Hey nitmba - sounds like you've had a rocky time of it so far this year! We're jumping in with an answer for you because we've got a few posts lined up on the EssaySnark blahg about issues similar to this in the coming week, so your question is timely.

While we didn't 100% follow the details of your recent employment history, we can most definitely say that IT WILL BE OK!! It's good that you've been keeping yourself busy with the consulting work and now the fellowship opportunity - the bschool adcoms will want to know how you've been occupying your time. They will also want to see what you did to rebound from being laid off.

Being laid off is not that big a deal in the context of a bschool app - it's what you do in response to it and how you recover, what steps you take to get back in the game - those are elements that can make for an interesting story for the adcom because they can reveal things like the candidate's maturity, how they respond in a crisis, and how they build towards a goal. Sometimes this can make for an ideal topic for an essay (depending on which school and what questions they ask of course).

No matter what, you will need to have your messaging well developed when you go to interview, since this will history likely be explored in depth by your interviewer. So it's good that you're looking at it from their perspective to get ready for all of this. And be very aware of how you present things. It's not necessary to go into gory details in your essays or interview about the layoff; you should be very matter-of-fact about the situation when you present it. (Here's an essay critique from our blahg that has a comment pointing to this sort of thing: https://essaysnark.blocked/2011/06/ ... -from.html )

We've got a few posts on the EssaySnark blahg that cover issues like this - you might want to check out a few like this one (it's only quasi-related but maybe it helps): https://essaysnark.blocked/2010/07/ ... school.htm

Be sure to watch the blahg (https://essaysnark.com) for those posts we've promised, too - they'll go up later in the week and they might be able to give you more insights on this sort of thing.

Good luck with it!

You may want to leave off the minor freelance work as it may be a distraction for the reader, but it depends if it is related to the fellowship. The bottom line is that you have provided too little information in your query for any solid admissions expert to be able to really help you think through your situation.