Washington University School of Medicine's unique approach to admissions [Show summary] Dr. Valerie Ratts, Associate Dean for Admissions at Washington University School of Medicine, explores what’s unique about the medical school’s approach to admissions, including what COVID-related changes applicants can expect this year. Interview with Dr. Valerie Ratts, Associate Dean for Admissions at Washington University School of Medicine [Show notes] Dr. Valerie Ratts earned her MD at Johns Hopkins, where she also did her residency in obstetrics and gynecology and a fellowship in reproductive endocrinology. She joined the Washington University faculty in 1994 and is currently Associate Dean for Admissions, as well as a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Can you give an overview of Washington University School of Medicine's program, focusing on its more distinctive elements? [1:37] Washington University School of Medicine is an amazing medical school. The thing that I'm the most proud about right now is that we are about to implement a new curriculum, an innovative curriculum, called the Gateway Curriculum. We're looking at how to educate in medicine a little bit differently. We are going to educate our students while thinking very carefully about what their passion and pathway will be in medicine. We will be working to enhance their exposure to the areas of academic medicine that we think are very important for physicians. That includes research, medical education, advocacy, inquiry, and  innovation. The other thing about WashU that we think is particularly important, besides our science, is that this is a place where we pride ourselves on creating a culture that is incredibly supportive for our students, a culture of collegiality and collaboration. Academic medicine implies that the graduates are going to become professors or continue doing research. Is that a focus, or do you see your grads going into primary care? [2:56] That's part of the new curriculum, recognizing that physicians go into various areas of medicine, and that we're ready to support them and enhance their education to be ready for those various areas of medicine (again, medical education, research, inquiry, innovation, and advocacy). We want to expose them to those areas, give them the skill set that they need and the experiences, so that when they graduate, when they complete their residency and fellowship, they can use that skill set to go into a career in all of those different areas. That's how we look at academic medicine. It's not just research, though research is very important. hbspt.cta.load(58291, 'ac360b0f-fe6d-4846-8573-f8705e225171', {}); You have one of the biggest medical sciences programs, don't you? [3:52] Yes. The MSTP program is a signature program here. It's one of the longest running and largest physician sciences programs in the country. Research has placed us on the map here at WashU, but I always say, research is more than just pipetting away in the lab. Basic science is incredibly important. And we are very good at that. But research, I always say, is asking a question, collecting data of some type, whether it's basic science data or question surveys, and using that data to answer the questions and think of more. Physicians have to be involved in making sure that we get healthcare to the population. That's particularly important. We know that there are social determinants of health, and we are positioned to make a difference, and we think that we need to actively teach our students how to do that, give them the skill set, give them the exposure. What is the WashU secondary like? [5:14] The WashU secondary application is a pretty short application. In fact, we pride ourselves on having one of the shorter secondary applications. It's actually part of our claim to fame there. It has a little bit of demographic information.

Admissions Straight Talk

What It’s Like to Apply to Washington University School of Medicine

Stanford GSB grads discuss MBA admissions, entrepreneurship and affordable car loans [Show summary] Nicholas Hinrichsen and Chris Coleman, startup co-founders who earned their MBAs at Stanford GSB, return to Admissions Straight Talk to share what they’ve accomplished as entrepreneurs since earning their MBAs. Chris Coleman and Nicholas Hinrichsen share how their experiences at GSB helped them grow their startups [Show notes] So, you want to be an entrepreneur in something using tech. Or maybe you're interested in tech product management. Should you get an MBA? Is it a waste of time and money that you could better spend learning on your own, founding your own business? Two Stanford GSB grads are here to share their perspective, reflecting seven years of successful entrepreneurial experience since earning their MBAs. Nicholas Hinrichsen and Chris Coleman, who were previously guests on Admission Straight Talk in Episode 88, both graduated from Stanford GSB in 2013. While at GSB, they founded Carlypso, which was acquired by Carvana in 2017. Since then, they’ve founded a new venture, WithClutch. When we last spoke, you both had recently graduated from Stanford GSB, and you were running Carlypso, which you had founded as MBA students. What's happened since then? Can you bring us up to date? [2:09] Chris: A lot has happened since then. When we talked, I think we were going through Y Combinator. We actually ended up pivoting the business into a new model since that time. Carlypso was this sort of peer-to-peer car sales platform. We ended up pivoting to being a direct wholesale channel where we sold cars, leasing to companies that can't sell directly to the consumer but have to sell through these wholesale auctions. We became a virtual dealer of sorts. We built software that said, "Okay, what are the cars that we think are good for consumers? How do we figure out how to use performance marketing to our advantage so that we can market the right car to the right consumer?" We had a pretty good handle on that. It was a good business. It wasn't a great business because it required very, very heavy operations, actually moving around 4,000-pound pieces of metal all the time, rather than bits and bytes. The software that we built ended up being more valuable than our end-value prop to consumers. And so we sold the software to Carvana, and ended up joining as executives there. Nick ran the sell-to-Carvana business of buying cars from consumers, and I ran product for the initial part of the consumer experience, from the homepage, search page, and product pages. We spent three years there. It was a great three years of seeing the company go from early public company to the company everyone else is aiming to beat. That was a really fun ride, and we got to know some of the executives there very well who were super helpful and had very different skill sets than us. Now we've gone off to start a new thing again. Me and Nick have just started WithClutch, which is sort of a platform for saving consumers on their automotive expenses. Nick: Our first employee at Carlypso ended up applying to business school when we sold. So, business school plays lots of roles in our lives. The person at Carvana who we touched base with to “compare notes” (when what we really wanted was to sell the company) happened to be one of our classmates from GSB. I had worked on a student-run event with her, and Chris had been on a student trip with her. Thankfully, GSB reappeared in our lives multiple times. I don't think we would have made it to where we are without our experience at the GSB, frankly. Silicon Valley tends to disparage the MBA. When we spoke in 2013, you were very happy you did your MBA. Do you still think the time you spent at GSB was time well spent? [5:34] Nick: There are so many dimensions to it. If you go into it thinking it's an academic experience, you'll walk out of it with so much more than what you've learned.

What These Seasoned Startup Founders Have Done Since Earning Their Stanford MBAs

An inside look at the impact of COVID with Darrell Nabers [Show summary] Darrell Nabers, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Recruitment at Loyola University of Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine, shares how the school is adapting its program and admissions policies to life in the time of COVID-19. Changes to Loyola Stritch's program and admissions practices as a result of the COVID pandemic [Show notes] Our guest today is Darrell Nabers, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Recruitment at Loyola University of Chicago's Stritch School of Medicine. Darrell earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Whittier College and Golden State University, respectively. He then held various admissions positions from 2000 to 2005 before joining the University of Chicago's admissions staff where he served in different roles until 2015. He joined Loyola Chicago Stritch in 2015 as Director of Admissions and became Assistant Dean for Admissions and Recruitment in February 2019. Darrell was a guest on the podcast last year for Episode 325. Our latest interview focuses on the changes to Loyola Stritch's program, and specifically its admissions practices as a result of the COVID pandemic. How is the Loyola Stritch medical school program different today due to COVID-19 than it was a year ago? [2:19] It's very different. One example would be the fact that I am speaking to you from my home and not from my office. We as a staff have been working from home since March 20th. There have been discussions about when we'll return to the building. They have not yielded a decision, and because we're part of a larger institution with an undergraduate campus and the graduate campuses, that has to be a unified decision. As a health sciences division, we have been able to advocate for our third and fourth year students to get back into their courses, which has happened. So we have third years who are doing mostly didactic-structured content for the first couple of months before they begin their rotations. The fourth years had to take a pause on their clerkship training when the COVID crisis hit, and this allowed them to make up the clerkships before we had third years overlapping with them. That's a difficult thing to do, to have two classifications overlap and then the third shift. Once the fourth years make up the clerkship rotations in the next few weeks, then the third years will move into theirs, but they're currently participating in clinical simulations and exercises and mostly virtual content, but we'll be back in the clerkships soon. And then of course, the fourth years move into their sub-I’s and electives. For the first and second years, we are virtual. So there's an asynchronous curriculum which allows students to log in and conduct their coursework. There are also live lectures that are provided through a virtual platform. The goal is to bring both groups back at some point this year. We have preliminarily determined the early part of October for the first years to be back on, to actually be on campus for the first time. It's just going to require attention to the different health mandates by the state. Our main campus made a plan early to bring undergraduates back to campus, and then this last week we were told that they're not going to have students on campus for the foreseeable future. So again, I think a lot of things are in flux. When it comes to the decision to reopen the school, talking about changes, obviously we'll be wearing hospital-grade masks, we'd be wearing PPE, and the building will be tied to a hospital, so when we're within the medical school, we'll be wearing masks. There'll be compulsory daily screenings, temperature checks, a questionnaire, and an application that all of us will have on our phones to check in. And obviously, if there are symptoms, if anyone's symptomatic, then there's self-isolation protocols that we have for students. And then for staff, obviously we have protocols for staff and facul...

How Loyola Stritch Is Adapting to COVID-19

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,

Expert Advice for Applicants and an Inside Look at UCLA Anderson from an Intl MBA

Zack Timmons integrated business and medicine to take on a social problem facing his community. [Show summary] Zack Timmons, a fourth-year medical student at Dell Medical School at UT Austin, combined his passion for medicine with his background in business to create Good Apple, an Austin-based produce delivery company on a mission to end food insecurity. Listen to the conversation >> A med student and social entrepreneur on a mission to alleviate food insecurity in his area [Show notes] Zack Timmons is a fourth-year medical student at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin and co-founder and CEO at Good Apple, an Austin-based produce delivery company on a mission to end food insecurity. Since launching Good Apple in November 2019 as a third-year medical student, Zack and his team have delivered over 540,000 pounds of healthy food directly to the doors of over 17,000 people facing food insecurity. Prior to medical school, Zack attended Rice University where he studied the cognitive sciences and was premed. He later worked for two years as a business analyst at Deloitte Consulting. He plans to pursue an emergency medicine residency, where he hopes to leverage his patient stories in the emergency room to continue building programs and organizations to meet the health needs of our community's most vulnerable residents.  Can you tell us a bit about your background outside of medicine? [2:14] I grew up near Waco, Texas in a small town just outside of Waco called Robinson, Texas, and lived there with my younger sister and my two parents who are a huge influence on my life. My dad is a commercial tire salesman and my mom's a social worker. I think they've really instilled the importance of getting to know people and service in the community. They're a huge influence on me.  I always really enjoyed the outdoors. I think that's something I still enjoy today, from downhill skiing to long-distance backpacking. Most recently, my partner and I completed about 300 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail in California. Cooking is also a huge hobby. I spent a little bit of time in the Northeast prior to medical school and got to know Marc Vetri, who is an incredible pasta chef in Philadelphia. So have recently been making a lot of homemade pasta, which is great. When did you decide to become a doctor? [3:38] Probably when I was a senior in high school, I made the decision that I was at least interested in medicine. I will say one thing is that my passions for medicine have definitely changed and matured the more I get into the field. I think there are so many reasons to be excited about healthcare today. But I think initially, the way I started off was maybe a pretty simple story. I was really interested in the sciences and loved the application in helping people. That was kind of the initial impetus to my path. When I got to Rice University where I went to undergrad, as you mentioned, I had this incredible opportunity to work as an emergency medicine technician, and I actually gained my advanced certification through a course at Rice, which is really cool. So I did that for three years during undergrad. I really always had a passion for emergency medicine. Initially, it was a lot around loving the pace of the field. I loved the opportunity to make an immediate impact on patients’ lives. But I think more recently, I've really appreciated newer things about emergency medicine: the opportunities to solve some really complex clinical challenges. In emergency medicine, we see a lot of undifferentiated patients, which is such an exciting thing to take care of, and then more systems-based. I think we see a lot of the problems in the healthcare system, both medical and social problems, things like housing and education that really impact people's health. That's my new passion in medicine: How do we create these health centers that also provide medical care? Medicine is such a vast field.

Show Summary: How This Dell Med Student Is Fighting Hunger

Why Georgetown's new MSBA program may be just what you're looking for! [Show Summary] Dr. Sudipta Dasmohapatra, Academic Director of Georgetown’s MSBA program, goes in-depth on who the new online master’s program is for and how will prepare students for careers in data science leadership. Earn your Master's of Science in business analytics online in just 16 months, while continuing to work. [Show Notes] Are you attracted to business analytics but don't want to take the time off work to enter a full-time program to master the topic? Georgetown's McDonough School of Business has just what you're looking for: an online master's designed for working professionals. Today's guest is the director of that program, and we're going to learn all about it. Dr. Sudipta Dasmohapatra earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in India and her PhD from Penn State, and she's always been a numbers geek. She started her career as a data scientist in 2004 and her teaching career at North Carolina State, where she was Associate Professor of Marketing and Customer Analytics until 2017. In 2017, she became, among other duties, the Director of the Master's in Statistical Science at Duke University, and in 2020 she joined Georgetown as Academic Director of its brand new online MS in Business Analytics (MSBA) program for working professionals. Can you provide an overview of Georgetown's MSBA program? [2:06] The Georgetown Master’s in Business Analytics offered by the McDonough School of Business is coming online in January 2021. It is an online, 16-month, comprehensive analytics program. We have designed it with the goal of preparing future business leaders and managers that are interested in learning how to understand data and how to use data to create, share, and sustain value. The graduates of this program will be prepared to lead in key growth sectors where graduates that have deep business analytic skills are highly sought. This particular program has been rigorously curated to meet the needs of the current marketplace. We have integrated the technical aspects of data analytics with the managerial business functions so that the students can learn to speak and communicate the language of data. Within this particular program, we have both asynchronous classes, as well as synchronous sessions in which the students can join their cohort, as well as a prominent faculty, in a virtual classroom. Students also have the opportunity to come to campus. We have two week-long campus-based residencies that provide integrated hands-on activities to the students through a very intensive, week-long curriculum. One of the cornerstones of this particular program that I want to talk about is the capstone project. The capstone project, over six months, applies the program's concepts and methods and tools that the students learn in a challenging business data analytics assignment with a project sponsor. Students that come into this program can not only leverage the core McDonough and Georgetown community network, but being in the global capital city of Washington DC, we are going to connect the students to a network of people, programs, and complex data that have real-world consequences. Could you give an example? What do you think a capstone project would be? [4:17] A capstone project could be from a real-life sponsor. We might have, let's say, the military that has all this different data to do, say, cyber analytics. We might go to them and leverage our existing contacts and get data from there, and students would be able to work on projects where they can see the application of what they have learned in a real-life project. That's what we are envisioning right now with the capstone project. Wow. How large of a cohort do you plan to admit this year and in subsequent years? Is it a lockstep program, where all participants take the same courses together, or are there electives where they can branch out? How does that work?

All About Georgetown’s New Master of Science in Business Analytics Program

What's it like being a student at Stanford GSB? [Show summary] Ilana Walder-Biesanz’s eclectic background includes engineering, opera, product management, ballroom dance, data analytics, and theatre. In this episode, she shares why she also pursued an MBA from Stanford GSB. Should you include interests and experiences that are not directly business-related in your MBA application? Absolutely! [Show notes] This show's guest is a true Renaissance woman, currently interning for a company in Nigeria, after earning her MBA from Stanford GSB as a member of the Class of 2020. She also has a fascinating series of experiences before arriving at Stanford. Ilana Walder-Biesanz earned her bachelor's in engineering from the Olin College of Engineering in 2013. As a student at Olin, she also had an arts and humanities concentration in theater and founded the Olin Opera Organization. After graduating, she pursued her masters at the University of Cambridge in European Literature and Culture and was a Gates Cambridge Scholar. She then studied for a year at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as a Fulbright Scholar. Returning to the U.S., she worked for three years for Yahoo as a Product Manager and joined Stanford's GSB class of 2020, where she was a Siebel Scholar and an RJ Miller Scholar. She just became a data analyst marketing intern, working remotely for a Nigerian-based company on behalf of Stanford Seed, the Institute for Innovation in Developing Economies. And what I've told you is just the tip of the iceberg. Ilana has traveled extensively. Per her LinkedIn profile, she speaks English, Spanish, German, and Italian reasonably well, and some Japanese, French, and Hebrew. I'm not exaggerating when I say she is a true Renaissance woman. Can you tell us a little bit about your background? [2:26] I grew up in Portland, Oregon to two parents who had both studied theater in college and had started their careers as actors. So they pretty much pushed me onto the stage as soon as I could walk and talk. I think that's been a through-line of things I'm interested in throughout my life in engineering and business: I've been an avid actress and theater-goer. Dance came a little bit later. I was horribly graceless as a child, and my mother (who was actually also a dance teacher on the side) despaired of me and pulled me out of dance classes because I was so bad at it. But at some point later in life, I found my feet and really developed a passion for ballroom dancing. Can you go into a little more depth on how you developed your interest in engineering and analytics, along with your interest in opera, dance, and the humanities? [3:27] The humanities and opera and dance definitely came first. I actually discovered engineering through Girl Scouts probably when I was eight or nine. My Girl Scout troop went to a Lego Robotics sampler. Just a day where we all built robots out of Legos together. I thought it was the coolest thing. I signed up for Lego Robotics after school and eventually graduated to building robots out of metal instead of Legos. I did that throughout middle school and high school and that was what sparked the interest in engineering and in building robots, which is pretty much what I did for my four years of my engineering degree. Why did you decide to go for an MBA? [4:25] I was working in tech as a product manager, and I think there were two things that sparked the MBA decision there. One was I felt like in my role as a product manager, a really solid grasp of business was what I was lacking most. I had the communication skills, I had the technical background, but product managers make a lot of business strategy decisions. I felt like I was Googling around for things and didn't really have a solid framework or understanding of the best way to approach those. I also had a hypothesis that I wanted to move out of product management and be more directly involved in the business side of things and swit...

A Stanford MBA with a Passion for Both Business and Humanities

Could a postbac program boost your chances of acceptance to medical school?[Show summary] Dr. Barry Rothman, an Accepted consultant with 19 years of experience in health professions advising, shares his expert guidance for applicants considering postbac programs and medical school. Learn how this admissions cycle will differ from other cycles, and how you can best position yourself for success. [Show notes] Dr. Barry Rothman is a former health professions advisor and Director of San Francisco State University's pre-health professions certificate program, which served pre-med, pre-dental, pre-nursing, and other pre-healthcare students who were preparing themselves to apply to their graduate professional schools. Today, he helps Accepted's clients in all aspects of the application process to graduate healthcare programs and graduate schools in the life sciences.  How did you get involved in pre-health advising at San Francisco State University? [2:22] I was being a good tenure-track faculty member, and I was given the opportunity to be the health professions advisor because the previous one had retired. I had no idea what I was getting into. I thought, "Oh sure, it'll be an interesting sideline." Little did I know that I would fall in love with it. Within a few years, I would be working with many health profession students and pre-health profession students, and that they would want more service than our school was offering, especially the ones that were postbac. With their support and help and with the support and help of my dean, we created, from nothing, a postbac program that's been highly successful the last 14 years.  Most of the applicants were premeds. Then when it was successful, I realized that it could expand into other areas. We expanded into a dental postbac program, in collaboration with UC San Francisco's School of Dentistry. We expanded into a nursing postbac program, which was also very successful and very unusual. There are very few nursing, dedicated postbac programs. In your opinion, who should consider a postbac program? [3:52] There are two major types of postbacs. One is called a career changer. Some people really don't figure out what they want to do, career-wise, until partway through, or maybe even all the way through undergraduate school. There's a certain kind for career changers that will take them through all the medical school prerequisites and hopefully a few upper-division electives. They basically need all the coursework, or almost all the courses, that medical schools require. There's another kind of career changer, which is somebody who actually completed their undergraduate degree, went out into the workforce, and then got the epiphany that they wanted to go into a health profession. Interestingly, many of them are children of physicians. If you're a child of a physician or a healthcare provider, you want to make sure you're making this choice on your own, not because mom or dad is in healthcare. Sometimes, you have to really convince yourself of that, by becoming an art history major or a political science major or a public health major, going out into the workforce, and then realizing that, "You know, inside of myself, I really do want to do this and I've certainly been exposed to it, but it's not just because of mom or dad." I think it's very valid. I think it's really good to make sure it's your decision and not just because you're being influenced. And of course, you have a tremendous advantage because you've seen what the home life is of a physician or a healthcare worker, the good and the bad of it. You've probably worked in the office during a summer or something like that, and so you really are well-informed; you just needed to make sure it was your own decision. Those are the career changers. Then the vast majority of people who show up for postbac programs are what we call academic enhancers. Those are people who knew for quite a while that they wan...

A Medical School Admissions Expert’s Guide to Postbacs and Med Schools

How to write an acceptance-worthy essay for HBS [Show summary] Harsha Mulchandani, member of the Harvard Business School Class of 2021, offers her perspective on student life at HBS, as well as what her work on the Harbus Essay Guide has taught her about writing the perfect admissions essay. How can The Harbus Essay Guide help you craft your admissions essays? [Show notes] Is HBS on your list? Hear from this student about her experience so far at Harvard Business School (shut down and all) and about how the Harbus Essay Guide can help you get accepted. Our guest today, Harsha Mulchandani, lived most of her life in India. She earned an integrated MS in mathematics and computer science in 2015 from IIT Kanpur. She then launched her professional career at Boston Consulting Group and left BCG to become an investment analyst in 2017. She moved to Boston to attend Harvard Business School last summer and join the class of 2021. For her summer internship, she is an M&A and operations associate while also serving, separately, as a product manager for Harbus, HBS' student newspaper. For Harbus, she works primarily on the Harbus Essay Guide, which just came out, and its interview guide, which will come out shortly. Can you tell us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and what you like to do for fun? [2:05] I grew up in India. For the largest part of my life, I was in a town in the northern part of India called Jaipur. You may have heard of it as the “Pink City” or a city famous for forts and palaces, or more recently for weddings. It's getting popular. I spent a large part of my time, until I was 18, there. And then I shifted to Kanpur to do my integrated master's in mathematics and scientific computing. I spent about five years there. After that, as you mentioned, I launched into management consulting with the Boston Consulting Group. A large part of my two and a half years there was focused on consumer goods, and I did a project with the government of Rajasthan, which is my home state as well. And then from there, I went on to a private equity fund called Westbridge Capital. I spent about a year and a half there, and I'm here now. That's what I did before joining HBS, other than of course getting married. And for fun, I've been into dance all my life. I used to do a lot of dance growing up, in college and now in HBS. And I like to go for short runs and listen to some of my favorite podcasts. Why did you decide to get an MBA? [3:46] I guess this is the question that people ask any MBA graduate often, or someone who is deciding to go into an MBA. I guess the most important question to answer is, why an MBA? And I guess for me, the answer was never just about only the hard skills or only the more tangible skills. It was a mix of a hard skills agenda and a more personal development agenda. And the answer for me somehow has always been a cross cut of those two. My exposure to working styles had only been focused on my own geography, which is India, so being able to develop a more global working style, interacting with some of my colleagues who have had experience working here or have grown up here. That was one of the things on my list. I wanted to interact with people and figure out what it is out there. A lot of people do it on investment calculations and take the salary of their next job and say, "Okay, in how many years can I make up for the salary?" But I guess for me, it was always that you have to add that personal development equation into that. It's a melting pot of so many different cultures, being able to listen to speakers from Brian Stevenson to Alan Horn. And also personally for me as an entrepreneur, I guess America is a much deeper market capital wise. Just to be exposed to the venture capital/private equity community here. I guess if I put all of that into the equation, it would seem favorable for me to come here and do an MBA.

A Harvard MBA’s Advice on Writing the Perfect Essay

A Columbia Med School student's incredible response to COVID-19 [Show summary] Dr. David Edelman, a recent graduate of Columbia Medical School, shares his perspective on pursuing a career in medicine during these exceptional times, as well as what led him to co-found the COVID-19 Student Service Corps. The journey of a Columbia MD/MPH who is already acting on his commitment to health equity [Show notes] What's it like to attend Columbia Medical? Why did this newly minted doc also earn an MPH, and how did he co-found a student organization to help med students serve New York City during the pandemic? That's what we're going to find out. Our guest today is Dr. David Edelman, co-founder and past co-chair of the COVID-19 Student Service Corps. Dr. Edelman earned his bachelor's degree in biology and Spanish from Washington University in St. Louis in 2015. He then began his medical school studies at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. While there, he also earned an MPH at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. He is about to start his residency at Montefiore Medical Center in its Primary Care and Social Internal Medicine program. Can you tell us about your background outside of medicine? [2:20] I'm originally from a small suburb outside of Cleveland, Ohio. I grew up there, played a lot of sports growing up, and then left the nest to be an undergraduate in St. Louis at Washington University. I continued on with sports for a little bit there. I played football for a year, was on the club baseball team for a while, and then really found interests in Spanish language, which I studied abroad a little bit in Spain. I just loved being in a different place and being on my own and learning about language and culture and people, as well as global health and the intersections between health and equity in the United States and abroad. I've gotten into running over the last five years. I love hiking. I have a dog who is here with me. Since I haven't started residency, I'm able to spend a lot of time with my dog. I also host a weekly trivia question for friends and family as a way to stay in touch over the last few years, which has been really fun. Those are my little quirky things I like to do. When did you decide to become a doctor? [3:40] I think the first moment was in high school. I think it really speaks to how the teachers that you have really make a difference on what you do in life. I was in a biology class and the teacher I had in 10th grade, Mr. Grim, was just such a phenomenal inspiring person. It's a cliche, but he made all the science come alive. And it's not because we were dissecting animals or anything, but because he really connected everything that we were learning in such a fun, fundamental way to how we live and breathe and act as people. That got me interested in it. The only physician in my family is my uncle. When I was telling him about how much I loved it, that class in 10th grade, he said, "Why don't you come down to my hospital one night, and you can shadow in the emergency room?" That first ever experience in medicine was on a Friday night, downtown Cleveland, in a level one trauma center from 8:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m. I think even 11 years later, that was still the most jam-packed night of medicine I've ever had. I saw more in those six hours than I think I've seen in week-long periods ever since. It was a pretty cool intro, and from there I knew I wanted to do something in medicine, and that kept growing as I kept exploring more, and I saw myself in that role. What were some of the more impactful experiences that you had as you explored medicine before medical school? [5:13] There were a number of things. When I think of what led me to where I am now, and that includes going into a primary care residency program and integrating medicine and public health through social medicine, I think about these converging threads of my life.

What a Career in Medicine Means to This Columbia Medical Grad [Episode 374]

What's it like to be a student at a top business school during COVID-19? [Show summary] Eli Engelman, member of the Columbia Business School Class of 2021, shares his experience applying to and matriculating at Columbia’s MBA program, including how his experience has been shaped by COVID-19. A CBS student reflects on his b-school experience so far [Show notes] Are you wondering if an MBA moved online is a valuable experience? Or are you less worried about how your education will be delivered and more worried about getting into an elite MBA program when you didn't necessarily attend a college with an Ivy League pedigree? Our guest today will address both those topics. Eli Engelman grew up outside of New York city and decided after a stint in the Israeli army to attend the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College, where he earned a BA in finance and minored in philosophy and computer applications and business. After interning at Bank Leumi, he joined the bank full time in 2016 and worked there until he joined Columbia Business School's Class of 2021. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and where you grew up? What do you like to do for fun? [1:52] I grew up in Monsey, New York, which is about 45 minutes north of the city. I attended a local high school and upon graduating, I decided that I wanted a little bit of an interesting experience in life. And so I moved to Israel to study abroad and join the Israeli Defense Force. And after three years in Israel, I decided to return to New York, this time Manhattan. I wanted to position myself at the center of business and to pursue a degree at Baruch College. Like you said, I majored in finance and minored in computer information systems and philosophy. And I had a wonderful internship at Bank Leumi, which is Israel's largest investments bank, and I decided to join them full-time. I loved the idea of being at the intersection of business, as well as that international experience that being at an Israeli bank afforded me. And at Leumi, I was a member of both the portfolio strategy and alternative investment teams. For fun, I love to read, I love to snowboard, hike and travel, and discovering different cuisines is a favorite pastime of mine. Your undergraduate degree is in business. You have four and a half solid years of experience at an international bank. Why did you decide you wanted or needed an MBA? [3:11] There are three primary reasons. I think there are actually many more, but the three that spring to mind are the fact that at Leumi, I got a really broad experience and I thought it was very important that starting out, I would focus more on the breadth than the depth of my experience, just to see what I would like. And I worked on public markets and private markets, and the private markets were really interesting to me. I hoped an MBA would allow me to leverage what I learned at Leumi and provide me a platform to focus my skill on that particular discipline. The second was that I wanted to just surround myself with ambitious, hardworking peers who I could learn so much from, and that's really come to fruition in a profound way. And the third and perhaps most important, and one that you're less likely to hear in general, is that life is short and I wanted to diversify my experience as much as I possibly could. I wanted to live as interesting a life as I could, and I thought an MBA would be a great way to take a two year break from "real life" and explore and see what's interesting to me and hear different perspectives, and that was very enticing. Do you remember anything particularly challenging about the MBA application process for you? [4:53] What was the most challenging thing to me on my application was also the thing I thought would be the least challenging, which was my resume. I originally assumed that my resume's purpose is to highlight responsibilities, essentially to showcase the faith that Leumi or the companies ...

An MBA’s Perspective on Columbia Business School

What unique challenges can this year's med school applicants expect to face, and how can they be overcome? [Show summary] Dr. Herman “Flash” Gordon, Accepted medical admissions consultant, walks med school applicants through applying during COVID-19, as well as disclosing thorny issues like academic discipline or a criminal record. How COVID-19 is impacting medical school admissions [Show notes] Dr. Gordon returns to Admissions Straight Talk to discuss applying during the pandemic, as well as applying with blemishes, like a criminal record or academic discipline. What qualifies him to guide you? He served as chair of a medical school admissions committee for four years. Dr. Gordon earned his bachelor's at Harvard and his PhD in developmental neuroscience from Caltech. He began teaching at the University of Arizona's medical school in Tucson in 1991 and has been doing so ever since. He also served as chair of the med school's admissions committee, and after leaving that position in 2014, he's been a very popular admissions consultant at Accepted. Who can better guide you in applying to med school, especially if you have some issues to deal with? (And everyone is dealing with the issue called COVID-19.) How did you get involved in med school admissions at the University of Arizona? [2:14] Like so many committee assignments, I was drafted. I was fine with it because I thought it was an opportunity to help choose the students that I'd be teaching. As I got into it, I really, really enjoyed it. It's such an important committee in med schools. It's definitely the most labor intensive, even probably more than PMT. It's also extremely rewarding, because you're changing people's lives by accepting them to med school, and it's such an intense effort. You're working with your colleagues who are also really dedicated to this task, and the outcome is great. You end up with this class that you really enjoy teaching, and you feel good about them becoming doctors. At University of Arizona, like at many schools, there are a number of students who serve on a committee as well. And that's very valuable, and I think they get the word out to fellow students, both at their own school and other schools, how dedicated everybody is to this effort. They also communicate how much effort it is, but it's also something I think everybody feels good about. I know that from talking with colleagues, who say "I had to serve on this or that committee," the one committee that everybody says was really worthwhile was the admissions committee. There's uncertainty about the kind of education future med students will get this fall. (Online? Offline? Blended? Clinical experience?) What's your take on how they should be responding to these different challenges? Let's take, first of all, the uncertainty surrounding the MCAT. [5:14] First, it is what it is. Med schools have to accept a new class of med students. And so they're going to roll with it. They know this, and what the MCAT is doing is allowing students to apply even if they don't have their MCAT score posted yet. Schools are sending out secondaries even without the MCAT. What they're saying is once you get the MCAT in, then we'll process your application, but you can be building it in the meanwhile and it'll just go through when it does. It won't be too late. Even people who are taking the MCAT through June and into early July, they're saying that they're expediting the reporting of the score. So it'll only be two weeks. So worst-case scenario, there is the end of July. That's still very much within the normal season for MCAT. So I wouldn't stress over that. I think the bigger stress I'm hearing from applicants is if they don't already have an MCAT score, and they take the test and it's not the score that they would have wanted, they don't have time to retake the test. And yet they've already spent all the money and put in the application.

Applying to Med School During COVID-19

Are you dreaming of an MBA from UCLA Anderson? [Show summary] UCLA Anderson’s Assistant Dean of MBA Admissions, Alex Lawrence, explores the opportunities awaiting future MBA students, as well as the changes Anderson is making to campus life this fall to provide its students with a safe, rewarding MBA experience. Learn about Anderson's unique MBA program, as well as tips for submitting an acceptance-worthy Anderson application [Show notes] Alex Lawrence is the Assistant Dean of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid at UCLA School of Management and an Anderson alum who earned his MBA in 1999. Prior to that, he earned bachelors and masters degrees in electrical engineering. After earning his MBA, he worked in management consulting for four years and then returned to UCLA Anderson as director of the Riordan Programs before becoming Assistant Dean for MBA Admissions. Can you give an overview of the Anderson full-time MBA program, focusing on its more distinctive elements? [2:08] Anderson emphasizes early specialization and hands-on experiences. We're like the typical two-year MBA program, having core classes with electives following that. I think one of the distinctive features, especially since we were the first school to have this as part of the requirement, is that all of our students have to complete one of two hands-on exercises or opportunities, that being the applied management research project, where you get a chance to work with an organization on a real business challenge or a business creation option. We were the first ones to create that opportunity for our MBA students. In addition, we're not a one-trick pony in the sense that we're not just a consulting school or a finance school. There's a lot of different areas that our students can be interested in or focus on. That variety makes our campus, our culture, so much more distinctive than other campuses, because students come in with diverse backgrounds and diverse interests. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNyw9J9NHFU Other than the lockdown and pandemic, what's new at UCLA Anderson? [3:37] One of the big things is that we launched a brand-new campus, a brand-new facility building, which is spectacular. Before this virus situation went down, the students were really enjoying it, the visitors who were coming, prospects, as well as those who had just been admitted and are still coming, the class of 2022 and beyond. Fantastic facility. Our new dean at that time, Tony Bernardo, he's still short of a year of being in the program, though he's been here on the campus for over 20 years, so we had a new dean in place as well. Those are two of the biggest things. What don't people know about Anderson that you would like them to know, on a bigger scale? [5:03] I alluded to it a little bit earlier, talking about the variety of choices that students can look at. Very few people know that in the Los Angeles area alone, it's number one in the world for small business activity. I say that because when you look at the culture, when you look at the opportunities that many of our students are exploring and that our alumni are currently participating in, it's a very entrepreneurial culture. It's a very entrepreneurial environment. That's why I made it a point to mention the BCO (Business Creation Option), which is younger than the AMR (Applied Management Research)  opportunity as well. With our accelerator that is on campus, many of our students do still look at that opportunity of becoming an entrepreneur. Many may still focus on some of the traditional career choices (tech, finance, consulting), but as a secondary, they all also are pursuing some entrepreneurial ventures as well. When you look at the types of companies that alumni have started or are currently engaged at, it's so diverse. The last thing I'll mention is that for as long as I've been here, I've seen this increase in the number of students who are doing internships beyond just the...

What MBA Students Can Expect at UCLA Anderson

Can students make a difference during the current pandemic? [Show summary] Jalen Benson, founder of the National Student Response Network and first-year med student at Harvard, discusses what health care volunteer opportunities are out there and how to find them during the Coronavirus outbreak. Listen in. Finding volunteer opportunities for premeds despite COVID-19 [Show notes] Here's a common scenario we're hearing about from premeds and others in healthcare fields. It goes like this: “I had a great volunteer community service gig lined up for the spring and summer, but it was canceled due to COVID. What can I do to get this kind of experience and apply effectively?” Our guest today is Jalen Benson, founder of the National Student Response Network. Jalen is a first-year student at Harvard Medical, after completing his undergrad in biology at Dartmouth and spending two years as a research assistant at Stanford University. When COVID-19 hit and students went home early, he founded the NSRP, a national network of medical, nursing, and PA students in all fifty states that helps connect volunteers with the organizations that need them and might not know they’re there. While many traditional internships and volunteer opportunities are shelved, there are still many ways you can help. The trick is to know where to ask, and realize that even if you can’t go on a far-flung internship, there are many local organizations that need help right now. Can you tell us a little bit about your background outside of medicine? [1:55] I'm from the town of Pensacola, Florida. It's in the panhandle of Florida between Tallahassee and New Orleans, so way, way at the far western end. Nice and warm, nice sunny beaches. So growing up in Pensacola, I really could never be still. I loved playing soccer, and I was always doing that and running around doing a million and one things from history, to working at the beach. And my family was mostly me, my younger brother, and my mom. And going to college I got involved more in the outdoors, and now I love hiking, and skiing, and the whole nine yards. All the things you get into going to New Hampshire when you see snow for the first time. My parents didn't go to college, so there was no warning of what to do or how to do this, it was, "All right, it sounds great." I visited, it looked good to me. I didn't think about what snow was, I hadn't seen it before, but I adjusted and I learned to love it, and I learned to play ice hockey, and ski, and go hiking. My parents still don't know quite how that happened, but here we are. When did you decide to become a doctor? [3:21] It's funny, I spent most of my life trying to avoid medicine. My mom is an MRI tech, and she raised us primarily by herself, so that meant a lot of weekends when she was on call, we were on call. Going to the hospital and sitting in waiting rooms, and I was like ... I didn't want to do this. I thought I was going to go and do law. And then as I got older, I fell more in love with science. And what struck me about medicine was the idea of the trust the patient gives you and the story. When you talk to patients it's not like, "Oh, my leg is broken and fix it," because I can fix problems as an architect or a lawyer, or anything else. But when they say the leg is broken they're saying, "It's broken, and it's really important because my daughter has a recital next week, and my wife is sick so I need to be able to go to the recital on her behalf," and so how to make sure we're doing that. The trust you get from patients and those pieces of stories you get, that's what really made me know that this is what I want to do. You help people now, get a piece of their story, and then they leave better for having seen you. Hopefully. Were you considering a career in research when you went to Stanford and did those two years, or were you always convinced that the clinical path was the path for you? [4:21]

Finding Volunteer Opportunities for Pre-Meds Despite COVID-19

What's it like growing a startup during business school? [Show summary] Stephen Cognetta had already co-founded his tech startup, Exponent, by the time he entered the Stanford GSB class of 2020. Today, he shares how his MBA experience shaped his approach to growing Exponent and what the business is doing to help job applicants land their next tech position. Combining a Stanford MBA with a tech startup career [Show notes] Are you thinking you'd like your next job to be in software engineering, product management, data analysis, or a host of other high-tech fields? Interested in learning about the Stanford MBA experience? This Admissions Straight Talk episode is going to discuss both how Exponent can help you land that next high-tech job, as well as how Stanford helped our guest run his startup, Exponent. Stephen Cognetta earned his bachelor's at Princeton in computer science before taking a position at Google in product management, where he did work on Google search features and then Android. In 2017, he founded Exponent and joined the Stanford MBA class of 2020 a little while later. Let's hear about his business, his MBA experience, and where he's headed.  Can you tell us a little bit about your background, where you grew up, and what you like to do for fun (when you can leave your house)? [2:07] I grew up in the Bay Area; my life always keeps pulling me back here, to the San Francisco Bay Area. I worked at Google, as you mentioned, for a couple of years. Then when I was founding Exponent, I took a big cross-country road trip where I went to 44 different states over a year and a half. I was doing a little bit of the digital nomad life, sort of starting a company, traveling, trying to explore and get out of the Bay Area. But of course, it took me back. My life took me back there, and I came back to Stanford for a great opportunity. So I'm back in the Bay Area.  Some things I like to do for fun: Obviously, I love road trips, exploring and seeing things. I'm a huge fan of puzzles and riddles and things like that. I go crazy for twisting plots of TV shows and movies and stuff like that, which is probably what got me to be a computer science major in the first place. What was the most interesting place you visited when you took that 44-state road trip? [3:11] I really loved the natural beauty of West Virginia. It was just super beautiful. I was staying in a town called Lewisburg, and it was near a bunch of natural beauty. I also felt like there was a lot of an appreciation for the land there that felt really special. It was on my list because it was one of those places that I didn't know much about or had much of an expectation about, but I was just blown away by the forest and the natural beauty and all the local types of flowers and plants that were there in the region. I think we in California have this idea that we're the most beautiful place in the US. California is certainly beautiful, but there's just so much beauty in other parts of the US also that I was not exposed to or knew about. Why did you decide you wanted an MBA? [4:58] My story is actually a little different. I applied to a deferred admin program. Actually, while I was at Princeton, I applied to get into Stanford. The deferred admit program, for those that don't know, is where you get admitted, and then you can choose to go to the MBA school two to four years after your graduation date from undergrad. At the time, I knew I really valued higher education. I knew that there would be a path for me where I could potentially get an MBA and it was an option that I thought was really helpful, especially as a STEM major, since I was majoring in computer science. And I thought that it would really balance out my skillset of having both the technical background and then also, the business acumen to help me succeed in that entrepreneurial world that I was hoping to get into. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgzr3D1xTVM

Combining a Stanford MBA with a Tech Startup Career

Advice on applying to business, grad, law, and medical school.

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Admissions Straight Talk

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