Recently, I was reflecting on the beautiful insanity that launching my own MBA admissions consulting firm has been. Last year, I worked with two dozens of MBA hopefuls, applying to the most selective schools in the world (and a whopping 95% of them got into one or more of their top choices!). They trusted me to read and critique their stories and as one of them put it, “your questions made me rethink the way I approached each and every detail of my essays”.

When I guide MBA hopefuls, I always use examples from MBA stories I still remember from my days as Dean of MBA Admissions at Babson College. After all, what could be a better sign that someone’s MBA story was memorable and unique than if you can still think of it years later?

On a whim, I searched for - and luckily found! - my own MBA admissions essay. Here it is below - taking me back to the days, so many years ago, when, just like you, I was a hopeful and anxious MBA candidate hoping the admissions odds will be in my favor. Enjoy the read!

Q: What unique contributions will you bring to the Babson community that will enhance the value of the classroom experience for your classmates?

The seemingly breezy project of adapting McDonald’s “Wow” TV commercial for the Bulgarian market was turning into a challenging task. All possible translations of the exclamation “Wow” sounded awkward. And yet, everybody that saw the original TV ad found it funny and persuasive. With no time to waste, I equipped myself with feedback from a small focus group and sold the marketing team of McDonald’s Bulgaria to the idea that we should run the commercial without translating the only word in it – the “Wow” the customer utters when he sees the price of the cheeseburger on the menu board. The campaign was a great success and the boost of the sales volumes exceeded our forecasts.

Having to balance the right proportions of cultural interchange was just one aspect of my days in the marketing and advertising field in my home country. Being part of the transition of the Bulgarian economy from planned to market economy involved not just managing the unknowns of an emerging market but also learning to motivate and inspire people that had never before experienced the challenges and liberation of being responsible for their own success.  My biggest achievement during my years of working in Bulgaria comes not from the impressive sales results. It stems from my pride to have been among the professionals that laid the ground for the free enterprise mindset in my homeland.          

Moving to the Unites States six years ago added a very different perspective to my personal and professional life. The geographical and financial restrictions of my situation made it difficult to find a job where my skills would be easily transferable. Joining the Management Training program of Enterprise Rent-A-Car felt at first like a step back.  Yet it wasn’t long before I realized that it’s up to me to prove that my previous experience and personal qualities are not industry and country specific.  My knowledge about consumer patterns and building customer relationships eventually led to my promotion to Enterprise’s Corporate Account department, where I am now responsible for managing the relationships with some of the company’s biggest and most important customers. Volunteering to be a member of the company’s “Diversity Committee” was a great way for me to share with others what I knew about the challenges of interactions of different cultures.  My technical expertise and desire to help others earned me the respect of my coworkers, which just last month selected me to be the Boston group’s representative on the team, responsible for the implementation of our new customer database management system.   

Today, as a person that has worked for large multinational organizations in two different countries and has been a part of management teams, including sometimes as many as five different nationalities, I am convinced that collaborative thinking is not just optional and the road well traveled may not lead to the desired destination if you don’t use the right country map. Working with people from varying cultural and professional backgrounds has taught me to never miss to acknowledge nontraditional viewpoints and to always evaluate the relevance of any approach to the environment where it will be applied. 

Knowledge of global consumer environments, awareness of the importance of cultural differences, and experience with emerging markets are among the main areas of expertise that I am prepared to share with my teammates at Babson. I believe that the process of making my experience useful to others will give it a new context and will enrich and broaden both mine and my classmates’ perspective on the past, present and future of the business world.   

P.S. Did you know that in MBA APPLICATION BOOST CAMP, you can work with me in a group setting at a fraction of the cost? Come join the driven community I am building to confidently walk the road to submitting your application.

Onwards and upwards,

Petia