Calling all UWA Foster MBA Applicants: (2020 Intake) Class of 2022!

Does anyone know if there is a different application process for reapplicants?
I could not find any information on the Foster website.

jitmondal

You are correct. I also don't find any information about reapplicants. I advise you to contact the Graduate School at uwgrad@uw.edu or 206.685.2630.

Hi All,

I am not able to find department code 02 for TOEFL score submission for Foster.
Mailed them regarding the same, but to no reply.
Can somebody from the team help me for this?

Thanks,
Priyal

I think you got the answer for this query in another forum, right?

Yes. I have sent it for Code 099.
Thank you

So just to clarify to other Foster applicants who may be facing this issue - You should use the code 099 for any not listed program. Is that correct?

Yes. I have used it for Foster and NUS. AdComs also confirmed this.

Foster continues to be one of the best schools for Amazon and Microsoft. Let me know if you guys have questions. I applied last year and got in with some serious $$$.

Hi Souvik,
What is a safe score for an Indian candidate to have a shot at Foster with some scholarship? I am going to apply in Round 2, does that have any impact?

Thanks,
Arvind

Hi Souvik,

Any essay tips? What are the core values that should be focused on?
As an Indian applicant what could be the strategy to impress?
I mean there are tons of questions. Any tip will be invaluable.
Just share your overall experience and how you made it happen.

Yours
troubled applicant

There are no safe score guarantees - but only anecdotal evidence. From my year, guy with a 740 got a full ride! Girl with a 680 did not get a scholarship!

Here were my essays! Enjoy reading and be kind!

Inspiring Experience Essay (500 words maximum) – Please tell us about an experience that inspired or confirmed your decision to pursue the MBA.

I faced my biggest career challenge to date when I could not convince others in my organization to adopt an impact evaluation strategy that I had created. One of our biggest hurdles has been proving to donors that our leadership programs for school principals truly have a revolutionary ripple effect, ultimately transforming outcomes for thousands of students. However, since we only measured our impact by analyzing standardized test scores, the evaluation of our leadership development program was rudimentary at best. What frustrated me about this is that I knew that our holistic programs truly changed lives, and that mere test scores alone were overly-simplistic. I then devised a plan for a new, multi-faceted way to attempt to quantify our programs’ effectiveness.

When I presented this idea to my fellow senior staff members, they strongly disagreed. Most of them were former teachers, and they favored maintaining the status quo of standardized tests as our only metric. As a former teacher myself, I saw where my colleagues were coming from, as scores were certainly the easiest way to measure progress. It was a crushing blow because I had thought that my strategy would be welcome by other staff members as it could potentially solve our funding challenge. However, the monitoring and evaluation team and the program teams were not convinced of my idea as I failed to explain the how and the why of why my strategy would really work.

I attempted to move the team forward by creating a shared vision. I started with a group brainstorming session asking: “What makes good teaching good?”. With our collective experiences, we came up with multiple variables ranging from teacher collaboration to student health, which I incorporated into my model to help encourage buy-in. This started to win people over, but I still felt I had to show them proof that the model could work. I convinced our CEO to let me lead a cross-functional team to analyze school practices in over 100 schools in 4 cities. We collected data on the new broader variables, such as lesson planning, parent engagement, and student safety to map them with ISLI’s program practices. We assigned weights to the variables to determine overall school health.

I learned from this experience that a good idea alone is not enough to persuade others to come together. Involving others in creating common goals convinced various internal parties to contribute, and made the project even stronger. At the times when I was struggling to convince my team, I approached my supervisor who reminded me that I lacked the leadership skills that would have made the challenge easier. I needed to learn how to market an idea and show feasibility by implementing branding strategies that connect with our own organizational vision. She reminded me that her own experiences in an MBA program had equipped her to broader organizational challenges that I am yet to master. When I spoke with Foster current student, Mukund Rajasekhar, I became more convinced that a Foster MBA would not only help me launch new EdTech products but also help me become a more persuasive leader.


Tell us your ideas about what lies ahead for you in your career. What are the gaps or deficiencies currently preventing you from pursuing these potential career paths? How do you plan to use your time in the Foster Full-time MBA program to fill these gaps and advance your career?

I once found one of my brightest students passed out after a drug overdose. His father wanted to send him back home immediately but I advised waiting, hoping to help him turn his life around. Though I tried to work with him one-on-one, he was soon caught stealing and subsequently expelled. This experience shook me and remained one of my biggest failures as a teacher. I have witnessed first-hand that using technology in the classroom can help positively impact academic outcomes tremendously. That having been said, I do not feel that current EdTech products adequately embrace the full student: addressing emotional challenges and building the sort of psychological resilience that will ultimately help middle school children learn holistically.

This has inspired me to one day start an EdTech firm specifically targeting those in the fragile early adolescent years: one that offers holistic lessons beyond academics, with psychosocial and developmental lessons as well. I will first learn best practices after graduating from Foster by joining an established tech company such as Microsoft a product manager in their education portfolio.

In the last two years, I have worked closely on several EdTech projects. As a part of the core committee of innovation at India School Leadership Institute, I have developed two MOOC style courses on school leadership that has reached over 500 school leaders in India. I have been able to integrate classroom level learning with interactivities that facilitate retention. Further, as a part of the National Teacher Portal set up by the Indian government, I have consulted with the department of education to create a leadership curriculum aimed at urban schools and delivered through technology. While my expertise has helped me understand EdTech in a broader concept, I am yet to fully realize concepts of product development and marketing. My dream of creating products for middle school children will not be fully realized till I develop skills that help me launch new products right from conception to ready to market stages.

An MBA from Foster will be critical to this development. Core courses in Marketing Strategy such as Market Definition will help me create the scope of my product and create go-to-market strategies for a category that is yet to flourish the EdTech space. Further, electives such as Entrepreneurial Strategy and Technology Commercialization will help me create my long-term venture and teach me intricacies such as pricing and analytics that I currently lack.

Another reason why Foster MBA is the ideal incubator to my ambitions is its strong entrepreneurial support. I am looking forward to fully leveraging the Arthur W. Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship. I want to participate in the UW Business Plan Competition and hopefully gather my first seed for my venture in the middle school EdTech space.

My experience would not be completed without the diverse student organiztions at Foster. The ENTREPRENEURSHIP & VENTURE CAPITAL CLUB (EVCC) and FosterTech will help me network with potential VC firms in Seattle and also partner with peers with similar ambition to form a coalition for my own startup. EVCC and FosterTech will also be crucial in getting in touch with other EdTech startups in the busy Seattle space such as Word Lab Web and Actively Learn, where I want to spend my summer learning middle school products to shape my own. SF Treks led by Foster Tech will help me gather insider insights in latest hi-tech startups in education and beyond.

Finally, I want to bring my mentors in the education sector to speak at the campus. I want to engage Maureen Ferry, MD at Teach For America, and Sameer Sampat, former CEO of ISLI, who is now based in California as he pilots a global school leadership initiative in North America, to participate in Social Impact conferences. I hope to engage my peers and classmates in the similarly helpful mentorship that has inspired me in my own career. I will also help my classmates find jobs by applying the lessons I learned in college as our department’s recruiting coordinator. In that role, I expanded the number of recruiters coming to campus from 65 to 100, by networking our alumni in untapped cities, and ran technical interview skills workshops for engineers, which led to 120% more job offers than the year before.

I have always been inspired by latest innovations in education and Foster will facilitate my future growth of creating my own venture through its academic and experiential opportunities.

wow! thanks I didn't know people can do that (I mean share former essays). Thanks any way. will be very helpful

Hey Souvik,
Firstly,your posts related to GMAT have been very helpful. So thank you for that.
Fosters is one of my top target schools because of the Tech placement opportunities post MBA.
I am currently in my 3rd year of work-ex with a US based company in India. In respect to your present class and maybe the immediate senior batch, what are my chances just based on work ex. That is a huge worrying factor for me apart from the 710 GMAT score.

Posted from my mobile device

Thanks Souvik for the info. There is very little discussion about Foster on the internet, really do not understand why considering Foster has grown a lot over the past few years. Just to be clear, are you currently studying in Foster ? If yes, how is it going for you ? I hope I am not bothering you.

Regards,
Arvind

Just FYI, Souvik is at Michigan Ross, not Foster. He did get into Foster and couple other programs but chose Ross over other schools for his MBA.

Guys. What are you using for the CGPA conversion?
While most of the universities want us to report actual grades, Foster is asking us to convert to a 4.0 GPA scale.
I am from a top NIT and all the conversion scale websites mentioned in the application help page do not seem to have proper conversion methods.