Undecided - 01-15-2021 | Clear Admit DecisionWire

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January 14, 2021 11:40pm ET

Enrolled: Undecided

Admitted: Berkeley / Haas $

$160000

, U. Chicago Booth $

$110000

, Northwestern / Kellogg $

$150000

, NYU Stern , UT Austin / McCombs $

$80000

Applied: Berkeley / Haas, U. Chicago Booth, Michigan / Ross, Northwestern / Kellogg, NYU Stern, UCLA Anderson, UT Austin / McCombs

Entering Year: 2021

Post MBA Career: Consumer Goods, Entrepreneurship, Undecided

GMAT: 750

GPA: 3.85

Notes:

WL at Ross and Anderson- probably for not seeming excited enough about their programs.

Kellogg was my top choice, but as a BIPOC I'm starting to doubt if the fratty culture will be too inclusive.

Haas has more API diversity at least and entry way into the Bay area start up scene, but I don't want to be in CA LT

Help! Any advice is appreciated

Like (4)

Show Comments (14) Last: February 10, 2021

anon23656 Likes Earned: 16 OP: Also, I LOVE McCombs' programming- their administration's dedication to inclusivity and equity blows almost all T15 schools, except maybe Ross, out of the water. It feels hard to say yes to them though when I have almost full rides to other places that have more extensive networks outside of TX. Additionally, Booth has a great entrepreneurship program for the type of start up work I'm attracted to, but I've found the culture pretty intense compared to other schools. ALSO, another note- open to career paths beyond consumer goods, looking for the school that keeps the most doors open (0)

grichmond Verified User. Likes Earned: 1149 Wow - congrats on these AMAZING offers! Not only have you landed 5 acceptances (and 2 WLs), but you've got some serious scholarship dollars. Do you have a sense of where you might want to be long-term, geographically? I'm hearing you say that you don't want to be in California, and perhaps not Texas either...but it's unclear where you would want to land. If you have a sense of that, it would allow you to explore strength of network in specific markets - e.g. how many Kellogg grads are active in that schools NYC alumni club? How about Haas grads in NYC, etc? On the face of it, you have two M7 admits with ample funding in Booth and Kellogg, and you have Haas sitting right on the bubble of the M7 and offering you even more money. As such, I'd start with those three and work hard to conduct some due diligence. Have you connected with other BIPOC students in these three programs? That sounds like a must in light of your concerns. Be careful about stereotyping Kellogg as 'fratty'; I think you might find that many MBA programs have that element, but keep in mind that the best programs also have incredibly bright students from all over the world. So just as there may be a 'fratty' crowd, you will also find the international crowd, the startups crowd, the LGBTQ crowd, and on and on. With many of these schools boasting decent sized intakes, there is usually something for everyone. Note: This is where the total absence of 'admitted students weekends' or even just plain old campus visits is a big disadvantage, since you aren't given a chance to get an on-the-ground view. I'd talk to current students (or better yet, alumni who know what the on-campus experience is like) and I'd also connect with career services at your targets. My guess is that Kellogg with $150K for CPG - and their close-knit, welcoming community may be hard to walk away from. Best of luck.
(1)

anon22776 Likes Earned: 155 Congrats on your huge haul. I will say that as a fellow BIPOC, you might be blowing the frat life in Kellogg out of proportion so it should not be something you worry about. I think per your goals, Kellogg with the full tuition covered is very hard for me to tell you to turn down. Kellogg program is predicated on teamwork for most courses which forces you to interact with others. This way you can see the people you might not have met up and you can weed out people you don't want to see through these Interactions. (1)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1576 More details on this decision in this episode of Wire Taps: https://www.clearadmit.com/2021/01/episode-145-wire-taps/ (0)

anon15681 Likes Earned: 14 Hy! Congrats! Has Berkeley given you a deadline for you to announce your decision? (0)

anon23656 Likes Earned: 16 OP here! Wow, I can't believe I made it to the podcast. Super exciting to hear my offers being discussed! To clarify, I never applied to HSW. I didn't think I'd even make it in to Kellogg or Booth, and so the scholarships were a real boost of confidence. Not to project, but in my experience as a woman of color, there's a lot of ways in which companies and communities don't support people of color and women (so being both is extra exhausting)- leading to unactualized potential. Let how I applied to MBAs be an example of this. Without supportive communities, I can see in retrospect, it was easy for me to diminish my accomplishments and not aim higher- I actually thought I was aiming too high with Kellogg and Booth. This is why inclusive community is so important to me. Even though Kellogg is known for its collaborative community, like most business schools, the norm is very white and affluent. There might be pockets that are inclusive, but I know firsthand how community focused environments can in actuality only support certain types of communities at the expense of excluding anyone that is too different from the norm. I think this is a really real fear for BIPOC, how alienated you will be when insidious manifestations of racism consistently show up in PWIs, and it didn't feel like the podcast treated this experience with much nuance, the nuance that this topic deserves. (3)

anon23656 Likes Earned: 16 And I get it- admissions in general have to be very PC when talking about racial equity, and there's not a lot of great ways to talk about this when you may not have lived this. So please don't take what I say as an insult or complaint- I mean it to be constructive feedback and an attempt to open up the conversation about the nuances of how race impacts the MBA experience. I think the hardest thing about giving feedback like this (and I'm already gaslighting myself out from earnestly replying as I think it though), is how often you'll hear justifications for how the world is the way it is. I get it, I probably get it more than most people, that the corporate/professional world isn't fair, and it will always be more unfair for people who look like me- and what is the point for speaking up about this when it's such a non-issue for the majority of people? I think the worst thing though is ignoring these experiences, avoiding hard conversations, because progress can't be made without growing pains. (2)

anon23656 Likes Earned: 16 Also- I think Haas' deadline is 2/17! Haas' preview days is the weekend before (0)

anon23656 Likes Earned: 16 And also- to be fair, had I known that my decision options was going to be featured, I would have been much more explicit about Kellogg and why it's "fratty" culture and how it manifests is not engaging to me as a person of color. I shorthanded "fratty" to get to straight to the point- hopefully the context I provide above will be helpful in decoding the term. And while I have done a lot of 1 on 1 coffee chats, it's really difficult to gauge how inclusive a community is overall- easy for people to say they love diversity, but talk is easier than the walk. I'm looking for a place where I can thrive, not just survive as a person of color. I can fully take responsibility for not communicating that well. Listening to the episode, I had a pretty visceral reaction to hearing how different the interpretation of what I wrote was from what I was actually experiencing. Hopefully this series of context posts help clarify any confusion about why culture doesn't seem like a given for community branded schools. Ultimately, I'll probably pick Kellogg for career and the amazing individuals I've met, but I do have a lot of reservations (that could be applicable to any of the M7) about racial inclusivity by a school's whole community and how the program is set up. I say all of this because the last thing that I want people to be left with is the idea that it's silly for BIPOC to worry about culture and racial equity in these programs- I'm not so silly to believe in the stereotypes of MBA programs without critical analysis, and I have found in my research that the stereotypes do signal cultural norms. (5)

anon23656 Likes Earned: 16 AND also I really do appreciate the podcast and everything Clear Admit is doing! The podcast and site has been a fantastic resource that I've really depended on the past few months to get the lay of the land on MBA admissions. There's not another MBA admissions resource that I depend on more! (2)

grichmond Verified User. Likes Earned: 1149 First off, thanks so much for all of this constructive feedback - and for the kind words about the community we have created at Clear Admit! Alex and I truly appreciate it and may dive back in to discuss your case in a coming episode!
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grichmond Verified User. Likes Earned: 1149 You raise several points that are very eye-opening, the first of which bears quoting here: "Without supportive communities, I can see in retrospect, it was easy for me to diminish my accomplishments and not aim higher- I actually thought I was aiming too high with Kellogg and Booth. This is why inclusive community is so important to me." While it may be too late for you to "aim higher" with your b-school targets (especially in light of how great your offers are!), my hope is that others reading this who go on to apply in the future will take your comments to heart. It's actually one of the main reasons that Clear Admit exists; to 'democratize' the admissions process and provide support for all candidates, especially those who can't look to their left or right at work and spot an MBA grad. (4)

grichmond Verified User. Likes Earned: 1149 I also appreciate your pointing out that you think we could have handled the subject with bit more nuance; which is something we will attempt to do in future episodes for sure. I think I was personally having a bit of a reaction to your classifying Kellogg as 'fratty', since it felt like a potential oversimplification to me - or at least it felt like something that could plausibly be stated about any number of leading MBA programs. I may not be expressing this terribly well, but I guess what I am trying to say is that I wasn't hearing much in the way of evidence to support the Kellogg/'fratty' theory vs. say Booth, McCombs, NYU, etc. I certainly wasn't trying to diminish your very valid concerns about attending b-school as a BIPOC; just pushing for that concern to be pretty evenly spread across any number of top schools. With that said, I think you make a tremendous point that a school known for 'close-knit community' and 'collaboration' doesn't necessarily translate to a school that provides a great experience for BIPOC individuals or to any minority, if that school's close-knit community is forcing a single culture/community/set of norms onto it's members. That's clearly something that merits further investigation for any candidate choosing a school. Thanks again for the feedback and best of luck in b-school!!! (3)

anon10200 Likes Earned: 21 This was such an enlightening post - thank you for sharing your story! I have similar feelings about Kellogg and this post really helped me identify why I felt that way. I also resonate with your approach to applications. Someone recently told me that I undersold myself and really should've looked at higher ranked schools, but I felt nervous about applying to some of the mid-ranked ones. Hopefully this helps other prospective students, especially women and BIPOC individuals, recognize their full potential. (2)