How to Get a Georgetown MBA [Show Summary]

If you’re looking for a global MBA program at the intersection of business and politics that is designed for principled leaders with a strong first-year core and an elective second year where you can customize your education to your needs, listen to this interview with Georgetown McDonough’s Shelly Heinrich, Interim Associate Dean for MBA Admissions. She’ll also gives you tips for effectively approaching the Georgetown’s MBA essay options, video, interview, and more. HINT: They want people who really want Georgetown.

Interview with Shelly Heinrich, Interim Associate Dean at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business [Show Notes]

Today’s guest is Shelly Heinrich, Interim Associate Dean for the Georgetown McDonough School of Business (MSB). Shelly earned her bachelors in business at Texas Christian, her Masters in Educational Administration at UT Austin, and her EMBA at Georgetown. She worked at George Washington University for four years and then moved to Georgetown’s admissions office in May 2014. She became Asst Dean for Marketing, Recruitment & External Relations in July 2017 and interim Assoc Dean for MBA Admissions and Director of Marketing in September 2017.

Shelly, can you give us an overview of the FT MBA program at McDonough focusing on its more distinctive elements? [2:01]

We really focus on developing principled leaders. We provide a strong business core in the first year to provide a wide breadth of understanding in business. In the second year students customize the program to their interests, choosing from over 100 electives, and not having to declare a concentration. This framework allows the student to get a full picture of business but also a deeper understanding of what they really like. All students are required to participate in a global consulting experience. They work in teams for six weeks in DC solving a problem for an international client and then ends with them going overseas to present their proposal to the client.

How does Georgetown take advantage of its Washington location, it’s being at the intersection of business and government? What does that mean in terms of the program, the classroom, and career placement? [4:13]

You really feel at the center of it all – business, society, and politics. We consider DC a learning lab, and there are a couple ways we do that. Brand new this year is a class in the leadership curriculum called Managing the Enterprise, which involves working with a very prominent organization in DC (press release soon) working hands on with tackling the problems of leadership and people and solving a problem for this organization. This course is in the second year, so students can apply tools from the toolkit they already have.

We also have a certificate in non-market strategy where students learn about the intersection of business, society, and politics.

Through academic tutorials students can get academic credit by working with an organization, and the World Bank is one of them.

Because of our location in a very global city, we graduate students who are interested in working in companies that are multinational, not working in isolation, as they realize the benefits of skills that cross borders. Our program is bookended with two global experiences, one I already mentioned in the second year, but our first three weeks of the program is the Structure of Global Industries, which throws new students into a project where they have to solve a mock problem for a mo...