MBA Admissions Consultant
Joined: 26 Dec 2008
Posts: 2457
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Re: Gov't Experience
[#permalink]
05 Mar 2010, 15:37
To be blunt, the worst thing you can do is to make career decisions driven by "what the adcom wants" -- if your resume reeks of being manufactured (i.e. the adcom gets a sense that you're doing it for the sake of b-school admissions and not because you'd actually like it, you'll come off as rather superficial and calculating - which is worse than anything else).
Practically speaking, if you'd do the gov't work regardless of your b-school plans (i.e. it's something that you feel you want to do regardless and is in your own best interests even if you don't go to b-school), then go for it. Otherwise, don't waste time trying to take jobs (whether it's gov't, corporate, sheep herding in Kazakhstan) in the hopes of "differentiating yourself" because it WILL come off as manipulative and calculating -- don't think you're the only person to have tried that and don't think that adcoms can sense it a mile away.
Again, if the opportunity is compelling to you, go for it! If not, don't. Treat this job opportunity on its own merits - and not on how it will be seen by an adcom. I know that you may feel b-school is some transformational thing that will give you the permission to take your career to another level, but the fact is paradoxically most folks who are at these b-schools would've been just as successful in whatever career path they took without the MBA (there's a reversion to the mean in the medium- to long-term and most folks end up in similar life circumstances/standards of living as they would have without the MBA).
What adcoms want are independently minded and accomplished young professionals --they're looking for compelling individuals, not "differentiated schemers". In any top b-school, there's a healthy mix of conventional and unconventional individuals.
Look, I can sort of understand where you might be coming from - hoping to have more reason to take (or not to take) this opportunity -- but that really should be driven by what YOU really want to do, what is meaningful to YOU, and not necessarily how others may perceive your choices (whether it's an adcom, your peers, your parents, your neighbors, etc. -- regardless of who it is you're trying to use as external validation - it's the same psychology). Yes, it can be hard to figure out whether this opportunity (or any other job) is what you want without defaulting to "what will others think of my decision" -- but the reality is the only gatekeeper to your own success is you and you alone (as cheesy as that may sound).
In short, what you need to do more fundamentally is to discount the value of b-school -- it's just a pit stop -- a luxury. It's not what will make or break your career. If you treat it as such, it'll free you up to do what you want career wise, and down the road you may very well end up being an even more accomplished or compelling individual than you would have if you had simply tried to manufacture your career choices to impress some "adcom" that you feel holds the golden key to your success.