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.