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throwawayMBA2022
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Wondering how to position fairly unique intl. experience Updated on: 07 Jan 2022, 18:21
Originally posted by throwawayMBA2022 on 18 Dec 2021, 20:15.
Last edited by throwawayMBA2022 on 07 Jan 2022, 18:21, edited 1 time in total.
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Admissionado
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Wondering how to position fairly unique intl. experience 19 Dec 2021, 12:40
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throwawayMBA2022:

This is a really interesting story but I think it's going to be hard to incorporate into your MBA essays given that it sounds like it's all or mostly pre-college material. Those narrative are generally not appropriate for MBA applications unless somehow they remain relevant to your post-high school/college "career." That doesn't seem to be the case here, but of course, I don't know what exactly you're writing about in your essays so anything is possible.

If you decide to leave this story out completely, it could still make for an interesting interview response so keep it in the back pocket.

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MBAGuide
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Wondering how to position fairly unique intl. experience 20 Dec 2021, 04:55
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Hi throwawayMBA2022 , interesting life story indeed and I would definitely recommend you to add a subtle version of it (focusing on your positive takeaways from different countries and cultures) in your motivational/personal essays for B Schools. Trust me, backpacking through 50+ countries at such a young age is a feat- shows your international motivation and willingness to adapt to situations. This is especially good if you are targeting a global school in another country. Also how you eventually returned to your country and caught up on the career radar also shows your perseverance for succeeding professionally.

Best wishes

throwawayMBA2022
[Heads up this will be a long post. Sorry for any typos. TL:DR is down below]

There is a unique piece of my background which I am hoping to understand if its worth mentioning, and if so, where in the app it makes sense to do so.

Background:
  • I do not come a wealthy background - my family was very much lower middle class. Both my parents worked blue-collar jobs
  • My mom never had the chance to travel but always wanted to - growing up she said to my siblings and I that "one day we're all going to travel the world together". Which we kind of just assumed would never happen given our situation.
  • Well, when I was 14, that day actually came
  • My parents sat me and my two siblings down to talk about an idea -- they wanted to know if we wanted to leave our high school and instead enroll in correspondence school and go backpack around the world for three years
  • They made it clear it would not the type of travel we had seen in the movies -- it would be done on a shoestring. It would be dirt cheap hostels, PB&Js and ramen from the grocery store vs. eating out, very little air travel if we could avoid it (long bus rides), and every few months, we'd have to stop in a city to rent an apartment for a couple months to save money and catch up on school work. It would essentially be more like 'living around the world' than 'travelling around the world'
  • To make it work, my dad would stay behind and pick up an extra job and come visit every few months. They also said the only way it would work is we could keep up with school remotely.
  • None of us had been outside of the country at that point so it all sounded so exciting. So my siblings and I agreed - and the next day we started the process of 'transferring' to the correspondence high school
  • 3 months later, my parents sold our house (needed some extra money to get going), my dad moved into a small apartment and found another job, and my mom and my two siblings and I got on a plane to Central America
  • Over the next three years, we backpacked through 50+ countries on 6 continents, all while lugging textbook's around (before e-textbooks were a thing) and finishing high school.
  • To say we did it 'on the cheap', is an understatement. Because we travelled mostly through developing countries where it was very inexpensive, we ended up living a less expensive lifestyle than we would have back home. We became experts at finding inexpensive ways to eat and get around. (shoutout to hostels that have breakfast included)
  • It was a pretty transformative experience for me and my siblings, and significantly shaped who we are today. I feel insanely fortunate to have such an experience.
  • But it did come with a couple downsides, one of which was the quality of our formal schooling -- our approach to school work was 'just get it done' so we can keep going. We learned lots by travelling but that came from researching each country we went to, visiting museums (the free ones only), getting to know locals. But when it came to our formal education... we definitely had a few major gaps compared to peers back home...
  • Fast forward to finishing high school and returning to North America. My siblings and I all went off to college and we each had pretty bumpy starts. We did recover though once we figured out how to succeed in a structured school setting / filled gaps from our high school education
  • I managed to graduate with an OK-ish GPA (think B to B+) but because of the extracurriculars I had (+ networking my butt off), I still somehow managed to get a job at large consulting firm in the US (think EY, Deloitte, PwC, Accenture)

Fast forward to today:
  • I have been working at my firm for 3 1/2 years in a larger office on the west coast and have done reasonably well. Several promotions and managed to transfer into the strategy consulting team
  • I am now applying to European MBA programs with the hopes of making a move to Europe
  • Given the value European programs put on international exposure, I'd like to share this story (if it makes sense) -- and I also think it serves as good context as to the less than stellar start at school / B/B+ GPA

My question: how would you approach this? Is this worth mentioning at all in the essays some how? In the interviews? Or would you just leave it all out?

Any thoughts are appreciated.

For additional background:
  • White male
  • GMAT: 710
  • Took an extra couple of quant classes to help build alt transcript


TL;DR: spent 3 years backpacking around world from age 14 to 17 while doing correspondence high school. Shaped a lot of about who I am today. Not sure if its worth mentioning in MBA applications or leaving out completely.
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Wondering how to position fairly unique intl. experience 22 Dec 2021, 03:37
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It could be powerful stuff. Increasingly, AdComm's are looking to understand you as a person and they are building classes of divergent backgrounds. Your perspectives on things like remote learning and developing world education in non standard environments could weave into a interested career path story.

The key is initial brainstorm (we call it 3Storms -- because it's done from 3 angles). If your background has informed your later adult decisions, it's a powerful element in building your personal brand story -- which is the thing that the audience for your essays will retain and make their early decision based on.

We could discuss this in more detail in our FREE First Brainstorm Session.