How I Got Into Business School, Part 3

(Wow, did the last 2 weeks ever get away from me. Here's the end of the story...)

Richard: "OK, walked into the wrong building... lost in the desert... to be honest, I'm almost afraid to ask this, but... what do you want to do with your life? What are your long-term goals?"

So I looked at him and I said: "Richard, I want to mine the asteroid belt."

At this point, he actually put his face in his hands, which is not necessarily how you want your interviewer to be reacting, so I added: "But... but let me explain what I mean by that."

And so we had a long conversation about the potential commercial opportunities in space: natural resource extraction from the moon and asteroid belt, zero-g semiconductor manufacture, tourism, solar energy generation, off-planet refining and heavy industry. We talked about launch costs, and the possibility of carbon nanotube space elevators. We talked about what I see as the human imperative of space development, as a practical means of not having all the species' eggs in one planetary basket, and as a psychological means of providing a new frontier to explore.

At the end of all of it, Richard sat back in his chair as though he were really exhausted, and for the longest couple minutes in the world he didn't say anything at all. I started to sweat a little around the edges. Then,

Richard: "Wow. Well, thank you, this was nothing like what I expected, nothing like the usual interview." He got up and walked around the table to my end, and sat on the edge of the table. "I think that if you get your application in by the second deadline, we can probably find a place for you."

I was shocked. Was he saying I was in?? I thanked him profusely and left.

So I did eventually get my application in by the second deadline, though I had to run to the FedEx place before it closed so I could overnight it so that it would actually make it. And sure enough, I got in. Yale was the only place that accepted me; Berkeley, UCLA, and Stanford all said thanks, but no thanks.

In the end, just as Mickey hired me based on a gut feeling that I would be good in spite of not having the slightest idea what his company did, Richard let me into Yale based on his gut feeling that despite not having a career trajectory that made any sense, or any apparent qualifications other than a GMAT score, I would add something worth having to the class of 2000. I doubt, if I had had my interview with anyone else, that I would have gotten into Yale either.

During my 2 years at Yale SOM, I always felt a little guilty, as though I had stolen the place of someone more deserving, so I worked extra hard to make the most of the chance I'd been given. I got involved in just about everything I could fit into my schedule; in a place where a full course load is 4-5 classes, at peak I was taking 9. I felt a responsibility to Richard that if anyone should ever review his work, and say, "Why the hell did you let that one in?", there would be evidence to suggest it was a good decision.

In the end, he switched over to the medical school to do admissions, in part I think because the dean wanted to stop letting in so many quirky people, and start behaving more like a traditional business school. And sure enough, since then the school has been slowly climbing the rankings, and slowly morphing into a more traditional place. I wouldn't have had a snowball's chance of getting in even 2 years later. Timing, my friends, is everything.

As a postscript, when Yale SOM was founded a little more than 25 years ago, it needed to distinguish itself in a hurry in order to avoid being buried at the bottom of the rankings. So, the market strategy the founders came up with was to approach a business education from all 3 sectors: public, private, and non-profit. Everyone would get some background in all 3. This was unheard of- at other business schools, if you were interested in having a career in public service or in the non-profit sector, you could certainly find a few classes, but the assumption was that pretty much everyone would go into the private sector, and that those people didn't need to know anything about public sector or non-profit sector issues.

As a way of highlighting this revolutionary philosophical approach, Yale SOM decided to call their degree an MPPM, a Master in Public and Private Management, rather than call it an MBA. And until 1998, that's how it was.

By 1998, the reputation of the school had started to mature, and basically no student, once graduated, referred to their degree as an MPPM anymore. Everyone called it an MBA. And the dean, once again wanting to be a little less quirky, decided it was time to kill the MPPM. But, the classes of 1999 and 2000 were offered the choice of what their degree would be called. Everyone after that would receive an MBA.

I attended the 1999 graduation, because Laszlo was graduating. In his class, 6 people out of more than 200 chose to keep their MPPM, rather than convert to an MBA. Ever practical, Laszlo also went with the MBA. I expected that my class would be similar. In the weeks leading up to my graduation, speculation was rampant about who might choose to keep an MPPM.

Graduation at Yale consists of 2 parts: first, a massive ceremony in the central quad where all students, undergrad and grad, get together, followed by separate ceremonies at each of the graduate schools and undergrad colleges. Imagine my surprise when our dean got up and presented "212 candidates for the degree of Master in Business Administration, and 1 candidate for the degree of Master in Public and Private Management."

Yes, that's right. Yours truly was the only one who went with the MPPM. Our dean, anxious to kill the degree and conform (he came to us out of Wall Street, so his instinct is herd behavior), audibly gritted his teeth as he said the MPPM part. I felt a little bit of impish pride about that.

At our separate SOM only ceremony, when he announced my name, and my MPPM, several of the old guard professors, who had been with the school since its beginning, got up and gave me a standing ovation. I felt both proud, and a little sheepish. I mean, I never thought for a moment I'd be the only one to do it. But I like to think that had Richard been there, he'd have been proud.

And that's how I got into business school.