The Beginning of First Generation College to MBA
Updated: Jun 16, 2020
I created First Generation College to MBA as a way to give back. I grew up in a small town in Colorado, where the local public high school district offered a "Pre Collegiate" program for anyone whose parents hadn't graduated college. As I fit that bill, I joined the group and was given a mentor. This mentor helped me with thinking about the things I was already aware of - standardized tests, applications, and essays, but more importantly he helped me with the questions I didn't even know would be an issue, helping me prepare for life in college, a new frontier for me and my family. As such, when I was starting to consider business school I searched for any resources for first generation college graduates that were applying to business school. No matter how hard I searched I couldn't find anything. While my network and social media were helpful, there's only so much you can glean from Reddit. And though I certainly made it through the application process and will be attending a highly renowned MBA program in the fall, I kept thinking "this would have been easier if someone in my family had done this before" - the same thought I had before finding Pre Collegiate a decade ago.
That's what brought me (and likely you) here today. I reached out on social media for people in a similar position to myself and found that both the supply and the demand (I'm going to business school after all) was immediately present. We have put together a great group of mentors to help fellow first generation college graduates looking at business school with those same unexpected questions I didn't know I had going into college. I hope you enjoy the site and find that it can be useful to you in your MBA application process. Good luck!
All the best,
Joe Ciborowski