Prospective MPP/MBA student with doubts about her chances

What’s going on, people. By now, I hope those of you in the U.S. are getting ready for a nice 4th of July weekend. You’ve gotta love three-day weekends, especially in the middle of the summer. Many of you are probably planning on traveling this weekend, so I’d like to encourage all of you to be careful while you’re on the road. With all the stuff going in the world right now, one can never be too careful, especially when he/she is away from home.

The email below is one of the more unusual ones that I’ve seen in the years of answering questions. At a high level, the reader would like to gain admission to a good MBA/MPP program and is looking for my advice…but that’s not anything unusual. And, she has questions about whether her profile is strong enough to get into a strong program…but that’s not unusual either. The unusual part is how down on her chances she sounds. I hope I’m not out of line by saying it, but, when I read her email, it seemed like she was defeating herself before she ever even applied. I can only remember one other reader with this kind of outlook and my response turned into an intervention of sorts…I hope my response has the same sort of effect in this case because it feels like something big has to change here.

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OO wrote:

“Dear Marquis,

I saw your blog and wanted to get some feedback on my current quandary. As the title suggest, I am looking to gain acceptance to a joint degree graduate program in Public Policy and MBA with a focus in International Development. It seems that there are very few programs that offer this joint degree. The schools that do offer this degree are generally very competitive… such as UCLA and Stanford. I honestly don’t think will be able to get into those types of schools. I had a 3.0 GPA in undergrad and worked a number of entry level jobs since then. Over the past three years, I haven’t been with a company for very long. The one bright side is that I’m currently traveling Africa at the moment. My internship in South Africa wasn’t the stuff to write home about. But I will be traveling to Nigeria later in the year and hope to have a more meaningful internship there. I am certain that I want to go graduate school next year and have settle on trying to put a good application in for an MPP program.After completing the MPP, I’ll go on to apply for an MBA. That’s the hope. But I’m not sure what kind of schools will admit me. My resume is attached to this email. Please pass along your thoughts.

All the best,
OO

PS: I am planning to take the GRE in the next month or so. But I fear that my nerves will get the best of me. Hopefully, that’ wont’ be the case”

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My response:

OO,

I hope this message finds you well. I know it’s been a while since you emailed me, but I’m sure you can understand how difficult it is to get through the volume of emails that I receive from my readers. I hope this response is arriving in time to be helpful to you. If I’m remembering correctly, the grad schools won’t release their new applications for another a month or two, so this might be the perfect time for you be getting this email. Let’s see if I can sprinkle some knowledge and have some clarity about your situation sprout up out of the ground 🙂

I don’t know how long you’ve been reading my blog (or if you’d read any past entries at all), but one rule that I’ve mentioned several times is that I don’t do resume reviews for readers. I used to do it, but it simply took too long to give the resumes a good read, think through how to improve them, and provide feedback on the contents. That said, I took a QUICK look at yours to get an idea of what you meant when you said “I haven’t been with a company very long”…and you certainly weren’t lying about that. After reading your resume, I was left thinking “why has she bounced around to six employers in four yearsw since undergrad???”…Mind you, I don’t see that as necessarily being a killer for your chances, but it’s something you’ll have to address in your MPP and MBA applications. If there’s a reason for your many career moves, make sure the admissions people understand it. Also, it seems like you’re selling yourself short on your educational background. You went to a strong undergrad and had some international study experience, which are both things that many applicants don’t have working for them. By the way, you should round that 3.06 GPA up to a 3.1, not down to a 3.0. It’s only a 0.1 difference, but it could make a world of difference in how you see your own applicant profile. Your GPA and work experience are already set in stone and can’t be changed, but you can certainly change the way that you frame them in your own mind and I suggest that you do just that. As for your plan to apply to MPP programs first and then the MBA once enrolled, I like it and that’s actually what I would have recommended for you to do, given your background. You’ve worked for a series of organizations upon which you should be able to build a good MPP application story. From there, you could build an MBA story and you’d be off to the races.

Before closing out this email, I want to bring something to your attention that has me a little concerned. As I read your email, I read your message, I couldn’t help but think that you were defeating yourself before you ever went into battle. I can understand trying to do some level-setting early on, but your message literally screamed out to me saying “I don’t think I’m a good candidate, but I’m hoping for a miracle”…It’ll be pretty difficult for you to convince a business school that they should admit you if you don’t believe it yourself. Don’t feel bad though because you’re definitely not the first MBA aspirant to feel this way. In fact, I’ve had several kids hit me up with a similar mindset. One of them in particular sticks out in my mind because he sounded so without hope in his email. So, I sent him an email with some motivation truth and wisdom in it and he ended up doing very well in the application process once he’d gotten his mind right. Instead of recreating that same advice in this message, I’ll just give you the link to that entry and advise you to read it and think about my words to him –> “I wanna break free” – the story of pigeonholed techie. You CAN do this, but that won’t be possible unless you switch up your mindset…and I’m serious about that!

By now, you’ve probably taken the GRE and I hope your score helped your confidence going into the application process. Remember, believing that you can gain admission to a B-school is the job #1 when applying. It all starts with KNOWING that you can do it. If you go in assuming that you won’t be successful, then you might as well not apply. Spend some time thinking about your MBA story and which qualities might make you a strong and unique candidate and then go out there and make it happen. It’s all about your own mindset…and don’t forget it! Take care and good luck with the upcoming application season.

Marquis