On Wednesday, May 17, the Columbia University commencement ceremony of the 269th academic year will take place on the Morningside Campus. On the same day, violet banners will fly high over Yankee Stadium as New York University convenes its 190th commencement cxercises for the class of 2023.
A selected number of students are lucky enough to graduate from either institution. Few educators are even luckier to teach these students. But Haitian-American Dr. Eli Joseph is one of the very few instructors that teaches at both institutions at the same time. In addition to teaching at Columbia University and NYU, he also teaches at UCLA.
Despite his distinguished accomplishments, Dr. Joseph is no stranger to failure and rejection. In his lifetime, he’s been turned down by more than 1,500 employers, 30 colleges, and 75 scholarship foundations.
He was denied admission to other elite institutions like Princeton, UPenn, Cornell University, Dartmouth University, and Brown University.
Back in 2012, Dr. Joseph received a letter of rejection from Columbia University. Today, he serves as an associate faculty in the applied analytics program at Columbia University School of Professional Studies.
Back in 2016, Dr. Joseph was also rejected by the New York University Tandon School of Engineering. Now he currently teaches graduate students at the NYU School of Professional Studies.
Additionally, he has seen thousands of rejection notices from various firms in finance, technology, and managerial consulting. Some of these companies include JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Google, Amazon, Facebook, BCG, McKinsey, Deloitte, and Bain.
Though Dr. Joseph experienced a plethora of rejections from various firms and institutions, he has successfully overcome personal and professional challenges, including the recent loss of his older brother last year.
Through it all, Dr. Joseph used his failures as fuel for motivation to succeed. He recently delivered two TEDx talks this past fall entitled, “Time Is Your Biggest Competition” and “No Trace, No Case.”
Dr. Joseph earned his Doctorate in Business Administration from Felician University, becoming the first-ever graduate to complete the curriculum at the age of 24. He is the author of the book entitled The Perfect Rejection Resume: A Reader’s Guide to Building a Career Through Failure.
