Double Journey

This past week, a co-worker of mine had her last day at work.  She was leaving the company to attend business school.  While I was happy for her, it got me thinking about my own experience applying to business school and my eventual decision not to attend.  Many people I know have attended business school.  I often tell people that I am the only one of my Princeton friends who did not get some sort of higher-level degree.  It is absolutely true, no exceptions.

So you would think that someone like myself, ambitious and smart, would have done like my friends and gotten an MBA.  But things for me were never that simple.  So I decided to outline why I think someone contemplating going to business school should perhaps think twice about making a decision like this.

First off, let me give you a brief account of my own decision.  I only applied to two MBA programs.  Harvard and Stanford.  These are two of the top four business schools and the hardest to get into (Penn and Northwestern being the other two).  The chance of success is quite small.   While this may seem crazy on my part I definitely had my reasons.  Like most things, it came down to money.

At the time I applied to B-Schools I was already making six-figures.  The average starting salary now for a Harvard MBA is $120,000.  When I applied five years ago it was even less, averaging right about what I made.  So just do the math.  Attending a top-tier business school will cost you somewhere in the ballpark of $200,000 for two years.  You add that to the opportunity cost of someone like me (lost salary) and now you are looking at something close to a cost of $400,000.  Yikes!  Now consider that on average, I could not expect to make more money upon graduation.  How would I ever make up the $400,000 difference?  The numbers get even worse at less prestigious universities.  Their graduates can expect to earn less.  So now you see why I did not apply to other schools.

So if I am not going to go to make more money, the only other reason I would go is to get a job I might otherwise not be able to get without an MBA.  I have two potential career paths.  I either want to start my own business or I want to be an executive at a large technology company.  The goals are similar in that I want to be the boss at a high growth and exciting technology company.  The paths are only different in the risk I’m willing to take to get there.  Do I need an MBA to do either of these two things?  Not really, but it would have made it slightly easier.

Starting my own business obviously does not require an MBA.  However, getting one has two advantages.  First, I would focus on classes in entrepreneurship.  Even today, I’m not totally sure where I should start if I really wanted to start my own business.  How would I go about making a business plan?  How would I get funding? What are the pitfalls I should avoid?  Second, it is all about the network.  It is a very big reason to go get an MBA.  The circle of friends and colleagues you will encounter will go well beyond your two years at school.  These are the people you will count on to tell you of new opportunities or help you get your own business off the ground.

But when I looked at it, the benefits just did not outweigh the cost.  If I was realistic, I thought I could get where I wanted to be without having to put everything on hold for two years.  Here is a dirty little secret of the top MBA programs.  Those who are most likely to attend are often the people who probably need it the least.  It is a strange situation in that you have to show the schools why you need to attend their schools to achieve your goals but you have to be the type of person who can succeed given almost any circumstance.  How is that for irony?

In any case, the bottom line is that you should not get an MBA if it does not actually make any financial sense to do it.   Just do the math.

Lifetime incremental increase in salary > Cost of MBA + Lost Income

Keep in mind that it is the incremental increase you could not have gotten if you did not go get your MBA.   If you did not get your degree, you would still get raises at your current profession.  So you have to think of the total amount of money you could gain above and beyond what you would normally be able to do.

For completeness, here are some other reasons not to go get an MBA.  These are actual reasons I have heard given.

• You don’t know what else to do
• Everyone else you know, friends and family, have an advanced degree
• You are tired of working and just want a two year break
• Might as well, you don’t have a job currently
• It is expected of you
• You want to move across the country and your parents will foot the bill for school

I got a comment yesterday on my post on How to Get Into an Ivy League School. In it, the reader was stressed about trying to get into an Ivy League school despite the fact that he has started “late” as he is almost done with his Freshman year.

Before I go answer that question specifically, I really want to touch on something. In no way should you feel stressed about getting into an Ivy League School. Let’s just be clear, it is very hard to get in but not getting in does not mean the end of the world. The vast majority of people who apply do not get in and they go on to live perfectly happy lives. I firmly believe that you can get a fantastic eduction no matter where you go, it is up to you to make the most of it. It is true, that most of my friends who have attended Ivy League schools have gone on to have great careers but you should not confuse correlation with causation. Most of these people got into an Ivy League school because they are just the type of person who would succeed in any environment. Just keep that in mind.

So despite my own words which may suggest that I’ve greatly benefited from my Ivy League degree, please keep those words in context. You will do fine in life so long as you are smart and driven. It does not matter what school your diploma comes from.

OK, now that I got that out of the way, let me answer this person’s specific question. You have nothing to worry about. I personally didn’t take any AP courses my Freshman year. I only took one my Sophomore year (that was basically all my school offered to Sophomores). I did however take every honors course that my school offered in the respective grades.

I’m no expert on the subject, but I heard of people who botched up their Freshman year, and recovered their Sophomore and Junior years to still get in. From the sound of it, my reader is doing well in the classes he is taking, so this is not a worry. If you show good progression and you take the hardest courses you can your Sophomore and Junior years, I think you have nothing to worry about. So don’t sweat it. Do well in the classes you are taking now, and make sure you take the hardest courses you can going forward. To balance it out, you should be sure to be involved in as many extra-curriculars this year to show that you were committed to making an impact in other ways this year, not just academically. Best of luck to you.

OK, so one of the keys to having a great corporate pedigree is to have attended and Ivy League School (And by Ivy League I do mean any of the top-tier national schools). For most people, it is too late to change this. There is always the option of going to get a graduate degree at a top-tier university, but for most people in the working world, that just isn’t going to happen. This is for all the young people who are wondering just how I did it and what advice I may have. Remember my post about compound interest? The point of that post was to emphasize how doing a little bit now, can pay big rewards in the future. This is my view on how important it is to do well at an early age to get into the right school.

I want to be very clear about this point before I move forward. You do not need an Ivy League degree to get a good job or to be successful. Getting an Ivy League degree does not guarantee success. What it does do is present a signal to potential employers is that somehow, someway, you made it through a very selective process. This is an important consideration in many managers hiring process. My alma-mater accepts around 10% of all applicants. And this is 10% of an already very selective group. It reminds me of that Seinfeld episode where George is able to meet beautiful women because he has a picture of a model who is supposedly his dead fiancee. The women accept him because he has already been selected by another beautiful woman.

Every time I go into a job interview, at some point someone says to me, “Obviously you are smart, you went to Princeton…” This is an important point. By default I am assumed smart. I got accepted to Princeton more than a dozen years ago, and yet it still works and is paying dividends for me. It won’t get me the job by itself, but it at least allows me to get my foot in the door. It’s up to me to shove my way through.

So what do I know about getting into an Ivy League School? Well I got into several, I still do interviews for Princeton, and I actually had a college friend on the admissions board for a while. So what’s the secret? Here it is, there isn’t any. I can assure you that there is no magic formula for getting into the best schools. Each and every application is read, and read by multiple people. What catches the eye of one, may not catch the eye of another. That being said, here are the basics in order of what I believe is important.

Get good grades in the hardest classes. I want to emphasize hardest, because A’s in classes that aren’t challenging just don’t carry as much weight. You don’t have to get straight A’s (I didn’t. Got a handful of B’s) and you don’t have to be #1 in your class (I was #8) but it doesn’t hurt. Your record has to demonstrate that you consistently challenged yourself and that you excelled in those challenges. Ivy League schools are looking for people who know how to tackle problems, get things solved, and aren’t afraid of what might come their way.

Do stuff outside of class. Obvious but important. However, don’t join every club for the sake of joining a club. Top schools prefer it much more if you can show you were committed and exceeded in a few areas than you spending an hour a week in twenty different clubs. This of course flies in the face of what I did, as I wasn’t particularly talented in any one thing. Everyone at Princeton, besides being smart, tended to have one really good talent whether it be playing an instrument or being good at sports. Be well-rounded. I can’t emphasize this enough.

Standardized test are important, but they aren’t that important. This is coming from a guy who got 1560 on his SAT’s and all 5’s on the AP exams that my school saw. If you do well, great. It will just confirm the other facts. If you do poorly, you aren’t sunk yet, the rest of your application is much more important. I knew people who got 1600 and didn’t get in. I knew some people who were in the 1100’s and got in. There were probably people even lower than that. So do your best, and as long as you are OK, then don’t worry about it.

Be interesting. Don’t do what everyone else does. This will come out in your application. These people read dozens of applications a day. Believe me, they all start to sound the same. If you have some unique talent or some special life experience, make sure it comes out in your application. However don’t write about how winning the big game made your realize blah blah blah. They’ve heard it all before. At the same time, don’t be too cute either. Chances are, among the thousands of applications over a dozen years, someone has tried the same tactic. Just be honest, and yourself.

Some things that aren’t that important include your recommendations and your interview. Everyone gets a good recommendation. At worse, it can only be a small negative. The same goes for interviews. Don’t stress over them. Most high-schoolers have never been in an interview, and they are very nervous going in. Believe me, it isn’t weighted all that much. I didn’t even interview with Princeton.  If you want advice on how to do well in your Ivy League interview, follow the preceding link.

That’s all it takes, and a little bit of luck. Did I miss anything? If you have questions or want to know more about my experiences, feel free to leave a comment, and I’ll try to respond.

My girlfriend was reading a book called The World’s Greatest Resumes by Robert WM. Meier. In it he talks a lot about having the perfect corporate pedigree and how his book can help those that don’t have a perfect corporate pedigree. It tells you how to emphasize certain aspects of your resume, and how to work your way around some of your weaknesses. Overall, I think she would recommend the book, as her resume looks pretty good now.

I write about this because when I asked about the book, she told me I didn’t need it, because I have the perfect corporate pedigree. I laughed when she said this, except she was serious. I’ve never really thought of myself this way despite the fact that I’ve always seem to be able to find a job, and a good job, when I want one. So just what does make a perfect corporate pedigree? While not coming out and explicitly saying it, Meier seems to suggest that a great pedigree involves

• Having an Ivy League Degree
• Working for a big Fortune 500 Company
• Having a continuous work history that shows good career progression

I fit the bill because I graduated from Princeton University, I have worked for two Fortune 500 Companies, Accenture and Microsoft, and I have no large gaps in my resume. I believe I took a small step backwards with my move to Microsoft, but I can easily explain the move and to outsiders it looks like a smart career move. So having these “qualifications” supposedly makes me more desirable to potential employers. Is it true?

Hard to say. I would say there is no doubt that many doors have been opened to me because the Princeton and Microsoft name carry some clout. I have a pretty high success rate of responses to people who I sent my resume to. I would say that of all the resumes I sent out in my latest job search, I had about a 40% response rate. This is a phenomenal number. But I want to stress this. I think this allowed me to get a call back, I don’t think it helped me all that much to actually get the job. But considering the fact that getting the call back might be the hardest part, then this may indeed be a key success factor.

HR and hiring managers might look through hundreds of resumes to fill an important position. Lots of times, they will only scan your resume and look at your eduction, job history, and previous titles. It is important to have something on your resume that will let you stand out from the crowd in this case, and having the above criteria certainly won’t hurt you.

The point of me writing this post is that you need to understand what many employers are looking for in order to prepare for it accordingly. If you have the above pedigree, great, you are set. Just make sure your resume looks decent and that you use the advantage that you have wisely. If you don’t, you need to be sure that you are showing off your qualifications in some other way to stand out. Further, if you have the opportunity to enhance your resume in some way, like going to get your MBA at a top-tier school, or to go work for a Fortune 500 company, you need to seriously consider it.

That’s my admittedly bias perspective. What do you think? How important is having a good “corporate pedigree”?