被商学院拒绝的感受是什么样的？现身说法：哈佛、沃顿、塔克、耶鲁都对我说不

    一次不幸的失误会产生连锁反应

    对于一个身高1米55、体重175磅、喜欢奥运会举重项目和超级英雄电影的27岁男性来说，没有被顶尖商学院录取可能是他遭遇的第一次重大失败。格兰特在公司从事财务工作，目前正在搬家和换工作——从东海岸一家位列《财富》50强的航空航天公司，搬往洛杉矶，即将加入一家排名接近《财富》50强的娱乐公司。

    在被五次拒绝之前，他还曾遭遇过一次不太严重的打击。一年前，格兰特只申请了达特茅茨学院塔克商学院，但未被录取。不过至少那一次他进入了候选名单。

    这是格兰特遭遇惨败的另外一个原因。

    2013年10月申请塔克商学院之后，从12月进入候选名单到第二年8月被拒绝，格兰特如同着魔一般，一直担心自己能否被录取，对成功的几率进行了各种计算。之前一年，有一位朋友的GMAT分数更低，但被塔克商学院录取，这让格兰特燃起了希望，结果希望变成了泡影。

    他回忆说：“我大概是有些不正常了。我就像个瘾君子一样。不停地去查看论坛，计算成功的概率。”

    于是，第二次，他申请了哈佛、沃顿、耶鲁、凯洛格和塔克。这一次，他不会再犯同样的错误，不想因为太关注被录取的机会而让自己变得神经质。

    但是，他却犯了一个更大的错误。之前一年，在焦急等待塔克商学院的回复时，他还能保持勤奋：他在面试之后与面试官保持联系，每个月发一封电子邮件——证明自己强烈的兴趣和毅力，让对方注意到他的存在。这一次在参加凯洛格和塔克的面试之后，他本应该继续这样做，但他说，这一次他却在尽量避免像上次一样，因为他不愿再为这种等待的游戏去消耗自己了。

    他说道：“今年我没有在面试之后跟进。我没有给面试官发邮件。我真是太蠢了。我太懒惰。我一次次推迟。真蠢。”

    并非因为缺乏热情

    总体而言，格兰特（他要求不要透露自己的名字，因为他还没有告诉雇主自己计划去读MBA）的条件并不差。虽然他读的是加利福尼亚一所二流州立大学，但他是全额总统奖学金获得者，他带领学校的队伍参加了国际大学生商业战略竞赛，得到了3.7分的平均绩点，并以优异成绩毕业，取得会计专业学士学位。

    取得MBA学位是格兰特多年的梦想。他说：“甚至在上大学之前我就梦想着能读MBA。”

    上大学之前，他的商学院梦想还只是一个朦胧的概念。但大学毕业之后，他认为自己希望进入一家美国排名前10的商学院攻读MBA，“但如果进入前十大商学院的机会渺茫，可以考虑前20名的学校。对于20名以外的商学院，我不会考虑，因为我不会为了一个没有太大价值的学位花那么多钱，”他说道。

    格兰特说道，两年前申请塔克商学院，并且只申请了这一所学校，“是对我的一次磨练。”

    他在申请时投入了很多精力。他花了近200个小时准备GMAT考试，并且得到了710分。为了准备申请材料和面试，他拜访了五位塔克商学院的学生，并在电话里向另外八位来自该校的学生请教。按他自己的估算，他一共用了50个小时研究塔克商学院的课程、教师和教授，读书，与MBA课程专家们交流。他将所有研究成果汇总为“关于塔克的疯狂记录”，其中包括他感兴趣的事实、学校里的复杂情况、课程详情，以及从Poets&Quants、网络论坛、文章和采访中收集的信息。他去学校考察过两次，这两次行程总共用去了他50个小时。格兰特说道：“我真的非常了解这所学校和关于它的一切。”

    阅读格兰特在申请过程中所写的那些充满激情的文章，就像在读泰坦尼克号船长爱德华•史密斯的日记。前面还在感情饱满地描绘美好的天气和平稳的航行，突然船便撞上了冰山。

    参加完塔克商学院的面试之后，他在开车回新罕布什尔州汉诺威的时候，得出一个结论：“我再次爱上了塔克。这让我有些害怕。在第一次申请的时候，我就知道我属于这里……今天我们再次重逢。”这一次，他还申请了另外四所商学院。

    然后，格兰特前往伊利诺伊州埃文斯顿，对凯洛格商学院进行了考察，并参加了该学院的面试，这一次，凯洛格夺走了塔克商学院在格兰特心中的位置。

    格兰特对凯洛格赞不绝口：“凯洛格太令人惊艳了，这里正是最适合我的地方，我希望在这里工作一辈子。”他在这篇关于此次考察和面试的博客中，又用了三次“令人惊艳”。

    此外，他还用了两个“奇妙”，所以你能想象他在收到凯洛格的拒绝之后会多么心痛。不过，事实证明，塔克商学院带给他的痛苦更加强烈。毕竟，前一年他还曾进入过候选名单，后来有一位学校官员曾告诉他，候选榜单中没有任何人被录取。所以，第二次申请塔克商学院的时候，格兰特感觉自己应该是条件更好的候选者。而且，塔克也是他最后的希望。

    哈佛商学院最先拒绝了他的申请，没有提供面试，但格兰特对此不太担心。“那可是哈佛商学院，全世界最好的商学院——拒绝，没什么大不了。”

    “没有得到哈佛商学院的面试机会，我并不意外。但后来沃顿商学院也没有提供面试机会，这让我有些担心。”

    One unfortunate fumble leads to another, and another

    For a 5’11”, 175-pound, 27-year-old man who enjoys Olympic-style weightlifting and superhero movies, not getting into an elite business school may very well be his first significant failure yet. Grant works in corporate finance, and is now in the process of switching homes and jobs—from the East Coast, working for a Fortune 50 aerospace company, to Los Angeles, where he’ll be working for an entertainment company not far outside the Fortune 50.

    He had suffered a lesser defeat before receiving the five rejections. The year before, Grant had applied to Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business alone, but didn’t get in. He’d at least been wait-listed.

    And that’s another reason why Grant went splat.

    After applying to Tuck in October 2013, and languishing on the wait list from December until his August rejection, Grant got a little obsessive, worrying over his prospects of getting in, trying to put numbers to his chances. The fact that a friend with a lower GMAT score had gotten into Tuck the year before after being wait-listed gave Grant hope, which turned out to be false.

    “It was probably borderline unhealthy,” he recalls. “I was like an addict. I was constantly looking on forums, and playing the percentage game.”

    So the next time, after he applied to Harvard, Wharton, Yale, Kellogg, and Tuck, he wasn’t going to make the same mistake and drive himself nuts by fixating on his odds of getting in.

    Instead, he made a bigger mistake. The previous year, while anxiously awaiting an answer from Tuck, he’d remained diligent: he followed up his interview by getting in touch with the interviewers, emailing them once a month—demonstrating his strong interest and perseverance, and keeping himself on their radar. He should’ve done the same this time after interviews with Kellogg and Tuck, but he was trying to prevent the waiting game from consuming him as it had the time before, he says.

    “This year I didn’t follow up on those interviews,” he says. “I didn’t email the interviewers. That was really stupid and lazy of me. I just kept putting it off. Really dumb.”

    Not for lack of enthusiasm

    Generally speaking, Grant (who asked that his last name not be revealed because he hasn’t told his employer he’s planning to go to an MBA program), is not a poor candidate. Although he went to a middling California state university for college, he was a full-ride President’s Scholar, led his school’s team in the International Collegiate Business Strategy Competition, earned a 3.7 GPA, and graduated Cum Laude with a BS in accounting.

    For years, Grant had dreamed of earning an MBA. “It was even before I went to college, to my undergrad,” he says. “That’s always been there.”

    Before college, he hadn’t refined his B-school ambitions to a particular tier. But after graduation, he arrived at the conclusion that he wanted to get his MBA from a top-10 school, “but if that’s outside the realm of possibility, then top-20,” he says. “If you’re not in the top 20, I can’t even look at you because I’m not going to invest that kind of money without any kind of demonstrated value from the degree.”

    Applying to Tuck, and only Tuck, two years ago was “kind of like my trial thing,” Grant says.

    He had put a lot of effort into the application. He spent almost 200 hours studying for the GMAT and scored 710. To prepare for writing his application and the interview, he met with five Tuck students and interviewed another eight by phone. He reckons he spent 50 hours studying Tuck’s programs, facilities, and professors, reading books, and speaking with MBA program experts. He organized the fruits of all that research into a “crazy document on Tuck,” containing facts, school intricacies, details of programs that interested him, and information gathered from Poets&Quants, Internet forums, articles, and interviews. He visited the school twice, and doesn’t include in the 50-hour total the time spent on those trips.”I really knew the school and what the story was all about,” Grant says.

    Going over Grant’s enthusiastic posts written during his application process is like reading a diary entry by Edward Smith, captain of the Titanic, rhapsodizing over the lovely weather and smooth sailing that came before the unfortunate incident with the iceberg.

    After his interview with Tuck—when he had applied there and at the four other schools—he came to a conclusion while driving home from Hanover, N.H.: “I have fallen in love with Tuck again,” he writes. “I was scared this was going to happen again. The first time I applied, I KNEW that Tuck was the place for me… And here we are again.”

    Then Kellogg usurped Tuck, after Grant visited the school in Evanston, Ill., and had his interview.

    “Kellogg is amazing and totally synonymous with who I am and where I want to end up in my career,” Grant gushes, going on to use the word “amazing” three more times in his post about his visit and interview.

    Add in the two “fantastics” he used, and you know that when that Kellogg ding came, it stung. But it turned out to be less painful than the one from Tuck. After all, he’d made the wait list when he’d applied there the year before, and a school official had later told him they hadn’t let in anyone from the list. For his second chance at Tuck, Grant felt he was an even better candidate. And the school had become his last hope.

    Harvard had been the first to turn him away, without an interview, but that didn’t concern Grant too much. “It’s Harvard Business School, the best business school in the world—denied, big deal.”

    “When I didn’t get an interview at HBS, I was not surprised. When I didn’t get an interview at Wharton, I was a little scared.”