The Road to Business School

I was intimidated by the business school application process to say the least. Business is a field in which I have little to no background at all, and has been a slowly developing interest over the last six years or so.

The entrepreneurial bug first bit when I started an internship my junior year in college at an e-commerce start-up. It was there I realized that legitimately anyone can start a business, but very few businesses will ever be successful. So if I ever wanted to go into business, I’d better learn to do it right.

Fast-forward to myself as a business school candidate now, and I feel like the most non-traditional applicant. I may have developed a lot of soft skills through my experiences (leadership, communication, resilience), but I have never actually worked a 9 to 5 job. Amongst the Peace Corps, volunteering in India, and working in a lab, my post-college work experience is varied and disparate. I am a driven person who almost needs to follow my passions or else become extremely unhappy, and I have been very lucky to have been afforded the opportunity to be able to pursue what I love with such gusto! And in applying to business school, I finally see all of my experiences being synthesized into a concrete future of productive and helpful work in healthcare.

This is why, despite feeling extremely deficient while filling out my applications, not having as shining of resumes, and lacking the hard won experience that others have had, I continued applying anyways. Because I know what I want, I know how to go about getting it now, and suddenly, my disparate story seems to make perfect sense.

A lot of this clarity actually came from writing essays, pitching myself to schools, and preparing for interviews. These processes, although they seem tedious and impossible, provided a great space to meditate about my life and experiences. I realized in accomplishing these tasks, that I had actually developed many more skills than I realized, and had better stories to tell about my transformation than I thought. In the end, despite having less of a strong background as a candidate, I think it was my passion and my conviction in what I want to do that sold me to schools.

This brings me to my final point. A few years ago, I was speaking with one of my college friends who pursued a law degree at a prestigious school, and who became a student mentor. He shared with me the interesting insight that a good handful of students who were pursuing law degrees at this exceptional school still had no idea what they wanted to do in life, graduate school, or with their degree. After that conversation, I felt more confident in my “non-traditional” pursuits after college. I may have been all over the map, but I knew what I wanted to do and how it would contribute to my future every time I chose to do something. Graduate school is no small investment, so I am happy to have the genuine confidence that business school is exactly the education I want, and I know how to apply my education to my passions after.