New Beginnings, How to Choose a Grad School: Complete Guide

Hello everyone! ever since I posted an update on my career goals and short term plans of going back to school quite a few of you reached out to me with questions. Given the bulk of the messages I am getting each day I thought of not just collating the FAQs under one post but also share my personal journey with everyone. Today I complete a little over a month in San Francisco, I can’t begin to share how much I love the NorCal culture and the opportunities that this place holds for me. If you are reading this post you are probably introspecting and evaluating your current skills and may be looking to transition to a more full-filling career I think the choice for the best medium to re-skill yourself is a personal one where you must consider your professional goals as well as other factors such as demography, exposure , networking, finances and direction of growth. There is no one fit all approach and often times young professionals as well as students get swayed away by public opinion and peer pressure in matters of education. Finding your true path is an exercise in mindfulness. It requires regular withdrawals from the world, so we’ll know what to bring to the world. We find who we are in silence and solitude, and we present our true self as a gift to the world.Some settle for mediocrity ,On the other side of the spectrum, there are super-ambitious people who chase worldly success as a way of overcompensating for their insecurities.

Your greatest strength is your resiliency and persistence. You can keep going and going, failure after failure, and still win big in the end. Standard pace is for chumps. High Risk = High Reward

Paul Graham

I would like to sum up the most commonly taken path with this lovely snipped from an essay by Paul Graham -“Riskier career moves pay better on average, because there is less demand for them.The first twenty years of everyone’s life consists of being piped from one institution to another. You probably didn’t have much choice about the secondary schools you went to. And after high school it was probably understood that you were supposed to go to college. You may have had a few different colleges to choose between, but they were probably pretty similar. So by this point you’ve been riding on a subway line for twenty years, and the next stop seems to be a job. Superficially, going to work for a company may feel like just the next in a series of institutions, but underneath, everything is different. The end of school is the fulcrum of your life, the point where you go from net consumer to net producer.” I know some of you might agree with it, some of you might have had a more interesting journey than others.Nevertheless, I think it’s important to take time to reflect and evaluate yourself. While it’s perfectly okay to not have a 5 or 10 year long career plan you must have some perspective as to where you are presently and are your current actions helping you achieve what you want to. This is a question I contemplated everyday before deciding to invest in myself and going back to school. The application for any school is holistic and

Standardized Tests

Now I know a lot of you absolutely hate standardized tests. If I had a dollar for every time someone messaged me , “studying for GMAT is giving me anxiety”, “what course plan did you follow”, “how to I study for GMAT while also working 80 hours a week “, “I am not a native English speaker and I can’t figure out GMAT verbal”, “I am an arts major and I am bombing GMAT quant over and over”. I can keep quoting more people but you catch my drift. I will share some pointers on how to study for GMAT in a little bit(future post). I have tried my luck with e-gmat, top1 percent, BYJU to name a few (I started preparing for GMAT in 2016 as I had a pretty hectic work schedule and business travel) .I would just say that for verbal you are pretty much on your own since no one in India is a native speaker(unless they immigrated which is highly uncommon) and GMAT verbal is highly idiomatic, more on this later.In short, you are just stuck with someone who is incapable of guiding you, It’s like blind guiding the blind. Again this is my personal opinion and my sole purpose is to guide students based on my experience only, I don’t promote or throw shade at any place/brand in specific as this is NOT a sponsored post.If you find a tutor that works for you by all means go for it. Most coaching institutes charge anywhere between $300-$1000 depending on the medium and duration of the program so plan ahead.

Why do I need to give GMAT/GRE/TOEFL? Is any value add to the standardized test? Who must take these? What are some of the best practices when preparing for these tests? How much weightage do these tests hold once I start school? If you have ever attended a presentation from a business school you will know that most admissions representative state that your GMAT score is a good indicator of your success in the first semester/quarter at your business school. I would highly recommend checking out Poet&Quants for resources on both test preparation as well as profile building. Sandy is an absolute genius at sifting and bringing out the best in students. I don’t know if you would like to schedule a 1:1 with him ( I didn’t try that but if you can and do, please let me know how it went 🙂 ). Remember that getting a business degree opens a lot of doors, you’ll have the entire world as a catalog to choose from but here is something no one tells.Success is life is decided by closing doors that don’t add value, MBA is an expensive degree with a price tag of over $200k, opportunity cost from loss of income for the two years you study, expenses, housing and a lot more. You can avail scholarships to help you with tuition and housing while you study but there is stiff competition and yes you guessed it you have to have a strong profile to win these . You have to think hard about where you want to go and if your degree will support your goals, assess your career goals, find a culture fit and future growth plan. Business schools are not looking for perfect candidates , you want to be able to share your story in a way that is compelling, answer the why , rationale behind you decisions and passions that drive you.

Essays and Core Values

Ok, this was good to know, what other portions of my profile should I pay attention. Thanks for asking, the GMAT/GRE/TOEFL is only 20% of your total profile. So please don’t spend all your time preparing for tests and have little to no time remaining for essays, recommendations, interviews and resume. Unless you have terrible GPA or test scores in your undergraduate or high school you will be just fine with an above 90% percentile test score. You can strengthen the remaining parts of your application, really put some effort into your essays to make your profile shine through. What are the key values that should be in the back of my mind while I build my narrative? Being authentic, genuine and concise. Your essays should be a true reflection of yourself and speak about your background as well as your interest in the field you are applying to.Make sure your essay is not a re-iteration of your resume. Here is how to remember this- Your resume answers the “What” you did and your essays answer the “Why” and the rationale behind your decision. Always include an example to support every claim you make. I don’t suggest hard selling but I want you to sell yourself , embellish your self, let those strength shine through.

Its always recommended to customize your essays to the school’s culture, curriculum and offerings.Make sure you do ample research about the programs of interest and also reach out to other students and faculty in these program. You can also state examples and provide evidence for anything that you shine at. Remember that you have about a years time for each application if you start working on them as early as summer. You can use that time to build new skills, add more dimensions to your profile and make it stand out.

Recommendation Letters

As for recommendations, get them from someone who knows you well, its ideal to get your direct manager’s recommendation as it shows trust and support but it’s ok to have a coworker write it as long as they can firmly support your work. Recommendations show your credibility, and make sure you have someone else write it for you. Writing styles are unique and it is so easy to tell if you wrote your own recommendation. I know a lot of people would ask you to give them a sample instead of writing your recommendation themselves. I would just say give them some pointers and if that is not enough find someone else to write. You want people to invest in you, if spending an hour is too much for your recommender find another one who does. Don’t be disheartened if people turn down your request stating any reason. I realized that people act as per their mood and there is no reason to waste your energy on people who won’t support you on your journey, cut them out of your life and keep your trust circle strong and tight.I am at a point in my life where I can count my friends on one hand. Real people don’t have a lot of friends.

Your journey might be different than mine and may be a completely different approach works best for you. I would start by asking these questions to both assess myself and my options.What is most important to you? location, teaching style, rankings(recommend US news).What have past graduates gone on to do?Are there networking opportunities? Are there any available opportunities to do projects and build your portfolio as part of the program? What do employers think of these programs? You want to add something that is valuable and helps propel you forward. You want to build a narrative that allows you to get differentiation in the market amongst similar candidates.This is particularly true for someone from an unconventional background.This trend is likely to continue as AI and Machine Learning become an indiscernible part of our daily lives.

Your Questions

Data Science “is about ‘can we model the world — and use these models to make predictions,’ while data analytics is more about extracting insights from big datasets.The power of a master’s or another degree in business analytics is you’re setting pathways for yourself to be a leader in that field,” Sosulski said. “That’s very powerful for someone returning to school looking to make a clear change.The curriculum should also focus on teaching you how to communicate data findings with the business, as this is a key element of the job that hiring managers seek out

Conclusion:Our culture’s obsession with early achievement dissuades us from pursuing our passions. Instead of having varied interests, studying widely, and taking our time—essentials for self-discovery—we’re encouraged to ace tests, become specialists right away, and pursue safe, stable, and lucrative careers. As a result, most of us end up choosing professional excellence over personal fulfillment, and often we lose ourselves in the process.Having a wide range of skills and experiences is more beneficial because it allows you to be nimble and creative – from “Late bloomers” by Rich Karlgaard.

Akansha

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2 Responses

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