Why “Nontraditional” MBA Applicants Don't Exist (And What Does) | Ep 106

Are any MBA applicants truly “nontraditional” applicants?

In this episode of The mbaMission Podcast, Harold Simansky is joined by Jeremy Shinewald, the founder of mbaMission, to examine a common notion in MBA admissions: that of the “nontraditional” applicant. Drawing on more than two decades of experience, Jeremy argues that applicants should not focus on whether or not their background is “traditional” but on identifying and showcasing the personal stories that only they can tell.

The conversation covers what overrepresented applicants such as consultants, bankers, and software engineers can do to stand out, and why Olympic athletes and other less-conventional candidates still have to prove classroom readiness. Harold and Jeremy also share practical advice for applicants who are still three to four years away from applying to business school: Figure out what genuinely interests you, invest yourself in it, and let the rest of the story build itself.

The episode highlights several mbaMission success stories, including a pharmaceutical sales rep who pivoted into healthcare private equity, a European hockey player, a small-town mayor, and a professional baker—all of whom illustrate the same point: What makes an applicant memorable is rarely their title but rather the impact they have had on the people and communities around them.

If you are thinking about applying to an MBA program or just curious about how admissions committees view differentiation, this conversation is well worth your time.

00:00 Why “Nontraditional” Is an Inaccurate Label for MBA Applicants

01:50 What Overrepresented Business School Applicants Should Do Differently

04:00 The Bakery Essay: Authentic Storytelling

06:18 Why a Unique Background Isn’t Enough

10:26 The Three- to Four-Year Applicant Playbook

15:09 What Impact in a Corporate Role Looks Like

17:30 Nontraditional Applicant Success Stories

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Transcript

00:00 Why "non-traditional" is the wrong frame for MBA applicants

Harold Simansky 0:00

You're coming from an industry that may be less represented than some other industry, but isn't that amazing? I worked with a couple of chefs. I worked with um a mayor of a small town. Everyone has their own unique thing. Try to share how you can add value, and that has nothing to do with what you do in the office. That's just how you are as a person, how engaged you are.

Jeremy Shinewald 0:17

Okay, I'm three years out. I'm four years old. What should I what's the magic recipe? What should what should I do? And my response to them is always what are you interested in?

Harold Simansky 0:27

They're so committed to this process, really is what sets them apart. Or what sets apart maybe every great applicant.

Jeremy Shinewald 0:34

If you put yourself in a position to do something you love really, really well, you can build a story. You don't know what's going to come with it.

Harold Simansky 0:51

Every year we had MBA missions speak with thousands of MBA hopefuls, and they almost all fall into two camps. We hear from traditional candidates, the consultants and the iBankers, saying, I wish I had a wider story so I could actually stand out. And then we hear from the non-traditional candidates, the teachers, the artists, the military officers say, I wish I came from finance so the schools would take me seriously. Here's the reality: non-traditional isn't about a box you checked. It's not just about your ethnicity, your gender, or whether you come from a country most people couldn't find on a map. The admissions office has one goal to build a class where you are challenged by people who don't think like you. And this is the part people miss. Being different isn't a golden ticket. A unique profile isn't just a list of stats. An application is a story of impact. And now I'm joined with Jeremy Scheinwald, the founder of MBA Admission. Let's get into it. So, Jeremy, frequently people calls and say, hey, I'm a non-traditional applicant. And I always say there's no such thing as a non-traditional applicant. Yeah, everyone's a non-traditional applicant. Absolutely.

What overrepresented applicants to business school should do differently

Jeremy Shinewald 1:50

So if you if you seem, if you feel like you are a traditional applicant in every respect, then you have a problem, right? Like maybe, maybe you're working, like, yes, there are over-represented groups. If you're if you're a consultant, if you're a banker, uh, you know, you're to a lesser extent these days, but in uh in software, um, you know, particularly from India, uh, you know, you're you're overrepresented. But if if you feel like you're overrepresented, it means they're kind of like a monolithic applicant. Right. So if you're a consultant who is a clown for children on the weekends in the hospital, yeah, and also started a reading group for your for your peers, uh, you know, reading like that's that is you're no longer traditional. I I'm not suggesting everyone run out and become uh you know clowns for children. But if you have, you know, maybe you're not maybe you're not maybe you're you're traditional in your profession, right? But there are there are so many other sides of you, right?

Harold Simansky 2:45

No, absolutely. And I always tell folks, whether you're traditional or non-traditional, it it's almost sounds like you tell your children, you're the only you. And we mean that quite seriously. I think it's at times it it becomes a cliche, but the reality is there are things that only you can say. There are experiences that only you bring. Right. And we have to communicate those experiences. So if you go in there and say, I'm an investment banker, here's my selected transactions, well, guess what? You generally lose because there's always somebody else at that, you know, other investment bank who has slightly bigger transactions or has that extra GMAT or Jerry. Yeah. Uh, and and then you lose. I think the reality of what makes for a good applicant is this notion here of I'm gonna really highlight for you those things that maybe you know you wouldn't have even expected about me. And like you said, the investment banker who plays piano in the old H home on the weekends.

Jeremy Shinewald 3:34

Yeah, also like some of some of what can make you distinct. I maybe I'm maybe I I'm kind of echoing what you're saying. Yeah, but like some of what makes you distinct might not be specific experience, but might be your insight into it. So I'm gonna disguise this a little bit. But I had an applicant who applied to who was successful in getting to the GSB, what matters most to them and why. Just again, this is disguised, uh, but talked about the role

The bakery essay: authentic storytelling

Jeremy Shinewald 4:00

that her high school job had in forming her perspective on um sort of finding relationships where you don't expect them. It's I'm trying too hard to be vague, but she but she just sort of talked about the fortuity of of again disguised, let's say working in a in a bakery and and just the people that she interacted with and how it kind of made her realize there are there are possibilities for relationships everywhere, and that wherever she went, she established, she she took everything nothing at you know, nothing for granted and and connected with people and found interesting relationships wherever she went. It's like that's not earth chattering. Like, like, like she didn't say uh when I was competing for my country in the Olympics, that's right, I established relationships around the globe. Yeah, but she offered a very sincere, authentic window into who she was. Overrepresented professionally, yes, but overrepresented in terms of the commitment to those values and the willingness to live those values, no. Yeah, and so that was a huge, it was like a huge, it was such a beautiful essay, so well written. And um and I think it really popped for her and really allowed her to differentiate. She was no longer overrepresented as a consultant. If you want to be one of our success stories, sign up for a free consultation with a member of our full-time MBA admissions team. Since we've worked with tens of thousands of applicants over the past two decades, we can give you our honest opinion on your chances and help you put together your very best application. That is not a sales call, but rather your first session with one of us for free. We can give you a profile evaluation, answer specific questions about the process, review your resume, talk about your school choices, and so much more. Sign up at nba mission.com/slash consult. We look forward to working with you.

Harold Simansky 5:51

Listen, I think you also hopped over something where you talked about how she wasn't an Olympic athlete. And what I'm gonna say to you is it also cuts the other way. We'll simply frequently have people come to us and say, listen, I'm an Olympic athlete or professional athlete or whatever it is, and they think that's the end of the story, and they think that's good enough. Right. At the end of the day, that's not good enough either. Right. Yeah, that there has to be something truly authentic, genuine. What are you gonna bring to the classroom? And again, a business school classroom is not the ski slopes in the Olympics,

Why a Unique Background Isn’t Enough

Harold Simansky 6:18

right?

Jeremy Shinewald 6:18

Like what do you what are you bringing? It's a head start. You're gonna get noticed because it's different, but it doesn't mean you you get it. You still have to prove that you can perform in the classroom. And uh, you know, you have to have strong grades or you know, very strong GMO or GRE score at some level. You have to prove that you can do the work and you're a capable, competent human being, and um, and show that you can offer something to the class.

Harold Simansky 6:40

I think that's it. Listen, non-traditional, again, not sure what that means, but the reality is that okay, so you're coming from an industry that may be less represented than some other industry, but isn't that amazing? Isn't that actually amazing? We've had people in the performing arts, for example. It's a wow, what does the business of entertainment look like? Everyone is is thrilled with the notion of your voice being in that classroom.

Jeremy Shinewald 7:01

Right. Yeah, it it's I I think I might have said this before uh on the podcast, but I think early in my career I dealt with someone who had who had started a retail shop, and and she was saying, like, oh, I just wish I was a McKinsey consultant. I just I you know, they're they're the ones who get into business school. And then I talked to the same day, talked to a McKinsey consultant who said, Oh, I wish I would have done something wildly different, like open a retail shop. You know, and like and I was like, oh my, that's this is crazy. And and and so I think we have a we have a perspective that you know, look, this is a highly selective process. There's a sense of want to measure ourselves against our peers. And I think that you're constantly trying to figure out whether you measure up or not, and you're looking and you're saying, well, if I'm overrepresented, it's gonna be harder in my group. Yeah. But then the the other person who's who is underrepresented is saying, like, they're not gonna, I maybe I'm not credible. Right, right. But the but the the inverse of that is the person who opened the retail store could say, Yeah, this is different. I'm gonna lean into this. And the consultant could say, I'm gonna lean into the specifics of my story and the things that I do particularly well, and I'm gonna the things that I do differently outside of my role. I've talked to this before. Like the the there are lots of applicants to Stanford and Harvard who get in who are just getting in on like remarkable competence, like just everything they do is just a turn of the dial better than everyone else. There's nothing necessarily in the background, you're like, whoa, behold, I can't believe a human being did that.

Harold Simansky 8:34

That's right. I think that's right. And frequently um that comes out in the recommendations. Because as I we do a lot of digging reviews, we end up going through people frequently, generally, if they haven't used their services, they come back to us with a resume that says something like it's even BCG, Ivy League School, whatever it is. And at the end of the day, they say, okay, what weren't wrong on my application? And well, they rely just on that. At the end, at the end of the day, it's still about showing yourself to be exceptional. And the recommendation doesn't speak to that. Right. At the end of the day, when we see the recommendation, so again, dialing everything up just a little bit. And pre people will frequently ask me, okay, where do some people what's the most under-indexed piece of the application? And really it's, I think, the recommendations very frequently with this idea here they have not connected with their recommender. The recommender isn't prepared to say they're the best ever.

Jeremy Shinewald 9:26

Yeah, I think I think you're touching on something like no matter who you are, execution becomes absolutely critical, right? So if you know if you're ignoring your recommendations, you've got one hand tied behind your back. If you are phoning in your short answers and just copying and pasting for your resume, you have one hand tied behind your back. Like don't do those things. Like it doesn't matter if you're you know, you ran that flower shop, whatever I said, or you're the top consultant McKinsey, if you're phoning in your application, it's you're in trouble.

Harold Simansky 9:51

That's right. And it takes time. And it absolutely takes time. And that's traditional or non-traditional. But um listen, I think at the end of the day, these business schools are building communities, and they're building all sorts of, they want all sorts of different people in their community. So as long as you're someone who goes in there and is going to start adding value, and that value can become in many different ways. One is by all means being the smartest in the class or being the person who orders the pizza on Friday night. Whatever it is, try to share how you can add value. And that has nothing to do with what you do in the office. That's just how you are as a person, how engaged you are.

Jeremy Shinewald 10:25

So we're talking

The three-to-four-year applicant playbook

Jeremy Shinewald 10:26

a lot about the applicants that we get and and as the as like a finished product and we're helping them to differentiate. I get a lot of people calling me and saying, okay, I'm three years out. I'm four years old. What should I what's the magic recipe? What should what should I do? I've got this time to do something. And and my response to them is always, what are you interested in?

Harold Simansky 10:48

Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely. First of all, you do the blocking and tackling, right? You're three years out, you know you're gonna have to take the GM out of the jury. You have to do really well. If you did poorly in college, or there's some other reasons, maybe take an online course. Yeah. But at the end of the day, okay, I always default back to Harvard Business School. What are they looking for? In habit of leadership, engage citizen aptitude for analytics. So aptitude for analytics, smart, GPA, GRE, GMAT, make sure you get that done. Okay, habit of leadership, habit, you'll see it over many different ways. Frequently comes out in your recommendations. But engage citizen, are you engaging with your community? Are you participating? So if you come to me three years out and I say, just do like I'll pick up one of you said, do what you like, but do it very well.

Jeremy Shinewald 11:29

Yeah. It's not like it's not like do what you love as some kind of like new age cliche. Right. It's like if if you, you know, if you really love basketball and you played in high school and it was productive for you, you feel great on the court, then coach basketball. Yes. You don't need to be on the board of MoMA. You can go out there and just if you're a really thoughtful, if you put yourself in a position to do something that you love really, really well, you can build a story. You don't know what's going to come of it. Like I can't predict out and say, coach basketball, you're gonna win the championship. That's not the point. The point is you'll develop interesting mentorship relationships with your kids if you're really committed to it. You might uh, you know, you might find yourself finding a unique coaching style, or you might find yourself fundraising for the team or whatever it might be, the story will evolve because you're there and you're engaged. And I think if you're if you're saying, like, okay, uh, well, I could coach basketball, I don't feel like that's good enough. I gotta get on the board of something. And you sit on the board and you can.

Harold Simansky 12:26

And believe me, that's exactly what I tell folks. It's it's don't be on the board of soup kitchen, go and serve lunch every other Sunday, whatever it is.

Jeremy Shinewald 12:32

Or do both, but like, you know, often sitting on a sitting on the on the junior board of something or the board of something, if if you don't have your own voice and your any your own impact, it doesn't matter. So like I'm like impact, impact, impact. Find a role. Like, don't just go and don't just go and I mean, coaching basketball, if you find that job, it's it's probably pretty hard unless you don't put yourself in to be impactful. But like, you know, ask yourself if you're gonna join that soup kitchen, yeah. Ask yourself, like, is there a chance for me to be truly impactful here?

Harold Simansky 13:02

Listen, I also tell folks you can be impactful outside of your job responsibilities. I had a client, a fantastic client of mine, really great guy, really wonderful guy, and he just loved film and he was working the usual 80 hours a week at one of the big consulting firms, but he just loved film. So he ended up creating just a film club where they'd sneak off every Friday afternoon or something, and a bunch of them would watch a movie together, and then they just talk about it. And it was a film club, and suddenly it went from like five people to 80 people. Wow, 80 people that included partners, that included support staff. And and you can imagine the yes say that he was able to write about this experience, bringing all sorts of different people together. And this is just because he loved film and was just wanting to watch it with some friends of his.

Jeremy Shinewald 13:44

Yeah, and I think people listening, some people listening will say, Well, does that count as if as if the admissions office is saying, like, well, we we only we only count if you're working for a 501c3 organization. They're not interested in count, they're not measuring in like a conventional sense where there's a the where there's uh you know five points of this and six points of that. They're saying, look, that habit of leadership. Yeah, the individual who found who basically founded a community of film enthusiasts, right? That's the other that's the individual who's gonna do this in other places and be successful in not just in his career, but in life or her career.

Harold Simansky 14:18

Yeah, absolutely. And they're gonna be a great classmate, they're gonna be a great member of her community in many ways. That's the most important thing.

Jeremy Shinewald 14:23

Yeah, what if they like replicate that in our in a because they love it or whatever it is. Um, and so I think it it's not just like film in the in the in the unconventional sense, like non-501c3, it's also doing things in your professional environment that are not sort of convey like conventionally part of your job. So if you were to revamp training, no, it hasn't been revamped in a long time. You're bored in training for your company, and and you've gotta someone's gonna breathe some new life into it. If you were to start a small mentorship organization or uh uh you know, uh some sort of employee group or lobby for some change in your benefits, whatever it might be. You're you're being impactful. And and with consulting.

What impact looks like inside a corporate job

Harold Simansky 15:09

Traditional, traditional, untraditional, whatever it is.

Jeremy Shinewald 15:11

It is impact. It is this notion here of the case. I I had a consultant many years ago who who interviewed at Harvard and Stanford, Alaska, he didn't get in. It was, it was, it was too bad. He tried his hardest. Yeah. Um, but he he was at one of the MBBs and he basically lobbied his HR team to give him the budget to put together an associate off site for his region in Asia and um and and kind of like ran a morale and training weekend for the and it he was so impactful. It was such a great story. It was great that recommenders could write about it, he could write an essay about it. I mean, he came pretty close. It didn't work out for him, which is too bad. But um, you know, like that's a massive differentiator for someone who's overrepresented. So he is no longer traditional. Again, to go back to the beginning, he's no longer traditional because he was so vested in something that was different.

Harold Simansky 16:03

That's right. And also someone is no longer non-traditional if it's clear that they're gonna impact the class in a way that is is relevant, that is important. Sure, you could be and insert whatever non-traditional you would imagine, maybe a member of the clergy or something. Right. But if that's a member of the clergy, it's the one who starts the film club and then is gonna bring that back to the business school and then is gonna start the uh a club there, then then suddenly you realize, okay, this is a person who really can analog.

Jeremy Shinewald 16:28

Let's uh without without revealing any confidence as a commission member of the clergy, let's let's talk about some of the individuals that we have helped over the years that have this is probably gonna make people crazy because they're they're going to say, Yeah, um, oh well, maybe you do have to be those types of things. But yeah, who tell me about um tell me just like the professions or or community passions of of people who really have stood out in the obvious way.

Harold Simansky 16:54

Right. So a couple of things certainly come to mind. One is a woman, I'm gonna say older, listen, still very young. 20 years old, 25 years old. You know, so so she was in her early 30s. Okay. And she was coming from a sales role. And there are there simply are not a lot. She's pharmaceutical sales, which is there's simply not a lot of salespeople at business schools. There, there just aren't. And she was coming from Northern California, and some things happened in her life, and she's like, I gotta be out of Northern California. It's like you can't imagine everyone goes to Northern California, she has to be out of it. And she's like, she doesn't know what to do, she doesn't know where she needs to go. But at the bottom line is we said, Oh, we want to be healthcare, uh, you

Non-traditional success stories

Harold Simansky 17:30

want to be someplace that's really cool, you want to end up doing something um, you know, just making your life different. So great, we wrote a great story about the fact she wants to go to into pharma, had some real personal reasons to do that. She goes to Vanderbilt, Nashville, home run. Nashville's a wonderful city. Um, Vanderbilt's a great school, ends up in private equity in healthcare, healthcare, private equity. And at the end of the day, it was just the fact that it wasn't that she was so different, but she was just so it was so clear what her goals were and her fit with the school. She was just, I mean, really a success story.

Jeremy Shinewald 18:03

I have another great success story, but I'll let you go first. No, I look, I remember early on um you know working with an individual who was a he was a hockey player in the um in the European leagues and um and wanted to go to business school and and ended up at a top 10 10 program. Yeah. Um, I remember we've had other athletes. We've worked with a few people. Um one I can't give too many details without the one person who was had a really respectable in uh NFL career and and is and went on to do some really amazing things with this with his MBA. Um so definitely some athletes. Clergy I never worked with. I worked with a couple of chefs over the years. That was really fun. I have worked with I worked with um a mayor of a small town, as I think Jessica did too.

Harold Simansky 18:49

Yeah, that's really neat.

Jeremy Shinewald 18:50

Uh that was really fun. Yeah. I'm trying to think of uh there's I mean it I think it speaks to the fact that like again, you know, you everyone ultimately everyone has their own unique thing. And so when I I mean I can think of individuals who uh you know are in private equity, yeah, really distinct individuals. Like I can think I can think of one individual who learned English quite late to basically learn English quite late to apply to undergrad in the States, and last ditch applied to Harvard and got in and went to Harvard like and was still learning English and and um and came back and he went entered conventional private equity and came back conventional banking private equity path, um, you know, then applied to Harvard and like just had this really distinct life story. Like, so I again speaking to like our point about don't be daunt, I mean, even though we're introducing it, don't be daunted by the the mayor or the professional athlete, though the clergyman, whatever, the baker or the oh, I worked with a baker. That was awesome. I worked with a baker. It was maybe I said chef, but it was a baker.

Harold Simansky 19:56

I've worked with a number of people from the country of Georgia. Okay, and the reality is that, first of all, it it's incredibly just incredible people. Yeah. The level of education, unbelievable. The reality though is that for them, business school is just an opportunity to really optimize their lives. That just just the notion here that they're so committed to this process really is what sets them apart. Or what sets apart, maybe every great applicant. They just they know they cannot maximize their life where they are. So they really put in the effort and really, really work hard to get the United States in the maximize things here.

Jeremy Shinewald 20:32

Yeah, I'm thinking about other countries. You're right. So I worked with um uh a bunch of members of a family from El Salvador uh over the years, as did uh as did there's such a big family, as did several others on our team. Uh and yeah, sometimes you know nationality can can allow you to pop and and and stand out for sure. Yeah, I'm trying to think of some of the more uh more uh uh you know less traditional countries that that um Estonia. Okay, speaking of the Baltics, I had an awesome applicant for the Baltics. His book is his uh his essay is in uh our book of HBS and GSB essays uh under the disguise name of Lukash L-U-K-S, one of the best essays. And the reason why it's great to talk about, it was the least traditional essay I've ever seen. That's where I'm gonna look for it. Yeah, he wanted to take a big risk because he believed in who he was, right? And he just he went for it. And it it's it's not everyone's cup of tea, but he was he was admitted to the GSP. And um he talked in the beginning about how his country was highly religious and how he did not believe, and how the steps he took to live a non-religious life in his country because it just was true to who he was. He just didn't believe and he couldn't accept the fact that he was pretending to believe and because he had to fit in. I was like, this is an amazing story of individualism. Totally different. He was in, you know what he you know what he did professionally? He was in asset management.

Harold Simansky 22:04

Yeah.

Jeremy Shinewald 22:05

Different because of his his value system beliefs.

Harold Simansky 22:08

Absolutely. And I wanted to turn that around, actually. I worked with a con with a client of mine, again, wonderful guy, a little bit older, and he said, What's really important to me is my faith, but I'm very sheepish about talking about it. And I said, absolutely not. Let's let's really dig into his faith. And it was so wonderful because on the one hand, we saw, you know, on the personal level, how he lived his life and was really so thoughtful about that, but also the impact he had on other people. I mean, he really did live his faith. And at the end of the day, he was changing people's lives. And he's like, Oh, is it worth mentioning? This I'm like, Yes, this is exactly what's worth mentioning. It was funny.

Jeremy Shinewald 22:39

I don't know, I we could probably spend 10 episodes talking to the applicants we worked with. But this is probably dating back, it was dating back enough years. I don't want to I don't want to give a specific year because I'm gonna could could be revealing confidential information. But this is before Elon Musk was uh the you know Elon Musk. Before he was Elon Musk, but he was still Elon Musk, but he wasn't Elon Musk he is now. Yeah, and uh he wasn't like sort of talked about in the zeitgeist the same way. And uh an individual uh that I worked with was his chief of staff, and uh it was just such a distinct role. Like there weren't a lot of chiefs of staff, yeah. And he was, I think this was maybe early at SpaceX. It might have, it might have been Tesla. Um, maybe it was early at Tesla, I can't remember so long ago. But um it was again, he wasn't like a he wasn't a household name at the time. He was he was part of the PayPal mafia, done some amazing things. If you knew, you knew. Yeah, but um, yeah, it was just like it was a really cool, different job to be supporting an entrepreneur like that. Yeah, no, no. All right, we have to we could go on and on. I think I'm getting the we're getting a big hook from uh from from our team.

Harold Simansky 23:43

By only it's if you don't talk to me. We're real people. If you want to talk to me, if you want to talk to Jeremy, anyone you see on the podcast, any one of our consultants' outmates, call us. Go on to our website, mba mission.com, sign up for a free 30-minute consultation.

Jeremy Shinewald 23:57

Absolutely. Don't call me, called Harold. Call Harold. He's he's he's uh I'm a real person. Yeah, he's affable, he's friendly. Uh no, we'd love to do this. And um would like to hear from anyone for sure.

Harold Simansky 24:08

Absolutely and keep on watching our podcast.

Jeremy Shinewald 24:09

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