Education
Chen shares his journey from military intelligence service-member to international MBA student to Accepted admissions consultant [Show summary] Chen Chadash, Accepted consultant and UCLA Anderson MBA grad, had a unique path to business school as an international student with a background in military service. He shares his insights on life at UCLA Anderson, working as an admissions ambassador, and navigating the MBA application process. How can an admissions consultant help international applicants understand the MBA application process and submit essays and supporting materials that highlight what adcoms value the most? [Show notes] Chen Chadash has a fascinating background: He earned his bachelor's in physics and electrical engineering from the Technion in Israel and served in an elite unit in the Israeli military for seven years in intelligence and cybersecurity. He then joined UCLA Anderson in 2016. After interning at Ernst and Young for the summer, he joined full-time in July of 2018. While at UCLA, he was a student admissions ambassador and has leveraged that experience to guide applicants to top MBA programs, including MIT Sloan, Kellogg, Booth, Columbia, INSEAD, London Business School, and UCLA Anderson. Can you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and what you like to do for fun? [1:51] I grew up in Israel, far from here, in Tel Aviv. I recommend everyone who hasn't been there to visit. Obviously, during the COVID pandemic, it's a bit difficult, but once that's over, I highly recommend it. I really like cooking a lot. Even more, eating what I cook. I really enjoy sports. I used to play basketball for many years in high school. And then other than that, I really like extreme sports. I like to try new things here and there like kite surfing, like climbing Mount Everest, scuba diving, stuff like that. I stick with some of them. Some I don't really enjoy, but I do enjoy trying them. Did you get to the top of Everest? [2:50] I got to the base camp. It's about 18,000 feet high. Base camp is what basically everyone can do without any special equipment. Beyond that point, it really gets dangerous. You have to get training, oxygen, etc. But base camp is what everyone can do if you don't mind the two weeks of hiking in very difficult conditions. And then just a couple months ago, I had my first baby. I would call that another extreme experience! But this one caused me to stop everything else that I was doing and focus on that. Why did you decide to earn an MBA? [3:37] I was in the military for a long time. After a long military service, which was great and a very fulfilling experience that I wouldn't trade for the world, I felt I had a huge gap in understanding business and how the "real world" works. It was a very different environment. I was looking for a way to bridge that gap as fast as possible and in a way that would be both beneficial career-wise and in a way that I would enjoy. Then living and studying abroad was something that was a dream for me for a long time. Both those things came together. An MBA abroad basically checked all those boxes. What was the hardest part of the application process for you as an applicant? [4:31] 2015 was when I started thinking about that process. 2016 was when I really started working on my application. First of all, it actually took me some time to really understand what an MBA abroad in the U.S. meant in terms of the application. It's really a funny story. I realized I had to take the GMAT first, so I signed up for the GMAT course, for the English part and engineering and physics. I figured with the quant part, I was going to be okay. But I felt I had some polishing to do on my English skills. So I signed up for this class. On the first day, it was me and some other folks, and the teacher asks, "Have you started working on your application?" I had no idea what she was talking about. There was nothing in my head. Everyone was like,