I just got back from interviewing a student for Education Matters. At the end, she mentioned how smart the people are in her class and also how competitive they are. She was shocked at how tough things can seem sometimes as a student.

But this doesn’t come as a total surprise. Especially at the Medill School of Journalism, where there are fewer jobs than ever. Where the industry in some ways is changing, maybe collapsing. And where jobs are hard to come by.

The same thing holds true at Kellogg and you see it pretty clearly in the recruiting process. Where you apply to a job alongside everyone who has similar backgrounds, who took all the same classes, and who worked as consultants before Kellogg. How can you distinguish yourself that way?

The same thing happens in law school, where everyone is forced to take the same classes, where everyone wants the exact same job after graduation (big law firm) and where many students are light on work experience.

So I propose the idea that it’s not always important to be better, smarter or faster. And sometimes it’s not even important to have more creativity. Instead, I think, it’s because they understand what work actually matters.

The problem is … what matters isn’t obvious. In fact its nearly impossible to tell.  It changes by person, by vendor, and sometimes every day of the week. Sometimes what matters is working on the right task. Other times working the right person. And sometimes it’s simply good timing.

The most successful ones are those that somehow find it, capture it, and then proceed to ignore everything else that gets in the way.

But this is easier said then done. Especially in business school when most students want to get involved in everything, and in work, where you want to learn everything about your job.  But many of those things are not nearly as important as you think.

In business, often times people are referred to as generalists. These are the general managers who touch multiple functions, work with multiple teams and work across boundaries and geographies. On the other hand, companies also have specialists. These are the consultants who know a lot about their industry, sector, business unit, or specific task at hand. There is not always a clear cut answer on which one is the preferred route. Even in business school.

Deep knowledge and understanding of a topic surely helps you in a variety of ways. It helps you create better analyses. You gain more access  to the numbers. You refine your ability to understand how a particular system works. And once you do that, you can begin to master other similar topics with overlapping content.

At the same time, it’s impossible to become CEO or political leader without also being aware of the wider world. That’s because we have countless interactions with people from different backgrounds, geographies, interests and beliefs as we navigate our daily lives.

On the other hand, the problem today is that the world is getting bigger every single day. The Internet makes the large world larger than ever and for now, it continues to expand. There is also more news available and more issues that we have access to given the world wide web.  And there is no way to manage it all. So how can you remain a generalist today?

It’s tempting to spend ever more time pursuing that goal. On the other hand, being an expert hasn’t changed. It’s still equally as hard as it used to be. But still doable?

Which one should we pursue?

Does it make a difference if you have a high paying job or low one?

Does it matter if you have an MBA or a JD?

Every single person still has to answer the question.

MLT is committed to preparing minority students for careers in business by prepping them for college, graduate school and beyond. By providing students with networking opportunities and career coaching, MLT is making leadership positions available to a much more diverse group of people.

A few weeks ago we attended an MLT conference in Houston to talk about grad school with up and coming fellows as well as to talk more about the education matters campaign. Check out this video from some MLT rising stars talking about what education has done for them. And as always, visit http://www.ml4t.org/ to learn more about how you can get involved with MLT.

This happens all the time. In track meets, a runner starts off running to slow and then when they try to sprint and catch up, the runner can barely maintain their speed, let alone run faster. Especially in really long race.

It happens all the time in basketball too. A team plays half heartedly before playing hard in the 4th quarter. Then they start making a run but before they can catch up, the game ends. Or the team doesn’t have enough energy to make it all the way.

The same thing is true in business. You start off doing just enough,  but when you try to push something through later,  execution issues in slow you down. And you don’t have the time to attend to everything.

In law firms, the deadlines come up too fast and you may not have enough time to do all the research.

In the start up world, too many issues surface and you don’t have the time to take care of them all.

I propose the idea that in some cases, it might make sense to start off faster. To run harder. To do more. To spring NOW. Because when the time comes to “turn it on” you may not have as much in the tank as you need.

I recently got an email informing me that I had won first place in Clear Admit’s Best of Blogging awards as well as in two of the four additional sub-categories.  Thanks to everyone that has visited (even if were only by accident – we have good keywords here).

Going forward,  we’ll be expanding rapidly.  Right now, we’re redesigning our website to more organized and far more powerful. And in a few weeks we’ll launch a video Q&A web series, where I can speak with more of you at an even faster rate.  So as applications and job season begins to heat up and as kids get ready to head off to college this summer, I look forward to speaking with many of you.

Click here to see Clear Admit’s website.

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Top Student Bloggers
Jeremy: http://www.jeremycwilson.com/
Bayo: http://nigerianintobschool.blogspot.com/
Julianne: http://julianneharty.blogspot.com/

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Bayo

Best Job/Internship Advice
Jeremy

Best Representation of Academics
Jeremy

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Bayo

This activist credits education with everything she has: “The more I know, the more choices I have, the more things I can experience and enjoy, understand, compare, the richer my life becomes,” Dawson says.

Dawson is not satisfied to just sit back and enjoy a celebrity lifestyle—rather, she uses her status to promote multiple causes and ensure that everyone has the opportunity to reach the same heights she was able to reach.

See below for her #EducationMatters video. And below that for a few other videos.

Rosario Dawson

David Hernandez

Jennifer Castilla

Steve Alvacan

Thank you Rosario and Voto Latino for sharing your ideas with us!

Similar to last year’s VIVA fundraiser this one is taking place in downtown Chicago and should be a pretty good time. As a board fellow with the organization I’ll be attending the event along with all the other Cristo Rey Board members to celebrate the end of a good year.

The event will be filled with food, fun and networking. There will be a great raffle, music and announcements. There will also be high profile speakers and new coverage, just like there were last year. In fact, to learn more about the event this year CLICK HERE.  Personally, I am a big fan of what Cristo Rey is doing and look forward to staying involved and attending future fundraisers.

At Kellogg,  business students seem to be increasingly seeking jobs in the education industry and specifically at strong schools and school systems. One place to consider is Cristo Rey, who many consider to be  a pioneer in their field.

See below for a video clip from created by one alumni of the school.

On Wednesday, Marquis Parker and I are looking forward to joining the innovative nonprofit in welcoming the largest group of graduate to date.  The team and Board of Directors for US Empowered have worked hard to create the event so we look forward to showing our support.

Founded by Jeff Nelsen, US Empowered is “the nation’s only teacher-led college persistence program, that identifies and trains highly effective teachers to lead students attending non-selective high schools in low-income communities to enroll in and graduate from college.”

To show just how far they have come, in 2007, US Empowered served 30 students at three Chicago high schools and this year, we are working with nearly 1,000 students and 44 teachers in 20 high schools. They really are doing great work here in Chicago, and will soon be expanding to a number of other cities.

At Kellogg and other leading MBA programs,  business students seem to be increasingly seeking jobs in the education industry.  For those considering that option, I highly recommend that you consider getting to know US Empowered. It’s a great organization with a great mission, and a strong team of staff and board members.

See below for a video clip from last years gala!

Well just last week the latest edition of the Merger came out. Written by Medill student Nicole Koetting, this version featured an article written about the Education Matters Project. See below for the article.

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Title: Fortune Favors the Bold

Author: Nicole Koetting

It all started when Jeremy C. Wilson read an article by Peter Thiel that said that going to college didn’t matter. It was the spring of 2011, and I was bothered by the article. Education had been very important in Wilson’s life, and he didn’t agree with Thiel’s argument that higher education was essentially useless.

“I wish I could talk to every student for five minutes to tell them, education matters; and education is worth fighting for. I know because I fought for it myself,” Wilson said  He talked with other people about the piece and Thiel’s ideas. Then, suddenly, an idea came to Wilson in a flash. He should do something about it.

Now, Wilson, along with a team of Northwestern students and a host of volunteers, has started the Education Matters Project, a non-profit organization with a pretty big mission: “To change the way humankind views the benefits of education and to help fund a better education for students who need it most.”.

Modeled after the It Gets Better campaign, the Education Matters Project website uses videos of role models and students who tell their stories and why they believe that education mattered in their lives.

The Education Matters Project’s aspirations seem to be three-fold: At the organization’s core is changing how the world views education. If everyone had equal access to receive a good education, the Education Matters Project posits, the world would be a better place.

Secondly, the Education Matters Project wants to inspire disadvantaged junior high and high school students to continue their education. “It’s always going to be easier to quit,” a “Welcome to the Education Matters Project” blog post says. “It’s always going to be easier to say no, to stay home, and to stop trying. The problem is, it’s also easier to fail than it is to succeed. That’s what makes it success. We here at Education Matters want to help you understand that working hard and getting the best education you can is critical to becoming the best version of yourself.”

Of course, it’s not that easy: even if disadvantaged high school students stayed in school and were accepted by a college, going to college costs a lot of money. Wilson and the other Education Matters Project team members understand that. Their third objective reflects that discrepancy: the organization wants to be able to give underprivileged students who want to go to college the money to be able to do it. The Education Matters Project will eventually crowd-fund scholarships for students from low-income families who cannot afford it. Donors will be able to give money to specific students through the website, and will be updated on their student’s success.

As of today, the website hasn’t officially launched yet, but the project has over 100 videos and written pieces, as well as hundreds of photos from people who say that education does matter, and those numbers are growing more every day. Wilson’s video was the first one.

Education is a very personal subject for Wilson. He grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, where the poverty rate was nearly 50% and very few people considered going to college.. Wilson’s parents were the ones who pushed him through school. Wilson says, “They imagined me and my sister getting a good education and attending the best schools in the world, even though nobody game them the same opportunity.” He noted that they jumped on a greyhound and fled Youngstown and moved to west to Arizona in search of opportunity..

They were right. Wilson ended up going to Stanford University, where he majored in Anthropology. Now, as a graduate student who knows how difficult it is for students from low-income families to go to college, he’s made it his personal mission, through the Education Matters Project, to inspire students to go to college, and fund them.

For the short term, Wilson wants the Education Matters Project to target junior high and high school students to show them the potential they can achieve if they pursue a higher education. But in the long run, he wants to make education more equal – he wants all students, whether from high-income or low-income families, to be able to go to college if they want to.

As for what the start-up organization needs right now, Wilson says, “At the heart of what we want to get is as many stories as possible. After that, we need to find a way to get the world’s attention. Because the more people that look, the more fundraising we can do.”

Wilson ended by saying, “There’s never been a more pivotal time to show the world that education still matters.”

First off, congratulations on your acceptance to Kellogg. I remember my acceptance to Kellogg a few years ago . I hope you are thrilled to get in. Second, congratulations to those of you who made it to the admitted student weekend. That was a great decision.

Feedback after the DAK 1 was that everyone had a blast.  And the point of this post is just to quickly to say that I think the same thing was true for DAK 2.  Many of you have already decided that Kellogg was the place for you during your stay, which is great news. And others have been making those decisions all week.

But don’t take it from me, take it from the feedback emails we’ve been getting since DAK ended:

Over the past few weeks we’ve gone out and asked the world this single, straightforward question. To compile the responses, we’ve created a forum for people to lend their voice and a multi-media technology platform to get the word out in a meaningful way.

Our website is totally free to read, share, translate, print and, most of all, use to start an essential conversation about why education is important.

It took a lot to get it to you. We’ve gotten help from a few MBA students, law students, journalism students and undergrads. So I’m encouraging you to take a few minutes to check it out, and  after you read it, I’ll ask you to put up a story of your own.

There’s never been a more pivotal time to move our communities forward by showing how much education matters. Please help us in spreading that message.

In business school we think about campaigns all the time. How to create a marketing campaign for products. How to start spreading the word for a big conference. And how to build buzz for clubs and organizations on campus.

In law school the same things happen. Students think long and hard about how to get momentum. How to start the process to change the things you care about. And how to organize and structure thoughts to make a good argument – to have a case.

But maybe that stuff is not good enough for a world class campaign?  Because to do that, you need the ability to connect the dots from start to finish. To change course of events, not just for your campaign but also considering other campaigns around you. And to understand the emotions of the people, not just the mechanics behind the process.

Perhaps the ability to do that can only come from learning from the ground up. From creating yourself.

Not from a teacher. Not from books. And not from a place without the same level of emotion.

For those embarking on the MBA application process or career process in general, I’d love it if you kept visiting and asking questions.  Unlike most bloggers before me, I have no plans to slow down here on JeremyCWilson.com. Instead, I plan to pick up the pace over the next few weeks and months.

Stay tuned for more great posts to come.

Good luck to everyone on the ballot.

And CLICK HERE to vote for me.

The Voto Latino conference that is taking place this weekend in Southern California. So I’m spending the weekend out in Los Angeles, CA along with the Education Matters Project to speak on a panel at Voto Latino’s Power Summit. As the 2012 election campaign season is under way, VotoLatino is launching their first annual conference to give participants the skills they need to organize.

Organized by Rosario Dawson and Maria Theresa Kumar VotoLatino’s goal is to empowers American Latinos to claim a better future by voting and bringing their voices into the political process.

This two-day event at the University of Southern California’s Davidson Conference Center will educate, engage and empower young Latinos from across the country to create positive change in their communities. Leaders will receive training from public officials, artists, grassroots organizers, and business leaders in new media, public speaking, activism and community organizing. Participants will also be the first to preview our new technology that will revolutionize the voter registration process.

With the election campaign in full force, there’s never been a better time to bring everyone together to discuss voting, having a voice and the education matters campaign.

Today, we have videos and written stories from people all over the country. And people from all different backgrounds. And now we’re just days away from having a live website, where you cannot only view and read stories but also share your story with the world.

There’s never been a better time to stand up and tell the world why education matters to you?

Stay tuned for our new site where you can do just that.

Just a few days ago I came across a great presentation by the Education Trust, where they summarized the lessons learn in schools districts studied in New York. Here are some of the lessons:

Over past 30 years, earnings among the lowest income families have declined—while biggest increases have occurred at the top

U.S. has the fourth-highest income inequality among OECD nations

 Median Wealth of White Families is (A) 20 X that of African Americans (B)   18 X that of Latinos

High school math achievement flat over time

High School gaps between groups are mostly wider today than in late eighties, early nineties

No matter how you cut the data, our students aren’t doing well compared to their peers in other countries

Only place we rank high? –> Inequality

Students in Poor Schools Receive ‘A’s for Work That Would Earn ‘Cs’ in Affluent Schools

African American, Latino & Native American high school graduates are less likely to have been enrolled in a full college prep track

More Classes in High-Poverty, High-Minority Schools Taught By Out-of-Field Teachers

CLICK HERE to read the document in its entirety

And special thanks to Rohit Agarwal for finding this great resource and sending it along to us.

This post comes to me ironically because it happened to me yesterday. I had a great idea for a blog post. I came up with it on my way to the gym. Thought about the concept during my workout and was ready to write something great when I got back. But just when I got home an hour later, I realized that I couldn’t remember it anymore. And it’s been bugging me all day today.

Every time this happens, it reinforces the idea that writing down your idea can be powerful. Even if it’s just a rough note to help you remember. Today, we’re busier than we’ve ever been before. We’re also inundated with more content, more people and more noise than any time in history. In some cases writing down an idea or a reminder will be the only way you will remember.

And while right now you might feel like going out of your way to do this isn’t worth the effort, the one time you have a great idea that you forget just hours later, I guarantee you won’t feel the same.

Today, many people around the world wil recognize Easter in some form. Some will head to church service or mass. Others will celebrate Passover with their families. And others will just go out for a walk, some around Evanston and others to the city to enjoy the Sunday morning. Many with the mission of celebrating this rebirth and renewal.

Personally, I’m taking an early morning walk today, to get outside and see Evanston. Then I’ll stop by the store and head to the gym. And then I’ll stop by two brunches to enjoy the morning with friends and family.

First, I’ll head over to a brunch sermon with the Kellogg BMA family who will celebrate the holiday at Dean Rogers place. The gathering will start around 11am and should go for about two hours. One of our very own Kellogg MBA members will deliver a brief message to the group.

After that, I will join the Kellogg Christian Fellowship (KCF) at a brunch event today.  KCF is teaming up with Catholics@Kellogg for brunch at the Celtic Knot. We will have the entire section for our gathering to enjoy fellowship with other likeminded people.

For many people at these events, and around the rest of the city, it should be a good time of rebirth, recharging and renewal, not just in the physical sense but also the spiritual sense.

To those who are going to church today, including my parents, Happy Easter. To those who will head over to mass, hopefully you enjoy that too. And to those who have been celebrating Passover this weekend, including both of my roommates, “Chag Sameach”.  To everyone else, I hope you feel renewed on this spring day.

It’s funny how it works. You can fail over and over again. No matter how hard you try.  But one day, it all changes. You succeed and things change. And sometimes all you need is just one HUGE success to build a really big career.

Like going 0 for 5 in law school applications but finally getting a BIG acceptance to your top school. Or like striking out with all your investors but then, one of them finally decides to invest after all.

If this is true, then the “neither” is the worst category. Because if you spend your time doing “neither”, then you won’t have a chance for success.  You’ll never have a shot at that HUGE success that you get if you can just survive the failing.

The interesting thing is that we all know this. But we still avoid failure at all costs.

A good friend of mine s recently passed the word about a job opportunity from a friend of mine and thought some of you might be interested. While I don’t typically use my site to post job opportunities or promotional reasons, I do like to use it to help non-profits, especially ones that I have some connection to. In this case, that organization is Building Excellent Schools.

See below for a description. See below that for more on the job role.  And drop me a line if you are interested in connecting with the school.

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Building Excellent Schools (BES) is a trailblazing nonprofit that raises the quality of urban charter schools by supporting entrepreneurial individuals to design, found, lead, and sustain schools in underserved communities.