Is This Possible?

Well, during the first and last few months of college I waited tables. Typically, I'd work 4 evenings a week (best money was Friday & Saturday of course) and Sunday during the day, where you could make great money being nice to old ladies drinking their asses off during brunch. For the 2 years in the middle, I wrote programs for data mining and database analysis for a Health Insurance consultant. I generally worked afternoons and weekends, but after a few months, I was allowed to work from home or late into the night in the office.

Fraternity business typically took all afternoon and evening on Mondays, with intramural sports 2-3 times during the week (I was an "A" league doubles tennis champ - tough at UCLA, as well as QB for our football team & hit 3rd for our softball team and played basketball & softball as well). We usually had a few philanthropic events each quarter that we sometimes did jointly with sororities. As a chapter leader, I also attended several national leadership conferences (drinking with other chapters), as well mid-year and regional conferences. Since we were on the quarter system, I had to plan rush 3 times per year, and lead recruiting efforts. 20-30 hours a week was the minimum, but included social events.

I'd go to class during the day like everyone else, but generally I'd try to schedule the bulk of my classes on either MW or TTh, say four 1 1/2 hour classes straight through between 9 -3 if I could work it out. That left me time to still get to work on the days I had class, and free time on the days I didn't. I never really studied much, maybe 2-3 hours per week total.

It was pretty hectic, but thinking back it was still really enjoyable. I don't recall being depressed about my situation or anything. Of course, I ended up with crappy grades, but to tell you the truth, I probably could have done better. Getting good grades just wasn't a priority at the time.

wait till you guys see your own resumes in a few months after getting it churned from the career services at your schools.. trust me it will look a lot different..

my resume before i began applying for mba and after i began itself looked a lot different.. and i am confident i will take it to another level after i join the school.

It wasn't the jobs or the job titles that impressed me as much as some of the extra-curriculars like people who played in the World Cup or who had other really remarkable accomplishments oustide of work.

Yeah, one Lauder scholar even scaled Everest without the assistance of a Sherpa. The same guy claims he has reached the summit of the tallest peak on each of the seven continents.

I'm just curious, is it just me or are there any others out there who don't believe this stuff? One story I heard from the bschool circles is that some guy in China claimed that he saved a bunch of people in a flood....and got into HBS. But how exactly do you prove that kind of stuff?

Some people will go backpacking across South America and they can easily say that they spent that time tutoring or helping build houses or whatever.

For some of the extra-curriculars and community involvement stuff, I would guess that a lot of people make things up. Some people will go backpacking across South America and they can easily say that they spent that time tutoring or helping build houses or whatever.

I'm just speculating here based on anecdotes from friends who tell me how once they got into school and went out drinking with classmates, people tradee stories about stuff they put on their apps, and some people fessed up to their exaggerations or fabrications. Nothing horrible, but maybe they'll transform a one-time algebra tutoring session with their little cousin into something like, "My senior year of college I was a high school algebra tutor."

I'm probably being too cynical because I know that there are a lot of people who are truly altruistic. There are people on this board who have talked about some of the work that they have done and it's really impressive. These people I'm talking about have shown that it was a pattern of behavior, not a one-off sort of thing as Lepium mentioned.

But I guess I'm jaded because I've had conversations with people who are attending or did attend ultra-elite schools where they have said more or less to me, in response to my denials from b-schools, "You should have beefed up your profile, that trip you took to X, you should have described that as a humanitarian mission. You work in a group with six other people, you should have said you managed those people. Those intramural sports you played in school, you should have said you were the captain of those teams, who would ever check that?"

Maybe I just hang with some unscrupulous pr*cks, but I have a feeling there are a good number of people who embellish to different degrees.

The real question is how do people find the time to do some of the activities they claim. I mean personally I never feel like I really have enough free time to do the things I have to do, let alone volunteer to do much else. Hell how can one afford to scale the 7 peaks. Its got to cost upwards of 20K for a couple of them just to get there and have all your supplies shipped.