How do Northwestern/B-schools count WE? Forum

[jms1987]

Posted this on another forum, figured I'd thrown it up here as well

I have worked for our family business in general contracting for a few years now (in school as of now so won't be working again until summer) What I'm wondering is if any top b-school or a law school like NW will count this time I've spent doing estimating as WE, considering so many applicants come in from I-banking, boutiques, etc. Letters of recommendation worry me a bit since my dad is also my boss so there's an obvious bias.

I'm currently in UG with 2 years remaining and deciding between an MBA or JD (or both?), and have yet to take either the LSAT or GMAT (which will the dealmaker or breaker) Obviously that leaves a big question unanswered, but I like to know as much in advance as possible

Any help would be highly appreciated

[jms1987]

bump

[09042014]

Northwestern Law counts pretty much anything that you do fulltime after you graduate college.

B Schools consider what you did, how challenging it was, how prestigious, etc etc

[jms1987]

Thats what I assumed, but I wanted to be certain. No reputable b-school takes you right out of UG either, correct? (unless I cure cancer perhaps )

[pissantvache]

meh. A lot of reputable B-Schools take you right out of college (harvard, stanford, wharton, etc.), but you need to be phenomenal in many ways for that to happen--like having 780/3.9/Goldman Sachs internship/harvard, stanford, wharton undergrad.

Unfortunately, WE is a totally different calculation for bschool than it is for law school; whereas law school cares that you've been doing something, bschool cares whether you've been doing something that's hard to get. McKinsey and Goldman place faaar better into bschools than even other good firms (say, Deloitte Consulting), and it's not because they have much better GMATs and grades. They just made it through a series of somewhat more difficult gatekeepers. so they don't find working in a family business all that impressive, unless you've completely changed the organization or something.