‘Hello Heller!’ Articles at Heller Admissions Blog

Tag: Hello Heller! (page 1 of 2)

Hello Heller! Shiko Rugene’s Acceptance Story

Shiko Rugene, Social Impact MBA’22

I received my acceptance letter on July 20th, 2020. As I sit here and try to rack my brain to remember the feelings I had when I received the decision letter, it feels almost impossible. I know I’m speaking to the choir when I say how out of this world 2020 was. In June, we were at the height of the pandemic, still sanitizing our groceries with Clorox wipes and trying to wrap our brains around this new way of life. I was spending all my time in my studio apartment in Berkeley, California, having recently lost my job due to the pandemic like many others. Around that same time, in May, the whole world witnessed such horrific police brutality, leading many of us to the streets in response. With the world on lockdown, everything seemed to be falling apart, but we finally had a moment to reckon with and question many of the injustices around us.

I applied to Heller because I wanted to be part of an institution where social justice was front and center. A place where I could be with peers who were driven and persistent about challenging systems and influencing change. The Social Impact MBA program felt ideal to me for two reasons: 1) I wanted to learn what it would look like to influence business to be more accountable to our society and 2) more practically, I knew I needed the hard skills that would position me to take on the management and leadership positions I sought after.

With Heller operating remotely and so much uncertainty looming, my decision to join felt a lot more challenging than I hoped when I applied. When I thought about graduate school, I imagined being in community with other students, with faculty and professors. I imagined study sessions with classmates, being in a large lecture hall and the buzz of being in a place like Zinner forum where students share ideas and meals together. I knew that I wanted to be at Heller, but I was afraid that learning remotely just wasn’t going to fulfill me. I had to make a decision soon.

As a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, I knew that I had a strong network of peers who I could lean on to help me with my decision. Many were completing their degrees remotely at the time and had first hand experience. Though they spoke of the flexibility afforded to them by Heller, they also spoke of the challenges of not being amongst other students and with community. With that in mind, I chose to defer and start my degree in 2021, a decision that I’m so glad I chose.

Hello, Heller! Calah McQuarters’ Acceptance Story

October 4, 2022 / cmcquarters / 0 Comments

Calah McQuarters, MBA’23

My sister knew I had been accepted to Heller before I did. It was Friday, April 1st (what a horrible April Fool’s Day joke this could have been), exactly one month after I had pressed submit on my first grad school application (they really meant 4-6 weeks!). After ending a long week at work, I was chatting with my sister about what she wanted to do for the evening when I decided to go through my email and delete the many promotional emails I had received that day (a daily occurrence). In the midst of talking, scrolling, and deleting, I saw an email from “The Heller School”. Now as a prospective student and applicant, I received MANY emails from the Heller School so initially I didn’t think much of it, but after seeing “Application Update” on the subject line, I got quiet and my heart started racing.

In the months leading up to Friday, April 1st, there were many days filled with questions, uncertainty, a few tears (okay, a lot of tears), and all around dread through the admissions process. As a person that didn’t come from a business background and wasn’t really sure what I wanted to be when I grew up, I encountered many moments of imposter syndrome, self doubt, and discouragement from administrators in other MBA programs. However, Heller was the one school that was different. When I expressed my inexperience and slight disdain for traditional business programs, Heller students encouraged me. When I expressed uncertainty due to my age and limited work experience, Heller students reassured me. And when I expressed my desire to find a program that would equip me with the necessary skills to change current systems, not further enable them, professors, administrators, and students all let me know Heller was exactly where I needed to be.

My sister, noticing my silence and change in facial expression, asked what was wrong. I told her I got an email about my application. I ran down the hall to grab my laptop and after returning, we sat down on the couch together very slowly, both of us freaking out. I said a quick prayer while logging in and paused for just a moment before clicking on my status update. When I did click and the page switched over, my brain stopped working. I was looking at the screen and my eyes were racing around the page, but I could not make out any words. It was like I literally forgot how to read! So how did I know I was accepted? My sister screamed and if I remember correctly, she may have punched me.

After a few minutes, my brain rebooted itself and I was finally able to read for myself that I had been accepted as a Social Impact MBA candidate at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management. In addition to excitement and relief, I felt peace. I knew without a doubt that the journey that led me to that moment was worth it all and it was just the beginning.

Now, it was time to find a place to live in one of the biggest cities in the US, in a crazy market, in a pandemic, but that’s another story 4for another time…!

Hello Heller! Brielle Ruscitti’s Acceptance Story

September 29, 2022 / bruscitti / 0 Comments

Brielle Ruscitti, MS GHPM/MA SID’24

Throughout my undergraduate career, I planned to go to medical school. I studied biology, shadowed doctors, participated in research but when it came time to study for the MCAT, I hit a wall. Through my undergrad, I realized that becoming a physician wasn’t the path for me and that my passions lay other places. I had developed a passion for fostering social change, worked with global health non-profits and had completed international development research projects. I had my own version of a quarter life crisis and scrapped my medical school plans. After some thinking, graduate school was my new plan, and I was specifically looking at social impact MBA programs, which indirectly lead me to Brandeis. I knew I wanted to be on the East Coast and through the classic Google search, I stumbled upon Brandeis, starting reading about Heller and, not too long after, started my application.

At the time, I had recently graduated and was working as a third grade teacher, trying to make plans for the next year. I remember trying to plan ahead when I would make the move to Boston, if I were to be accepted, but was concerned I was planning for something that wasn’t guaranteed. I’m sure you can imagine that I was counting the days to when my admissions letter was going to be released, and I quite literally did: I estimated that it would come on Valentine’s Day, a Monday, and with the two hour time change, my letter should come by three pm… I told myself that was the best case scenario. Three o’clock passed and I hadn’t received an email. After repeatedly checking my inbox, I headed out to my afternoon duty to help with student pick up and other end of the day activities. At this point, I assumed that I would hear later and casually checked my email heading back to my classroom. That’s when I saw it: “There has been an update to your portal” and my admissions decision had been released. Since running isn’t allowed in the hallways, I walked as fast as I could to my computer to check my portal and anxiously checked my letter and read that I had been admitted. I told my co-teacher first, because she was right there. All I said was “Oh! I got in!” She laughed, shook her head and congratulated me. I laughed and quickly called my partner to share the news and messaged a few other family members.

My immediate feeling after reading my letter was relief. I felt like I knew what I would be doing, where I would be going, and that I could start planning for my future. My partner and I planned to move to the East Coast together and my acceptance cemented our plan – 30 hour road trip, here we come! After I processed what happened, I realized I could start finalizing plans and getting excited. I was excited for my future, the program and my Brandeis experience.

I had applied to other programs in the area, but knew that the Heller school was my top choice. The dual degree program design and field practicum would give me the opportunity study, gain experience, and fine tune my passion and knowledge before starting my career. We are now about a month into school, and I know I made the right decision. While it is just the start of my time at Heller, I am excited for all that is to come!

Hello Heller! Andy Mendez’ Acceptance Story

November 18, 2021 / amendez / 0 Comments

Andy Mendez, MBA/SID’23

When I read over my acceptance letter on a snowy day in January 2020 in an apartment on Chicago’s northwest side, I thought about what it had taken for that letter to land in my inbox. I thought about how I had borrowed books from the Peace Corps library in Morocco and studied for the exam every day of Ramadan. I thought about how I raced against a snowstorm and the clock to make it seven hours north to the capital to take the GRE at the AMIDEAST center in Rabat. While I was serving in the Peace Corps, I had 8 to 10 schools on my list at any given time. When the time came to actually commit, I thought about where I could really see myself and that was Heller. I withdrew the only other application I had submitted, put all my eggs in the Heller basket and it had worked out!

The problem was I had committed to a second term of service with AmeriCorps VISTA in Chicago that would run from February 2020 to February 2021. To attend Heller, I’d have to end my service 6 months early. I had just transferred from a position as a VISTA Member to a position as a VISTA Leader supporting a full 45+ member cohort of volunteers working on sustainable, anti-poverty solutions.

Maybe you can understand why it was hard for me to type out my deferral letter. If I had accepted, I knew I would be leaving a lot unfinished in my role at AmeriCorps and I would be forfeiting another $6K Education Award. With my pre-COVID-19 naiveté, I thought an extra year would allow me to gain more work experience, build my Chi-town network, and still leave a few months to volunteer abroad. A week after my deferral request was accepted, my office went remote, my campus tour was canceled, toilet paper was flying off the shelves, and the reality of our new normal started setting in. In that week, I realized my decision to defer had much bigger implications. It meant avoiding an uncertain year of virtual school. It meant committing to a year of national service that would look very different than what I had anticipated. It meant that the third-largest city in the country had been reduced to the four walls of my bedroom.

When I received my updated Admissions decision a year later, the COVID-19 situation was still unclear, but my resolve to attend graduate school was firm. The pandemic had clarified a lot of things for me, including my desire to be at a mission-driven institution and to be in an environment where I could build my quantitative skills and technical expertise. I knew that, despite the uncertainty, I was ready to become a part of the Heller community. I knew that I didn’t want to delay the start of this journey any longer.

Hello Heller! Ronunique Clark’s Acceptance Story

September 23, 2021 / ronuniqueclark / 0 Comments

Ronunique Clark, MPP’23

During my fall semester of senior year at Boston University, I was remote learning while also drowning myself in LSAT prep books and study groups, as I had the dream of becoming a lawyer. After months of connecting to law schools, LSAT study groups/courses, and gathering my application materials, I was in the middle of writing my personal statement for law school that I realized I did not want to be a lawyer anymore. It was now the end of November: I opted out of taking the January 2021 LSAT and was back to the drawing board of what I wanted to do after graduation. The most important part of the next journey was that I knew I wanted to work in the government sector, but I did not want to enforce laws. I wanted to create, implement, and assist in helping communities gain adequate access to government resources. After consistently asking myself “What are you going to do?” I came across the Master of Public Policy at the Heller School of Social Policy.

I was familiar with Brandeis University, as a Posse scholar hailing from the Bay Area, and I knew if Brandeis was a Posse partner school, then this university prided itself on working to making the next leaders in our generation. After reading more about the Master of Public Policy program, it embodied every element I wanted to gain knowledge on. I appreciated Heller’s dedication to social justice and encouraging their students to think beyond the current social structures, providing them with the tools to addressing systematic inequities while developing equitable solutions. From there, I knew I wanted to apply for this program.

After attending my admission interview with Andrea, who is now a 2nd year MPP student, she made me feel much more confident in my application. Andrea was sweet, informative, and she answered the questions that I had to the fullest extent. After logging off my zoom call my anxiety was through the roof— I wanted to know in the next 24 hours if I was admitted into the program or not. Almost 2 weeks went by before I received the decision letter. I had just walked into my dorm room from taking graduation photos when I felt my Apple watch buzz that there was an update made to my application. Without a second thought, I yanked my phone out of my pocket, nearly dropping it in my rush to the status page. And there it was: “Congratulations we are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted in the Master of Public Policy program at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management with a scholarship.” I screamed my very first graduate school acceptance letter and with the scholarship offer, it was the best thing yet. I screenshotted the status page and texted it to my mother: just like any other proud parent, she posted about it before I even got the chance to decide. Yet we knew the decision that was going to be made. The scholarship money was a plus, but being accepted into the Heller School of Social Policy and Management told me that it was the beginning of my new official journey of fighting for the social causes I believed in.

It now has been 3 weeks since I started at Heller, and I know it was the right decision. My cohort, the professors, and the team at Heller admissions have been so helpful and enlightening. I am so excited to see how these next two years will become I hope to gain the most knowledge and skills from this program.

Hello Heller! Hannah Plumb’s Acceptance Story

September 21, 2021 / hplumb / 0 Comments

Hannah Plumb, MA SID’22

I distinctly remember when I got my acceptance letter from Heller. I was at a friend’s house, watching Bridgerton and unwinding from an exceptionally long work week. I heard my phone ding from an email notification and I excitedly pulled up the email. I held my breath while pulling up the page and waited for the response to appear…accepted!!

I yelled in excitement and my friend and I paused the show to get hype about it. We had a drink and some chocolate chip cookies to celebrate— might not seem like much, but I was incredibly excited. The journey to graduate school had been a bit of a tumultuous one for me .

After finishing my undergraduate degree in Communications, I was incredibly burnt out from school and unlike most of my friends, decided I wanted to work for a while before going back to school. I enrolled in the Peace Corps and was planning on spending the next two years of my life learning about Indonesian culture and the development world— COVID had other plans, however.

When I got evacuated from Peace Corps, I had no idea what to do. The plan I’d had for my life was suddenly in pieces. I took a random job at a COVID testing site to get back on my feet, and started reevaluating my next steps. I knew that I wanted to stay in the realm of nonprofit work and that I wanted to have an international focus. I started applying for jobs in these areas but was having little luck since several of them required Master’s degrees or more experience (and we were in the pandemic— the job market wasn’t great).

From there, I decided to look at the Heller school, and immediately it intrigued me. I loved the focus on social justice, the diversity of the student body, the interdisciplinary skills it focused on, and the practicality of the program. It was different than most of the other programs I’d looked at, and best of all, it had an incredible financial aid package too. That made it so much more affordable!

After talking to another Peace Corps volunteer who had gone to Heller, my decision was set. If they accepted me, that’s where I would be going. And lucky for me, they did, so here I am at Heller now 🙂

Hello Heller! Kyle Doherty’s Acceptance Story

June 1, 2021 / kyledoherty / 0 Comments

Kyle Doherty, MA SID’22

My Heller admission story does not begin with my own acceptance to Brandeis, but my partner Ran’s. She accepted an offer to Brandeis’ MA in Psychology program around the beginning of June, so we planned our move to Waltham. I had graduated in May of 2019 with a degree in psychology too, but had decided to take a gap year before going back to school. A little after the year deadline I set for myself, I was more confused than I was when I graduated. I knew I wanted to go back to school to get a graduate degree, but I was uncertain on the type of program I wanted to apply to. As I was doing research for possible schools for a Spring 2021 or Fall 2021 start, I found the Heller School when scrolling through the Brandeis website.

As I flipped through the webpages of all the Heller programs, I was fascinated by what I saw. I was interested in so many of the programs, but also in the existence of a school that prioritizes social justice and equity. The Sustainable International Development program particularly caught my eye because of experiences I had the previous four summers. when I would travel to China to live with Ran and her parents before returning for college. Those trips exposed me to the need for development, by showing just how privileged my American life had been. When visiting their home village, many of the houses lacked sewage, had holes in roofs, and electricity was unreliable. Thinking back to those times and seeing the current development projects occurring there such as roadbuilding and agriculture projects, I decided I would apply to Heller the next cycle. When I went to go check if Heller had spring admission, I was shocked to see that they were still accepting applications for the fall. In that moment, it all came together: my interest in social psychology from undergrad, my love for traveling, and a commitment to disrupt oppressive norms and policies. I knew I had to take advantage of this situation and immediately got all the required materials ready in just a few days.

The wait for a decision was agonizing as it was the middle of the summer, a pandemic was raging around us, and we were also moving at the same time. It had been a long two days of moving in the July heat as I sat down to catch my breath. Flopping down on the nearest elevated surface, I chuckled when realizing that I was the first to sit on the couch my partner Ran and I had just put together. The air conditioner blared in the background as I opened the Gmail app on my phone (even when handling much more pressing issues like putting together furniture, I still like to keep my digital inbox in order!). As the screen flickered to show an unread email from ‘The Heller School’, the exhaustion I felt moments ago evaporated instantly. Not letting anyone know what was going on, I stealthily thumped in my email and password before hitting the scariest enter button of my life. If I did not get accepted here, I would not know what I would be doing for the rest of 2020. My anxiety turned to jubilation as I saw a financial aid award letter load in slowly because we had not had the chance to install wi-fi yet. I looked over to Ran with a blank look on my face and said “Well, guess I got in”, before cracking a huge smile. Seeing her exhaustion melt away too, she jumped up and gave me the most epic high five into hug combination I had ever experienced.

After coming off the initial rush of the acceptance I took a day or two to make sure Heller was the right choice for me. It did not take long to make my decision because they had already won me over during the application process. Once accepting the offer and settling into our new place, it was time to enjoy our last month of summer before becoming graduate students.

Hello Heller!: Daniella Levine’s Acceptance Story

March 25, 2021 / daniellalevine / 0 Comments

Daniella Levine, MPP ’21

After a week of working remotely (in what my organization called at the time a “work from home test-run”), I was in the midst of a post-work debrief with some of my colleague friends when the email notification popped up on my phone.

I’d been getting bombarded by Brandeis and other academic institutions for weeks at this point with reasons why I should consider their school and the special opportunities they had to offer. Yet, I was confused – wasn’t I the one who should be wooing them – sharing my value add? Suffice to say, when another email came in from Brandeis, at 5:20 on a Friday afternoon no less, I was skeptical that it would be a significant update. But when I opened the email and saw that it carried news, I suddenly could not hear what the four boxes on my screen were saying. Logging into my account without trying to signal any emotional change in my face for fear that someone on my call would ask what was happening, I tried to keep my face stoic and unchanged.

Ultimately, however, my face betrayed me as my expression quickly transformed to reveal what the letter said: I was accepted. Interrupting my friends (which is common for me and my stream of conscious style) to relay the news caused the whole screen to erupt in celebration. Good news was hard to come by those first couple weeks (months) of the pandemic, and being able to share my excitement in real-time with the women who had spent the last four years inspiring and uplifting me was such a gift. Then came the screenshots and texts to family and friends alike, all eagerly awaiting any news.

Heller’s commitment to social justice and equity drew me in and is what has sustained me over the last year. They not only practice what they preach, they actively work to do and be better and I am so lucky to be a part of the change, surrounded by driven and like-minded peers, faculty, and professors.

Hello Heller!: Sazia Nowshin’s Acceptance Story

March 16, 2021 / sazianowshin / 0 Comments

Sazia Nowshin, MBA/SID’22

One fateful Friday in late February of last year, I was leaving my workplace to go back to campus and received an email from Brandeis regarding an “update on my application.” As I was walking down the stairs to the backdoor exit, I opened the email and went to my application. Thinking back on it, I’m sure I should have been more nervous. But at the moment, I was so tuckered out from a long day’s work, I opened up the email as casually as possible. However, when I discovered that I got into Heller, I stopped in my tracks immediately. I remember texting my closest friends and FaceTiming my parents.

“Congrats on brandice,” my friend told me, whose ability to remember the school I applied to mattered more than spelling Brandeis wrong.

I remember my sister being ecstatic over text, and my parents having extremely different reactions. My father’s first question immediately was “how much does it cost?,” a question that Heller Admissions can help answer for prospective students and parents (please don’t judge my shameless plug). My mother, on the other hand, was bawling at the idea of me moving to a different state for school. Nonetheless, I believe they were all proud of me.

Once I received my decision from Heller, I was faced with a difficult decision. I had to choose between this program and another social policy program in New York. Either way, I would have had to move because I had lived at home all my life, needed to change my environment to really focus on my graduate education, and experience new things in life overall. After weighing my options and consulting with many people whose opinions I value, I ended choosing Heller.

The biggest factor that caused me to hesitate with Brandeis was name recognition. The other program was from a school that all my friends knew and had a high ranking in social policy programs, and no one but my professors had known of Brandeis’ esteemed academic reputation. But name recognition only gets you so far, in my opinion. One should choose their program for what it truly offers. With Heller’s program, I would be able to experience the vast opportunities the Greater Boston area has to offer and the diverse student body of Heller. The program at Heller was also better for me in terms of financial aid and the opportunity to network with those in the international development community, which is the field I strive to have a career in.

When it comes to choosing which program or school one wants to attend, what really matters is if one believes they can make the most out of where they are attending.

Hello Heller!: Hannah Lougheed’s Acceptance Story

March 2, 2021 / hannahlougheed / 0 Comments

Hannah Lougheed, MA SID/MS-GHPM’22

As my parents and I were directed to move to the side and wait with the crowd of other hungry onlookers to be seated, I casually refreshed my email inbox on my phone and found I had an “update on my Application” from Brandeis University. We were at a chain restaurant that boasts an Americanized Italian cuisine, and up until that moment my mind was consumed solely with thoughts of chicken and gnocchi soup, but this certainly broke my hunger haze. I anxiously logged into my admissions page to see – I was in! It was my first graduate school acceptance letter up until that point, and I was ecstatic. I informed my parents of the good news, to which they congratulated me, and then we returned to waiting in silence for our buzzer to ring. Sorry, a little anticlimactic – I know.

The Lougheeds are a pragmatic people; we celebrate, then quickly and systematically come back down to Earth. As we slid into our faux leather, well-worn booth, we began looking at what Heller had to offer in terms of cost, opportunities, etc. How naive we were to spend considerable time talking about what the physical campus and city of Waltham could offer for social activities and outdoor recreation. But, to be fair, this discussion took place in January 2020 when COVID-19 had yet to find a daily permanence in our vernacular. All that aside, by the time we had consumed half our body weight in pasta, we had discussed many of the pros and cons of the Heller school.

At this point in my story you may be thinking, “Wow, is she a paid sponsor for Olive Garden?” To that, I would respond, pass me those affordable and delicious never-ending breadsticks and just hear me out.

As I emerged from my pasta-induced coma the next morning, I was delighted to see multiple emails welcoming me into the Heller family. I was showered by warm smiles, stories of the impact that Heller has made on students and faculty alike, and a sense that this graduate program was different from the others to which I had applied. I also deeply appreciated that this program was seemed to uplift students to succeed, whereas others boasted about their competitiveness and challenging material within the program. To be candid, I was sold on Heller but still had one reservation: name recognition.

I grew up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, then moved to rural south-central Pennsylvania when I was young, so my exposure to higher ed institutions had been limited. I have always been starstruck by institutions with “big” names and dreamed of dawning a sweatshirt that proudly read “Johns Hopkins” or “Harvard” so the world knew I had “made it”. So, sillily enough, one of my major reservations for attending Brandeis was that many people, at least in my small circle, had never heard of the school. I reached out to meet with my undergraduate academic advisor and general giver-of-great-advice human and he reassured me that Brandeis does have great name recognition within academia, and that I would be foolish not to go to a school that fit me well just because the name is not “big” enough.

I spent considerable time still assessing my options, but found that the Heller school was a perfect fit. My advice and something I am working to change in my own thinking: do not let names alone guide your path. For grad programs, jobs, etc. You are special and your value is not validated by a name on your resume, but by who you are innately.

Heller Admissions Blog

Tag: Hello Heller! (page 1 of 2)

Hello, Heller! Calah McQuarters’ Acceptance Story

Hello Heller! Brielle Ruscitti’s Acceptance Story

Hello Heller! Andy Mendez’ Acceptance Story

Hello Heller! Ronunique Clark’s Acceptance Story

Hello Heller! Hannah Plumb’s Acceptance Story

Hello Heller! Kyle Doherty’s Acceptance Story

Hello Heller!: Daniella Levine’s Acceptance Story

Hello Heller!: Sazia Nowshin’s Acceptance Story

Hello Heller!: Hannah Lougheed’s Acceptance Story

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