Yulia Gvozdeva:
UPDATE: Since this page was posted, Yulia was awarded a scholarship for Manchester and was shortlisted for the interview stage with London Business School.
Yulia Gvozdeeva was chosen as our Student of the Month for March 2008 because of her enthusiasm, zest for life and dedication to her goals, as well as, of course, for her quite high TOEFL and GMAT scores. Yulia says she was wanted to go into management since 6th grade—now that’s long term dedication. She graduated cum laude from the State University of Management, majoring in Economics, and it was there that she learned what an MBA was and determined to get one eventually.
She started her career as an assistant in the business development department of Procter and Gamble and developed to the position of Country Marketing Manager of a global biotechnology company, Alltech. In between these, she managed marketing activities for a Finnish retail chain Stockmann and for a chain of shopping centers. Work for these Western companies enhanced Yulia’s appreciation for Western management practices, and drove her towards applying for an MBA in the West.
She came to Pericles in June of 2007 to get a training on TOEFL which she passed in August, scored 105, with 29 in the writing section, 26 in speaking & listening and 24 in reading.
Then she started preparing for the GMAT. She took Pericles GMAT course in October and realized that this exam represented a substantial challenge and demanded time and effort that her job wasn’t enabling her to undertake. But, as a musician and competitive ballroom dancer since childhood, Yulia had learned that building skills and succeeding in a venture takes time, persistence and hard work. So Yulia took the unusual and quite brave step of resigning from her job in order to dedicate full time to preparing for the business school. She spent 1,5 months studying persistently 6-8 hours every day!
This heroic effort resulted in success, as she achieved 690 (90%) in her first attempt at the test (48 Quantitative and 36 Verbal). Congratulations Yulia, that was quite some effort!
Yulia decided, sensibly given her work background, that she wanted to go to a European rather than American MBA. She applied to Manchester, Cambridge and LBS. While she is still waiting on results from other schools, she received an immediate response from Manchester and was offered a place only two weeks after submitting her application.
She says that she is attracted to Manchester because of its challenging, eighteen month multi-project program, which she believes will help her internationalize her career more and get a strategic role in international business upon graduation. Indeed, the “Manchester Method” as they call it, involves working not on past, printed business cases but, under the supervision of professors, on real-life, real-time consultancy projects commissioned by outside sponsors. It sounds really interesting.
Congratulations Yulia, both on your high scores, your admission to Manchester, and your sure to be future success!
