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

    徒劳无功

    每收到一次拒绝，他都会因为自己在准备GMAT和申请学校过程中所犯的错误而深深自责。

    他曾决定取得比第一次710分更高的GMAT分数。他在博客中写道他“很有可能再次参加考试，目标是750分左右。”但在为第二次考试努力学习的时候，他却遇到了阻碍。

    他说道：“我被升职了，我得到了一份额外的领导职务。我获得了领导一个特别项目的机会。我开始写博客。我在公益事业上投入了太多精力。”

    格兰特每天早上4:30起床，5点开始学习，学习一两个小时之后去上班，然后去做公益。每天晚上，他会从8点开始学习两个小时。周末如果没有志愿者工作，他便选择加班。

    “我每天睡四个小时，持续了六个月时间。”

    他在八周时间里，总共投入了150个小时准备GMAT考试。他说道：“学习的质量并不高。我的脑子要思考无数个问题，GMAT只是其中之一。”他不仅“身心俱疲”，而且根本没有达到200个小时的目标，甚至与第一次准备GMAT的190个小时也相去甚远。

    他第一次准备塔克商学院的申请和面试共用了50个小时，而第二次五所学校的准备时间总共也没有那么多。他说道：“这太令人尴尬了。我以为我会用60个小时。或许吧。这已经是我的极限。可能会更少，可能在40个小时左右。真是太糟糕了。”然后他低声抱怨道：“真该死！”

    他聘请了一位顾问，但并没有进行任何信息性面试练习。他考察了除耶鲁之外的所有学校。

    在没有收到哈佛和沃顿的面试机会之后，耶鲁也拒绝了他的申请。格兰特说：“我想：‘天哪，我今年可能没机会进商学院了。’”

    拒绝依次到来，他也变得越来越担忧。“被凯洛格拒绝之后，我想到：‘我真的有麻烦了。’”

    与此同时，格兰特的职业也在发生变化。他打算放弃在航空航天领域的工作。公司计划裁员，而剩下的人将面临额外的工作负担。“我开始两边下注。我在寻找其他机会。”

    沉浸于自我怀疑

    连续被商学院拒绝，让格兰特开始怀疑自己。这是一种他从来不曾有过的情绪。他问自己：“我真的是最佳员工吗？我自己有能力做什么事情吗？”

    “所以，找另外一份工作便显得非常重要。”

    凯洛格商学院拒绝他的申请时，他已经参加了洛杉矶一家娱乐公司的电话面试。

    格兰特不会放弃自己的MBA梦想。他还会申请前10大商学院，不过可能只从中选择三至四所学校，并且不会申请哈佛商学院。他计划为自己将申请的每一所学校拿出30个小时准备时间，GMAT考试的学习时间目标为300个小时。格兰特说道：“我真的希望能得到760分。这个分数将很有帮助。”

    格兰特表示自己之所以写博客，是因为他想帮助同样在申请MBA的其他人。这也符合他对公益事业和志愿者工作的兴趣。他说道：“这是我的人生使命。我希望其他人获得成功，这是我的快乐之源。”

    “这也是最让人受伤的地方。就好像我在说：‘嘿，我来带路，大家跟我来，’然后，我摔了一跤。”

    在他的博客里，火星风景照片的下方是他对被五次拒绝的反思。格兰特对读者们写道：“我感觉我让大家失望了。在众目睽睽之下遭遇失败，并且承认失败，这简直太难了。我非常抱歉。”

    不过，格兰特已经做好了再次尝试进入顶级商学院的准备，尤其是塔克和凯洛格。这两所商学院已经给过他足够高的评价，并且提供了面试机会。在航空航天行业从事财务工作的经历，让他很受招生委员会的喜爱，而且他的新工作也令人印象深刻。他已经从前两次尝试所犯的错误中学到了许多，如果他能将这些经验教训付诸实施，他肯定能在申请和面试时给学校留下更好的印象。更高的GMAT分数也将给他额外加分。

    他说道，事实上，荒凉的火星并不意味着这是一片灵魂的荒原，而是代表了一个新的前沿。他说道：“那是一个全新的世界。”（财富中文网）

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    审校：任文科

    Running on empty

    With every rejection, he’d beat himself up a little more over the mistakes he’d made during the process of preparing for the GMAT and applying to schools.

    He’d been determined to far surpass his first GMAT score of 710, writing on his blog that he “most likely will be taking it again for a ~750.” But when it came to studying for the test his second time around, the rest of his life got in the way.

    “I got promoted, and then I got an additional leadership responsibility. Another opportunity came up at work for a special project to lead. I started blogging. I’m really heavily involved in non-profits,” he says.

    Grant would wake up at 4:30 a.m., start studying at 5, keep it up for an hour or two, go to work, then go to his non-profit assignment. Each night, he’d resume studying at 8, and put in another couple hours. If he wasn’t doing volunteer work on the weekend, he’d work through his Saturdays and Sundays.

    “I was operating on four hours of sleep for six months.”

    All told, he put in 150 GMAT-prep hours over eight weeks. “It wasn’t good quality studying time,” he says. “My mind was racing on a million different things and the GMAT was just one of them.” Not only was he “completely stressed out,” he hadn’t even come close to hitting his 200-hour goal, or even matching the 190 hours he’d put in when he studied for the GMAT the first time.

    While he’d spent 50 hours preparing for his first Tuck application and interview, he fell far short of that when applying to the five schools, not even hitting the same number for all the schools combined. “This is so embarrassing,” he says. “I think I spent maybe 60 hours. Maybe. That’s being pretty generous with myself. It might’ve been less, it might’ve been closer to 40. It was really bad,” he says, before muttering to himself: “Damn it.”

    He’d hired a consultant, but hadn’t done any practice informational interviews, he says. He visited all the schools, except for Yale.

    After he didn’t receive interviews at Harvard and Wharton, Yale was the next school to reject him. “I was like, ‘Holy shit, I might not even get in (to B-school) this year,’” Grant says.

    The fear grew worse as the rejections added up. “When I got dinged from Kellogg, I was thinking to myself, ‘I’m really in trouble.’”

    Meanwhile, Grant’s career was shifting. He was anticipating disruption at his aerospace industry job. Staff were going to be cut, and those who remained would face additional work burdens. “I basically started hedging my bets. I had started looking at other opportunities.”

    Swimming in a sea of self doubt

    The string of B-school rejections had seeded Grant with self doubt, not a feeling he was used to. “Am I really a top performer?” he asked himself. “Am I capable of doing anything on my own?

    “That’s why it was so important that I applied for another job.”

    By the time Kellogg rejected his application, he had already had a phone interview with the L.A. entertainment firm.

    Grant is not giving up on his MBA dreams. He’s going to apply again to top 10 schools, but probably only three or four, and will likely not apply to Harvard, he says. He plans to spend 30 hours of prep time specific to each school he’ll apply for, and he is shooting for 300 hours of GMAT studying time. “I’m really hoping to get a 760,” Grant says. “That will help.”

    Grant created his blog because he wanted to help other people on the same path, he says. That fits with his interest non-profit and volunteer work. “That’s my life’s mission,” he says. “I want others to succeed, that’s how I get my happiness.

    “That’s what hurt the most. I was like, ‘Hey, I’m going to lead the charge, and everyone follow me,’ and then I, like, tripped.”

    On his blog, beneath the photo of the Martian landscape that tops his revelation about his five rejections, Grant addresses his readers, “I feel that I have let you down,” he writes. “It is incredibly difficult to fail publicly and own up to it. I am deeply sorry.”

    Nevertheless, Grant is clearly well positioned for another attempt at getting into a top program, particularly at Tuck and Kellogg, which had already rated him high enough for an interview. His history working in finance for the aerospace industry makes him attractive to admissions committees, and his new job is impressive. He appears to have learned a great deal about what he did wrong in his first two attempts, and if he applies those lessons, he’s bound to make a better impression in applications and interviews. A higher GMAT score would give him an additional boost.

    It turns out that the stark Martian scene, he says, does not represent a barren wasteland of the soul. It shows, he says, a new frontier. “It’s a whole new world out there.”