An undergrad trying to set himself up for an MBA/MPP joint degree program

What’s up, y’all. The email responded to in this entry is from a college senior who is asking about how his background fits for an MBA/MPP degree. As I’ve said on here before, I’ve never worked for an Admissions office at a business school, so my read on his candidacy is just that…my own read on his case. I’m not saying that I’m 100% correct on this stuff, but I think I’m pretty good at it 😉

One more thing…in my response below, I gave this reader some advice on making his resume tighter because it seemed relevant to his question. This is not an invitation for all of y’all to send me your resumes for reivew and comments. I don’t have enough time to review a bunch of resumes and, honestly, there are services out there that can help you with that.

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SA wrote:

“Hey there Marquis!

I just found your blog, and over the past couple of hours, have scoured through all the past 3 years. It was quite…exhilarating to see you go through your journey.

I saw that you were sharing your thoughts with other MBA hopefuls, and I was wondering if I could “pick your brain” too. I’d be most grateful. Let me tell you a bit about myself: I’m a senior undergrad at the Univ of Texas at Arlington, studying Econ and PoliSci. Currently, I’m interning in DC at a energy/enviro consulting firm called “GS”. Being intimately in touch with the business world, I’m sure you’ve heard all about Walmart trying to “go green”; we’re the firm advising them as they go along this path. My main project, though, is to help design a law school course called “The Law of Climate Change.”
I’ve attached my “master” resume so you can take a more in-depth look at my background.

My short-term (2-3 years) goal is to do a dual MBA/MPP from a top school, which will enable me to accomplish my long-term goals. Considering that corporations are now the most powerful institutions in the world, I’d like to see what they can do in terms of environmental and social justice. I will expound on this later.

So would you please give me your thoughts on my background, and whether I am establishing a good “track record,” and where I can improve.

Thanks and take care,
SA”

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My response:

SA,

Thanks for checking out my blog. I’m always amazed when I get emails from folks who aren’t even out of college yet. I wish I had been as driven and focused as you are back when I was in college.

I just looked over your resume and it looks like you’ve had a good set of experiences so far in your career/education. One immediate piece of feedback is that it is far too long. You shouldn’t have a resume that it longer than a page at this point in your life because you haven’t even gotten out of college yet. For the purposes of efficiency, re-read your resume and highlight the items that are most relevant to what you want to do in the future. Anything that you did in high school might be nice to mention, but it could probably be left off if you’re trying to save space. Also, make sure you describe only the most important responsibilities for each job or leadership experience in your sub-bullets to save yourself some space. Finally, you should clean up your “Other relevant experience” section to put in only the most noteworthy items…all in the spirit of saving space. Making these changes will help you get your resume down to a page, but, more importantly, it’ll help you focus on describing only the most important parts of your background.

From the looks of your resume, your background is very well suited for an MPP program, but I don’t know if the MBA admissions folks would faint over your profile as of yet. Your many leadership experiences in addition to your passion for politics, the environment, and action would probably make for some fantastic public policy program application essays. Also, you’d likely have a lot to say that could contribute in the classroom. Based on the little I know of you from the resume, I can’t see if there would be as natural a transition for you into a business school program right now. I could be wrong about that, so don’t take what I’m saying as the gospel on the subject. My read is that you have two primary options for making yourself a more attractive candidate for an MBA program:

1. Get into the MPP program first and apply to the MBA program while enrolled as a student –> This would be your primary option if you would like to enter grad school directly after undergrad. I’ve been told that public policy grad programs are a mixture of people coming in straight from undergrad and from the working world. I’ve heard several stories of people who have entered a different grad program and then leveraged heir standing as a student to get to know students at the associated MBA program to get to know the culture and academics in the Bschool, which helps in their applications. Plus, you’ll be able to get recommendations from your policy school professors who have had a chance to see you perform in a graduate school classroom environment, which can only help your cause.

Of the top of my head, the public policy programs at Harvard, Michigan, and Berkeley would be good options for this because they are also homes to strong MBA programs. It’s not necessary to get your MBA at the same place as your MPP though…I had several classmates at Stanford GSB who were doing joint-degrees ith the Kennedy School at Harvard too. Stanford University is launching its own MPP program sometime in the next year or so, but i don’t know anything about where it’ll rank among those of its peer institutions.

2. Pursue a post-undergrad job that takes advantage of your passion for leading others and affecting change –> You seem to be someone that has a knack for taking charge while trying to drive the group toward some sort of change or impact…that would be a good starting point for selecting a career path after college. I’m not positive, but I have a feeling that those are your areas of passion and you should charge hard in that direction. As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, a person is more likely to excel in a job about which he or she is very passionate or interested. Strong pre-MBA job performance is a huge part of getting admitted to business school and 3-4 years of job success before applying would make you an even better candidate. At that point, you could either apply to a joint MBA/MPP program or just apply for the MBA and then apply to public policy programs in the reverse of the method that I suggested above.

Take care and good luck with your last year of college…keep on thinking strategically about your future.

-Marquis