Finance Major Accepted to Stanford
Senior Jessica Craig lost a bet that changed her life.
"My dad and I had a deal," Craig said. "Stanford application fee was $260, so I put it on a credit card that I have from my parents. I asked my dad, 'Hey, I'll pay you back, just transfer the money over,' and my dad actually said, 'You only have to pay me back if you decide to go there.' So when I got in I called him and said, 'Dad, I owe you $260, I'm going to Stanford!' "
Harvard is the No. 1 business school in America; Stanford is No. 2.
Craig had other Ivy League schools on her mind but hadn't even considered Stanford.
"I originally was only going to apply to Harvard and MIT and legitimately applied to Stanford kind of on a whim I started looking at their website and thought, why don't I apply here?" Craig said.
"So I'm sitting in my dorm room one night and I have a friend in there and I look at her and ask, 'Should I apply to Stanford?' and she goes, 'Yeah, you might as well.'"
Getting involved in everything, especially at ORU, has been Craig's method of success.
"At ORU I've done a ton," Craig said. "I was executive vice president for Student Association and I've been involved in everything I had an internship this summer with Walmart Corp. in their Global Internal Audit Department, and I'm on a National Sodexo Student Advisory Board, and a few other random positions that I got on through crazy connections I had through things I've done here."
Despite all her involvement on boards, internships and SA, Craig still had one thing that was necessary to get into any Ivy League: the GMAT, a standardized test equivalent to taking the ACT for college.
Harvard's average is a score of 710.
"It's the most nerve-wracking experience I've ever had," Craig said. "The whole time I'm sitting there and like, you literally click and it asks 'do you want to cancel your scores?' and if you click no, your score pops up. When my score popped up, I nearly started crying because I was so happy."
Craig scored in the 97th percentile with a score of 730.
After her acceptance, Craig received more good news from the admissions counselor.
If she wanted, Craig could start this fall or take a year or two off and still have a place. In MBA programs, most of the students have two to eight years of work experience.
"It seems insane that I can go do anything for the next couple years and then still have a spot there. So at this point I may look at enrolling in 2013, so then I would graduate in 2015," she said.
Craig didn't get this far by being a normal student.
Unlike her classmates, she said she wishes she could eliminate "eating and sleeping" from her busy life.
"In high school, me and my friends tried out this thing called polyphasic sleep, where you sleep for 30 minutes every four hours we survived for four days of doing this, but we were like zombies and couldn't function or talk to people," she said.
Considering her many goals, a lack of sleep may certainly be in Craig's bright future.
"There is a laundry list," she said.
"I want to be a CEO of a large company. I want to be involved in the United Nations. I want to be an advisor to the president in economics. I want a doctorate in economics. I want to be a college professor. I want to be a president of a university. I mean, just a few things to get done here and there before I die."
By Sarah Thompson
via The Oracle