Fashion MBA Application Why is an MBA a critical next step toward your short- and long-term career goals? Why is LIM College the best MBA program for you? LIM College seeks candidates of various backgrounds who can bring new perspectives to our community. How will your unique personal history, values, and/or life experience contribute to the culture at LIM College?

For the past two years, I have worked in retail -- at first doing visual merchandising with my current employer, but then working up to actually selling women's clothing, establishing a clientele of women whom I personally style and advise about the latest trends. The personal relationship between salesperson and client is something that comes naturally to me, and in contemplating my own long-term career goals I realize that I enjoy everything about my current job -- except the fact that I am not doing these things in my own women's boutique.

To establish myself as an entrepreneur in this way requires an MBA -- but to do so in my chosen field absolutely requires an MBA from LIM College. In researching different MBA programs that could help me combine my own engagement with both fashion and entrepreneurship, it became clear that LIM College's program was unique in sharing my own focus.

When I think about models for my own career, I think of names like Jeffrey Kalinsky. Kalinsky's groundbreaking boutiques in Manhattan and Atlanta are only a little more than a decade old, but represent an example of the same kind of business I hope one day to run: one that cares more about close personal attention to establish client loyalty and goodwill than about the fast sale. In researching Kalinsky's career, I was relieved to discover that he had served apprenticeship...

But Kalinsky had an advantage that I did not have: he is the third generation in his family to own and operate retail businesses. I lack this kind of advantage, but I am humble enough to realize that an MBA education at LIM College would assist in the aspects of opening a boutique that I do not have personal experience with. But I know from personal experience that I have all of those intangibles which would make me a success in doing so.
2. LIM College defines leadership as "inspiring others to strive and enabling them to accomplish great things." We believe great things and great leadership can be accomplished in pursuit of business and societal goals. Describe a time when you exercised such leadership. Discuss the challenges you faced and the results you achieved. What characteristics helped you to be effective and what areas do you feel you need to develop in order to be a better leader?

If leadership is about offering inspiration to others and helping them achieve their own goals, then I would. Although I myself would describe it more modestly -- yes, I advise my clients, but one reason I have been so successful in establishing a client base is that I view my role as enabling my clients to better be themselves, rather than forcing this season's latest look on someone when it would be inappropriate. I can recall one specific case with a client whom I will call "Angela." Angela works as an executive in the financial industry, but she also happens to be overweight. I encountered her early on when I was working in retail, and I met her under less-than-auspicious circumstances: she had just emerged from a fitting room and was clearly in a state of anger. Because I saw that she…