Applying Round 1? This Year's MBA Deadlines Are Earlier Than You Think.
Rejected? Dinged? 5 Tips for Reapplying to Business School
3 Key Thoughts About Columbia Business School's 2016 Essays
Like last year, we are going to use a little running device of "three key thoughts" for each essay release. If you want to get a deep dive into these essay sets, of course, the answer is probably obvious: sign up for our services and become a client, at which point we can guide you every step of the way.
Now, on to some thoughts from the new Columbia essays!
You Really Should Watch This Harvard Business School Video - Inside the HBS Case Method
How to Survive the Inevitable "Bad Part" of an MBA Admissions Interview
Soliciting Letters of Recommendation: Remember the Rule of 10%
When it comes to recommendations, the first thing that any applicant needs to understand is how they work and, therefore, how they should handle them as part of the process. We sum up this analysis with something we call “The Rule of 10%”: they count for about 10% of a decision, they should be about 10% of your focus during application season, and you should contribute about 10% of the work that goes into their outcome.
Obviously, these are all gross estimates and generalizations, but it shakes out to about right and its easier to use 10% than “a percentage that is a LOT less than you think it is.” The bottom line is that most applicants assume a much higher level of importance, they spend far more time thinking and worrying about them, and they get far too involved in their production (the biggest issue of all). Let’s work through all three:
Always Waive Your Right to View Your MBA Recommendation
I tell my clients up front that they have to waive their right and that it is not really an option to not do so. Not waiving your right could tell the adcom that you don’t trust your recommenders. It could tell them that you are paranoid or overly anxious.
It could tell them that this applicant is a liability. What happens if he doesn’t get in? Is he going to go after his recommenders for throwing him under the bus? Is he going to create more headaches for all involved? Is the applicant going to create reputational risk for the school?
The adcom would rather just not deal with it.
Video: How to Prep For Your Business School Interview
Paul Lanzillotti, founder of the Amerasia Consulting Group, walks you through how to handle your MBA interview. Learn how to answer representative questions; structuring your thoughts using "stories" versus the "pyramid principle" and connecting all aspects of your MBA application for your interviewer.
This in-depth video is approximately 1 hour and 20 mins in duration.
Last Minute MBA Application Advice: Before You Hit the Submit Button
I've updated Amerasia's list of best tips and best practices for submitting your MBA application online. So hopefully this prevents many of you from not getting caught with your pants down just hours to go before the application deadline!
In fact, I always tell my clients to start their online MBA application at the very beginning of the application process because it can help you understand what you are in for. Most people think that HBS does not have a "goals" essay. Technically, they are correct. But they do have a 500 character goal statement on the actual online form. They also want you to rank your extracurricular equities in order of importance. And if you read the language on the application carefully, it seems as though they only want you to fill out activities that occur during your undergraduate career. To make it that much more difficult, Harvard only provides you a few hundred characters (not words) of precious application UI to do so. By the way, this does include characters like spaces. Surprise! But not a good surprise if you waited until the 11th hour to open up and start reviewing the online application. There are many other instances of these types of requirements – MBA app hoops you have to jump through – when you were least expecting.
But since this blog post is about what you can and should do before finally pressing "submit", I do not want to revisit what you should have done. Let us focus on what you can do right now.
Looking for an MBA Advantage? Consider Round 2
I've been having this conversation a lot lately with individual clients, so I thought I'd take it out wide.
Basically, the idea is that Round 2 might be offering a slight advantage, based on theories of market inefficiencies and so forth. For years, I would say the prevailing belief is that Round 1 is the best round in which to apply to business and while there is no hard-core evidence to suggest otherwise, some common sense and deduction may point to a different result. So let's quickly run this down.
International Students Advised to Have Multiple Career Options (in Multiple Locations) Upon Graduation.
Forget Star Wars. The MBA talent wars are coming to a b-school near you.
Forget Star Wars. The MBA talent wars are coming to a b-school near you, according to a recent survey by Poets & Quants.
With admissions officers more active than ever in recruiting today’s best and brightest, P&Q asked a group of leading MBA consultants where their top clients are heading for their graduate educations. And their answers may surprise you.
Quick & Dirty Tips for Maximizing your Business School Visits
Why Elite MBA Candidates Fail the "Failure Essay"
Today, we are going to be breaking down the failure essay and the biggest reasons why everyone blows it. This is particularly relevant to the season, as we begin to take on our usual batch of INSEAD clients (for both January and September intakes) and that schools asks a very tricky little failure question. We have a very specific approach to the accomplishment part of that essay that transforms run-of-the-mill answers into INSEAD-worthy submissions, but we're going to keep that locked in the vault. The failure essay though ... we owe some thoughts to the masses, just as a public service.
Would Saint Thomas Aquinas Have Hired an MBA Admissions Consultant?
Warning: this blog post will be more esoteric than most. If you don't like deep thinking, you might want to wait for the next one. Because what I am going to do is use some of Thomas Aquinas' teachings to explain that there are different ways to going about the MBA application process. Namely, that one can "seek learning," "be taught," or "rush out and share what he has learned," which loosely translates to doing the applications on your own, hiring a consultant, or engaging in forum culture. I am a consultant, so you will never guess which one I am saying he would have endorsed! In all seriousness though, this is some interesting stuff so I encourage you to dive in, be willing to self-assess, and possibly achieve a new perspective.
Is an on-campus tour or MBA class visit required for admission?
I was recently asked "Is a campus visit required for admission?", followed up by "is it going to be viewed negatively if I don't visit?" The official party line - most admissions committees will tell you that a campus visit is not going to be considered when making admission decisions. However, most MBA applications will ask you if you have talked to anyone from the program. Some program apps - such as Columbia - will get a bit more granular and only ask what current students have you spoken to?"
So what is the deal with school visits and do you have to do them?
Tips for Reapplying to MBA Programs
Rankings: Best MBA Programs for Technology Jobs (2015) - Haas
Today's blog post is a follow up to our Best MBA Programs in Finance ranking. It's also our attempt at ranking top MBA programs by industry and based on publicly available data. We've never felt completely comfortable with the rankings because (to our knowledge) the raw data that drives the rankings has never been fully disclosed. So we decided to start over and with the very numbers that the school's career centers are reporting via their respective employment reporting.
Yale SOM's 2015 Essays - Read the Fine Print
Today we are analyzing Yale's 2015 Essays ... sort of. What we are really doing is taking a look at them and using this essay set as a way to remind everyone to read the fine print when it comes to dealing with applications and even schools in general. I'm not blowing the whistle on some grand conspiracy or anything like that, but just illustrating that you can't take everything at face value. This is especially relevant at a time when applicants are killing themselves to try to hit Round 1 deadlines because an admissions officer "told them to," or when candidates make horrible errors in judgement based on the same logic. The truth of the matter is you have to keep your eyes open and use your own common sense when navigating this process.
Cognitive Bias and Tuck's 2014 Essays
Tuck released its new essays and they feature no changes to Essay 1, the removal of one word from Essay 2, and the cutting of their old Essay 3 (on setback/failure).
No doubt everyone in this space will be analyzing those changes today (I am too), but my guess is they will come to incorrect conclusions in many cases. There are a lot of reasons why people make incorrect determinations when analyzing changes, but much of it can be attributed to cognitive bias - everything from recency bias to bounded rationality to confirmation bias. We tend to read things in one way and our flow of assumptions follows that set path. I will explain what I mean with the context of each questions - but just be forewarned that this blog post serves two functions: an analysis of Tuck's questions, but also an attempt to figure out why people trip up and make errors in interpretation.