Shedding The Veteran Stereotype & Thriving In B-School - Poets&Quants

Matt Cowsert, a U.S. Army veteran, NYU Stern MBA grad, and author of What’s Next: A Military Veteran’s Guide to Maximizing Your MBA. Courtesy photo

For most MBA applicants trying to gain acceptance to their top schools, there are hurdles to overcome. For those transitioning out of the military, one of those hurdles is a stereotype.

“The sentiment I often hear is, ‘Hey, you’re really good at following orders.’ Which is true, sure, but I also spent a lot of time with more autonomy than most 20-somethings are going to ever receive in the corporate world,” says Matt Cowsert. He’d know. After graduating from The Citadel — a military school in Charleston, South Carolina — Cowsert enrolled in the U.S. Army, where he quickly moved up from an infantry platoon leader managing 30 other soldiers to a company executive officer, a role that required managing 125 others.

Before enrolling in the full-time MBA program at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Cowsert was a budget analyst, managing $56 million. But, he says, that’s not the way he’s often been perceived.

“I feel like a lot of people think that I’ve been told what to do my whole life and I’m a drone, I can’t think for myself, there’s no creative thinking involved,” Cowsert says. “And it might not be true for everybody, but through anecdotal conversations I’ve had over the past two years, I’ve seen it more than I appreciate and I feel like it’s something I’ve tried to actively overcome throughout my interactions in interviews.”

WRITING A 101-PAGE HOW TO GUIDE ON MAXIMIZING THE MBA

Now, as Cowsert transitions from school to a technical product manager position at Amazon in Seattle, he has put the lessons he learned through the whole B-school life cycle into a 101-page guide called What’s Next: A Military Veteran’s Guide to Maximizing Your MBA. In the book, Cowsert focuses on three essential transitions that military veterans go through while applying to business school: convincing yourself, convincing your target school, and convincing your target company.

“As I was transitioning out (of the military), I was pretty deliberate with my research and my methods. I probably spent 18 to 24 months working through how I was going to evaluate these schools,” Cowsert says. “So I tried to put as much structure into the process as possible because, for me, at least, it was pretty daunting, to try to suss some of these things out — not only my transitioning out of the Army, but also finding a career in which I would be able to support myself and my family. What was our future going to look like and how was I going to align those things?”

In the wide-ranging interview below, Cowsert goes into detail about his experience applying to business school as a military veteran as well as what he has learned by mentoring other veterans transitioning into MBA programs.

P&Q: What made you want to enlist in the military originally?

Cowsert: I think I have a similar story to most vets that came in around 9/11. I was in high school when that happened and I was just really inspired and wanted to give back to my country. So I ended up going to The Citadel, which is a military college in Charleston, South Carolina. After that first year — it’s kind of like an initiative period — I was like, there’s no way I’m going to go into the military. But the more I was there, the more I enjoyed the culture and the structure. And then the people I looked up to the most, that I had direct leadership experience with, they were all going into the Army versus some of the other branches.

So I started to check it out a little bit more and by my sophomore year, I was signing a contract for the next couple of years. The other key piece in that is I knew I wanted to go back to school at some point. I didn’t exactly know how I was going to pay for that, so the Army had a program at the time where they would help you for graduate school. So it kind of seemed like a win-win. I was going to be around people that I knew well, that I admired, that showed great leadership potential, but also gave me the opportunity to eventually go back to school.

P&Q: What are some of the direct lessons or skills you picked up in the Army that were immediately applicable to business school and now moving into a full-time role at Amazon?

Cowsert: One of the things that really stood out to me, and I think it was first noticeable in the first week of school when we were doing a lot of group work. You have a lot of people that are in their career paths that are non-military that are going back to school and they have generally been individual contributors. It’s not always the case, but it’s pretty consistent. The first job I had in the Army I was in charge of 30 guys. And I had that role for almost two years and then I went to a role where I was second in command of 125 people. Understanding those relationship dynamics and some of the softer skills towards management, helped me prioritizes as soon as I got to school to say, OK, you’re good at this thing or if you’re really good at doing financial analysis, we’re going to have you do financial analysis. If you’re really good at doing PowerPoint or marketing or research, then we are going to have you focus on those things. And I think I learned trait on aligning people with their strengths and the benefits to the organization in doing that, I think I learned that in the Army first.

P&Q: When you decided you wanted to go to business school, what was your initial approach? What were you looking for in schools and how did you narrow your school list down?

Cowsert: I originally started with about 14 schools. Number one, they were programs that I thought I could get into or had known others that had gone to, which I think is a pretty similar story that most people have. But when I started to dig a little bit deeper, I started to focus at the company level, and I think that really helped me. What I ended up doing is figuring out which companies I thought I wanted to work for and then started to focus on metropolitan areas. I hadn’t lived in a larger city before, but I thought there would be benefits to being in a larger city. Not that the schools don’t have great career services, because they do, but after not having as much control over my future career directory in the military, I was really ready to own it. So I wanted to pursue opportunities outside what was just going to be structured in school.

P&Q: What were those target schools you were really focusing on?

Cowsert: It was Harvard and MIT up in Boston. It was Berkeley and Stanford in the Bay Area. And then NYU and Columbia in New York City. I also targeted Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill. And then I had a one-off in Seattle for Foster because they have such a great technology program.

P&Q: And what was it that made NYU end up being the final decision?

Cowsert: I think for me, it was my interactions with the students that were there — not just the veteran population, but the non-vets as well. I felt like a lot of my success in the Army was relationship driven. Everyone has these set core-competencies that you should be strong with like your ability to relate to people, to get along well, to motivate them, to lead without authority, even when you’re in an authority position. I felt like those were the things that really helped me be successful, so I was looking for a similar environment. And for me, NYU fit the bill.

I had the opportunity to visit all of these programs and be in touch with veterans at all of these programs and then to work with the adcoms in these programs. And, I don’t know, man, it was something about walking through Washington Square Park and the experience I had with the folks that were already there that made it special for me.

Matt Cowsert. Courtesy photo

P&Q: Switching over to the book, what was it that made you feel like this sort of book was necessary? What gap in the market is it meant to fill?

Cowsert: As I was transitioning out, I was pretty deliberate with my research and my methods. I probably spent 18 to 24 months working through how I was going to evaluate these schools. So I tried to put as much structure into the process as possible because, for me, at least, it was pretty daunting, to try to suss some of these things out — not only my transitioning out of the Army, but also finding a career in which I would be able to support myself and my family. What was our future going to look like and how was I going to align those things?

At first, I kind of thought it was just me and everyone else had it figured out and I just needed to build in these extra steps. But part of the reason I thought I needed to write the book was because once I got into school, I signed up to be a Service-to-School MBA Ambassador. And that was one of the programs I took advantage of when I was making my transition, so I got some help there. It’s funny, my ambassador was actually from NYU and I had a great relationship with him. He was very diplomatic about it and wasn’t steering me one way or the other, but I just had a great experience with that program and I just wanted to give back.

Through that, I’ve been able to work with about eight applicants over the last two years and I just kind of realized I wasn’t the only person struggling with some of these transition periods, and I felt like the book was a way to help people figure these kinds of things out before applying to schools. Because if you do, it’s going to make it much easier to not only apply to these schools, but also get into them. And as soon as you get into school, you make that transition from convincing your target school to convincing your target company.

P&Q: What are some of those transitional challenges and what were some of the most helpful tactics you have found for overcoming those challenges?

Cowsert: I think some of the initial concerns that you deal with is you just don’t have the vocabulary to properly relate the things that you’ve done in the military. For instance, I was a budget manager and a budget analysis for the last three years in the Army and it was three or four months into business school when I realized the outside world calls that financial planning and analysis — or FP&A. So, I’m sitting around talking to my friends and explaining what I did and they were like, yeah, that’s just FP&A, man. And I was just like, I had no idea that is what you called it. And as I was going through some of my interviews later on, I started to get it and didn’t have to do that constant struggle early on of finding things that were applicable or transferable.

Matt Cowsert. Courtesy photo

P&Q: In the book you highlight the three broad topics of ‘convincing yourself, convincing your target school, and convincing your target company.’ What are some of the best practices for each of those areas you discuss in your book?

Cowsert: There were two things that really helped me frame my transition. Right after I had gotten out of undergrad, when I was six months into the Army, I took this strengths assessment by Clifton. And it listed the things it thought I’d be good at, like being strategic, which was good because there was a lot of strategy in the Army, it also talked about building relationships and figuring out how to align people to their strengths. But I didn’t think a whole lot about it for the next six or seven years until I’m putting my resume together for business schools and I come across the report again and all the things I’ve listed on my resume and sure enough, the things that really stood out were the same key characteristics that I had identified and found about six or seven years ago.

So when I sat down and looked at what my next career steps should be, I wanted to make sure that I was able to leverage those same things that had gotten me there, that kind of transcend the job and focus on the skills and attributes.

P&Q: For someone who is at the beginning stages at the process and comes across your book or this article, what is your best advice for getting the most out of your book?

Cowsert: I think it’s helpful to think about it as you’re essentially storytelling. You are taking the best bits and pieces out of your military career and you’re sharing them with people in the proper context to demonstrate your value, because you haven’t gone through the same experiences as others. It’s just difficult to relate. The overall population of folks in the military shrinks every year. You can’t just assume they are going to understand all of the different things that you’ve done in the military or the value of those things. So, I feel like the better you are at telling your story — and you’re going to get better over time — your ability to relate six months into business school is going to be different as it is two years after. That’s OK. It doesn’t need to be perfect, but just understand that it is going to be refined and evolve.

We’ve talked about the strength assessment, but also too, understanding your personal brand. If you have a clear sense on what your brand is or what you’re trying to cultivate to the outside world, it’s so much easier to have that shine through in your stories that you are going to tell. And I really feel like it’s the authenticity through your storytelling that is going to set you apart from other candidates — whether that’s non-military or military — that authenticity of not just thinking about this is what the interviewers are going to want to hear, but really being able to feel it and know it and I feel like people pick up on that.

P&Q: Do you have any examples of that authenticity or storytelling from your own personal statements or interviews?

Cowsert: One of the things that I discussed when I was talking about applying, I had a friend who had been in product management beforehand and he kind of related to me in a way that it made sense for me. He was walking through things like sitting at the intersection of technology and business and user experience and it seemed similar to some of my experiences. So when I was sitting down talking about why I would be a great product manager, it tied back into a lot of those responsibilities I had as an executive officer. It’s about both planning and execution and understanding the end goal and not being too rigid on the process for getting there. And it was a very similar process to when I was in a product management role this past summer. To where it’s not about the tools you’re using it’s about being able to get the job done and have that flexibility.

Another example is in the Army, you do a lot of training plans. So, you essentially have your whole quarter scripted out saying these are the things we are prioritizing and this is what we’re going to execute. I found the same exact thing when I was in the product management role, where we call it prioritization. And it’s just like, this is what’s on your road map, these are the features that are going to be released. And as a product manager, how do you deal with the trade-offs? Where are you going to accept risk? Those were things I was very comfortable with because I feel like I spent the last seven years doing that sort of thing.

And then from a user experience standpoint, in the Army it’s a lot about the vision. There are times when you are doing things you don’t necessarily enjoy, but you need to motivate people and allow them to see the end-state goal that all the work you are putting in is going to result in. And I feel like it’s a very similar process with designers. You’re going through screen by screen and here’s the type of experience we want to have. Here’s the feeling and the emotion you want to evoke from users. There is just a lot of correlation there.

P&Q: What are your general thoughts on how business schools view military applicants?

Cowsert: I genuinely think there is a lot of love there. I do think depending on which school you’re looking at, they may have a hard cap, but either way, they have a general idea of the number of vets they are looking for. You’re always going to face that when you’re thinking about the size of the incoming class and it’s generally going to be 4% to 6% — maybe 8% on the high end — of veterans in the class. I think that’s OK. I think one of the benefits of business school is you get such a diverse community to immerse yourself in and to learn from as well.

I will say this, though, I think you’re always fighting against stereotypes. You need to make sure you’re not fitting into their version of the negative military veteran stereotype. You want to be the archetypal — the perfect MBA candidate — not just veteran. They should be able to look at you and say, I’ve seen 40 other people over the past four or five years that had your similar skill set coming in, you’re pursuing the same career goals, and I know you’re going to be successful. You want to move quickly from any preconceived notions they might have about your look, your appearance, your haircut and move into that archetypal zone where they’re like, oh yeah, Matt is going to be a shoo-in, I can tell already.

P&Q: What are some of those negative stereotypes business schools might have?

Cowsert: I guess I don’t even know if this is business school agnostic, but the sentiment I often hear is like, hey, you’re really good at following orders. Which is true, sure, but I also spent a lot of time with more autonomy than most 20-somethings are going to ever receive in the corporate world. Where, again, you have something you are trying to accomplish, but no one is telling you how to do it. So, I actually enjoyed it and it’s one of the reasons I sought out a career in product management, because you get that autonomy to make decisions and then live with those decisions, either good or bad.

So, I feel like a lot of people think that I’ve been told what to do my whole life and like I’m a drone, I can’t think for myself, there’s no creative thinking involved. And it might not be true for everybody, but through anecdotal conversations I’ve had over the past two years, I’ve seen it more than I appreciate and I feel like it’s something I’ve tried to actively overcome throughout my interactions in interviews.

P&Q: So it seems like the best thing an applicant transitioning from the military to B-school can do is highlight her or his ability to creatively problem solve at multiple points in the application packet and interview.

Cowsert: Yeah, I 100% agree with that. I remember sitting down with my HR manager, going over my evaluation and she was asking me, hey, Matt, why is design thinking in your essay? And I was like, that’s a term for something I do on a regular basis and it’s something that is going to be critical for my next career. But it’s always something you are working against. And if you can break that mold or stereotype, the sky’s the limit.

P&Q: Any other final thoughts?

Cowsert: The only other thing that we haven’t talked about is, I talked really big about storytelling and the importance of connecting those dots, and that’s really important for getting into school. But it’s also OK if those things evolve and change as you learn more about your career opportunities. The exposure you have to the job opportunities you have in front of you while you’re still in the military might be limited. So don’t beat yourself up too much if what you end up doing two years down the road after completing your business school degree doesn’t match what you wrote about in your essays. That’s OK and it’s probably for the best as long as you’re still adhering to the strengths you already demonstrated and the career goals you want for yourself and your family.

DON’T MISS: 10 MILITARY VETERANS TO WATCH FROM THE CLASS OF 2019 or A VETERAN’S ODDS OF GETTING INTO A TOP SCHOOL

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