In this conversation, Jungduk Seo shares her journey from healthcare consulting to pursuing an MBA at Kellogg School of Management. She discusses her thoughtful approach to school selection, the value of working with an admissions consultant, and how she used multiple internships during business school to pivot into product management. Jungduk emphasizes the importance of being open to unexpected career paths, as she initially had no interest in product management but discovered her passion for it through hands-on experience.
The conversation covers her GMAT preparation, application strategy of focusing on just three schools, and the transformative power of MBA internships. She details three different internship experiences in healthcare VC, health systems, and mental health startups that ultimately led to her current role as a product manager at a health tech company. Jungduk also reflects on the lasting value of business school relationships and the importance of having clear goals while remaining flexible about outcomes.
In the DC area in Maryland, all throughout middle school and high school I had always leaned more towards the math and the sciences. Classic Asian family story. So when I was looking at colleges to apply to, I was really focused on engineering schools, and as a result of that search Cornell pretty quickly popped to the top of that list. I applied to Cornell specifically to engineering, and during my time there pretty quickly figured out it actually wasn't the right fit for me. It was overall a super humbling experience. I've never been so surrounded by people who are just so much smarter than me in every single capacity. But I pretty quickly realized that engineering was probably not the right fit for me, and I was already in the school, already going down that track, so I ended up switching majors quite a few times. I landed on operations research engineering, for which I'm ultimately super grateful I stuck with it, because I think it just equips you with a set of critical thinking and problem solving skills that I otherwise wouldn't have gotten exposure to.
Coming out of undergrad, it's kind of funny looking back, because my parents had set up this fund for me to help finance undergrad, and you're allowed to use that same fund for future school, graduate school as well. I was so confident coming out of Cornell that I would never go back to school that we liquidated it. I told my parents, forget it, I will never go back to grad school, it's a done deal, I'm 1,000% confident, don't need it. And sure enough, five years later I was like, goddamn it.
After undergrad I was kind of debating what I wanted to do from there. I had always had a natural interest in the healthcare space, so I ended up applying to a few healthcare consulting firms, one of which fortuitously was in Boston where a few of my very best friends from college also happened to be - not a coincidence at all. So I ended up going to a company called Health Advances. They focus on healthcare strategy consulting. I worked there for about five years, helping a lot of especially medical device and biotech companies with commercialization strategy. So that's the pre-MBA story. I started there as an analyst and then worked my way up to being an engagement manager before leaving for Kellogg.
Hearing you talk about your own story and what provided the impetus for you to get your act together and start applying, for me that was much the same way. I was just all of a sudden surrounded by a couple peers who were going off to business school, and so it really just made me think, is that something that I should consider as well? I never deeply considered it before that. In a lot of ways I was very fortunate to be in an environment where there were other folks who were interested in that as a next move. That was what made me consider it in the first place.
From there, in terms of me evaluating whether or not I wanted to take the next step of actually applying, which is obviously a massive undertaking, for me it was a calculus of: if I left consulting, what would I do next? I had actually zero idea, truly zero idea. Where my mind always went was, okay, I'm working mostly in the medical device space. In the three, four, five years I spent there, I gradually started to specialize in the medical device space and consistently worked with those partners who managed those projects, so I gained a real domain expertise in the medical device space. So I was thinking, okay, I have this domain expertise, could I potentially apply that in industry in a strategy role at a medical device company? That was where my mind went, but I couldn't tell if that's where my mind was going because it's all I'd ever really had exposure to, or if it's because this is actually something I'm interested in actively.
Taking a step back, you think about the healthcare space, it makes up 20% of our GDP. Medical device strategy is not the only job in that space. So for me business school was a real opportunity to level set on what is it that I would want to do, before doing a bunch of trial and error in a bunch of roles that may not necessarily be a fit for me. How can I take a step back, evaluate, and be a lot more intentional about the path I go from there?
As you were working with all these clients in med device and other healthcare clients, did you feel that in order to move up, should you choose to stay in those fields, you needed an MBA? Were the leaders that you were talking to, did they have MBAs, how did that factor in?
I honestly never paid attention to the credentials of the folks that I was working with, and I think part of it was
It's sort of telling, right? It's because I didn't look at our clients and think, "Oh, I desperately want your job." It was a little bit more like, "Oh, I guess that's a job that exists, so maybe that makes sense for me." So I didn't necessarily think about the path to getting there in such an intentional way. And certainly, if I had stayed at Health Advances, which was totally a realistic possibility - I loved my time there. People don't often spend five years in consulting, so it was a little bit of a rarity, and very much a people-driven decision to stay in it as long as I did. And if I did stay at Health Advances, I certainly wouldn't have needed an MBA to succeed there. So for me, it was really just about taking a step back and resetting on where I wanted to go next with my career.
My target list of schools - I knew I wanted to stay in the healthcare space. If there is one certainty going into my application process, it was that. And so I sort of overindexed on the programs where I knew there was more of a focus, from both a curriculum and extracurricular perspective, on healthcare-related activities. What that ultimately meant was Wharton has an incredible Healthcare Management program, so I applied there. Sloan, just because they're based in Boston - they're in Cambridge, surrounded by biotech - that felt like a natural fit as well. And then the third place I applied was Kellogg. They have a healthcare track as well, and they have a healthcare conference, and they put a lot of resources towards the healthcare space, so that was the third place that I applied.
Had you talked to anyone from any of these schools prior, to get a feel for student life?
I had talked to students from all three places before I applied. I remember talking to Alex's sister, and she connected me with a couple of friends who are in the healthcare space. I talked to Alex's sister and a couple of our classmates at Sloan, and then there were quite a few people from Health Advances, my consulting firm, who went to the Healthcare Management program at Wharton, so I got connected to a few of them. And then at Kellogg there were also a couple of folks that I had known from Health Advances alumni. So all those were definitely helpful perspectives.
I would still say ultimately it was a pretty personal decision, in the sense that I had a clear vision in terms of what I wanted out of business school, and so for me it was very much about having the right fit. So while those were really helpful perspectives, my in-person time on campus and just talking to current students who were there - that was what really helped me feel comfortable and confident in my decisions.
The consultant that I worked with was helpful in terms of just honing in on the three schools as well, and confirming that those were sort of within reach, that they made sense for the story I was telling for my ultimate goals out of business school. Having some of that external validation also helped me gain confidence in that. Ultimately, with a lot of things in life, it was a trade-off between time and money, and for me, just outsourcing the research that I otherwise would have had to do without the consultant was the right call for what I was trying to balance, especially work-wise. People applying to business school are coming from generally speaking pretty intense jobs, and so the consultant was super helpful in providing me with insight into what to expect from the application process and how to craft my narrative. While I had a strong story for myself, he really helped to make sure that it would resonate also with the admissions officers reading the applications within a pool of thousands.
And then he also helped me through the interview process, helping me to prep, giving an external perspective. While I had many peers who were also going through the same process and would have been happy to spend the time with me to prep, it was just the confidence of having somebody who I was literally paying to do that same thing and be my sounding board and help me go through reps, so I could get really comfortable going into the different stages of the application process. I don't know that I would recommend it for everyone; again, it's just a trade-off of time and money.
You said you got value out of it helping craft your narrative. What were the kinds of questions or exercises that the consultant did to help craft the narrative, and what do you think they provided that you would have struggled to do on your own?
For me it was pulling together threads of different parts of my past. Without the consultant I probably would have been hyper-focused on just my career experience, especially as I had gotten to the more senior levels within consulting, because to me that was the most impressive, the most top of mind. It demonstrated my ability to interact with C-suite executives, manage multiple projects at once, lead a team. To me those were all MBA-like qualities. The reframing that the consultant was super helpful in bringing to light is the fact that admissions officers are not only interested in your exact capabilities and your most recent job. What they want to hear is a holistic person who is passionate about what they do and would add something to the community.
So that's where some of the parts of my essay drew upon experiences in undergrad that I never would have even thought to draw upon, but I was involved with, for example, the Society of Women Engineers organization at Cornell. To me that was not a wildly impactful experience, but I had helped to launch a series where we brought in guest speakers to talk about their real-life work experience with small groups of women in this society. And he was like, that is exactly the kind of thing that MBA admissions officers also care about, because you're helping to foster a culture and a community of people who are interested in the same things. So the consultant was also helpful for reorienting how I thought about the various experiences.
You drew on undergrad experiences. Did he push you to draw on personal experiences outside of both school and career?
He did to some extent. I would say it didn't end up being a core part of any one of my essays; it was additional color. One part where I remember adding that type of color was a component of the MIT Sloan application, I think it was a 90-second or 2-minute video.
That I found incredibly awkward, and I just remember talking about part of where my name came from. So I talked about my heritage and how Jungduk is a pretty unusual name. I talked about where that name came from, how I have this massive collection of ducks at home, because over the years, especially growing up, even though it's not spelled the same way, it certainly sounds like a duck. So I just have this massive collection of rubber ducks and stuffed animal ducks and things like that. I think just showing more personality in those types of channels is where that more came out, but not so much my essays.
How many ducks made it to Kellogg with you?
Actually, I think one, because I have a little duck that has a Cornell t-shirt on it.
Yeah, exactly, 100% that value. And there's just simply the collateral piece of it too. In prep for this conversation with you both today, I was looking through some emails with my consultant, and he provided a lot of the prompting questions that I needed to help prepare for every step of the process, including things like the recommendation letters from the two people. So I had my direct mentor at work, and then the partner that I worked with most frequently serve as my two recommendations, and he provided the template for what he called a reference guide. And that reference guide was me populating really specific examples, qualities that I wanted them to highlight in the recommendation letter, what is my narrative, what is my goal out of business school, that kind of template, to really equip them with what they needed in order to provide the strongest possible recommendation letter. I would not have thought to do that. I would have been like, thank you so much, really appreciate the help, let me know if you have any questions. Just having that consultant be like, no, it is your job to equip them with what they need to be successful.
That 720 was the first time that I took it. I had taken it because basically my thought process was if I ever want to go to business school I need to take the GMAT, it is the very first step in this whole process, so I might as well get that out of the way. This is even before I had really homed in on any target schools. I had no inkling of essays or application process. All I knew is that the GMAT was a core component of the full package, and so that was what kicked my butt into gear as far as buckling down and starting to study. So that 720 was the first time I took it.
And then I got advice as I was evaluating different consultants. One of them told me 720 is a great score, it could be better, even if it's 10 points higher it could make a difference, so I want you to take that GMAT again. So based off of that advice I prepared again, not nearly as much as I should have, ended up getting the exact same score. And it was also just timed really poorly. I was on a pretty brutal diligence at work and I was just not in the right headspace, had not been studying as much as I should have. So in retrospect, do not recommend, unless you have the time and the headspace to really fully prepare for a second, it's just not worth it, because then it also takes away from the other parts of your life that you're trying to balance that with.
720 was the cutoff for you, right, in terms of whether you'd keep your score or not?
Exactly, that was my cutoff, and that was helpful to predefine too. I didn't have a debate of like, oh, is this really good enough or not. It's just this is the target I set for myself, it's binary, yes or no.
To the point about an application with package components, because I felt a little bit more confident that even though my GMAT may not have been stellar, at least I had the degree in engineering, and so that kind of helps to balance out. I can at least check the box and say I have some analytical quantitative abilities.
Although I will say, the curve at Cornell engineering was ridiculous. The initial scores could be so bad, but then ultimately I ended with well above a 3.0. I took my first math class at Chicago and the curve was not probably nearly as bad, but I remember I got like a 40% without any context around it, and I called my mom in tears like, I'm not smart enough to be here, I have to come home. And sure enough, the average was still higher, the average was 50%, the average was failing. That's what I mean by humbling, nothing to take you down a couple notches like an engineering class at Cornell.
I think that the application process, I only focused on three schools. I know a lot of other folks choose to apply to more schools, for me that was the number I thought I could do really well, and I wanted to apply first.
Between time and quality, I made sure that I was only focused on a really small subset of schools that I was genuinely excited about and, if I got in, I would be happy to go to. I would say this is in contrast to an undergrad application process, where it's a little bit more like, "Let's see what happens when I scatter my application across a wider net." For an MBA, because you're also balancing against your job, which is probably pretty time-consuming and intense, I think less is more. At least that was what worked for me. This is not a spray-and-pray approach; this is a thoughtful, targeted pick of three schools.
So I was three for three through the schools. Sloan straight up projected they were a hard no, thank you. For Wharton, I got the initial interview. Even prior to the interview process, which I should have mentioned, for Wharton the head of the Healthcare Management program is a woman named June Kenney, who is a storied figure at Wharton and within the healthcare space. I actually met with her prior to the formal interview process on the advice of my consultant, and then so that way when I got invited for the interview I met with her for a second time. We already had some relationship, some rapport to build off of, which is super helpful. Then we had the group interview, which is where they give you a prompt and then you work with your fellow applicants towards the solution and present it. That went pretty well. I actually came out of the conversation with June thinking that went super well, felt really confident about it. Even the group interview, the dynamics can always be a little dependent upon who you're paired with, but I thought that overall went pretty well as well. I ended up not getting into Wharton either.
Then for Kellogg, I got the interview, went to visit on campus, met with one of the admissions officers there. Again, I was scrolling through my notes in my email this morning, and I actually sent my consultant Tyler an email and said it went incredibly well, super easy flowing conversation, loved Rachel, the admissions officer. I just got a good vibe from being there. I felt really confident speaking to her, and it just felt like a really natural dialogue and not like a traditional interview. So even in the moment I just walked away thinking, if I don't get in, that's okay. I had a super positive application and interview process experience. And then sure enough, a month maybe later, I was accepted into Kellogg. That was the end of my story. From there, at least it made the choice really easy: did I want to go to business school or not, and if so, it's Kellogg.
Did the Kellogg decision come out before the Wharton one, or was there a 24-hour amount of panic?
It was reverse, luckily. Kellogg first, and then the next day was Wharton, and I was like, "Well, oh man, that helps a lot."
Would you apply to other schools in round two?
Oh man, I think I might have. It would have been a pretty difficult decision, though, just because it's not only time-consuming but emotionally taxing to go through that process. So I don't know if I would have been prepared to go through it again, but I think I probably would have, just because you've gotten this close, all the application material is there, it's just a matter of tweaking them and making them fit for the next school. So I probably would have done it, even though it would have been incredibly painful.
From obligations, there's no jobs to get back to, you're just starting school again, just hanging out with your best business school pals. But that for me is just - and it was so spontaneous. We couldn't go anywhere, so you're not doing crazy international travel or yacht week or anything that you would typically associate with business school. We just literally drove from Chicago to the Smoky Mountains, all piled into a car and went down there, and it was awesome. That was a highlight on the personal side. And then professionally, the most valuable part of business school from a career perspective was the internship experience. I did three internships while I was in business school, two in semester and one over the summer, and they were on the healthcare space but just three different facets. So I did one with a VC fund, I did another with a health system where I was working in their innovation group, and then I did another one with a mental health startup. All three were different roles, different types of companies, different capacities, so just super valuable for me.
How did you end up landing where you are, and what roles did you have in those three internships?
I'll actually start with the internships because it then leads me to my current role. At a super high level, I'm currently a product manager at a health tech startup called Transcarent. My three internships - the very first one that I had was the summer internship with the health system. For that one, I wanted to make sure that at some point during school I had an opportunity to actually work with a provider. I'd always worked, even while I was in consulting, with medical device manufacturers, pharma companies, biotech, but never the providers, and so that was a perspective I was really keen on getting. I worked with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in their Enterprises group, which essentially functions as sort of a hybrid between a VC fund and an incubator, where they look to work with startups or straight up acquire them, and they'll co-build products. They have their own team of product managers, software developers, and they'll work to use technology to build a solution that they then pilot within the UPMC system. So I was working in their digital solutions group, technically the title was product manager but it was very much 80% strategy, 20% product management.
It's funny looking back on that experience, because I think about what I was doing in the product management capacity there, which was a tiny feature tweak, like there's a copy change that needs to be made on that button. And I hated product management coming out of that role. I was like, product management, I don't understand the hype. I feel like there's this culture around product that makes it seem super elite, super cool, and I was like, I don't get it, that was awful, so no thank you.
Going into the fall - well, over the summer I actually applied to the internship with UPMC, had also applied to an internship with Seven Wire Ventures, which is a digital health VC fund. I ended up taking UPMC over Seven Wire because I wanted to work with a provider. But then in the fall, Seven Wire came back and asked if I wanted to do an in-semester internship, and I was like, amazing, absolutely, I want that experience. The way the Kellogg curriculum is structured, the school week is such that you have no class on Wednesdays, which is amazing, and then it's pretty easy to maneuver the rest of the day so that you have all the classes concentrated on just a few days a week. So I ended up spending usually two days per week with Seven Wire, maybe a little bit more, like two and a half days, and then the rest of it would be spent on school time. I did that for a quarter, which is also incredibly useful. I had also been super curious about the early investment space and just what that was like on a day-to-day basis. It ended up being a lot more similar to consulting in some ways than I expected, because it's a lot of market research - what are the macro trends that you're observing - a lot of diligence into specific potential targets, and a lot of that is very similar to what you might see in the consulting space as well.
I came out of that experience thinking VC doesn't make a ton of sense for me right now at this stage of my career, because I have zero operational experience. I thought that sitting at the VC fund, if I'm a founder looking for a potential investor, I want people who have on-the-ground experience and can actually help me stand up this company. So I thought that my value-add at a VC fund would pretty quickly hit its limit without actually getting on the ground, boots on the ground experience. That was my experience in the VC. And then because of that internship, I got connected to someone who worked at a mental health company called Mindstrong, and so I worked on their partnerships team for a quarter. When you think about execution of strategy, it was in the weeds - how do we stand up and implement a new partnership with a payer. So it's very tactical, just running through the mundane details that we need to make sure we have credentialed, and in these states we need to make sure we have the data file with these specifications. So very tactical, and again that was my first exposure to that kind of operational work. So again, insightful, probably not the right fit for me career-wise, but at each step of the way a lot of learnings.
Coming out of all that, my experience at Seven Wire was super helpful, not just for lifting the hood on what VC entails, but also because it connected me with an incredible network of people in the digital health space. So Transcarent is actually founded by the managing director of Seven Wire Ventures, Glen Tullman, and that was how I got interested and excited about Transcarent - just realizing Glen is spending all this time on this startup that's still in stealth mode. I have no idea what it is, but if Glen's working on it, it's got to be interesting. So I kept tabs on it as I was considering full-time opportunities.
It ultimately is a product management role, so how were you confident that it was going to be different than your prior product management experience?
Great question. When I first applied to Transcarent - and I would say this is active anti-advice - I only applied to one job at the end of business school, and this is it. The job I applied to was at Transcarent. I just felt really excited about the company. I knew I wanted to work at a company that I was super aligned with the mission. So I applied to the strategy manager role at Transcarent. I did not apply to the product management role. I didn't end up getting the strategy manager role because it went to one of your classmates from HBS, who was a delight and a good friend of mine now. She ended up getting the role, but as a result of the interview process I talked to four or five individuals at the company, and they were like, we just gave that role away, but would you be interested in an internship on our product team? So it started off as an internship because that was all they had headcount for, and for me that was actually really helpful, because I was also at the time super unsure as to whether product was the right fit for me. And it was an internship, so just because of the three experiences I had during business school, I was very bullish on internships. I was like, this makes a ton of sense for me, it's a really
It was a risk-free way to try something out, and I would absolutely be down to do something for three months. That's no time at all. So I interviewed with the product team, ended up getting an internship, loved it. It was completely different from my time at UPMC, and so I interned for a couple months and then converted to full-time in September of 2021.
You summarized that so articulately. That second piece that you just hit on in terms of things I was able to put on my resume is so key. Just the fact that I had the words "product management," however small percentage of my time it actually was in practice, even that was enough for the strategy team who interviewed me at Transparent to think, oh, maybe product might be a fit for her. So they made the connection of, it's actually not even on our job board right now, but it's an open role, so do you want to just go talk to our head of product?
And I think the other thing I would say is this is also a learning for me, and this is a theme that you'll hear back when I alluded to the fact that after undergrad I was like, absolutely never business school, graduate school, that's a never for me. That is how I felt about product management after my internship at UPMC. I was like, absolutely not, never, product management is not the right fit for me. But I would just say, never say never, because all those things change. Once you learn more about what it actually entails, and you change as a person and your interests change, your goals change. So I would just say, at every step, keep an open mind as to what your next move might be, because it might surprise you.
The most valuable of those experiences was probably the internship with Seven Wire, because they are just incredibly well connected, and that was the only one that I didn't get paid for. And that was okay, because it paid for itself. That was exactly how I got the interview for the strategy world at Transparent to begin with too. So without that, that wouldn't have led to the product internship, wouldn't have led to the full-time roles and where I am now.
That being said, everybody, if you're listening, always ask. Take the unpaid internship if they have no budget, but ask if they will pay. Come up with your worth. Your time is worth money, so worth asking at the very least. I asked, I tried.
I wish I'd had some experience outside of consulting before business school, because there are a lot of times in my current role when, it's a startup, there's a lot of chaos, and sometimes I can't tell: is it the company, is it because we're an early stage startup and this is just how it goes, is it because I'm new to product management and this is a kind of crazy role? There are a lot of variables, but having some of that experience prior to business school would have helped me to contextualize so much of what I was learning inside and outside the classroom. So that when it came up again, I'd have better pattern recognition. I could say, oh, this is what I saw in the company I was just at before, here's how I think about applying it differently in my future role. Whereas I didn't have that contextual awareness beforehand, and so now I'm like, we probably talked about a situation just like this in business school, but I can't really recall, because it didn't seem relevant to me at the time. So I experienced some of those moments where I'm like, darn, wish I had gone in business school.
There are so many moments when I think about it. Honestly, it's less the learnings from within the class versus, I was involved in the healthcare conference my second year. I helped to run our startup and growth fair as part of the healthcare conference, where we invited 20 different companies to come and basically use it as a tactic for recruitment. That conference happens in the winter, the January, February timeframe, which is on the later side as far as traditional recruitment processes, but it's ahead of the ball for startups who don't necessarily know how to count resourcing with a lot of notice. So our conference was pretty well timed as far as getting companies in front of students and vice versa, and using it as a marketplace. I led a team of first years, reaching out to companies, and it was a lot of project management. It was a lot of, how do I empower these first year students? They're all adults, we're all adults in business school, you know what you're doing, so you go find the companies that you think are most interesting to you and bring them to the fair. So there are some management and soft skills experiences that I definitely gained in business school that were helpful.
From a personal perspective, the thing that I cherish the most about business school, and I'm sure everyone says this too, is simply the relationships that I've formed. And it extends beyond the direct relationships that I established during my time at Kellogg with my peers. I had brunch yesterday with two of my classmates from Kellogg, and another woman who had graduated from HBS the year below us. There's already so much common ground when you meet another person who went to business school, and immediately that shared experience and all the commonalities across business schools, the interests, where you are in your career, what motivates you, what inspires you, what interests you in terms of what you like to talk about and think about. There's so much of that that I definitely didn't anticipate going into business school, but in retrospect I'm like, wow, I would love to hang out with her again. It was just super easy to talk to, and I learned so much just from chatting with her yesterday at brunch. It sounds sort of silly, but it's just little connections like that that I really appreciate now.
What is a stereotype about your school that is true, and what is a stereotype that is not true?
A stereotype that is so true is Kellogg nice. Kellogg people are just friendly. It's crazy, everyone is so nice. That is a first and foremost quality that I think they screen on, and the admissions folks do a phenomenal job in terms of identifying people who are down to earth, friendly, personable.
As for one that isn't true, it's hard to think of a false stereotype. But the stereotype that everyone who goes to Kellogg either is from the Midwest or stays in the Midwest is so false. There's definitely a lot of people who are from the Midwest and stay in the Midwest, but especially my year, I think at least a third of the class went to San Francisco. It was a particularly high percentage of folks my year that went to San Francisco, but there's definitely a lot of influx, outflux, and broad geographical spread.
Do you remember any interview question that took you by surprise?
My very last question of my Kellogg interview. The only reason this is top of mind is because I was just reviewing the notes I sent to my consultant. The very last question was, what will you struggle with the most if you come to Kellogg, which I thought was a good question. I ended up saying balance, which is still something I totally struggle with, because I'm sure you both experienced this at HBS too, you could spend your time doing twelve million things in business school. It's almost too much freedom, and so you have to be super intentional about how you spend your time.
What's the worst piece of advice you got in your business school application process?
The worst piece of advice I got was take the GMAT again. I don't know why, I just remember being so stressed out right after I took it. I just sat in my car and cried because I knew it didn't go well. I was so stressed at work and I just needed to go back home and log back on to do the rest of this project that I was working on, and I was like, why did I do that, that was just silly.
What Hogwarts house would you be?
Hufflepuff. I don't know why, I just feel like I'm not that cool. I'm a little bit of a pushover, just kind of nice and just there, so it resonates with my core.
Is there anything else that you want the listeners to know?
For me, business school made a lot of sense because I had a pretty specific goal, and I know people always say that, but that helped guide my entire application process too because I had a clear reason for why I was going. It's a massive investment to make, money and time and everything else that goes along with it, so be really clear and honest with yourself about what it is that you're trying to get out of it. For some people it was, I want to go to business school to find a partner, and if that's one of your reasons for going, also be honest with yourself about that because it might impact the school that you apply to. The second thing is just a reiteration of what we talked about earlier, but I am still kind of surprised that I'm in a product management role, that I'm in Chicago. Those are things that are surprising to me because I didn't expect it going into school. So just be open to surprising yourself. There's a lot of opportunity for growth and learning in business school that I wasn't anticipating, but is now the reason why I love it and why I appreciate it so much.