Dean Anoje

I read MBA applications from the inside. As a Booth Admissions Fellow in 2020-2021, I sat in the admissions office reading essays and resumes, ran 60-minute interviews, and wrote the evaluation that went to the committee on each candidate. That was the pandemic surge, one of the most competitive cycles Booth has had, so I saw a lot of strong applications and learned fast what separated the ones that moved forward from the ones that stalled. I also applied as a non-traditional candidate. I was a CPA out of KPMG audit, not the consultant or banker profile most people picture, and I was admitted to Booth, Columbia, Cornell Johnson, and NYU Stern. So I have been on both sides of the same file. I work best with applicants who look strong on paper but read as generic, and with career switchers out of accounting, finance, operations, and non-profit backgrounds who are worried their story does not add up to an M7 candidacy. It usually does. It is almost always a framing problem, not a resume problem. What I do with you: pressure test your school list against your real profile, find the through line that makes your career make sense to a reader who has ninety seconds, cut essays that are trying to be impressive down to essays that are trying to be clear, and run mock interviews the way I ran them for Booth, with the same written evaluation afterward so you see exactly how you came across. Outside of this I run a small company and teach cost accounting as adjunct faculty, so most of my week is spent explaining hard things to people learning them for the first time. Same job.