School: Top 4 University. Bachelor of Economics. Rich extracurricular experience, including debating contest champion and global student organizer? forum
Work experience: 6 years as sales manager in 2 top FMCG companies. Have solid work achievements, including rapid promotion and high-level recognition.
Results: GPA 3.5, GMAT 700, TOEFL 105.
Application results: Apply to 5 schools (r 1: Chicago, Tucker; ; R2: HBS, Stanford, Wharton)
Interview 3 schools (r 1: Chicago; R2:HBS, Wharton Business School)
Enter 1 school (HBS) and WL 1 school (Wharton).
The following is the process and experience of applying for HBS:
A Why can I be admitted to the school? What do I think is my core competitive advantage?
The only person who accepted me was HBS, one of my dream schools, which made my heart beat faster. HBS is the last school to apply and the last school to announce the results. A series of blows before, in fact, people were going to collapse on the night of the list release. Their hearts almost stopped beating when they clicked on the application result link, and of course they were ready to accept the worst result. I feel lucky and grateful in the face of the last unexpected surprise. I thank fate for playing a cruel joke on me for months, but finally I saved the best for last. I thank my close relatives and friends for their constant encouragement and prayers. This is not an easy process. Without their support and help, it is difficult for a person to go on. This is also a lucky result, because countless people have made the same or even more efforts, but they have not got the ideal result, which should be the result of most people. The application itself is such a difficult process, and it is also a high-risk process to accept a cruel result. Isn't it the same in business? We are on a business trip, and the process of applying for MBA is undoubtedly the best epitome, and it is also a practical psychological exercise.
Calm down from the excitement. If I sum up why I got in, I think it is two points: persistence and relaxation. This may be very general and mysterious. I will try to be more specific with my own experience and feelings.
The spirit of persistence is what I have done this year to satisfy myself. In fact, the past year was the most stressful one for me in the past six years. I accepted a new task, in charge of the company's largest global customer. As the customer's headquarters is in Shenzhen, the business trip frequency is very high. I have had the experience of flying five times a week three times. At the same time, because the indicators of global customers are directly hung on the top of the company's senior leaders, the company attaches great importance to it from top to bottom, and leaders at all levels will pay attention to it at the slightest sign of trouble, so there will be many trivial matters and meetings, and there will be many complicated contradictions to be dealt with, so it is common practice to sleep only 4-5 hours a day. Faced with such a situation, I think my initial insistence comes from my strong motivation to apply: whether to apply for an MBA or to study abroad is a knot that I have struggled with for so many years. Now I want to understand why, knowing that I have to fight for it. The power generated by this heartbeat is enormous. I used to be a person who couldn't do two things at once, but driven by this motivation, I could find all kinds of spare time to do topics in the waiting room and on the plane, carry a thick GMAT OG on my back, or correct my composition on the plane at the last minute before the deadline, so that I almost couldn't hand in my computer on the plane (this is exactly what happened when I applied for HBS). The persistence supported by this kind of motivation is strong, but it is not lasting. It was very useful at first, but in the face of various setbacks, such as the failure of GMAT in the first exam and the complete destruction of the application of R 1, it will be severely tested. At this time, patience and perseverance are needed, as well as the support and encouragement of relatives and friends. Therefore, as far as the spirit of persistence is concerned, I think it is very important that you have a strong motivation to apply (it may be impulsive or immature at first, it doesn't matter. The key is to be strong enough to wake up every day and want to jump up, have the courage and patience to face setbacks and actively support your environment. Only when external and internal factors work at the same time can you go on this year.
I didn't do a good job of relaxation, but fortunately, I got this occasionally on my way to HBS, so this is also the key reason why I think I can successfully apply for HBS and others are not ready. This is really hard for me. I am a very serious person, suppressing my resignation. I know the importance of hard work and persistence, but I also lost a free and easy and presumptuous in this process. This is actually a typical case of good students in China. We are all educated? Eat a little bitter, and you will become a master? Therefore, I always feel that the pain in the process is right. I don't know that this kind of mentality is easy for people to persist, but it often lacks a kind of inspiration and self-confidence at the last moment, which is the most crucial thing for a composition to be excellent and great, and no one can meet it. Just like Nina in Black Swan, it's easier to dance a white swan than a black swan. To say that I occasionally get this point on my way to HBS, it actually comes from my inner feeling that there is no hope of success, because the TOEFL score is 5 points worse than the official 109, but it is also my dream school, so I always feel sorry not to apply, so I let go and write as I want, and I won't regret it if I hand it in. It is in this environment that the previous efforts have finally reached a new height. Through hard training and inspiration when relaxing, the writing level has been greatly improved. I didn't realize this feeling at that time, and it took me some time to see it clearly. A few days ago, when I looked through and compared my Wharton 30 composition with HBS 4 composition, it was obvious that Wharton's article was very compact and HBS's article was very free and easy, which showed my deep passion and enterprising. This is not to say that careful analysis seems to be perfect, and there is always something missing, so the relaxed mentality is like this. Magic? . In fact, a lot of practice and final relaxation can not be ignored. If you just relax if you practice less, that's graffiti, that is, you haven't even done the basic order, but many people in China can still get by. Applicants for the top MBA in the United States are elites from all walks of life. They have struggled for so many years, but because of this, they are particularly lacking in relaxation in their mentality. This is worthy of continuous cultivation and improvement in the future, because business itself is the same. You must study hard and practice hard, but you must also relax and be positive, otherwise you will face the ever-changing situation and strong competition from competitors. Either the pressure is too great to die young, or it is too depressing.
So to sum up, I think all the experiences are concentrated on these two key points: persistence+relaxation, which seems contradictory, but it is indeed a high-level unity of opposites. Resolving these contradictions well will produce predictable results and enhance our understanding of business in the future. After all, business is actually to solve contradictions that ordinary people can't solve, which is also the core idea that "The Foundation is Evergreen" wants to tell us.
B. What preparations have I made during the whole application process? What do I think is more important?
Speaking of preparation, I think the core sentence is: try your best to do what you can, and don't dwell on what you can't change. Here, let me talk about some popular traditions in the market? Competitive advantage? Scenery. Many applicants attach great importance to background. Often when a successful applicant publishes information, someone will reply to a post immediately, asking the applicant to share the background, and then everyone will integrate what kind of background is strong and what kind of background is weak according to a lot of information in the past. This is an understandable habitual inertia thinking: imitation. Everyone will think that finding out this rule is a ruler, and you will know your weight by measuring it yourself. Even more active classmates will collect and analyze relevant materials from the beginning of college, and then imitate their career planning before MBA.
Then the first thing I want to tell you is that all the summarized laws may be fallacious. Let's look at some popular ideas. Viewpoint 1: Girls have an advantage. Yes, there are indeed several schools this year where girls recruit more than boys, even much more. However, HBS is uncharacteristic this year, enrolling more boys than girls. Viewpoint 2: Strong investment banking and consulting background, top 500 enterprises, followed by the Big Four, and so on. It makes sense, but there is no logic in this matter, because these enterprises are not comparable at all. Every MBA program recruits people from these industries every year. How to distinguish between 369 and 369? Many people infer from students' portfolios, but they don't know that there are many investment banks and consulting applicants. In fact, the final admission rate of all walks of life may not be very different. Viewpoint 3: The higher the score, the better, otherwise there is no hope. This view has some truth. My application experience is that high scores must have advantages, and low scores may not necessarily have no chance. I know that neither of the two students admitted to HBS actually passed the 109 required by HBS, and it is clearly written on the HBS website that applicants who fail to meet 109 are strongly recommended to apply.
Therefore, based on the above point of view, my conclusion is that there is no absolute hard background. A mature candidate should know that your thorough understanding of yourself is what really sets you apart. Everyone is unique. The simplest thing you have to do is to turn you into a unique package and present it to the AO of the school, instead of trying to cover up the so-called advantages. So back to my original point of view, there are actually two meanings: what is the first layer? Okay？ The second layer is how to try not to entangle the objective facts.
What do you mean? Okay？ It is good to know yourself, which is also the core and most important thing in my application. I think an extreme sign is that when you realize that applying for an MBA is not the only way for you to succeed, you know yourself to a certain extent. Everyone here should agree with this. MBA is a means and a process, but it cannot be the ultimate goal. It may be a good building block for most people engaged in business, but there are many other building blocks that can go to your other shore, even better than MBA, which is possible. If you don't know who you are and what you want to do in the future, you will think that an MBA is necessary, but in fact you don't know why. Learning when you arrive is just an inertia. How can I answer who you are? What? What are your career goals? Why do you study for an MBA? So I want to tell those who lament their poor background and those who work hard in college? Save? Background Students, your's efforts and sighs are not unreasonable, but if you are more mature and rational, we should put this energy on our own understanding, experience more, try more, make more friends, and do our best (in fact, mainly through the process of comparing experiences and other people's comments) to better understand ourselves and discover the truth of what we care about most. At that time, you will find that the future of life will be clearer and what MBA means will be clear at a glance. It doesn't matter if you can't find it at the moment. Don't stop to think. Steve Jobs is our role model.
As for how to try not to entangle the objective facts, after you have a correct understanding of yourself, what you need to do is to persist and face the facts bravely. When we applied, several facts were basically fixed: your gender, your school, your GPA and your work background, which obviously cannot be changed. But there are two things we can change in the whole scheme: your G/T score and your thesis. As I said just now, the G/T score won't get you in, but a higher score is definitely beneficial. Therefore, students who have enough time and are still in college, please cherish your time and take these two exams well. This is only good, not bad. Worth the effort! In the first three months of your application for deadline, this is worthy of your attention. Three months after the application deadline, perhaps G/T has become an established objective fact, because I don't recommend writing a paper while doing G/T at this time, which is very unfocused. This is also where I feel tight in R 1, which is a lesson. I came out late, so many schools missed R 1, so R 1 didn't apply to any schools, and the result was more dangerous. As I said just now, the first thing you have to do is to write more and try more. There are two advantages: (1) At the initial stage, the mind is relaxed and it is easy to write your true self. Although the language and organization are rough, it is not easy to miss your key experiences and ideas. What you have to do at this stage is to try to write out your real experiences and thoughts, even if they are small. In this process, your understanding of yourself is constantly strengthened; (2) In the sprint stage, the accumulation of previous writing can help you gradually extract the most expressive things, and the essay can also become concise and powerful. This is a kind of sublimation. Without strong accumulation, how to sublimate? Secondly, what you need to do is to do your research homework, which includes understanding your future career, school and MBA. These are all hard work. Know yourself and know yourself, and fight every battle? This is a well-known truth; (3) Find experienced people to read your composition, and find like-minded people to correct your composition together: don't be afraid to reinvent the wheel. This process is very painful, but we must persist. I have seen many people's composition packages changed more than 20 times, and my Wharton package has been written for 30 editions. These are two things that must be worked hard. They are far more important than your settled background, because the simple fact is that business schools value your background, but they value more why you have these backgrounds and how you view past experiences. If you can't answer well, then why don't I think your NB background is just luck or even fake?
In addition, one more thing to say is the preparation for the interview. Many people have worked hard to complete the package and are very happy to get an interview. They thought that one foot had stepped into the school gate and could not help but breathe a sigh of relief. Relaxation is the most dangerous at this time, so be especially careful. Business school interview is basically a part of the whole package, its importance is not clear, but as an organic part, it will definitely not be weaker than other parts, so we need to make careful preparations. This is actually my lesson. My interviews in Chicago and Wharton were poorly prepared because they didn't bite their last breath. Although I spoke fluently, even Chicago ended up with Ding, my interviewer came forward to help me with my school theory. It seems that this is a very successful interview, but in fact, I compare this interview with HBS, and the gap is very large. I think the most effective preparation method is mock interview. Mock should be careful not to worry about other people's problems, whether it is not done well and affects confidence. All you have to do is keep practicing, find alumni, find experienced applicants, find classmates and make friends. In this process, you should use as many cases as possible. This kind of training has two advantages: (1) your language conciseness will gradually improve with your continuous practice, because when you speak more skillfully, you will only speak the most essential part, which is far better than the preparation method of endorsement, and it is obviously more flexible and natural; (2) Rich materials. My interview experience shows that in a real interview, you can't think at all because of nervous and high-density questions, and you basically say what you think. Therefore, only through a lot of imitation can your direct reaction be improved and you can use a lot of cases freely. Otherwise, my previous two interviews were just a feeling: the materials used were limited and the language in BS was verbose.
C How does the application process help, change and influence me?
The biggest change and influence of application on me is to make me realize how important it is for you to go your own way and seek happiness in the process. I am a typical good student who grew up in a traditional cultural background. My parents are both teachers, and I have always been a top student at school. The traditional education in China is dominated by repression, and there are many rules and regulations to tell you what not to do and what to pay attention to. Growing up in such an environment for a long time, people actually become less and less individual, and their thinking tends to be inert, imitative and pessimistic. Right, I've thought a lot. I usually like to think and analyze things around me, but at the same time I am a good boy with a soft or obedient personality, so there is a great struggle between thinking and obedience. I have been trying to balance, and I don't want to lose what I want to do, but I don't want to let others down and fall behind. This entanglement has been with me until the application.
For example, studying abroad has always been my dream. In fact, I didn't know why before, but my parents' demands were very strong (when I first started working, my father even threatened to sever the father-son relationship for two years). I also feel that it seems that all good students want to study abroad, and it would be great to go to Harvard and Yale or something. But this motivation is not lasting, so I can't work hard, so I didn't make it. When it comes to work, the only good plan to go abroad is MBA, but it was at that time that I began to think about my career development. When I know, I must think clearly about what to do after I finish my MBA, otherwise it is no joke to add up 1 10,000 in two years. After working for two years, I found that it was still very glamorous to come back from MBA to do investment banking consulting, so I decided to go. But it was all hearsay and background. I feel that the background of a Fortune 500 company is too simple and insufficient, and the application background is not as good as those consulted by investment banks. So I just had a good opportunity to go to another Fortune 500 company and find a higher position, and I want to apply later. When I first arrived at the new company, my work was very busy and challenging. Besides, I got married and my parents didn't rush me. Once I really gave up the idea of applying completely. Until April of 20 10, a colleague of the company went to Wharton. Out of comparison and strong desire to go out and see, I made up my mind to take this road.
In the process of applying for a job, with the deepening of my understanding of myself, I will realize how funny it was to change jobs in the past in order to apply for a job, but I also objectively realize the value of this experience, not to mention the professional development speed of solid and the recognition of top, the company experiences of two different cultures at different stages and my own unremitting thinking and comparison, which gave me a deeper understanding and more love for the consumer goods industry. I began to know what I had gained from my serious work, and I also began to know what I wanted to do. Combining my childhood experience and my hobbies, all the points are connected! Then you can start to face up to your own uniqueness, so that you will have enough confidence and strength when writing your composition. So looking back, I finally embarked on the road of applying with an impulse and blindness, but in the process, I also learned a little about my career development beliefs and the true meaning of life happiness. What could be more valuable than this? If there is no good result, I dare not say that I can accept it. After all, my mood will still affect my attention to the results, but I must be more clear than before that applying for an MBA is not the only way I pursue in life, and I have gained much more in this process than applying for it. Back to the beginning, there was a lot of luck, just like the stock market rose and fell every day, but with a deeper understanding and persistent pursuit, the luck on the long road of life would be much lower. First, even if a stock with good fundamentals goes up and down every day, it must be a long-term growth trend. Therefore, the application process has actually made me feel more about myself and my life, which is very important at the age of 30.
D Postscript: If you are ready to embark on the road.
If you have made up your mind to embark on this road, please be prepared to accept challenges, setbacks, time pressure and spiritual destruction. But if you can do it better, please enjoy the process. Because there is no better opportunity to force us to think and sort ourselves out systematically, and even find what we really love. After working for several years, confusion is almost inevitable. At this time, let's use the application process to squeeze out some time to think about ourselves. Then, no matter what the application result is, you should be more clear about your ideas and embark on a more determined ideal life. This may be more important for us in China. We should use this process to get rid of the shackles of thought and embrace our own rejuvenation!
By introducing the experience of applying to Harvard Business School, I believe that for many people who plan to go to the United States for graduate studies, they can refer to the above experience when choosing a business school.