Recently we ranted about a certain class of BSer who (we feel) is a little classist: The ones who think that it’s only worth it if you go to Harvard.
We want to clarify something.
Being committed to a school is valuable. Getting psyched up about Stanford, or Harvard, or Wharton, and locking your sights on that one school, and pulling out all the stops in making your pitch as powerful and polished and perfect as possible…. this is worthwhile. Commendable. Useful.
If you have done your research and know your goals and researched your options and mapped out your future and in that long and involved process, you have fallen in love with a school to the point where you’re obsessing and your girlfriend is threatening to ditch you because she can’t stand the endless talk about it and you can’t even imagine yourself going anywhere else…. this is good.
Well, maybe not overly good.This shows signs of imbalance and perhaps personality disorder, but the general phenomenon we’re describing is a positive one. This means you’ve done your homework and you have REASONS for choosing Harvard, or Stanford – beyond just the name.
Of course, anyone who even sets foot on the Stanford campus is going to fall in love with the place. Anyone who sits through an info session with their admissions peeps will do the same. This place is INSPIRING. And beautiful. It’s near-impossible not to believe that Stanford and only Stanford is the place where you must do your MBA.
Remember though that there’s 7,000-odd other people feeling the same way about it, and a mere fraction of them will actually demonstrate this to the adcom sufficiently enough to even get an interview invitation.
And to be explicitly clear: Our prior post was ranting about the cocksure BSer who asserts that only Stanford (or Harvard) is “worth it”; that’s the only place worthy enough for THEM. This other attitude we’re describing today is most typically coming from someone in love… and when you’re in love, then you’re working ever so hard to prove that fact to your beloved. If you’re in that boat, you’re coming from a good place.
Being rabid for a school can help – particularly if it’s motivating you to do the work, and even more particularly if your enthusiasm and joy and excitement comes through in your apps.
[Please though: if you really want to go to bschool: don’t apply only to Stanford.]
Tell us what you think.