I just got off the phone with a Tuck MBA applicant who spotted me at our case competition page (shameless plug: http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/clubs/case/), and wanted to chat about the application process.  It was an interesting conversation for me, because he had his whole future planned, just as I did over a year ago when I was in his shoes.  I knew I would go to XYZ B-school, interview with company ABC, and get the internship in PQR city.  It's funny, because for all the specific plans I made, none of them actually came to be. 

Don't get me wrong, however, it's not a bad thing.  I planned to go to a school that would be academically and socially intense, where I would be challenged to do my best, and encouraged by my class.  It just wasn't until I visited Tuck that I realized that it was the school I should have been planning to attend the whole time.  It fit exactly what I was looking for; I just needed the right set of circumstances to get me face-to-face with the possibility.

The same was true for Microsoft.  I had been planning for an internship that would challenge me through a variety of problems and would force me to generate solutions for senior management.  I was focused on an opportunity to be creative in a cutting edge environment, but with expectations to be able to land my ideas into the real world.  I didn't think that Microsoft offered that sort of opportunity.  That is until the Firenze case competition put me face-to-face with the possibility.