{What are your short-term and long-term post-MBA goals? How will [school name] Business School help you achieve these goals?}My short-term career goal is to work for a management consulting firm where I can combine my hands-on consulting and entrepreneurial abilities with an established firm’s proven professional methods. Consulting continues to present interesting and challenging opportunities for me, and a large consulting firm would afford me a chance to expand my team responsibility, apply my skills and business school theory on a larger scale, and develop specialization in a single industry...
To the outsider, the chain-link and barbed wire fence enclosing the field did nothing to enhance its appeal. Save for a few trees and a couple of patches of grass that lay around the edges, the field was flat, brown, and dusty. On some days, when the wind was blowing just right, I could chase the dust twisters. I imagine that it resembled the sort of fields my Midwestern ancestors encountered during the Dust Bowl. Back then, more of life was about living with what was available...
On my visit to Yale, I planned to observe a chemistry class. With my bad sense of direction, I eventually ambled into an important-lookingscience facility instead. Awaiting the arrival of any stranger with a key card to let me out, I soaked it all in. I saw true investment in science--labcoats, postings with science events, brand new rooms, complicated machinery, space for thought. I didn't learn chemistry, but I learned that Yalecares about my interests, which is as reassuring as it is cool...
{Please reflect on something you would like us to know about you that we might not learn from the rest of your application—or on something that you would like to say more about.}My previous residential life took place in what some endearingly refer to as “hardship” posts. Our State Department postings abroad lasted two to five years. Yet, in these countries with high poverty, unequal income distribution, and corruption, things were not bad for us. With the support of the US Government, my family lived in comfortable, consolidated communities with vigilant security details, decent embassies, and quality education...
{Why did you apply to the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia?}As a civil engineer, I consider extremely important the development of water resources for the benefit of the society. The MS in Civil Engineering program at Columbia University will provide me the necessary skills to find engineered solutions to water resources problems. As I will have the opportunity to work with world renowned faculty and to have plenty of resources at hand for career development, including the academic centers, research laboratories, and libraries...
During the Fall of 2009, I worked as an engineering intern at the Adventist Developmentand Relief Agency (ADRA), a non-governmental organization in Bolivia. During my time atADRA, I applied my engineering skills to solve the complex issues of developing sustainableand replicable water systems in rural Bolivian communities.As an engineer, I engaged thecommunity in selecting the rules and procedures for operations, management and financing...
{Describe your interest in pursuing a legal career (Penn Law)}
Mark Twain’s Pudd’nhead Wilson’s use of fingerprinting science in order to solve a complicated murder was instrumental in shaping my interest in the law. While a difficult book to comprehend at the start, Twain peaked my curiosity with his unusual introduction to the characters and his slow unraveling of the plot, which centered, in part, on fingerprinting and how this new “science” would help to solve a murder...
As I scanned the classroom in the Saint Michael’s Church at the first meeting of the FELLOW Program (Free English Language Learning for Overseas Workers) and read the students’ nametags—Sylvia and Manuel from Portugal, Maria and Paulina from Poland, Marco and Lorenzo from Italy—I wondered how I, at best proficient in Spanish, would communicate with the 17 international students. Further, how would I connect to assist these students in learning the complex English language?..
I have become mildly obsessed with the numerical sneezing patterns of humans. An odd interest though it is for an aspiring political scientist with little interest in biology, it fascinates and frustrates me beyond all reason. It all started with one girl with a cold sitting two rows in front of me in English class. With a resounding “piupiupiu” reminiscent of laser guns in movies, the sound of her sneezes startled me into a revelation: everyone always sneezes the same number of times. Ask anyone and they’ll say they sneeze in twos, threes, and even—as my friend claims—in eights...
{Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?}Growing up, my parents had a few coined phrases that they would tirelessly drill into my mind. They would tell me, “You must persevere,” and “Let your past make you better not bitter,” any time it was applicable. Being young and hardly aware of what they were telling me meant, I would dismiss their words and ignore them because the repetition was annoying. But, as I have always heard, and have now learned first-hand, parents are always right...
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