What is The Consortium?

The name of this post should really be - The Consortium application process through the eyes of an applicant.

Last week I was asked by a blog reader what The Consortium was, so I wanted to address this topic since I've spoken so much about it and relatively, not many people would know about it unless they were applying through it.  So I'll give a little bit of background on The Consortium and then go into the application process because it's definitely SOMETHING ELSE!

I first heard about The Consortium from a friend who was applying through it two years ago.  I had never heard about it before but then when I started seeing it referenced on the school's websites that I was interested in I began to inquire further.  Here is evidence:  NYU Stern, Dartmouth Tuck, UC Berkeley Haas, Cornell Johnson, Michigan Ross (whew that took a lot to find all those links!)  So yeah I saw a reoccurring theme going on here.  Now some people may ask "Where is Harvard, Wharton, Columbia..."  Well... from what I hear... in order to become a member of The Consortium, the other member schools must vote you in.  So ask yourself this...Would NYU want to vote in Columbia?  Would UNC want to vote in Duke? Would any school want to vote in Wharton, Stanford, or HBS?  :-)

The Consortium Mission: The mission of the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, an alliance of leading American business schools and some of our country’s top corporations, is to enhance diversity in business education and leadership by helping to reduce the serious underrepresentation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in both our member schools’ enrollments and the ranks of management. 

To this end there are 17 schools that are members of The Consortium meaning they're dedicated to the mission stated above!  Here is the list of Consortium Member Schools (go take a look at the list and then come back to my blog and you'll understand later why I wanted you to see the list of schools.)

There are four main benefits of applying through The Consortium and here's where I will add my perspective as an applicant.

1.) Common Application - One application allows you to apply to up to six Consortium schools.

My 2 Cents - So yes there is one application which a lot of people find amazing (myself included).  There are only two rounds though.  R1 was Nov 15th and R2 was Jan 5.  The only "downside" to this is that all of your applications are due on the same day, hence the reason for the madness I went through last week.   Here is what the application entails:

- 3 Recommendation letters - 2 professional and 1 that is from someone who can speak to how you support the Consortium Mission.

- 2 Mandatory essays - 1 about career goals and 1 about how you support the Consortium Mission

- 1 Optional essay - is there anything else you'd like for us to know?

- School specific essays - So each school has a topic or topics that they would like to use.  In a lot of the cases the school specific essay mirrored the school's "normal" application, but in some cases it did not ie. with Tuck - remember my video essay?

- School Rankings (fun times with this one...see Fellowship below)

2.) Tiered Application Fee - Using The Consortium common application significantly reduces your application fee costs. You may apply to up to two member schools for $150, three schools for $200, four schools for $240, five for $275, and six for $300.

My 2 Cents - nothing really to say about this other than it was simply INCREDIBLE!  Had I applied to 6 schools outside of The Consortium it would have cost at least $1200, but when I hit submit I had to pay $300 total, so that's a blessing.  This is why I added one more school to my list the Sunday before hitting submit.  My friend said "Richard what's another $50 and 2 essays?"  He was right too!  It's not like I needed to find new recommendation letters and what not.

3.) The Consortium Fellowship - Last year, Consortium member schools offered more than 330 fellowships covering tuition and mandatory fees for two years of full-time study. Applicants who are admitted through The Consortium process and become Consortium members are considered for these prestigious fellowships.

My 2 Cents - so when you apply through the consortium, you HAVE to rank your schools in order of preference should you be accepted.  Do the schools see your rankings?  The consensus is that they don't, so I'm going to go with that.  Why do you need to rank them?  Well it's all for fellowship consideration.  I believe in March the schools Consortium representatives get together in a room and practically "duke it out."  Here's an example of what happens to the best of my knowledge.

All of the acceptances and decisions go out with the rest of the people who applied normal R1 and R2.  If I am accepted to my first choice school they get the first chance to offer me a fellowship.  If they decide to forgo giving me a fellowship, I can still attend, but have to find other means of financial aid.  Also, if they decide to not give me the fellowship, then the school that I ranked 2nd gets the option to offer me one of their fellowships.  This continues all the way down the line.  At this stage in the game I do believe the schools know where they fall in your ranking.  Cool Right?  Well no not really because us applicants know which schools tend the have more fellowships available so that factors in to people's ranking decisions.  You can only be offered 1 fellowship because of the trickle-down effect works.

For instance, Michigan has a large Consortium cohort and I have many friends who are applying to schools outside of the Consortium who ranked Michigan first.  So now when doing my rankings I need to factor that in.  Also, one would think that a school would choose to give the fellowship to someone who ranked them first, but they don't BUT if you rank a school too low, the chances of getting a fellowship dwindle.  And then you get into a situation where you know that there are a couple schools out there who will not give a fellowship to anyone who does not rank them 1 or 2, a couple won't if you rank them below 1. So then you think to yourself.. hhmm if I won't get it if I don't rank them first then I'm just going to put them last so that I have a better chance with another school who likes to see themselves 1st or 2nd.

Now you see the trickiness of it all....  But once accepted you become a Consortium member.

Furthermore - If you've applied in R1 for any non-Consortium schools, your deposit will be due before you find out if you've received the fellowship, or acceptances for that matter, from any Consortium schools.  So you get into a situation where you may have to send a $2k deposit to school X before you know if you're admitted to schools A,B,C,D,E, or F.  

4.) Consortium Membership - Consortium members gain many benefits, including access to over 70 corporate partners, a mandatory Annual Orientation Program & Career Forum (OP) prior to beginning their MBAs, and access to nearly 6,000 Consortium alumni across member schools.

My 2 cents - This orientation program occurs in the summer and a LARGE percentage of students who attend walk away with an internship before the start of the school year!  This is huge because as we all know the recruiting process is grueling and pairing that with school work and activities is tough, so I've spoken to many students at schools who already had their internships when they started so they never had that recruiting headache.  You may be asking, well which companies recruit that soon?  Well... companies who are dedicated to increasing diversity.  All of the big MBA recruiters are there so it's not like these are just Tier 10 (are there Tier 10?) recruiters.

Also if you're a Consortium Member, you get a huge network!  HUGE! Networks are always fun!

Read and re-read this post if necessary, I know it's confusing.  That's all folks

Application Submission Exhaustion

Well folks... the journey is partly over!  I would like to tell you all about my day today because it was EXHAUSTING.  I’m not sure how long this post is going to be, but I have a lot to get off my chest, so you may need to grab a snack and a drink.

AS YOU READ THIS... IF YOU HAVE NOT APPLIED YET... TAKE NOTES AS TO WHAT NOT TO DO THE DAY BEFORE AND DAY OF YOUR APPLICATION DEADLINE.  I’M TELLING YOU THERE ARE SOME GOOD NUGGETS IN HERE.

Ok so let me just pick up where I left off.  My last post was around 11:30 when I posted about my blog’s 1 year anniversary right?  Yes, that’s right!  At 11:30 I was still working on my essays.  As I said previously, I was working in tandem with my friend who would read my essays for grammar mistakes and then send them back.  This may seem like an easy plan, but when you fix one thing with grammar, it may change your original intended meaning, so then you get into editing sentences.  Well sentences are part of a paragraph so...--- you get the point.  

Now...multiply that by I think it was something like 13 essays.  So it went like this.  I would edit and essay... send it to her...and then start working on another one. Then I would send that one to her and she would send back the first one.  Repeat this over and over again for 13 essays.  Then once I got through all 13, I went back to the first one she sent back to me and redid that one.  So we essentially went through 26 essays in one night.

I finally finished my essays and felt good about going into today only having to enter the essays into the application.  Easy stuff right?  HAHAHAHAHA Yeah... you’ll see.  I figured I had gotten by the hard part.

I finally turned my light out at 1:15am because my eyes were closing from the all nighter the night before.  At this point my computer was on my bed and I was picking up something off my floor when I see that I have a message from my friend who is also applying.  (There were about 6 people on my buddy list who were all working on essays last night.)  Anyway... so the message said “GET ON SKYPE I AM FREAKING OUT!”  

I thought that she was just overwhelmed with everything and needed someone to talk her off the ledge.  Little did I know that her next words to me would make me want to GET ON the ledge.  On Skype she said something to the effect of “someone on Facebook posted that the Consortium application is due at 3am for us!”  So I was like “UM.... COME AGAIN?”  She’s like “yeah someone said that on the email from the Consortium it said that the application was due 12pm Pacific time.  I’m like “yes that’s right... 12pm Pacific time is technically 3am for us on Thursday.”  So then of course the doubt set in.  I was like... ok what if I misunderstood and this person is correct?  At this point I was not stressing out about it because it was 1:30 and I thought I would have enough time to input my essays.  I mean I had just finished them right?  Hhahha YEA...You’ll see (lmao).

She and I tried calling the Consortium phone number in hopes of someone being there, and of course no one was there!  Granted it was the middle of the night, so I don’t know why we even tried.  I said to myself “ok hhmm.. how cna you find out?  Ok let me check Facebook!”  So I go on the Consortium Facebook page and see that 12 minutes before I checked Facebook there was a Tweet from the Consortium that was filtered through the page status that said “APPLICATIONS ARE DUE TODAY - SUBMIT NOW!”

Ok so this is when I started to think that this random person was right.  I then go to twitter and send a message to #cgsm asking “Does this mean 3am on the 5th for people on the East coast or essentially 3am on the 6th for people on the East coast?”  I was hoping that since the person tweeted (Or they could have scheduled that tweet) not too long ago, that they might respond.  But no such luck!  Then I went back to the Facebook page and posted asking the same question, again hoping that someone would respond.  Again... NO RESPONSE.  So I look for my friend who lives in California to check his FB status and a couple hours prior he posted “JUST APPLIED TO BUSINESS SCHOOL.”

Then I started freaking out but moreso in a pissed off manner.  I thought “THIS CANNOT BE HAPPENING TO ME RIGHT NOW  NOT AFTER EVERYTHING I’VE BEEN THROUGH!”  By this time it was 2am, so I thought I only had an hour to get everything submitted.  I went into the Consortium system and started filling out my information.  That was easy then I realized that my updated resume was on my work computer!!!!  (insert curse words here) I was so pissed at myself.  Then I remember that I had a copy in my person email.  Whew!

I email myself everything because my thought is that I trust Google more than I trust my laptop.  If my laptop were to be stolen, since I bring it everywhere, then at the very least I would still be able to submit my applications because everything would be in my inbox.  Anyway, I digress.  Ok so I had my updated resume...I had my essays... I filled out the boxes that I could fill out....and I had my transcripts.  Perfect right?  Just have to upload everything.

So first I tried uploading my transcript.  The day before I scanned a copy and emailed it to myself, so I thought I was good.  NOPE.... FILE WAS TOO LARGE!  The file size limit was 1000kb and mine was 1500kb.  The only way I know how to compress PDF is with adobe and I don’t have adobe on my computer.  (insert curse words here)  Then I started giving up hope thinking to myself “ok I’ll just apply Round 3 but will have to write all new essays.”  I then figured maybe they’ve had this problem before and I can send my transcript later...let me get my essays in.

So I open up my essay and here is my inner monolouge:

 “.... copy it.... click into the dedicated box within the application and click paste.  Hhmm... it didn’t paste.... That’s odd let me try again.  Copy...Paste... didn’t paste.  Oh I think I’m using the wrong keys.  COPY.......PASTE.  I think I need to restart my computer.... ok let’s try this again.  COPY PASTE... WTF IT’S NOT WORKING!!!!!  Let me try typing a couple of words in the box to see if it works.... WTF WHY DID THAT WORK while the other one didn't?”  

By this time it was 2:50, so I tried to convince myself that this person had actually gotten the times mixed up.  By this time with the lack of sleep really really hitting me at this point, I tried to go to sleep.  2 hours later and many pillow punches, I fell asleep.

Hahaha 2 hours go by and it’s time to wake up!  FML, but honestly I don’t feel tired because I’m still on that adrenaline high!  So I wake up and immediately get sick to my stomach.  I keep thinking the worst.  What if that person was right and I’ve totally fucked up the deadline?!?!  (you know it’s serious when I curse on my blog, but that doesn’t begin to describe how I felt this morning).  So I get dressed....and didn’t even work on anything on the bus ride going in.  Normally I look over essays or something, but I was so pissed off that I could not think straight. 

I was pissed because I thought that I had missed the deadline....pissed because I thought that I would have to TYPE all of my essays into those small boxes in the application....and pissed because I was tired!!!  I get to work and immediately call the Consortium and ask what the deadline is and she said today!  I had the biggest smile on my face and said “ok I can do this....” in attempt to pump myself up to TYPE all of my essays.  When I got to my desk, one of my recommenders came over and said “you know what’s dumb... that you can’t copy and paste from a document!”  I said “YEAH I KNOW...BUT I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT BECAUSE I HAVE TO TYPE ALL OF THESE ESSAY INTO THE APPLICATION!”  

Needless to say I was livid!  I signed onto gchat and was venting to everyone on my buddy list.  It’s a good thing I did that because when I asked my friend who is also submitting today, she said “No... I was just able to do it.”  So then I’m like “what?  how!?!?”  Then I realized... WAIT A SECOND - I’M USING CHROME!  I asked her what she was using and she said INTERNET EXPLORER.  So I immediately opened up Internet Explorer as well as one of my essays and the Consortium application.  I COPIED.... and IT PASTED!  You can imagine my relief.

Let me stop here and say that no where within the application did I see that “It’s recommended that you use Internet Explorer.”  I don’t know what I would have done if my friend did not mention that she could do it prompting me to try in a different browser.  Thankfully at work we have PCs (I never thought I’d say that), because at home I have a Mac and there is no internet explorer on my Mac.  I have Safari!  I think there will be some very surprised people tonight when the deadline approaches and they are not able to copy and paste their essays.  Hopefully they read my blog and see before they go through what I went through not too long ago.

Ok so... the essays were “pasteable”.  Now all I had to do was copy and paste all of them.... upload the 3 Core essays... send my transcript to my friend to have her compress the file... upload the transcript... upload my nyu transcript... fill out some more personal information...upload my resume.. and fix the last part of an essay.  HAHAHAH I know right?  Although that paragraph sounds more crazy than it actually was.

Yeah... I was at work, but I was doing this inbetween doing work.  At one point my manager came over and saw me and said “hey Richard I’m sorry to bother you but I just have a question about something.”  Again...I’m blessed to have understanding people at work, although had this been the beginning of December things would have been different.  

From the time I got to work, I was on gchat talking to my friends who were also submitting.  I had to convince my one friend to call the Consortium to inquire about how she could submit one of her essays.  She thought that she could email it and read the instructions a different way, so I told her to just call because it would make ME feel better.  ;-)  I knew that would work honestly... she did call and turns out that she had to submit it the same way as the other ones.  It’s good that she asked because that meant that she needed to cut down the word length.

After that fiasco, the day went on and I was just fixing up things here and there... formatting essays... etc etc.  Then I reviewed each element of the application about 10 times.  I didn’t want to leave anything out.  I must have uploaded - then deleted my core essays 4/5 times.  But I got them JUST RIGHT!  At this point it was 4pm!  Yes.... it takes THAT long to get everything situated.  And I am not an isolated case, because all of my friends who also submitted today finished +/- 30 minutes from me.

Strictly because I don’t know if anyone else felt this way and I’m not embarassed by it... I clicked “Preview full application” and then printed it out... and I felt myself get misty eyed and then had to get tissue and go to the bathroom.  It had nothing to do with being nervous about hitting Submit, but was more of a release of over a year of hard work.  I told my friend Brandon (osirus) that it would probably happen, but I didn’t think it would happen like that.  I thought about all of the people who helped me get to the point when I could press submit and it was a good feeling.  

My saga was not over yet because then yeah... I still had to pay $300 hahah.  That’s how they snap you out of your fantasyland of “YES I’VE APPLIED”.. because then they’re like.. OK that’s great that you uploaded everything but can I have your money please?  

So I paid my $300 since I applied to 6 schools and then was ELATED TO SEE THIS:

So now I should find out next week right????  hahahaha... Time to open the bubbly.  I'm going to drink some champagne and edit my friends essay lolol..

I am no longer PROSPECTIVE APPLICANT - I am an OFFICIAL APPLICANT!

Tomorrow I will post a checklist for other applicants of things I wish I knew going into today...but as for now... I need a drink!!