Thursday, December 30, 2004
Q&A
I received an e-mail with some questions and I thought I would post my answers here for all to see. My responses are altogether too brief, but unfortunately the job search is taking all my time these days:
Q: I currently work for [a consulting firm] doing IT consulting work - however, my goal is to enter the Strategy Consulting arena. I believe that most HBS students/applicants are career changers (I believe you are one of them) - do you think this is a disadvantage while applying to HBS - are there others that want to make a similar shift in consulting (IT to Strategy)?
A: As long as you have a clear goal in mind and it is consistent with your experience and the rest of your application, you should be all set. There aren’t a lot of IT consultants in general at HBS, at least not compared to Strategy Consultants. I don’t know why that is…
Q: What kind of community and leadership activities (inside and outside work) were you involved in before HBS?
A: I had relatively little in the way of EC activities. Fortunately, HBS knows (or assumes) that most applicants work a lot of hours, so it wasn't a big deal.
Q: What are your thoughts on acing the GMAT - I take it in Feb. How did you prepare?
A: I used the Kaplan GMAT prep book and another book recommended by Montauk that I can't remember or find on Amazon. Plus the sample tests on the GMAT website. Everyone is so different with regards to test preparation that my style probably wouldn’t help anyone else...
Q: I currently work for [a consulting firm] doing IT consulting work - however, my goal is to enter the Strategy Consulting arena. I believe that most HBS students/applicants are career changers (I believe you are one of them) - do you think this is a disadvantage while applying to HBS - are there others that want to make a similar shift in consulting (IT to Strategy)?
A: As long as you have a clear goal in mind and it is consistent with your experience and the rest of your application, you should be all set. There aren’t a lot of IT consultants in general at HBS, at least not compared to Strategy Consultants. I don’t know why that is…
Q: What kind of community and leadership activities (inside and outside work) were you involved in before HBS?
A: I had relatively little in the way of EC activities. Fortunately, HBS knows (or assumes) that most applicants work a lot of hours, so it wasn't a big deal.
Q: What are your thoughts on acing the GMAT - I take it in Feb. How did you prepare?
A: I used the Kaplan GMAT prep book and another book recommended by Montauk that I can't remember or find on Amazon. Plus the sample tests on the GMAT website. Everyone is so different with regards to test preparation that my style probably wouldn’t help anyone else...
