From a young age, Courtney Jacobson (Wharton, ’23) knew that she wanted to attend graduate school. With the encouragement of her parents who stressed the value of education, Courtney initially set her sights on law school, but after starting her career at Deloitte Consulting Courtney realized quickly that an MBA was a path more aligned to some of her future goals. Like many other aspiring MBA applicants, Courtney put a significant amount of effort, thought and diligence into her MBA applications, and went through the ups and downs of applying to business school, before ultimately being accepted to and enrolling in Wharton’s JD-MBA program.
During this interview, we had the chance to catch up with Courtney, where she shared her journey to Wharton, her ambitions for her dual degree program, and her advice to prospective MBA aspirants who are considering an MBA degree.
MBASchooled: What did you do before business school, and why did you decide to apply?
I attended Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo where I was a business major with a concentration in Information Systems. I started my career with Deloitte Consulting in the technology consulting practice. Since undergrad, I’ve always known that I wanted to go to grad school. Initially my goal was Law School, but after joining Deloitte my interests pivoted to MBA programs.
Since high school, my Dad always encouraged me to pursue a graduate-level degree because of the traditional limitations non-MBAs face in the Corporate world (which are now largely gone), and because of the leadership and management skills I would gain.
Once I joined Deloitte and started meeting people who were coming back to the firm from business school, I gained a much more nuanced understanding of what MBA programs are and what you learn and experience while pursuing the degree. Ultimately I’ve decided to pursue an MBA to accelerate the development of my leadership skills and build a network that will help me pivot out of Consulting and into early-stage tech.
MBASchooled: What was the application process like for you? What were some of the more challenging parts?
The process was very time consuming. Aside from taking the GMAT, which is just an unfortunate, miserable hurdle we all have to get past, I found the process to be very interesting and helpful for pushing myself to be more introspective and refining my long term career goals. The process was especially time consuming for me because I really wanted to make sure that I knew what was out there in terms of programs and opportunities, and I wanted to understand the schools that I was applying to so that I could be focused in my applications, and ultimately only apply to places that I would be happy going to.
All of the leg work to gain that information – coffee chats, reading blogs, attending info sessions, etc. – takes a lot of time and effort. I know there are plenty of people out there who can cruise through the GMAT and shoot off some great applications without too much leg work, but based on what I put into the process I think I got a lot out of it and ultimately found it to be very rewarding.
MBASchooled: What were the most important lessons you learned from the MBA application process?
Knowing yourself and staying true to yourself are very important and also very hard things to do. An example from my experience – I have travelled to New York City for work many times and while I absolutely love visiting the city, I know that it’s too much for me to handle as my permanent residence. As such, I decided pretty early on that I wasn’t going to apply to schools in New York. This was a hard decision to stick to because as I gathered more information about the schools, I kept hearing from friends and colleagues that I would absolutely love Columbia. Columbia’s application is rolling, so after I had submitted my apps for the 5 schools I had shortlisted for Round 1, I started worrying that I was missing out and should put in an app for Columbia. While it’s not a huge deal to add another school, I think it was ultimately a good test of my discipline to focus on my goals and stay true to my intuition in the face of a lot of external feedback which is going to be an important skill during times such as recruiting.
MBASchooled: How did you decide on the schools to apply to?
At first the process was very hard – there are so many great schools out there, and every alumni has great things to say about their programs, so it can be hard to compare and contrast. I already said that geography was a pretty important filter for me. In addition, once I decided that I was going to apply to integrated 3-year JD/MBA programs, that further distilled the options since there aren’t a ton of schools that offer those programs.
Ultimately, a friend advised me to make a list of 7-10 characteristics about schools that were important to me, e.g. geography, class size, industry focus, etc. and rate the 10 or so schools I was looking at in each of those categories to arrive at a short list. I limited myself to 5 schools because I wanted to get all of my apps in during Round 1, and that was how many schools I thought I could feasibly get done.
MBASchooled: What criteria were important to you when selecting schools?
Geography – I moved to Philly with my partner, and we’re going to be here for 3 years, so it was important to me to apply to schools in places where we would both be happy living. Also, I wanted to be in medium to large-sized cities where there would be good opportunities for me to find in-semester externships.
Class Size – I was looking for schools that had smaller classes, or where there was the ability to join programs (like a JD/MBA program) that would by default give me a smaller community
Exit Opportunities – I think most industries recruit at most MBA programs these days, but certain schools lended themselves better to certain industries; At Wharton specifically, the ability to do a semester in San Francisco, which a lot of people use as an opportunity to network with VCs and Startups, lends itself well to my post-MBA goals
MBASchooled: You speak with a lot of students who are interested in an MBA. What advice do you give them for navigating the MBA admissions process?
This is probably the Consultant in me saying this, but I think it’s really important to be structured and disciplined in your admissions process and do things like I already talked about – focus on getting to know yourself, refining your goals and establishing clear criteria for the schools you’re looking at – so that you don’t get overwhelmed with all of the external feedback you’re going to get.
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for those individuals considering an MBA?
Establish your “personal board of directors” early on in the process. These are the people who you are going to ask for feedback on your essays and overall application strategy. They should be individuals in your life (professional colleagues, managers, former professors, etc.) who you trust to give you objective feedback in the good times and the bad (there will be bad times in the application process).
For me, this was my parents, one of my former managers at Deloitte, and the admissions consultant that I worked with. I sought a lot of insight and ideas from my colleagues at Deloitte, but ultimately I only had 3 people read my essays because I knew it would be too difficult for me to incorporate feedback and ideas from more stakeholders, and it would muddy my intuition.
MBASchooled: What advice do you have for those individuals who might not be considering an MBA?
An MBA is not right for everyone and I have certainly talked people out of getting an MBA, so don’t let people pressure you into doing something that you know isn’t the right path for you. That being said, don’t let the financial aspect be the only reason that you don’t pursue an MBA. A lot of people go around saying that an MBA isn’t worth the money – but the data doesn’t always back that up, especially for women and underrepresented minorities.
The decision to get an MBA is an incredibly personal one that should be informed by research, data and personalized advice and feedback. Statements like “an MBA isn’t worth the money” is broad-brush and doesn’t take into consideration people’s unique circumstances.
Also, I want to give a big plug for organizations like the Forte Foundation, Consortium and Management Leadership for Tomorrow – all of these organizations are working to increase the diversity of MBA programs by addressing the unique challenges and financial burdens that applicants with these backgrounds face. Also, something I didn’t learn until very late in the process, scholarship awards are negotiable!