(Poets&Quants) — It was as if he’d climbed up on a high diving board, shouted down to everyone on the pool deck to watch him perform a triple back flip with four twists, bounced a few times to prepare for launch, bounced a few more times to make sure everyone was looking, propelled himself into the air … and missed the pool completely.
这件惨事这么说吧，就好比他爬到一个高台跳水板上，大叫着让泳池边的人观看他表演向后翻腾三周转体四周。他在跳板上跳了几下准备开始，又跳了几下确定所有人都在看他，然后高高跃起……结果却栽到了泳池外面。
Splat.
啪嗒。

Poor Grant. He wasn’t attempting the world’s most difficult dive, but its academic equivalent instead: applying to an ultra-elite MBA program. And while he wasn’t wearing a Speedo on a high board over a pool, he was even more exposed—Grant was standing in the middle of the Internet for all to see.
可怜的格兰特。当然，他并非真的在尝试最高难度的跳水动作，而是在进行一次学术方面的高难度尝试：申请超一流的MBA课程。虽然他没有像跳水运动员那样，穿着Speedo站在泳池上方的高台跳板上，但他暴露得更加彻底——在互联网上，所有人都能看到格兰特的失败。
You may have read his blog, Grant Me Admission, in which he chronicles his quest for a top-tier MBA. It’s received nearly 100,000 page views. And it’s pretty good: enthusiastic, lively, clearly written, full of tips and ideas and lessons learned. Read it, and you’re right there with Grant as he studies for and takes the GMAT, researches schools, visits campuses, analyzes sample essays, and gets interviews. It’s incredibly detailed.
你可能读过格兰特的博客“赐我一份录取吧”，其中详细记录了他申请顶级MBA课程的经历。其页面浏览量已经达到10万人次。内容也很不错：充满热情，生动详实，其中包括许多建议和想法，以及他自己总结的教训。阅读他的博客时，你就如同在陪着格兰特一起努力学习，参加GMAT考试，研究学校，考察校园，分析短文范例，参加面试。不能再详细了！
Which is part of the reason Grant went splat. He wasn’t just applying to top B-schools. He was also working full time, and doing a lot of nonprofit work, plus putting in hours and hours on his blog.
但这也是格兰特遭遇惨败的原因之一。他并没有将全部精力投入到申请顶级商学院上。他还有一份全职工作，同时还在从事大量公益事业，更不用说还要花费大量时间更新博客。
。
他的故事对于正在申请顶级MBA课程的所有人都很有价值。格兰特没有专注于进入商学院这个首要目标，结果付出了惨痛的代价。
His story holds a valuable lesson for anyone applying to top MBA programs. Grant failed to focus on Goal No. 1, getting admitted to business school, and he paid a painful price.
最近他在一张荒凉的火星照片下面写道：
As he writes on a recent post, below a photo of a bleak Martian landscape:
哈佛：拒绝，没有面试机会
Harvard: Dinged without an interview
沃顿：拒绝，没有面试机会
Wharton: Dinged without an interview
耶鲁：拒绝，没有面试机会
Yale: Dinged without an interview
凯洛格：拒绝
Kellogg: Dinged
塔克：拒绝
Tuck: Dinged
我不想撒谎；但告诉大家这些结果真的很难。
I’m not going to lie; it is incredibly hard for me to share these results.
当然，正在报考MBA的人都知道，被拒绝是最糟糕的事情，但这也是常事。去年，格兰特申请的五所商学院，一共收到了超过25,400份申请，但最终被录取的人数不到3,000人。在这五所商学院中，哈佛商学院的录取率最低，为12%，耶鲁大学最高，为24%，总体来说，被这些学院录取的几率很低。去年，这五所商学院MBA课程的录取率不足18%。
One unfortunate fumble leads to another, and another
一次不幸的失误会产生连锁反应
For a 5’11”, 175-pound, 27-year-old man who enjoys Olympic-style weightlifting and superhero movies, not getting into an elite business school may very well be his first significant failure yet. Grant works in corporate finance, and is now in the process of switching homes and jobs—from the East Coast, working for a Fortune 50 aerospace company, to Los Angeles, where he’ll be working for an entertainment company not far outside the Fortune 50.
对于一个身高1米55、体重175磅、喜欢奥运会举重项目和超级英雄电影的27岁男性来说，没有被顶尖商学院录取可能是他遭遇的第一次重大失败。格兰特在公司从事财务工作，目前正在搬家和换工作——从东海岸一家位列《财富》50强的航空航天公司，搬往洛杉矶，即将加入一家排名接近《财富》50强的娱乐公司。
He had suffered a lesser defeat before receiving the five rejections. The year before, Grant had applied to Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business alone, but didn’t get in. He’d at least been wait-listed.
在被五次拒绝之前，他还曾遭遇过一次不太严重的打击。一年前，格兰特只申请了达特茅茨学院塔克商学院，但未被录取。不过至少那一次他进入了候选名单。
And that’s another reason why Grant went splat.
这是格兰特遭遇惨败的另外一个原因。
After applying to Tuck in October 2013, and languishing on the wait list from December until his August rejection, Grant got a little obsessive, worrying over his prospects of getting in, trying to put numbers to his chances. The fact that a friend with a lower GMAT score had gotten into Tuck the year before after being wait-listed gave Grant hope, which turned out to be false.
2013年10月申请塔克商学院之后，从12月进入候选名单到第二年8月被拒绝，格兰特如同着魔一般，一直担心自己能否被录取，对成功的几率进行了各种计算。之前一年，有一位朋友的GMAT分数更低，但被塔克商学院录取，这让格兰特燃起了希望，结果希望变成了泡影。
“It was probably borderline unhealthy,” he recalls. “I was like an addict. I was constantly looking on forums, and playing the percentage game.”
他回忆说：“我大概是有些不正常了。我就像个瘾君子一样。不停地去查看论坛，计算成功的概率。”
So the next time, after he applied to Harvard, Wharton, Yale, Kellogg, and Tuck, he wasn’t going to make the same mistake and drive himself nuts by fixating on his odds of getting in.
于是，第二次，他申请了哈佛、沃顿、耶鲁、凯洛格和塔克。这一次，他不会再犯同样的错误，不想因为太关注被录取的机会而让自己变得神经质。
Instead, he made a bigger mistake. The previous year, while anxiously awaiting an answer from Tuck, he’d remained diligent: he followed up his interview by getting in touch with the interviewers, emailing them once a month—demonstrating his strong interest and perseverance, and keeping himself on their radar. He should’ve done the same this time after interviews with Kellogg and Tuck, but he was trying to prevent the waiting game from consuming him as it had the time before, he says.
但是，他却犯了一个更大的错误。之前一年，在焦急等待塔克商学院的回复时，他还能保持勤奋：他在面试之后与面试官保持联系，每个月发一封电子邮件——证明自己强烈的兴趣和毅力，让对方注意到他的存在。这一次在参加凯洛格和塔克的面试之后，他本应该继续这样做，但他说，这一次他却在尽量避免像上次一样，因为他不愿再为这种等待的游戏去消耗自己了。
“This year I didn’t follow up on those interviews,” he says. “I didn’t email the interviewers. That was really stupid and lazy of me. I just kept putting it off. Really dumb.”
他说道：“今年我没有在面试之后跟进。我没有给面试官发邮件。我真是太蠢了。我太懒惰。我一次次推迟。真蠢。”
Not for lack of enthusiasm
并非因为缺乏热情
Generally speaking, Grant (who asked that his last name not be revealed because he hasn’t told his employer he’s planning to go to an MBA program), is not a poor candidate. Although he went to a middling California state university for college, he was a full-ride President’s Scholar, led his school’s team in the International Collegiate Business Strategy Competition, earned a 3.7 GPA, and graduated Cum Laude with a BS in accounting.
总体而言，格兰特（他要求不要透露自己的名字，因为他还没有告诉雇主自己计划去读MBA）的条件并不差。虽然他读的是加利福尼亚一所二流州立大学，但他是全额总统奖学金获得者，他带领学校的队伍参加了国际大学生商业战略竞赛，得到了3.7分的平均绩点，并以优异成绩毕业，取得会计专业学士学位。
For years, Grant had dreamed of earning an MBA. “It was even before I went to college, to my undergrad,” he says. “That’s always been there.”
取得MBA学位是格兰特多年的梦想。他说：“甚至在上大学之前我就梦想着能读MBA。”
Before college, he hadn’t refined his B-school ambitions to a particular tier. But after graduation, he arrived at the conclusion that he wanted to get his MBA from a top-10 school, “but if that’s outside the realm of possibility, then top-20,” he says. “If you’re not in the top 20, I can’t even look at you because I’m not going to invest that kind of money without any kind of demonstrated value from the degree.”
上大学之前，他的商学院梦想还只是一个朦胧的概念。但大学毕业之后，他认为自己希望进入一家美国排名前10的商学院攻读MBA，“但如果进入前十大商学院的机会渺茫，可以考虑前20名的学校。对于20名以外的商学院，我不会考虑，因为我不会为了一个没有太大价值的学位花那么多钱，”他说道。
Applying to Tuck, and only Tuck, two years ago was “kind of like my trial thing,” Grant says.
格兰特说道，两年前申请塔克商学院，并且只申请了这一所学校，“是对我的一次磨练。”
He had put a lot of effort into the application. He spent almost 200 hours studying for the GMAT and scored 710. To prepare for writing his application and the interview, he met with five Tuck students and interviewed another eight by phone. He reckons he spent 50 hours studying Tuck’s programs, facilities, and professors, reading books, and speaking with MBA program experts. He organized the fruits of all that research into a “crazy document on Tuck,” containing facts, school intricacies, details of programs that interested him, and information gathered from Poets&Quants, Internet forums, articles, and interviews. He visited the school twice, and doesn’t include in the 50-hour total the time spent on those trips.”I really knew the school and what the story was all about,” Grant says.
他在申请时投入了很多精力。他花了近200个小时准备GMAT考试，并且得到了710分。为了准备申请材料和面试，他拜访了五位塔克商学院的学生，并在电话里向另外八位来自该校的学生请教。按他自己的估算，他一共用了50个小时研究塔克商学院的课程、教师和教授，读书，与MBA课程专家们交流。他将所有研究成果汇总为“关于塔克的疯狂记录”，其中包括他感兴趣的事实、学校里的复杂情况、课程详情，以及从Poets&Quants、网络论坛、文章和采访中收集的信息。他去学校考察过两次，这两次行程总共用去了他50个小时。格兰特说道：“我真的非常了解这所学校和关于它的一切。”
Going over Grant’s enthusiastic posts written during his application process is like reading a diary entry by Edward Smith, captain of the Titanic, rhapsodizing over the lovely weather and smooth sailing that came before the unfortunate incident with the iceberg.
阅读格兰特在申请过程中所写的那些充满激情的文章，就像在读泰坦尼克号船长爱德华o史密斯的日记。前面还在感情饱满地描绘美好的天气和平稳的航行，突然船便撞上了冰山。
After his interview with Tuck—when he had applied there and at the four other schools—he came to a conclusion while driving home from Hanover, N.H.: “I have fallen in love with Tuck again,” he writes. “I was scared this was going to happen again. The first time I applied, I KNEW that Tuck was the place for me… And here we are again.”
参加完塔克商学院的面试之后，他在开车回新罕布什尔州汉诺威的时候，得出一个结论：“我再次爱上了塔克。这让我有些害怕。在第一次申请的时候，我就知道我属于这里……今天我们再次重逢。”这一次，他还申请了另外四所商学院。
Then Kellogg usurped Tuck, after Grant visited the school in Evanston, Ill., and had his interview.
然后，格兰特前往伊利诺伊州埃文斯顿，对凯洛格商学院进行了考察，并参加了该学院的面试，这一次，凯洛格夺走了塔克商学院在格兰特心中的位置。
“Kellogg is amazing and totally synonymous with who I am and where I want to end up in my career,” Grant gushes, going on to use the word “amazing” three more times in his post about his visit and interview.
格兰特对凯洛格赞不绝口：“凯洛格太令人惊艳了，这里正是最适合我的地方，我希望在这里工作一辈子。”他在这篇关于此次考察和面试的博客中，又用了三次“令人惊艳”。
Add in the two “fantastics” he used, and you know that when that Kellogg ding came, it stung. But it turned out to be less painful than the one from Tuck. After all, he’d made the wait list when he’d applied there the year before, and a school official had later told him they hadn’t let in anyone from the list. For his second chance at Tuck, Grant felt he was an even better candidate. And the school had become his last hope.
此外，他还用了两个“奇妙”，所以你能想象他在收到凯洛格的拒绝之后会多么心痛。不过，事实证明，塔克商学院带给他的痛苦更加强烈。毕竟，前一年他还曾进入过候选名单，后来有一位学校官员曾告诉他，候选榜单中没有任何人被录取。所以，第二次申请塔克商学院的时候，格兰特感觉自己应该是条件更好的候选者。而且，塔克也是他最后的希望。
Harvard had been the first to turn him away, without an interview, but that didn’t concern Grant too much. “It’s Harvard Business School, the best business school in the world—denied, big deal.”
哈佛商学院最先拒绝了他的申请，没有提供面试，但格兰特对此不太担心。“那可是哈佛商学院，全世界最好的商学院——拒绝，没什么大不了。”
“When I didn’t get an interview at HBS, I was not surprised. When I didn’t get an interview at Wharton, I was a little scared.”
“没有得到哈佛商学院的面试机会，我并不意外。但后来沃顿商学院也没有提供面试机会，这让我有些担心。”
Running on empty
徒劳无功
With every rejection, he’d beat himself up a little more over the mistakes he’d made during the process of preparing for the GMAT and applying to schools.
每收到一次拒绝，他都会因为自己在准备GMAT和申请学校过程中所犯的错误而深深自责。
He’d been determined to far surpass his first GMAT score of 710, writing on his blog that he “most likely will be taking it again for a ~750.” But when it came to studying for the test his second time around, the rest of his life got in the way.
他曾决定取得比第一次710分更高的GMAT分数。他在博客中写道他“很有可能再次参加考试，目标是750分左右。”但在为第二次考试努力学习的时候，他却遇到了阻碍。
“I got promoted, and then I got an additional leadership responsibility. Another opportunity came up at work for a special project to lead. I started blogging. I’m really heavily involved in non-profits,” he says.
他说道：“我被升职了，我得到了一份额外的领导职务。我获得了领导一个特别项目的机会。我开始写博客。我在公益事业上投入了太多精力。”
Grant would wake up at 4:30 a.m., start studying at 5, keep it up for an hour or two, go to work, then go to his non-profit assignment. Each night, he’d resume studying at 8, and put in another couple hours. If he wasn’t doing volunteer work on the weekend, he’d work through his Saturdays and Sundays.
格兰特每天早上4:30起床，5点开始学习，学习一两个小时之后去上班，然后去做公益。每天晚上，他会从8点开始学习两个小时。周末如果没有志愿者工作，他便选择加班。
“I was operating on four hours of sleep for six months.”
“我每天睡四个小时，持续了六个月时间。”
All told, he put in 150 GMAT-prep hours over eight weeks. “It wasn’t good quality studying time,” he says. “My mind was racing on a million different things and the GMAT was just one of them.” Not only was he “completely stressed out,” he hadn’t even come close to hitting his 200-hour goal, or even matching the 190 hours he’d put in when he studied for the GMAT the first time.
他在八周时间里，总共投入了150个小时准备GMAT考试。他说道：“学习的质量并不高。我的脑子要思考无数个问题，GMAT只是其中之一。”他不仅“身心俱疲”，而且根本没有达到200个小时的目标，甚至与第一次准备GMAT的190个小时也相去甚远。
While he’d spent 50 hours preparing for his first Tuck application and interview, he fell far short of that when applying to the five schools, not even hitting the same number for all the schools combined. “This is so embarrassing,” he says. “I think I spent maybe 60 hours. Maybe. That’s being pretty generous with myself. It might’ve been less, it might’ve been closer to 40. It was really bad,” he says, before muttering to himself: “Damn it.”
他第一次准备塔克商学院的申请和面试共用了50个小时，而第二次五所学校的准备时间总共也没有那么多。他说道：“这太令人尴尬了。我以为我会用60个小时。或许吧。这已经是我的极限。可能会更少，可能在40个小时左右。真是太糟糕了。”然后他低声抱怨道：“真该死！”
He’d hired a consultant, but hadn’t done any practice informational interviews, he says. He visited all the schools, except for Yale.
他聘请了一位顾问，但并没有进行任何信息性面试练习。他考察了除耶鲁之外的所有学校。
After he didn’t receive interviews at Harvard and Wharton, Yale was the next school to reject him. “I was like, ‘Holy shit, I might not even get in (to B-school) this year,’” Grant says.
在没有收到哈佛和沃顿的面试机会之后，耶鲁也拒绝了他的申请。格兰特说：“我想：‘天哪，我今年可能没机会进商学院了。’”
The fear grew worse as the rejections added up. “When I got dinged from Kellogg, I was thinking to myself, ‘I’m really in trouble.’”
拒绝依次到来，他也变得越来越担忧。“被凯洛格拒绝之后，我想到：‘我真的有麻烦了。’”
Meanwhile, Grant’s career was shifting. He was anticipating disruption at his aerospace industry job. Staff were going to be cut, and those who remained would face additional work burdens. “I basically started hedging my bets. I had started looking at other opportunities.”
与此同时，格兰特的职业也在发生变化。他打算放弃在航空航天领域的工作。公司计划裁员，而剩下的人将面临额外的工作负担。“我开始两边下注。我在寻找其他机会。”
Swimming in a sea of self doubt
沉浸于自我怀疑
The string of B-school rejections had seeded Grant with self doubt, not a feeling he was used to. “Am I really a top performer?” he asked himself. “Am I capable of doing anything on my own?
连续被商学院拒绝，让格兰特开始怀疑自己。这是一种他从来不曾有过的情绪。他问自己：“我真的是最佳员工吗？我自己有能力做什么事情吗？”
“That’s why it was so important that I applied for another job.”
“所以，找另外一份工作便显得非常重要。”
By the time Kellogg rejected his application, he had already had a phone interview with the L.A. entertainment firm.
凯洛格商学院拒绝他的申请时，他已经参加了洛杉矶一家娱乐公司的电话面试。
Grant is not giving up on his MBA dreams. He’s going to apply again to top 10 schools, but probably only three or four, and will likely not apply to Harvard, he says. He plans to spend 30 hours of prep time specific to each school he’ll apply for, and he is shooting for 300 hours of GMAT studying time. “I’m really hoping to get a 760,” Grant says. “That will help.”
格兰特不会放弃自己的MBA梦想。他还会申请前10大商学院，不过可能只从中选择三至四所学校，并且不会申请哈佛商学院。他计划为自己将申请的每一所学校拿出30个小时准备时间，GMAT考试的学习时间目标为300个小时。格兰特说道：“我真的希望能得到760分。这个分数将很有帮助。”
Grant created his blog because he wanted to help other people on the same path, he says. That fits with his interest non-profit and volunteer work. “That’s my life’s mission,” he says. “I want others to succeed, that’s how I get my happiness.
格兰特表示自己之所以写博客，是因为他想帮助同样在申请MBA的其他人。这也符合他对公益事业和志愿者工作的兴趣。他说道：“这是我的人生使命。我希望其他人获得成功，这是我的快乐之源。”
“That’s what hurt the most. I was like, ‘Hey, I’m going to lead the charge, and everyone follow me,’ and then I, like, tripped.”
“这也是最让人受伤的地方。就好像我在说：‘嘿，我来带路，大家跟我来，’然后，我摔了一跤。”
On his blog, beneath the photo of the Martian landscape that tops his revelation about his five rejections, Grant addresses his readers, “I feel that I have let you down,” he writes. “It is incredibly difficult to fail publicly and own up to it. I am deeply sorry.”
在他的博客里，火星风景照片的下方是他对被五次拒绝的反思。格兰特对读者们写道：“我感觉我让大家失望了。在众目睽睽之下遭遇失败，并且承认失败，这简直太难了。我非常抱歉。”
Nevertheless, Grant is clearly well positioned for another attempt at getting into a top program, particularly at Tuck and Kellogg, which had already rated him high enough for an interview. His history working in finance for the aerospace industry makes him attractive to admissions committees, and his new job is impressive. He appears to have learned a great deal about what he did wrong in his first two attempts, and if he applies those lessons, he’s bound to make a better impression in applications and interviews. A higher GMAT score would give him an additional boost.
不过，格兰特已经做好了再次尝试进入顶级商学院的准备，尤其是塔克和凯洛格。这两所商学院已经给过他足够高的评价，并且提供了面试机会。在航空航天行业从事财务工作的经历，让他很受招生委员会的喜爱，而且他的新工作也令人印象深刻。他已经从前两次尝试所犯的错误中学到了许多，如果他能将这些经验教训付诸实施，他肯定能在申请和面试时给学校留下更好的印象。更高的GMAT分数也将给他额外加分。
It turns out that the stark Martian scene, he says, does not represent a barren wasteland of the soul. It shows, he says, a new frontier. “It’s a whole new world out there.”
他说道，事实上，荒凉的火星并不意味着这是一片灵魂的荒原，而是代表了一个新的前沿。他说道：“那是一个全新的世界。”（财富中文网）