About Ella: Ella is a born and bred east coaster, raised in Upstate NY outside of Albany before heading down to the DC area to study at the University of Maryland for undergrad. At UMD, Ella found community through her major, Fire Protection Engineering, where she served as the Secretary of the Student Chapter of Fire Protection Engineers and the President of the Fire Protection Honor Society while in school. After graduation, Ella spent a year working in DC for a building design firm doing fire protection & life safety code consulting, before making the move back up north to NYC to continue working in code consulting. Ella ultimately wanted to expand beyond her East Coast roots and head to sunny LA for business school, which is how she landed on Anderson. Ella is pursuing a career in Management Consulting and hopes to continue to leverage her engineering background within consulting.

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Applying to business school can be extremely daunting, especially as someone without any formal business experience. I experienced countless moments of imposter syndrome where I doubted if my experience would make me a good fit for business school, and eventually a career in management consulting. However, over my first 5 months at Anderson, I have found that a unique background makes me more than just a good fit, it makes me an incredibly valuable addition to the MBA community and has allowed me to bring a unique perspective and story to the management consulting recruitment process.

I studied Fire Protection Engineering during undergrad at UMD and worked after graduation as a fire protection engineer doing life safety code consulting for buildings. This is an extremely niche field – UMD has the only undergraduate program in fire protection in the country! It was not an often occurrence where I would tell someone I worked in building code consulting and they knew what it consisted of or even knew fire protection engineers existed. I thoroughly enjoyed my time working as a fire protection engineer – specifically I loved working with my team to help solve our clients’ tough issues. However, I wasn’t sure that life safety code consulting was a place where I wanted to spend my entire career, which is when I began my journey of applying to business school.

When I was initially researching business schools, I assumed that I was at a huge disadvantage having not majored in business during undergrad and not worked in a traditional business field like finance prior to MBA. This could not have been further from the truth. My unique background in fire protection engineering became a great conversation starter, many fellow prospective students and current students were extremely intrigued by this field, having not heard of anyone who had worked in a similar role before. This made me an extremely memorable candidate – I think it is highly unlikely that any other fire protection engineers also applied Round 1 to Anderson! 

Having a unique background has benefitted me beyond only being accepted to Anderson – it continues to be something that my classmates know me by and an aspect that has shined through in my management consulting applications. My engineering background has greatly benefitted me in the quantitative MBA classes such as finance and accounting, and working as a life safety code consultant has allowed me to make a valuable connection as to why management consulting is a natural next step in my career.

My advice to other unique candidates with non-business backgrounds is to understand that your unique work experience only makes your application stronger – the more you can differentiate yourself in the application cycle the better! The Anderson MBA program is such a valuable experience because of the various types of experiences and backgrounds that the class brings – we would not be able to learn from each other if everyone had the same experience.

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• Student Blogger: Ella Meredith ’26
• Undergrad: University of Maryland College Park ‘19
• Pre-MBA:  Life Safety Code Consultant/Fire Protection Engineer at SLS Consulting
• Leadership@Anderson: Director of Prospective Students, Admissions Ambassador Corps; Director of Prospective Students, Management Consulting Association; Section B Executive Vice President; Consultant – Anderson Strategy Group