Harvard, Stanford & Wharton All Say ‘Yes’ To This Inspiring Applicant
Jerome Fulton had an unimaginably challenging start in life. He will join the HBS Class of 2023 in the fall after also being accepted to Wharton, Stanford, Columbia, Yale and UC-Berkeley Haas. Courtesy photo
Jerome Fulton begged his mom to stay home.
The 5-year-old knew that if his mother went out that December night in 1998, something bad would happen.
He was right.
“My mom died December 1st, 1998. And that night I told my mom not to leave, I had a very eerie feeling that I was never going to see her again, so I said, ‘Mommy, don’t leave. I want you to stay home with me and put me on a bus in the morning,'” Jerome recalls.
The next morning when little Jerome woke up, his family had gathered. Angel Wilson had been found dead in a car on a Miami street, shot 16 times.
‘I’M MY MOM’S ONLY CHILD, AND MY DAD’S ONLY CHILD’
Jerome Fulton. Courtesy photo
“The news people were coming around and called, it was a spectacle,” Jerome recalls. “I remember the news interviewing me and I wasn’t sad or crying, and I said, ‘I told her not to leave, but she didn’t listen to me.’ And everybody was looking at this 5-year-old kid like, ‘Did he really just say this?’ I don’t know if I had a grasp of what was happening, but I had some level of maturity, or understanding, at that point. But you know, it was tough because, I’m my mom’s only child, and my dad’s only child.”
But Jerome did not have his father to comfort him in grief. His dad had been murdered five years earlier, on the day of his parents’ baby shower, about a month before Jerome was born.
With the death of his mom, Jerome was an orphan.
“No one has custody of me; now the families are at odds and I’m in the middle,” he recalls. He moved around a lot in the ensuing years, to South Carolina and Atlanta, living with different family members. “And it was tough. My aunt had lost her only maternal sister, and then six months after my mom died, my aunt’s husband goes to prison, so she has four kids and then me, so it was tough.”
It got tougher. Even as he was the subject of a protracted custody battle, Jerome was called to testify as a character witness in the trial of his mother’s killer in February 2005.
“I was in the sixth grade and a guy was standing in front of my house with an envelope and subpoenaed me and my auntie to court to testify in my mom’s case,” Jerome recalls. “And I am the one that ended up doing it, going to the state attorney’s office after school, writing a deposition and getting on the stand and looking at one of the men responsible for my mom’s death and telling them, telling the jury, how much my mom meant to me. And at 11 years old, that was a traumatizing experience — but also a liberating one.”
AN INTENSE FOCUS ON SCHOOL PAYS OFF
Through it all, one key lesson, instilled by determined family members, stuck with young Jerome.
School matters.
That lesson, reinforced again and again throughout his turbulent early years, made the difference for a young man who has gone on to great academic success, including an undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Florida and a master’s in accounting from the University of Southern California. After working for two of the premier global consulting firms, Fulton last month achieved his greatest success yet: admission to six of the most elite business schools in the world.
Fulton was accepted by Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Columbia Business School, UC-Berkeley Haas School of Business, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Yale School of Management. He will join Harvard’s MBA Class of 2023 in the fall.
“Life was tough,” Fulton recalls. “And my aunt did a phenomenal job of instilling an education in all of us and letting us know that This is your way out. What’s around you, this is not it — keep focusing on school.
“And I always kept that, even after I moved in with my dad’s side of the family when I was 12, and I made sure that I was accountable and responsible for my education.
“It was just a joyous occasion to get into the schools that I’d never even imagined that I would go to, coming from where I come from, and experiencing the things that I’ve experienced.”
Jerome Fulton. Courtesy photo
OVERCOMING A ROCKY START
Fulton’s LinkedIn post about his journey to business school (see below) is undeniably compelling, which explains why, as of July 1, it had received more than 16,000 likes and nearly 1,000 comments.
“Let me tell you a little bit about my journey,” it begins, before chronicling the harrowing series of events at the beginning of Fulton’s life, starting with the murder of his father and continuing with the death of his mother, the custody fight, and a rocky start to his schooling.
But by his pre-teen years, Fulton had begun to turn things around, both academically and behaviorally. A salutatorian in middle school, he graduated high school a semester early in late 2010, beginning his freshman year at Florida the next fall. Once a Gator, he really began to shine, making the Dean’s List six times and earning an Anderson Scholarship for maintaining a 3.9 GPA for consecutive years, and a Reitz Scholarship for exemplary academic, leadership, and service. In 2015, the year he graduated, he was named to the University of Florida Hall of Fame, one of the most prestigious honors awarded to Florida students: Only about 25 each year are named Florida Hall of Famers.
What followed — becoming a CPA, taking on consulting roles at Ernst & Young and Deloitte, and frequent speaking and panel engagements where he shares his story — have all helped fulfill his long-time plan to get an MBA.
Long-time, as in going back to his earliest memories.
“I remember being in elementary school saying, ‘I’m going to get an MBA by the time I’m 26,'” he recalls.
‘STAY THE COURSE’
Fulton shared his story on LinkedIn — as he has shared it to audiences in past — to help others see that even the worst tragedies and challenges can be overcome.
“I wanted to let individuals know that anything is possible,” he tells P&Q. “You don’t have to have this cookie-cutter upbringing or experiences — anything is possible.
“I’m a pretty transparent person, I do speaking and I do a lot of panels, and I talk about my story and different things that I’ve experienced. But I want to paint a clear picture because I look perfect on paper, with getting into every place and the GPA, and the CPA, and the Hall of Fame, and working at these great companies. But I really wanted to demystify that and show people that it’s like the iceberg: LinkedIn is such a polished profile where everything looks good and you post your highest moments — it’s like a highlight reel. But there’s more than meets the eye. And that’s what inspired me to repost it and add onto it and just show my journey and the different things that I’ve experienced.”
He says while sharing his journey, even the most painful parts of it, may help others by showing that even the hardest circumstances are surmountable. But it also helps him.
“It’s not the only part of who I am, which makes it not as painful,” he says. “Because I think a lot of times when people are still sitting in that pain, it’s harder. But because I’ve had life experiences and go to therapy, I’m able to process the different things I’ve experienced. I have triggers and I have days, but overall, I’m a go-getter, an upbeat person. So, I don’t stay down for too long.
“I really wanted to touch people and let them know that no matter what you’re going through, no matter what you’ve experienced, it gets better later. You just have to stay the course and continue to fight, and pivot as needed. But as long as you tap into your resilience, you ask for help, you persevere — it’s going to be fine. And that’s what I wanted people to take away from it.”
JEROME FULTON’S LINKEDIN POST
Let me tell you a little bit about my journey:
April 1993: My father was murdered on the day of my parents’ baby shower.
May 1993: I was born to a 20 year-old woman, Angel B. Wilson, who was forced to be a single mother.
December 1998: My mother was murdered, shot 16 times.
September 2004: I was rejected from the Gifted and Talented program.
February 2005: I testified as a character witness in my mom’s murder trial.
June 1999 – September 2005: I was in the midst of a six-year custody battle.
May 2007: I graduated salutatorian from my middle school but wasn’t allowed to attend the ceremony.
December 2010: I graduated high school a semester early.
August 2011: I started my collegiate journey at UF.
December 2011: I finished my first semester with a 4.0 GPA.
December 2012: One of my professors accused me and 2 other Black students of cheating and tried to ruin our academic careers. Thankfully, he was unsuccessful.
April 2015: I was inducted into the UF Hall of Fame, and I received the Warrington College of Business’ Distinction in Leadership & Service Award.
May 2015: I graduated from the University of Florida with a BS in Accounting.
May 2016: I graduated from the University of Southern California with a Master of Accounting.
October 2016: I started my career with EY (one of the best decisions I made).
January 2018: I became a Certified Public Accountant (African Americans represent less than 1% of CPAs).
January 2019: I joined Deloitte Consulting.
November 2019: I incorporated my non-profit, the Angel B. Wilson Foundation (https://lnkd.in/eijVrv9).
March 2020: I joined MLT’s MBA Prep (I’m forever indebted to MLT).
November 2019 – August 2020: I took the GMAT 6 times; I wasn’t letting up.
February 2021 – March 2021: I got accepted into Columbia Business School, Harvard Business School, Stanford GSB, UC Berkeley Haas, the Wharton School at UPenn, and Yale SOM. I was also waitlisted at Michigan Ross.
May 2021: I was passed up for promotion at work.
August 2021: I WILL BE A HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL MBA CANDIDATE!
I used to say that it’s not how you start, it’s how you finish. However, I realized my beginning is just as important as my ending. I’m sure I will encounter more obstacles on this journey, but I will stand in my resilience and persevere. The moral of this unfinished story is to never give up; you are the master of your destiny.
See the next pages for Poets&Quants‘ interview with Jerome Fulton’s about his life and MBA journey, edited for length and clarity.
Fulton is a frequent motivational speaker. Courtesy photo
Poets&Quants: You wrote your LinkedIn post about the deaths of your parents and shared it with people for a reason. I’d love to talk about your reasons.
Jerome Fulton: Yeah. So the post actually is a continuation of something I wrote two years ago. So I made a post that was pretty much cut-and-paste, I just redacted a little bit and took out some earlier stuff, because when I posted it two years ago, I said “2019 and beyond, there’s more to come” — that was my last bullet. So, I just went ahead and I found it, I copied it, I tweaked it and I posted it because I wanted to let individuals know that anything is possible. You don’t have to have this cookie-cutter upbringing or experiences — anything is possible.
I’m a pretty transparent person, I do speaking and I do a lot of panels and I talk about my story and different things that I’ve experienced. But I want to paint a clear picture because I look perfect on paper, with getting into every place and the GPA, and the CPA, and the (University of Florida) Hall of Fame, and work at these great companies. But I really wanted to demystify that and show people that it’s like the iceberg; LinkedIn is such a polished profile where everything looks good and you post your highest moments, it’s like a highlight reel. But there’s more than meets the eye. And that’s what inspired me to repost it and add onto it and just show my journey and the different things that I’ve experienced.
It’s an incredible journey. Is it still painful to share some of these things?
It’s not necessarily painful because, I mean, it’s who I am, it’s a part of who I am.
It’s not the only part of who I am, which makes it not as painful. Because I think a lot of times when people are still sitting in that pain, it’s harder. But because I’ve had life experiences and go to therapy, I’m able to process the different things I’ve experienced. I have triggers and I have days, but overall, I’m a go-getter, upbeat person. So, I don’t stay down for too long.
Posting this, sharing your story and talking about it, that’s going to help other people, for sure.
And it helps me as well.
Ideally you want someone, or many someones, to read this and say, “I can do it too.” Right?
Absolutely, that was the whole purpose. I really wanted to touch people and let them know that no matter what you’re going through, no matter what you’ve experienced, it gets better later. You just have to stay the course and continue to fight, and pivot as needed. But as long as you tap into your resilience, you ask for help, you persevere, it’s going to be fine. And that’s what I wanted people to take away from it.
So, you’ve got an already super impressive CV. I got to ask, why business school? What was the spark? And go back to the beginning of when you first started thinking about business school, was it all the way back to undergrad, or before, or what?
I remember being in elementary school saying, “I’m going to get an MBA by the time I’m 26.”
I’ll just say that, I didn’t get it by the time I was 26 (laughs). But when I was at college, I was the only one about to get an MBA, because I knew I was going to do business, and that was the kind of thing to say, because I had already manifested it. But when it became more realistic is when I went to JumpStart Undergrad, it’s a program founded by John Burt and Elton Ndoma-Ogar. They were two Black men that went to Duke Fuqua. They created this program for high-performing minorities to get access to jobs that you didn’t really hear about, like in investment banking and the consulting and all that good stuff.
And so, when I saw them in 2014, I was like, “OK, this is actually possible, this is what an MBA can do for you, this is the type of impact you can have.” I think John worked at BCG and Elton did investment banking, he worked in finance. So I just became super inspired and I was like, “All right, I’m definitely going to get my MBA one day.”
So, they just gave me a tactical roadmap to say, “This is how you do it, these are the people that are going to help you do it. And I also knew several people that went through the Management Leadership for Tomorrow process, they always raved about “the network, the network.” And I applied to MLT back in 2018, because I was actually going to start business school in, I think, 2020, but I ended up deferring. I just got a new job and all that good stuff.
Every year we talk to a handful of people who get into all the top schools, like you did. Obviously they’re all super-impressive people, but our readers never get tired of hearing about how the acceptances rolled in. So tell us, what was it like? It’s grueling just to apply to one business school.
It was tough because I was studying for the GMAT and I was like, “I want this score. I got to get this score.” You know, because I’m a competitive person, I always want to bring the best version of myself to anything. And so once I had finished the GMAT and I started applying to schools, I would say I’m a decent writer, so the writing was easy for me. But the “why business school?” story was kind of the challenge at first because I want to do so many things, I want to be a motivational speaker, I want to impact people.
So I had to find a role that made sense with my profile to tell a story, and be able to still communicate my passions. Once I was able to get over that hurdle and get my “why an MBA?” down pat, that was fine. But applying in like December, Christmas, everything’s going on, I’m leaving the day after Christmas to go to a workstation to write my essays. I read my work about 20 times out loud. At see point it was just, “Forget it, I’m just going to submit it.”
The hardest one was actually Harvard. So, I thought the HBS deadline was at 11:59 p.m. A friend of mine texted me at 10:30 and said, “Oh, when are you going to submit it?” I was like, “I was going to submit it tonight, I’m already done.” He says, “Oh, no, you have like an hour and a half.” I started freaking out, my computer started freezing. I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m not going to be able to shoot my shot.” And luckily I got it in, maybe an hour before the deadline, or 30 minutes to the deadline.
I did Stanford last. But I remember the first acceptance I got was Columbia. And I was happy, I was like, “Oh, it’s a great school, Columbia, I love it, it’s in New York, it’s amazing.” All of us in MLT, we’re posting like, “I got the interview, I got this, I got that.” And after a while when I would post, everybody’s like, “Of course you got it.” I believe Wharton came in next, and I got the Howard E. Mitchell Fellowship from Wharton, a full-tuition scholarship to Wharton. So that was a super special moment because Wharton was like my dream school from undergrad. I have a picture standing in front of Huntsman Hall, and to get in, that was amazing.
And then I believe Yale was next. I got into Yale and I got the Consortium Fellowship to Yale, which was amazing. And then I get a Columbia fellow later on, maybe a month later, and I got a full-tuition scholarship to Columbia. So now I’m like really on a high, things are working out, this is crazy how everything has come to fruition. Like I can’t believe it. And then HBS comes. And I actually drove from Charlotte to Atlanta to be with my family, so I can experience my acceptances with them. I could not sleep that entire day. And I’m up, I can’t sleep. And so, one of my friends says, “Watch the college admissions scandal so you can feel better about yourself — to know that you didn’t have rich parents to pay for it, you did it on your own merit.”
I’m literally watching it and it’s interesting, it was taking my mind off of the decision, but it’s still college-related, so I’m still thinking about it. I’m an only child, I’m my parents’ only child, but I have first cousins that are like siblings, so I call them my sisters. So they were in a room with me when I checked it, we recorded it. And it says, “We said, Yes,” and we jumped up and hugged, and it was just like a great moment. That was at 12:00 p.m., and around 5:00 p.m. I get a call from a Northern California number. I got into Stanford and Harvard on the same day. And it was amazing. So, my friends took me out to go get seafood, I love seafood.
So, it was just a joyous occasion to get into the schools that I’d never even imagined that I would go to, coming from where I come from, and experiencing the things that I’ve experienced. And so now, not getting into one (Ross), but pretty much every top school that I applied to.
Jerome Fulton. Courtesy photo
What gave Harvard the edge? Why Harvard? Why not Stanford? Why not Wharton?
Harvard, for me, was the school that I felt like I had the least chance of getting into, so I had, I would say, an unhealthy relationship with it — like, “You know, I’m not really going to apply, but I’m going to apply to shoot my shot, and if I don’t get in, oh well.” But for me, when I was a kid, I would say I was going to go to Harvard Law School because I wanted to prosecute the men that killed my mom — that was like a driving force in me. And I even wrote about it in my article, called My CPA Journey, on LinkedIn. And when I was a kid people would say, “Oh, you like to argue, you should be a lawyer.” So that was always going to be my thing.
I realized I didn’t want to be a lawyer, but once I got into Harvard and I saw where all the alumni went and the brand, and I know that I don’t only want to work in business, I don’t want to work outside of business. And that day I got into Harvard and Stanford my family said, “Oh my God, you got into Harvard.” It was like, everybody knows Harvard. And so, being able to transcend business, and even the U.S., is something that I want to do. And by having that Harvard brand, I was able to do that.
And Stanford is a great school, and I want to work in tech, work in the VC tech space. And you know, Stanford is great for that, but I know that that’s not my destination. That’s a part of my journey. And I know that I want to be a speaker, and I want to have impact to help others. And the way to do that is having a strong brand name on your resume. And also the curriculum and everything is great as well — but nothing beats the Harvard brand. Right? I don’t think so.
You were thinking Harvard Law, and because you wanted to become a lawyer because of this terrible tragedy in your past. I have to ask you about that: You were five years old when your mother was killed. That’s the kind of thing that a lot of people would not have dealt with as well as you have.
My mom died December 1st, 1998. And that night I told my mom not to leave, I had a very eerie feeling that I was never going to see her again, so I said, “Mommy, don’t leave. I want you to stay home with me and put me on a bus in the morning.”
And that night I could not sleep. And I think that was like my warning to her, to stay. And then I woke up the next morning and my mom’s sister and my god-mom and her friends came in and told me that my mom had passed, and it was all over the news. Like the news people were coming around and called, it was a spectacle. I remember the news interviewing me and I wasn’t sad or crying, and I said, “I told her not to leave, but she didn’t listen to me.” And everybody was looking at this 5-year-old kid like, “Did he really just say this?” I don’t know if I had a grasp of what was happening, but I had some level of maturity, or understanding, at that point. But you know, it was tough because I’m my mom’s only child, and my dad’s only child.
No one has custody of me, now the families are at odds and I’m in the middle. You know, spending summers here, and moving here, and moving around. And it was tough. My aunt had lost her only maternal sister, and then six months after my mom died, my aunt’s husband goes to prison, so she has four kids and then me, so it was tough. Like a lot of things I didn’t share on LinkedIn, because I want to protect the privacy of everyone’s story. I wanted to share my story. But life was tough. And my aunt did a phenomenal job of instilling an education in all of us and letting us know that, this is your way out. What’s around you, this is not it, keep focusing on school.
And I always kept that, even after I moved with my dad’s side of the family when I was 12, and I made sure that I was accountable and responsible for my education. And that was a tough situation. I remember, I was in the sixth grade and a guy was standing in front of my house with an envelope and subpoenaed me and my auntie to court to testify on my mom’s case. And I am the one that ended up doing it, going to the state attorney’s office after school, writing a deposition and getting on the stand and looking at one of the men responsible for my mom’s death and talk, telling them, telling the jury how much my mom meant to me. And at 11 years old, that was a traumatizing experience but, also a liberating one.
Would you say that your aunt was the most important person in your life growing up?
My grandma is the most important, has always been the most important person in my life because, she showed me the most love. My mom has a baby, I’m my mom’s only child. My grandma took a huge loss; seeing me was like seeing her daughter. And so she always loved on me and gave me that love that I needed that no one else could give me, because she’s my mom’s mom. So, she would probably be the closest person that can do it. My auntie was definitely an important fixture but I would say my grandma was my motivation to do well because, once my mom passed away, my grandma had a nervous breakdown and she wasn’t herself anymore.
So my goal was to do well so I can take care of her, so now I’m able to do that. So, when she needs something I can provide and she’s like, “You’re going to school.” And I’m like, “You know what? I got you. I’ve been prepared for this, so you’re going to be OK.”
Why accounting? And are you planning a pivot now that you’re going to HBS?
(Laughs) So, accounting is all of my aunt, that’s my mom’s sister. So, my aunt had a 99-cent store called Angel’s 99 Cent Store, named after my mom, and I used to work the cash register as a kid. So I know how to calculate tax. You know what? It was 6%, 7%, I rang customers up and did inventory, I would go to the warehouse with her to restock on different things. So that kind of got my interest in business. And when I got into high school, I had to do a project on a job. So, me being me, I Googled, “What job has 0% unemployment?” Google was like, “Accounting.” So, I was like, “Oh, CPA, OK, I’m going to do this” — at 14. Then I had a teacher that said “You’re good at math, you should be an accountant.” That solves that! “Okay, I am going to go in business and you’re telling me I should do it, it’s 0% unemployment, let’s do it.” And so that’s kind of how I got there.
Well, I did it in college, and I had some reservations about it, but it worked out.
I have never done accounting a day in my life. I have always been a consultant. So, yeah. I interned in account… Well, I lie. I interned in accounting at PwC for three months in audit. I said, “I will never be an auditor. I will never be in tax. I’m going to be a consultant.” I’m also outgoing and creative, which is why I want to do consulting. So I started my consulting career with EY after my master’s program, so I’ve been in consulting. But to answer your question about pivoting, yes, I’m looking to pivot in the tech VC space, what to invest in tech startups. And also, as you know, I have an interest in product management, within tech as well. So, I’m considering those options.
Because our audience is largely people who are considering business school, those right at the beginning of the process, if you had a message for those people maybe thinking, “I can’t get into Harvard, I think I can’t get into Wharton, I can’t do it” — what would it be?
I would tell them, you miss a hundred percent of the shots that you don’t take. And I would say, when life throws you lemons, you make orange juice and you keep the world guessing how you did it. Whatever obstacles you’re facing while you’re applying to business school, don’t be ordinary and do what’s expected. You get lemons, you make lemonade? No. Go beyond that. Figure out a way. If it’s the GMAT, take the GRE. If it’s an essay, reach out to other individuals for help. You know, you have to stay the course and tap into that resilient spirit that we all have, and persevere. That’s what I’d tell them to do.
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