Before MBA Protocol

I have worked in logistics in retail and pharma/bioscience spaces for five years. Though I have been successful in my roles, and even earned a promotion in the retail space, I found different issues with both companies. In the retail space, I grew fatigued from corralling delivery drivers, working weekends and repetition routing deliveries, so much so that I had to take a leave of absence to tend to my mental health, despite generally enjoying my coworkers and the company’s atmosphere.

More recently in the pharma space, I found no career ladder, a stagnant salary structure as well as unethical and unnecessarily complex systems that made my job exponentially more difficult. On top of that, turmoil within the company meant that my success was often overlooked and underappreciated by people in charge.

I worked with a career counselor and aptitude test company in early 2024, which uncovered a faculty with retaining numerical information that I had not thought out prior, concerns about my financial future and life satisfaction if I could not make a change, and a desire to work with intelligent colleagues on more complex or creative problems that require in-depth thinking.

Why MBA, why now

I explored some analytics certification programs in early 2024 and tried some open source materials to get a feel for what I would need to learn to market myself. However, I struggled staying focused and determined that I would need to formally return to school to work in a program with the resources and structure I needed.

I first considered an MBA after an exit interview with the retail company, where my colleague in the HR department mentioned her MBA, which allowed her to take on some new opportunities and ultimately settle on HR long-term. After conducting research, I decided to pursue my own MBA after seeing the flexibility I could have with the degree - for someone who has struggled for years to decide on a career path due to a wide variety of interests, a degree with flexibility sounded like a perfect fit.

Why MBA Protocol

I previously applied to MBA programs in the 2024-2025 cycle, completely on my own and without knowledge of what I was getting into. The results were disastrous, and I took a free consultation meeting with another well-known firm once I decided to reapply in the 2025-26 cycle to try and nail down specific areas that most needed my attention. While the meeting was productive, the price point and personality of the consultant did not match what I was looking for. I felt like just a resume to her.

I remembered watching Angela’s YouTube videos at some point previously, and found them fun, informative but also supportive. Angela was kind enough to jump on a free call with me, and opened the conversation by asking about a non-work item on my resume that she found impressive before reaffirming the previous consultant’s advice (that I was a candidate for a top program with a little extra care). The LFG program’s cost fit my budget as well as the services I required - something more self-paced with the option to schedule one-on-one sessions as I needed them.

The work we did together

Generally speaking, I tend to not shy away from tackling big goals. Even though my confidence wavered at times, I never stopped believing that I deserved entry to a top program. With MBA Protocol, I found not only supportive coaches who agreed and reinforced my beliefs, but also a team of other prospective students who cheered me on along the way. Having hit my goal of attending a top program, I feel greater confidence that I can successfully recruit for a top firm as long as I follow the structure of the program and seek out resources when I need them, just as I did through MBA Protocol.

MBA Admission Results

In 2024-2025, I was rejected at MIT, Harvard and Dartmouth, with admits to lower-ranked part-time programs in Boston College, Boston University and Northeastern.

In 2025-2026, my test scores went up. This put me within the median range at every school I applied to, six in total.

While I was rejected once again at Harvard and MIT without an interview, I did get an in-person interview at Dartmouth this time, and ultimately two admits from Georgetown and Cornell, the latter of which I accepted. There was an issue with my application to Carnegie Mellon and I turned down their invitation to interview, but I felt confident I would have converted that to an admit as well.

I grew up in rural Vermont and was the first in my family to graduate college. The average Cornell Johnson graduate earns three times my current salary. The Ivy League felt like a place that existed in imagination only, no matter how successful or impressive my resume, and that I would have to settle for smaller programs in the region. Thanks in no small part to MBA Protocol, I am on the precipice of making this imagination reality. To say that I am ecstatic about the results would be the understatement of the century.