The two months between applying for grad school and hearing decisions have been quite a lot of trying to stay calm while every now and then getting super stressed about whether I’d get admitted anywhere. After submitting my applications, I waited to hear about interviews. By the end of February, the ones I hadn’t interviewed for basically seemed out of reach and now I know how it all panned out. So here’s a look at what things have been like since applying through admittance/denial notifications.
January 4th: Submitted UCLA Anderson application and paid $200 fee (deadline on 5th). Ordered GMAT scores sent to 4 schools for $112. When you take the GMAT, order scores sent to as many schools as possible. I believe it’s 5 for free, so might as well get the scores out to them. I had done so for 2 of the schools, but now needed to pay for the rest.
January 5th: Submitted Northwestern Kellogg application and paid $250 fee (deadline on 6th). Also submitted Harvard Business School application and paid $250 fee (deadline on 6th).
January 6th: Submitted Berkeley Haas application and paid $200 fee (deadline on 7th).
January 7th: Submitted USC Marshall application and paid $150 fee (deadline on 8th).
January 11th: Submitted Stanford GSB application and paid $275 fee (deadline on 12th). Kellogg received GMAT score report.
January 12th: Completed video interview for Kellogg, after many practice rounds.
January 15th: Anderson received GMAT score report.
January 29th: Kellogg off-campus interview information received (they try to interview everyone); I reached out to set up a time with my interviewer, an alumnus.
February 3rd: HBS decision posted as denial without interview. If I had gotten an interview, I would have been notified and then I would have had to plan a visit to the school to do it.
February 5th: Kellogg interview with the alumnus, who has been doing interviews for something like 12 years! Great conversation that lasted for 2 hours and made me feel like I did well.
February 10th: Invitation to interview by Marshall; I scheduled a Skype interview since I could not fly out in person.
February 25th: My mom suggested a call with my dad to learn from his business experience, so I called him up on Skype and listened to him for about 90 minutes. He had a lot to say and I learned quite a bit about his life and our family that I didn’t know before.
February 27th: Skype interview with Marshall MBA Ambassador, which went well.
March 5th: Call from Dean of Admissions at Marshall. I was eating dinner and didn’t recognize the number, so I didn’t pick up. I then forgot about the voicemail until the next day, when I listened to it and was THRILLED!! That was one less month of wringing my hands hoping for good news. 🙂
March 8th: Stanford GSB decision posted as denial. As with HBS, had I been selected for an interview, I would have been notified by then and scheduled something.
As the days ticked by in March, I pretty much knew that Haas and Anderson would be nos since I did not hear about an interview from either.
March 23rd: Northwestern Kellogg decision posted as denial.
March 24th: Berkeley Haas decision posted as denial.
March 29th: UCLA Anderson decision posted as denial, but with invitation to apply for FEMBA.
And there you have it! My experience throughout the period from application submissions to final decision notifications. Luckily, I knew I had a program to go to nearly a month earlier than I had anticipated, which was just fabulous. I didn’t get into any of the others unfortunately, but hey, that just means I’ve been able to focus on going to Marshall rather than being confused about which program to pick.
I’ve told my manager about my plans and finalized a last day at work: June 17th. He also announced my pending departure to the company since we are looking for someone to fill my role. With just two months to go, there’s a lot to try to accomplish but of course it’s hard not to want to look towards the future and focus on that. Later I’ll write up the whole experience with USC Marshall from now until I start in the fall!
