What Goldman Sachs Told Its MBA Interns And Why It Matters For B-School Admissions

MBA interns started their summer banking and consulting summer internships earlier this month, and the news point was Goldman Sachs instructing newbies at its offices around the world to leave before midnight and not come back before 7am the next day.

Policies like this follow the 2013 death of a 21-year-old Merrill Lynch intern, Moritz Erhardt, who collapsed and died in his London apartment after working 72 hours straight.

Shortly after Erhardt’s death, Goldman Sach’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein effectively told his interns to get a life:

“You have to be interesting, you have to have interests away from the narrow thing of what you do (at Goldman),” he said. “You have to be somebody who somebody else wants to talk to,” he said.

Sound familiar? It does to me. Every time I work with an MBA applicant who is all about the office and nothing else, the red flag goes up: MBA Adcoms are not going to like this.

Remember, you have to be somebody somebody else wants to talk to.

So, get some outside interests. It doesn’t matter too much whether these interests are sports, arts, or community oriented, but preferably (very preferably) your outside activities should be group or team-based rather than solo endeavors because “works well with others” is a big part of a successful admissions profile for business school.