did my due diligence on the Marshall program. I decided it wasn't a good fit for me, but it got me thinking about checking out the other programs at UCLA. I decided to do some research on UCLA's part-time program.  After concluding I couldn't get a brand management job without experience and an MBA, the part-time program seemed to be a perfect fit because I could build both simultaneously and be a stronger contender for these jobs in the future.  I also thought the promise of having an MBA in three years would entice employers to want to hire me now...kind of like investing in a stock.


I attended an open house and began reaching out to part-time students to learn about their experiences.  From the students I spoke with, it seemed like they were having just as good of a time as the full-time students.  All of them were in the same clubs, participated in the same events and had access to the same resources.  During my tour at NYU, it seemed as if  the part-time students and full-time students were highly segregated.  They didn't have access to the same resources and seemed to operate as two different entities.  However, at UCLA, they try to integrate and encourage interaction between the programs.  The whole reason I never considered part-time is because of the invisible line drawn between each of the programs, but I was excited to hear UCLA was different.

I also spoke with the Dean of Admissions to tell him about my situation and asked if I could apply this year even though I had been rejected by the full-time program already.  He was very understanding and told me that he understands people's situations change some time.  As long as I explained myself clearly in the optional essay, it wouldn't be a problem. Although I originally did not intend to do the part-time program, it seemed like the best route for me to go in terms of professional development.

There are always alternate routes to get you to your goal.  You just have to find your fit and what works for you.

With the advantage of another profile analysis under my belt from the multitude of people that helped me, I believed I had the ammo to crank out an awesome application.  I had nothing to lose and tons to gain so I decided I would apply to UCLA's part-time program.

Catch 22

After working in PR for 6 months as an intern, not only did I know for a fact I did not want to do PR now, but my savings was depleted due to my oh so sweet hourly rate of $12-$15.  Although making 70% less than I did as an auditor, I still had to take care of 100% of the same bills (school loans, rent, etc.) so I needed to find a higher paying job I liked while building experience in the proper direction.  If I wanted to stay at the PR firm until I found a new job, I would have to sign another 3 month contract. Since I didn't want to screw my supervisor and leave midway through my contract if I found a job, I decided to turn in my two weeks notice.  For the next couple of weeks leading up to my departure, I started applying to jobs and talking to TONS of people in the brand management industry and getting advice from friends that were recruiters.


Based on my talks with people from Nestle, Mattel, Disney, WD-40 and a ton of other places, here is what I learned about brand management:


1.  No one will look at your resume for marketing/brand management unless you have an MBA or you have extensive experience.  


2.  In the chance you do miraculously get an interview, you will not get hired unless you have prior experience. Quick anecdote within an anecdote, I met a great guy from WD-40 through my NYU video. After I told him I was rejected, he said that he was happy to recommend me to WD-40 for an assistant brand manager position.  He printed out all my materials I sent him, walked it over to HR and emailed them my NYU video with a personal recommendation.  Although NYU didn't appreciate the video, making it was all worth it because it helped connect me with awesome people like this. Long story short, I was extended an interview, but not extended an offer because I didn't have experience.


3.  It is extremely difficult to get into marketing/brand management as a former CPA. Because of my former life, I get judged all the time as an uncreative, number crunching square and it pisses me off. It's okay though, I've always felt like an underdog, so as much as it makes me mad, I love being put in these situations because so I can show people anything is possible.


Switching careers is a damn paradox and its difficult to find that first person that is willing to give you a chance. You keep hustling though and opportunities will eventually come your way. 


After my last day of PR, I hit the ground running and four days later, one of the most ridiculously perfect opportunities lands in my lap. My recruiter calls me and tells me there is a marketing position open at UCLA and they are looking for someone who has an interest in marketing, marketing analytics, supporting on campaigns and is an Excel pro.  I tell her I'll take the interview and when she emails me the location, guess what department of UCLA it is in? UCLA Anderson. Holy shit.  Did this really just happen? Even better, I walked into the interview room, nailed it and was hired on the spot.  Just 4 days after my last day of work, I found a new job and it was at one of top schools on my list. Hustling pays off my friends.  Miracles do occur and I'm living proof.  Now I'd be put in an atmosphere where I could really show UCLA Anderson what I had to offer and I could help them put a face to the name.

As I was driving home from the interview.

Friends, how many of us have them?

I have friends and they are some of the best damn people I know on this planet.

I wanted to dedicate this post to my family and friends for their undying belief and confidence in me.  Your belief in me has helped me to never lose confidence in myself and has helped me fight harder to get into a top ranked business school.  When I told my friends who helped me with my NYU video that I didn't get into a school, their second response, after the first response of shock, was, "So what are we going to do for next year's video?"  Although I was rejected for a second year in a row, hearing that from them lifted my spirits to unimaginable heights. I was not in this fight alone. My friends were all willing to help me see this through until I succeeded.  I couldn't have asked for a better support group through this process.

On top of that, what surprised me was the response I got from random business school prospects.  Another component of my video was to push it via social media and news outlets.  I actually had pitched it to several newspapers and online publications with b-school sections (Bloomberg Businessweek, Poets and Quants, NY Times, NYU Student newspaper, etc).  My pitch was that with the increase of applications to business schools, its hard for schools to distinguish candidates and for candidates themselves to stand out.  My video was an example of how some students were attempting to stand out in their applications and how people try to help admissions put a name to a face. I was working in PR at the time so that's where I got the idea of trying to get some media coverage.  I was rejected on all fronts, but it was worth the try.  One last component was to help me network in the New York area.  Being from the West Coast, I didn't know anyone from NYU.  I was hoping the video would generate buzz on campus and would get some people pulling for me in the admissions race. This goal worked out quite well.  With the help of Facebook, Twitter and my social network, it blew up in the New York area.  Friends were showing it to their NYU friends and I saw a huge spike in the NY area on my YouTube viewer statistics.  I started a Facebook fan page too so that people that liked the video could track my progress and see if I made it into NYU.  Through this medium, I made a lot of really cool friends and connections.  The amazing part in this story though was the lengths these new friends were willing to go to to help me out.  After they found out I'd been rejected, several people contacted me to help me review my profile.  Another person even used my video to help me land an interview at his company and he put in a personal recommendation for me.  The support I got from these new friends (now students at schools such as Yale, UCLA, NYU, UT Austin and ESSEC) had a tremendous positive impact on my morale.  They all believed in me too and went through the effort of extending their help to show they had my back!


I feel extremely blessed to have such an amazing network of friends and to have met so many great people through this process. From the bottom of my heart, thank you to each and every single one of you and I will probably being writing more personal emails to each of you later!

Moral of the post, make sure to surround yourself with great people because this process sucks and you're going to need a pick me up/kick in the ass every so often to keep on pushing onward. To everyone that has supported me:

I really do

Dig Deeper!!!

Unlike trying to woo a girl/guy that you think is the love of your life, persistence is key to making it in this game of getting into a business school.  After a girl tells you she's just not that into you, it's time to call it quits and move on, but when a business school tells you that, its your job to convince them they are really madly in love with you...that is after re-working your game for the next year.

After being rejected for a second year (especially when I thought I had everything figured out), I was shaken, but not broken.  I gave myself three days to experience frustration, depression and anger.  After that, I was ready to work.  No school was going to call me and magically admit me after I was rejected. I needed to look for holes in my application and fill them in if I was going to stand a chance in the coming year.

As I stated in my post about essay writing, I knew my story and thought I had all my ducks in a row so it was tough for me to see my flaws.  I immediately reached out to my network to see if they could review my profile and give me tips to improve. Thanks to those friends, these points were brought to my attention:

1. 690 GMAT- My friends said that overall, this was a good and respectable score.  However, when broken down to each of the separate components, what my buddy said might have hurt me for NYU was the 77% percentile score in math.  Because NYU is quant heavy, this could have raised a red flag in ad com's eyes.  

2.  Essays- Of my essays, I should be able to nail an interview and entice ad com to want to meet me after my first essay (for most schools, it is usually the essay about why mba, why "x" school, and why now). However, when my friend (this guy attends NYU btw and is ridiculously smart) read it, he said he had mixed feelings about it.  He didn't think I did a good enough job explaining why I wanted to do marketing and brand management.  The essay made it seem as if I just got bored with accounting and just decided to switch careers into something that seemed fun.  My passion for the field wasn't explained so ad com could have been confused about my motive to switch careers. This and the fact that in the prior year, I said I wanted to do social entrepreneurship, my story seemed fickle. Once you get into school, you hit the ground running with finding an internship and building the skills you need to thrive and flourish in your chosen career.  There is little time to lollygag if you don't know what you want to do so I could definitely see how this was a huge fault in my essay.

It sucks to know that one of my two points of improvement was immediately within my control. I felt like I was right on the cusp of being interviewed for the schools that didn't extend me an interview offer. I just needed to be positioned a bit better and I would have gotten that extra face time to shine. 

Either way, I understood my faults and would improve on these points for the coming year. Once again, it was time to get serious.

Stake in the heart, in Texas: Interviewing at UT Austin

After getting rejected by NYU, I lost a bit of hope. Shortly after that, I also got dinged by UCLA and USC.  If the school I went all out on didn't even humor with an interview, how was I going to land anything else?

I was in for a pleasant surprise though when I got an email from UT Austin requesting to interview me. After I saw that email, I got really excited:

This was my time to shine and to show Texas I belonged at their school.  

When you get an interview invite, good sites to check are the GMAT Club Forums and the Clear Admit Wiki.  A lot of applicants that have gone through the interview process will post the questions from their interviews on those sites. It'll give you a good idea of what to be aware of.  Also, remember to check with the schools whether its a blind interview. Blind interviewers have not reviewed your file and they will be asking you questions strictly off of your resume. A non-blind interviewer will have reviewed your profile and could possibly have very specific questions about your resume, essays or other parts of your application. UT Austin's interviews are blind so I made sure to bring a copy of my resume as well as any other collateral that I wanted to share.  Some people I met at UT in the interview room had no clue what the differences were. They assumed the interviewer had a copy of their application and they didn't print their resumes.  BE PREPARED PEOPLE! Getting into a school is tough so you don't want to drop the ball once you get past the application round.


Onto my interview experience, my interviewer was a second year student.  He was an aspiring management consultant and was a pretty damn tough interviewer. I could not get this guy to crack a smile at all.  It was like talking to Siri, but a male version. He had me sweating because I didn't know whether I was doing good or not.  Here are some of the questions I was asked:

1.  Tell me about your career and what led you to decide you wanted an MBA.
2.  Why UT?
3. What was the least rewarding experience on your resume?
4.  What is a common misconception people have of you? How do you prove them wrong?
5.  What type of worker is most difficult for you to deal with/ work with?  How did you alleviate problems with this type of worker? Name a situation and resolution. How is your relationship with this person now?
6.  What experience added the most value to your personal growth?
7.  What type of leader are you now? How will the MBA experience transform your leadership abilities? What type of leader do you see yourself as post MBA?
8.  What are you most passionate about?
9.  How do you anticipate giving back to the McCombs community?

At the end of the interview, my interviewer said I did well and that he thought I would be a great fit for the school.  What a relief! He wished me luck and said that he hoped I would be hearing good news in a couple of weeks. After hearing that, my confidence went up again.

When decision day rolled around for UT Austin, I was in for another shocker.  I received the email, but was out at a birthday dinner and was scared to open it.  I waited that night until 2 AM to check the decision and boom. Rejected. Holy crap what went wrong?  I thought interviewing was my strong point and even though I was sweating during the interview, my interviewer said I nailed it. 

That was it.  With the final rejection, I was out of the running to be a part of the Class of 2014.

What I think I did wrong and what I did next in my next post.

All Out

My friends that know me know that when I do something, I go all out. Whether it be organizing a banquet, hosting a party or making a costume for Halloween, I go to extremes to make sure I put my best foot forward and applying to school was no exception.

NYU Stern, one of my top school choices, gives you the creative freedom to deliver Essay #3 through any medium you desire. I was psyched to have this opportunity and thought it was the perfect way for me to showcase not only my creativity (and the creativity of my friends), but also demonstrate my ability to motivate and lead a team as well.  My goal with this video was to completely obliterate the last one I made and to show NYU the effort I was willing to put in to get in.  Here is the video:





The concept of the video was created around the fact that I wanted to go to b-school to transition into brand management with consumer packaged goods.  If you didn't notice, that was the reason for all the random product placements in the video. On top of that, all the product placements were for products whose parent companies hire from NYU (Nike, Unilever, Kraft, Pepsi, P&G, etc).  In addition to the video, I also packaged everything together like a consumer product you'd buy at Target.  I put together the following bundle to mail to the school:

DVD box set with limited edition custom tank tops!

Pretty all out right?  After the time and effort I invested into this project, there was no way I could be rejected without an interview.  Admissions would humor me with that at the least.  I knew without a doubt that there was no other applicant that put more work into their application than I did.  

As the days passed, I started to get more and more worried about NYU.  My friends had gotten interview invites already, but I had heard nothing.  Finally, decision day rolled around and I thought I had to have at LEAST been waitlisted.  To my complete shock, I was rejected without an interview.  Two hundred hours of blood, sweat and tears from me and my friends for nothing. 

I tried calling and emailing admissions to see if they even got my video.  To clarify, I did put extensive amounts of effort into the rest of my application as well. I wasn't hoping to get in on the video alone; I simply leveraged the video to demonstrate my strengths and what I had to offer to the next class.  I have to say that being rejected by NYU was one of the lowest points of my life, but I am one very determined/stubborn guy.  


After the rejection, I immediately reached out to my network at NYU to get feedback on my application.  I was still waiting on decisions from UT and UCLA, but in the meantime, I started looking for the holes in my application so that I could begin strategizing on how to fill those holes. The rejection didn't just add fuel to my fire, it dumped a barrel of oil on top of that fire.  If I don't get into a school this year, you better be damn sure I'm coming for you 100 times harder in the coming year.

Je déteste écrire

Writing the essays was definitely not one of my strong points. I've always lived by the phrase "less talk, more action."  That is why I've always preferred to show people what I'm capable of instead of telling them.  I also think its difficult to find that fine line between sharing your accomplishments and boasting about them. The way you read something in your head always sounds different from the way someone else reads them. After working on hundreds of drafts of essays and getting tips from b-schoolers and others familiar with this game, here are some tips I would love to share:

1.  Tell your story - Don't tell a story you think ad com wants to hear. Don't tell a story that you think will be super original.  Tell YOUR story. This was my biggest mistake when I applied the first time.  I told a story I thought ad com wanted to hear and because of that, my passion for what I really wanted to do did not shine through.  I didn't feel the emotions I was interjecting into my essays and the ad com was able to spot the phoniness. 

2.  Remember these essays are about you - Even if the essay calls for you to talk about your family or something that doesn't directly address you, you need to craft a story and an essay that talks about you.  Your dad isn't trying to get into business school; you are.  Ad com is trying to learn about you even though they are asking an indirect question. Don't waste your word count setting the story up too much (I had a huge problem with this).  Spend the bulk of each essay connecting the story to you.

3.  Write tons of drafts - I usually start with an unfiltered dump of all my thoughts.  When you write unfiltered, I think that's when it is easiest to get your real emotions on paper.  Then I'll go through and pick the elements I like and begin writing more formally.  After that, I'll let a couple of friends read it and depending on how they feel, I'll either continue to edit it or I will scrap it and start over.  Sometimes, I'll write 2 or 3 versions of one essay; each with a different approach and I'll use my friends to figure out which one is best. There were a couple of instances where I worked on essays for a month and just scrapped the whole thing to start fresh.

4.  Explain your actions - Remember to convey to the reader your motives.  Explain why you want to work in finance or marketing.  Talk about the tipping point that drove you from being interested in "x" to knowing that you had a genuine passion for it.  Don't make your essay so robotic that it loses the emotion.  This is another mistake that I've made.  I was told my essays were so logical, they became stiff and boring.


5.  Reach out to those outside of your immediate circle to read your essays - All my friends know my story. They know me and they understand how much I want this. I had a problem throwing assumptions into my writing, but those don't translate well to people that don't know you. Because my friends think like me, they weren't catching some holes in my story. When I let my boss read my essay, she ripped it apart and it was awesome. She saved me from turning in a shit essay that didn't make sense.


This is all I could remember off the top of my head.  I'll make a second entry if I think of anything really important.  Actually, one last thing...when you run into writer's block:

go take a mental break and inspire yourself.

Phase 2

After talking to scores of b-schoolers, I was convinced that the reason I didn't get into a school was because of a branding issue. I failed to articulate in a meaningful and passionate way what I wanted to do, why I wanted to do it and how each specific program was going to help me.

Some b-schoolers told me that my GMAT was within range so if I didn't think I could drastically improve on it, I was better off focusing on finding a school that was the right fit.  With that said, I decided to use the time off before I started my internship to research and visit some schools.  On top of that, I also started reaching out to alumni and current students to learn about the culture and how their respective school helped them reach their goals.

Quick tip, when reaching out to alumni and current students, instead of just talking to whoever at that school, you should try to talk to people in specific clubs and in your specific areas of interest.  It's a plus if they have the same background as you because in that case, you can ask them about how they positioned themselves when they applied to b-school.

In the month of August, I visited 4 campuses and talked to dozens of students.  Researching schools was no joke, but I was able to take something away from every single person I talked to and I learned a lot more about marketing positions that I didn't know existed. So I'd highly recommend to talk to as many people as you can. Be it other prospects, first years, second years or alumni, I learned so much more about what I could take away from the b-school experience.  With every new person I talked to, I got more and more excited about getting in. 

The people I enjoyed chatting with the most were seconds years that had already gone through their summer internships. Learning about their projects over the summer was awesome.  I was so excited hearing about these marketing projects that I probably sounded like a total teeny bopper on the phone.

Tell me more, tell me more!

Talking to all these different people in marketing allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the multitude of different positions available and also helped me find out the exact type of positions I wanted to take on. One thing I learned that the admissions committee likes is specific goals.  Before, my essay just stated that I wanted to go into brand management with consumer packaged goods, but after my research that clause has now changed to: I want to do brand management with consumer packaged goods and specifically, I would like to work with Disney's Marvel division and be a part of their licensing and branding team to assist in maximizing the value of each of their characters.  

For the previously mentioned role, I had no idea it existed until I talked to a UCLA Anderson student who interned at Disney this past summer.  Thank you Rachel Knight for helping me find my way and in case you were wondering, I literally looked exactly like the pic above when you were telling me about your experience at Disney.

Final note, when reaching out to people, don't be afraid to cold email and don't take it personal if people don't respond to you. Business school students are ridiculously busy so its tough for them to get back to you.  If you get a chance to talk to them though, it makes a world of a difference. The students were the reasons I narrowed my target schools down to UCLA Anderson, USC Marshall, McCombs at UT Austin and NYU Stern.

The Next Step

After botching my chance at being a part of the Class of 2013, I was determined to get in the next year.  The question they always ask you on your re-application is what you did to improve on your profile.  I wanted to show the admissions committee that I was dead serious about making a change and that I had love for the field of marketing.  With that said, I decided to be extreme and quit public accounting cold turkey to take myself out of my comfort zone and force me to find something marketing related. To be honest, I was damn scared.  It was good I had stacked up a decent amount of money to survive on for a bit.  I decided that while I was job hunting, I would work on expanding BakeGreek, a start-up company that I helped found.

Before I left my company though, I decided to make a sweet ass goodbye video.  I mean, I had no love for the public accounting profession, but my colleagues were very cool people. They taught me a lot and I wanted to show them and the company I would miss them.  Here is the video I made to say goodbye to my colleagues.

Since I was leaving the company, there wasn't really anything I could get in trouble for so I thought what the hell, let's see if they will let me play this at the firm meeting to all 250+ employees at the firm. I put in a request to show the video and they actually did it. What happened after that was even more amazing.

After showcasing the video to my company, I got an email from the Marketing Director and she was really impressed with the creativity and effort put into the video.  I mean, this was a project that my team had invested 60+ hours into.  After talking to her a bit about what I wanted to do, she kind of took me under her wing to help me break into the Marketing world.

You know how a lot of people always say they know people and that they will show your resume around? I thought that this was going to be one of those people, but I was far from wrong.  She reached down into her network and emailed TONS of people in the advertising and PR world that she knew to try and get me an interview.  I was CC'd on each one and along with my resume, she sent the video as well as a witty final goodbye email I sent to my colleagues on my last day.  In the email, she totally had my back and put her reputation on the line because she believed in me. It almost brought tears to my eyes to know she was willing to risk her ass for me. Within two weeks of unemployment, I had landed an internship position.  I took a giant pay cut (70%) taking this internship position, but it was my way of showing admissions I was willing to do anything to begin building experience in the right direction.  

The Marketing Director at my old firm has been a huge inspiration and guiding force for me. Re-energized after landing this internship opportunity, I was ready to continue on this path to matriculation.