how to get into NYU Stern
starting from the beginning:
Switch from Biology to Electrical/Biomedical Engineering not because it’s easy but because it’s hard. because it will bring out the best in you. because you’ve taken easy things for granted your whole life, and this might be your last opportunity to change things.
Take your first calculus class as a college sophomore at the start of a dual engineering track. fail tests. realize you’re not smart in the way your peers are smart. pass by the mercy of the curve. decide to rewire your entire fucking brain. realize you can become smart like them.
Start reading. study the topics you fear–make them your passion. read books that are more interesting than your textbooks. stay a super senior and then a super super senior year. stay until you think you’ve got it.
Move away to NYC without finishing either degree. convince professors to let you finish remotely. (including core requirements).
…end up in NJ.
Remain unemployed for 9 months living with your girlfriend at her [very patient] mother’s house. apply for jobs and wait. and wait. and wait. befriend cats. privately go a little insane. lose hope. play fallout to pass the time. regain hope. decide to learn to code. regain sanity. regain focus.
Go on coding interviews. get humiliated (you may have learned math, but you didn’t learn to code very well). On regardless…
Get a job requiring your engineering degrees before you’ve finished your engineering degrees. feel good about buying a pair of dress shoes and having a place to wear them during the week.
Start from the lowest rung on the corporate ladder and shake up the entire organization because you pay attention to details.
Have the CEO reward your work by creating a new position for you with commensurate raise.
Sit for the GMAT three times: cancel your score once, don’t finish on the second try, then score 200 points higher on the third.
Write application essays about being captain of your championship co-ed floor hockey team and about going to the Moon–because you don’t have any “real” extracurriculars.
Proofread your own grad school application essays.
Have a sub-3.0 GPA and an F on your transcript your “senior” year. (you retook and got a C+).
Apply to a top 10 business school over a month late.
Realize essays have a few typos after hitting “submit.”
Get accepted to Stern in two weeks.
Become youngest manager in history of your organization 2 months later–several months prior to even starting your MBA.
Breathe.