Stanford's application is due tomorrow afternoon (10/28/03) and I'm freaking out. I submitted my application over a month ago, so i thought everything was straight, but that isn't the case. I'm startig to worry that my recommenders aren't going to have their parts ready in time. I know that they're all busy, but I gave them two and a half months notice on this and none of them have submitted their stuff yet. I worked hard to get my stuff finished for Round 1 and I hope that I don't end up getting pushed to Round 2 because they didn't come through in time.
One thing that I will take away from this whole business school application process is that I will definitely get an early start on writing recommendations when I'm asked to do so in the future. If someone would think enough of me to put their fate in my hands, I'd feel like it was my responsibility to make my contribution as soon as possible.
Today was a huge day for me and a lot of other people who were applying to HBS in the first round. I almost didn't get my stuff submitted in time though.
I submitted my application on 10/4/03, so, at that point, I only needed to have my recommendations submitted and then I'd be straight. Easy, right? Heck naw. I notified my recommenders on 8/8/03, but, by the time I turned in my application, none of them had even had a chance to start yet. One of them turned their rec in for me last week, but, as of two days ago, two of them hadn't even started yet. I don't think I can put into words how frustrated I was. Fortunately, I got to work and had an email from one of my recommenders saying that she had submitted her part and my tech lead told me a few minutes later that he'd gotten his stuff in too. Y'all don't know how relieved I was to get that news.
Next up...Fuqua this coming Monday. My app is in, but I'm still waiting on one of my recommendations. I hope I won't be sweating like this again.
What's going on, y'all. My name is Marquis and I'm applying to business school for entrance in Fall 2004. I'm excited to have the chance to share my experiences with all of you because I hope that typing all of this stuff out will help relieve some of the stress that this whole process has caused me for the past few months.
To give you a litle background on myself, I am currently a Software Engineer with a small software company about 30 miles outside of Washington DC. I've got a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Princeton and a Master's degree in Management of Information Technology from UVA. My ultimate career goal is to become the CEO of a Technology company and my current education hasn't given me the business background to make that move, so I plan to get that background in business school. I could just sit back and get that knowledge through added work experience, but I'm on the paper chase and time is money, so I'm all about getting where I want to go as quickly as I can.
I started my application process back on July 4 by drafting a bunch of the standard essays that appear on most applications (Why MBA, Ethical Dilemma, Leadership experience, etc). That made things a lot easier once schools started releasing their apps in August because I could tweak what I'd already put together and customize them to what the schools wanted. I had to write plenty of essays from scratch, but it was a huge burden lifted off of me to have several of the essays already knocked out. I'm gunning for the first round for allof my schools so i can get this over with. So far, I've submitted my apps to Stanford, Harvard, and Fuqua and I've still got the Kellogg and Consortium apps ahead of me. Dang, I can't wait until i've got these things all turned in. I just hope i get into soemwhere because I've put in too much work to get a bunch of ding letters.
Ok, I guess I'll close this entry out because it is close to midnight and I've still got to put some work in on one of my apps before I crash for the night. i'll catch you later.