Was not accepted to Kellogg 2Year FT program, advice?

Sorry to hear about Kellogg :/

Personally I feel that within a certain level (top 5, top 10, top 15) which ones you get into is a crapshoot. Yeah there are people that get in everywhere but for the rest of us surprises happen. I thought I was a great fit for Kellogg and had much lower shots at Wharton/MIT but it turned out to be the opposite. I got Stanford/HBS interviews but no Kellogg admit - confusing things happen. Maybe Kellogg was super tough this year haha.

If you really want to get a MBA you should consider more schools (maybe 3-6). Putting 100% effort into one school and getting rejected doesn't mean you can't get into an equal or even better school. You'll have to weigh your belief that only one school is the school for you versus your desire to get out of a technical job. But the main point I wanted to hit is that there is not necessarily something seriously wrong. Kellogg is hard to get into and at the end of the day it's humans picking who gets in, not an algorithm. Maybe in reality you're a better fit for another school - which is perfectly fine and you could end up incredibly happy there.

As for R2 versus next year...personally I'd think about my happiness level at my current job and the possibility of improving my profile in 1 year (specific promotion, opportunity, extra-curricular & impact, resume impact, essay impact). Waiting isn't the end of the world but on the other hand the Kellogg app is fairly extensive so maybe other apps wouldn't be too difficult to power through. Seems like the most difficult thing would be choosing which R2 schools. Or you could just say screw it and devise a plan to start your business.

Hope this helped you think things over a bit (or at least made u feel less crappy?) - good luck!

Quite bold of you to apply to just one school. Kudos. Sorry it did not work out.
The standard strategy is to hedge your risk.... build a portfolio. Schools are like stocks or women - unpredictable (I never know what makes them move)

Thanks man. I surprisingly don't feel as terrible as I thought I would considering how disappointed I am, but I definitely reflected on my application and realized a few shortcomings. This is probably because I know I only have a few weeks before the next set of deadlines so I am already looking to the next move, haha.

Ultimately, I don't think my resume is going to get much better at my current job (I work at Electronic Arts). I will be able to add some more technical achievements, and a bit more in terms of leadership, but nothing thing is going to lead to a sexy statistic like "negotiated new contract with company x leading to an increase of profits of 65 million" or something like that. For my ultimate plan, I would really like to do my MBA next year, which would give me the skills that i need to get out of a purely technical / development role and transition into something more in the product realm which I am much more passionate about.

Looking at the rankings, as well as the acceptance rate - given that R2 is going to have a smaller acceptance percentage compared to R1, I picked:

Duke - good school, background in health which ties into my background in medical image analysis research, although not necessarily my 1st pick because I am really looking for a school with a strong innovation / entrepreneurship program
Ross - known for innovation and entrepreneurship
Tepper - similar, tech school which given my background (worked for Yahoo!, worked at a men's online e-commerce apparel startup company and now at electronic arts and did my BSc in computing science, publishing 4 papers in medical image analysis)


How does that sound?

Thanks! Yeah, I think though this may work out in the end (hopefully). Kellogg is the school I wanted to go to, had all the classes I wanted to take, but by spending so much time on the application I have a really good base and I think I can quickly apply that to the other schools.

Women, that one is easy my friend .

Sounds logical from my super limited knowledge on entrepreneurship/those schools (not more than you just wrote). I was looking more at product management (but not entrepreneurship)/consulting myself. As long as you'd actually attend if you got in and are willing to live in those cities then I wouldn't say it sounds bad. Based on the EA locations I know of that would be a big change for u. But props to you if you're willing!

What makes a good school for entrepreneurship to u? Available programs/incubators/funding? Alum that are VCs/Angels to potentially fund you? Are you more trying to gain product/soft/finance+marketing skills then get a job then start a company or rather start a company during school?

why did you like Kellogg so much? I didn't think it was known for innovation/entrepreneurship unless u applied MMM again. Did you cut MIT/Haas bc of # of admits/%admits?

I second bb 's question - how much full time experience do you have (in terms of months/years; and if you manage or supervise anyone or anything)?