Bush’s Personal Aide To Enroll at Business School (MBA) with no bachelor degree

[Future-Haitian-Lawyer]

Bush’s Personal Aide To Enroll at Business School

Gottesman, college dropout and former beau to Bush daughter, to begin in the fall

Published On Monday, May 22, 2006  2:12 AM

By PARAS D. BHAYANI

 
A 26-year-old college dropout who carries President Bush’s breath mints and makes him peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches will follow in his boss’s footsteps this fall when he enrolls at Harvard Business School (HBS).

Though it is rare for HBS—or any other professional or graduate school—to admit a student who does not have an undergraduate degree, admissions officers made an exception for Blake Gottesman, who for four years has served as special assistant and personal aide to Bush.

Gottesman, a Texas native who attended Claremont-McKenna College in California for one year, has long had ties to the Bush family. He dated the president’s daughter, Jenna Bush, nearly ten years ago when he attended St. Andrew’s Episcopal School of Austin.

After completing his freshman year at Claremont in 1999, he left to join the Bush presidential campaign and later served as a junior aide to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. In February 2002, he became the president’s personal assistant.

In his current role, Gottesman performs a wide range of duties, from dog-sitting the president’s Scottish terriers, Barney and Miss Beazley, to carrying the president’s speeches and giving him the “two-minute warning” before a speech begins.

Gottesman has declined all requests for comment on his business school admission, but White House staffers have described him as loyal, warm, and fun-loving.

“He is a friend and adviser to every employee of the White House, from career maintenance workers to cabinet secretaries,” Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin told The Myrtle Beach Sun News. “He is consistently kind and warm and generous with his time and provides extraordinarily good advice.”

Gottesman has likened his role at the White House to that of Charlie Young on the NBC television program “The West Wing.” When asked about his similarity to Young in an interactive question-and-answer session on the White House’s Web site, Gottesman wrote, “Charlie seems to be smarter, funnier, and better-looking. But, from what I remember—our jobs are probably pretty similar.”

HBS spokesman James E. Aisner ’68 explained the decision to accept Gottesman, even though he is not a college graduate, by telling The Economist that “extraordinary circumstances will sometimes compel it to drop [its] rule” of only admitting students who hold bachelor's degrees.

He refused to comment specifically on Gottesman, citing Harvard’s policy of not commenting on the admission of any individual student.

Aisner also pointed out to The Economist that Harvard would surely admit applicants like Bill Gates and Michael Dell, both of whom are college dropouts.

But the often-snarky British weekly noted: “Needless to say, holding the president’s hand-sanitizer is a far cry from heading a Fortune 500 company.”

—Staff writer Paras D. Bhayani can be reached at pbhayani@fas.harvard.edu.

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=513563

[Denny Crane]

Fantastic, and yet this will in no way reduce the invective levied against minority applicants benefiting from AA.  At least they had the decency to graduate from college.

[pikey]

haha.. I love the comparison of Bill Gates/Dell with the dude who hands out breathmints and makes peanut butter sandwiches.

on a side note, it seems artificial to have graduate/professional schools require a bachelors degree, yet lack any required courses.  business and law school come to mind.

No it doesn't.  A university degee shows that you can handle advanced level coursework (such as at the graduate level) and hopefully means that you have been exposed to a variety of ideas/coursework/etc.  It also (hopefully) means that you have gained a certain level of maturity and perspective.  It offers a (more) objective means of evaluating acedemic acheivement.  Work experience is nice, but at the end of the day they are schools, not trade courses, and you need to be able to handle an acedemic curriculum.

[Lily Jaye]

haha.. I love the comparison of Bill Gates/Dell with the dude who hands out breathmints and makes peanut butter sandwiches.

on a side note, it seems artificial to have graduate/professional schools require a bachelors degree, yet lack any required courses.  business and law school come to mind.

No it doesn't.  A university degee shows that you can handle advanced level coursework (such as at the graduate level) and hopefully means that you have been exposed to a variety of ideas/coursework/etc.  It also (hopefully) means that you have gained a certain level of maturity and perspective.  It offers a (more) objective means of evaluating acedemic acheivement.  Work experience is nice, but at the end of the day they are schools, not trade courses, and you need to be able to handle an acedemic curriculum.

Yeah, but MBAs aren't about academics: they're about networking.

[pikey]

haha.. I love the comparison of Bill Gates/Dell with the dude who hands out breathmints and makes peanut butter sandwiches.

on a side note, it seems artificial to have graduate/professional schools require a bachelors degree, yet lack any required courses.  business and law school come to mind.

No it doesn't.  A university degee shows that you can handle advanced level coursework (such as at the graduate level) and hopefully means that you have been exposed to a variety of ideas/coursework/etc.  It also (hopefully) means that you have gained a certain level of maturity and perspective.  It offers a (more) objective means of evaluating acedemic acheivement.  Work experience is nice, but at the end of the day they are schools, not trade courses, and you need to be able to handle an acedemic curriculum.

Yeah, but MBAs aren't about academics: they're about networking.

You still have to do the work.

[Lily Jaye]

haha.. I love the comparison of Bill Gates/Dell with the dude who hands out breathmints and makes peanut butter sandwiches.

on a side note, it seems artificial to have graduate/professional schools require a bachelors degree, yet lack any required courses.  business and law school come to mind.

No it doesn't.  A university degee shows that you can handle advanced level coursework (such as at the graduate level) and hopefully means that you have been exposed to a variety of ideas/coursework/etc.  It also (hopefully) means that you have gained a certain level of maturity and perspective.  It offers a (more) objective means of evaluating acedemic acheivement.  Work experience is nice, but at the end of the day they are schools, not trade courses, and you need to be able to handle an acedemic curriculum.

Yeah, but MBAs aren't about academics: they're about networking.

You still have to do the work.

Trust me, the work is nothing -- especially at the b-schools that don't release grades to recruiters. 

[joespecial]

on a side note, it seems artificial to have graduate/professional schools require a bachelors degree, yet lack any required courses.

I don't see why. Most BA/BS degrees require a certain number of general education units, plus advanced study in at least one area. The ones that do not (like perhaps BFA's at certain schools) are generally not favored by professional schools.

[mivida2k]

It sure is quiet in this thread.  Shouldn't those opponents of Affirmative action be outraged, calling their senators, filing lawsuits, complaining on television....

[thorc954]

I think undergraduate degrees are a waste of time anyway. I got a degree in math, which is completely unrelated to anything I will do in law school. The only math I will need I learned in elementary school. Core classes just reinforced my beliefs, and English classes served no real purpose. From what I have been told, college writing courses should be completely dismissed when attending law school. The trick to sucess is short sentaces which is the opposite of what we have been taught. I wish I coulda skipped that useless four years like this guy did. Then again, I did build up my alcohol tolerance... hmmm... 

[TX06]

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