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<\/h2>\n<\/h2>\nI was incredibly gratified to receive a message on LinkedIn from a prospective MBA applicant named Harley. Inspired by the call to action in my recent article for Poets&Quants, Extracurriculars In Quarantine: Building Your MBA Leadership Profile<\/a>, Harley mobilized to create an impressive initiative, which offers an excellent way for other rising business leaders to get involved during the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n \u201cI read your March 30th<\/sup>\u00a0article\u2026\u00a0and it sparked something in me,\u201d wrote Harley. \u201cAfter having already browsed around and finding only activities that required a long-wait or specialty I did not have, your article got me to start thinking like a leader. Two days later I began forming\u00a0pandemicprofessors.org<\/a>, a free tutoring service for children whose education has been impacted by the shutdowns. Two weeks ago, I began recruiting and we are now almost 30 strong.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Pandemic Professors is a stellar example of a relevant, timely, and collaborative response to an urgent need facing families and communities \u2013 especially the most vulnerable \u2013 amid widespread school closures. It has a clear mission, compelling intro video, and offers an easy and essential matchmaking service between prospective learners and volunteers. If Harley is ultimately successful in delivering on its promise, Pandemic Professors will be emblematic of what\u2019s possible when you apply your expertise to serve a higher purpose.<\/p>\n And business schools are paying attention. Six months from now, the question of how what you did with your time in quarantine and you responded during Covid-19 will be front of mind to the MBA Admissions Committee who reviews your candidacy. It\u2019s a theme that emerged across the Admissions Director panels last month at the virtual CentreCourt MBA Festival, co-hosted by my Fortuna colleague, Matt Symonds.<\/p>\n \u201cI think any big disruption, like the financial crisis or like the Covid crisis, creates opportunities for people to really show how they lead and how they lead with heart,\u201d remarked Pete Johnson, Berkeley Haas Admissions Director, in\u00a0this panel with fellow heads of MBA Admissions at Stanford GSB, UCLA Anderson and UW Foster<\/a>. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t mean necessarily that in your professional life you\u2019re going to have the opportunity to suddenly lead the big team. It might be something you\u2019re doing outside of work altogether. And I hope to see a lot of really interesting essays next year about how people have used the opportunities that have presented themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n My Fortuna colleague, Brittany Maschal<\/a>, believes Covid presents a special opportunity for what otherwise would be seen as a last-ditch effort \u2013 and one that is too late to be meaningful \u2013 especially for MBA hopefuls without extracurricular involvement. Getting involved now can fill a gap in your application that would otherwise be harder to fill.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a few candidates with no extracurriculars other than company\/internal work, who are now taking this time to reconnect with their alma maters and get involved in their virtual efforts as a volunteer,\u201d says Brittany. \u201cColleges need extra support right now with admissions and recruitment efforts given the changes to that landscape, so it is an easy gap to fill.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Brittany also points candidates to organizations seeking volunteers such as\u00a0Learn To Be<\/a>, UPchieve<\/a>, and\u00a0MyFreeTutor<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve been really impressed by what MBA students around the world have been doing to try to contribute to the ongoing crisis and to try to address it,\u201d said Chad Losee, Harvard Business School Admissions Director, in\u00a0another Admissions Director panel<\/a>\u00a0with Fortuna\u2019s Matt Symonds<\/a>. Losee celebrated a cross-program initiative started by current MBAs at HBS, Kellogg, Michigan Ross and others, called\u00a0MBAs Fight COVID-19<\/a>, which matches MBAs with nonprofits, small businesses, municipalities, and other organizations in crisis. Says Losee, \u201cI remain convinced that it is going to be business school students among others that are coming up with solutions beyond our political leaders.\u201d<\/p>\n As I wrote in my\u00a0earlier article<\/a>, the next best idea may just be the one that you come up with during a mindful pause from your work. But it\u2019s also possible that your most important opportunity to make a positive impact may start very close in, and that doesn\u2019t make it less worthy of your time and dedication.<\/p>\n Kirsten Moss, head of Admissions at Stanford GSB, cautioned prospective MBAs to allow themselves to be driven by \u201ctheir inner motivation \u2013 not from what they think we would want to hear.\u201d In the admissions director panel with Haas\u2019s Pete Johnson, Moss offered a reflection.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just talking to one of our recently admitted students\u00a0who is now in charge of her younger brother because her parents have immunity issues. She is taking a leadership role in her family getting meals on the table and helping him with his homework. This work, helping\u00a0your\u00a0family or community during COVID, makes an impact that\u2019s important,\u201d said Moss. \u201cCandidates can show leadership in many different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n Fortuna Admissions Co-Founder & Director Judith Silverman Hodara\u00a0is former head of Admissions at Wharton.\u00a0For more free advice and a personal, candid assessment of your chances, you can sign up now for a\u00a0free consultation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Covid-19 Crisis presents a special opportunity to be of service with your expertise \u2013 especially for MBA hopefuls who are light on extracurriculars. I was incredibly gratified to receive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1831,775,243],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49029","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mba","category-fortuna-admissions","category-admission-consultants","category-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49029","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49029"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49029\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49029"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49029"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49029"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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