MBA Candidate Differentiation: Do NOT Try This at Home
Time to go full PSA here. I'm talking all alarms ringing, sirens, whatever it takes to get your attention. By "you" I mean: anyone applying to business school. You need to stop doing something immediately. Here it is:
Stop trying to "differentiate" yourself.
Or at least, stop doing it without a professional by your side. Let's dive into the 4 Rules of Differentiation before someone gets hurt.
Rule #1 - Do not "differentiate yourself" with a panicked career change.
Rule #2 - Listing a hard job to get as your short-term goal is not "differentiating."
Rule #3 - The "quick and easy" place to differentiate is in the WHY of your long-term career goal.
Rule #4 - The real, pure way to differentiate yourself is to do the app right.
Applying Round 1? This Year's MBA Deadlines Are Earlier Than You Think.
Normally, once the fireworks go off on the 4th of July, that's our signal to start digging into the apps in earnest, as "October" Round 1 deadlines are a few months away. However, in recent years, the deadlines keep getting earlier and earlier. I know I had to really reset my own calendar given these changes, so I figured I'd do a public service and list them out here, calling special attention to the front-loaded nature of the deadlines.
How to (Actually) Differentiate Yourself on your MBA Applications
Time to break out an annual PSA here. I'm talking all alarms ringing, sirens, whatever it takes to get your attention. By "you" I mean: anyone applying to business school. You need to stop doing something immediately.
Here it is: STOP TRYING TO "DIFFERENTIATE" YOURSELF.
Or at least, stop doing it without a professional by your side. Let's dive into the 4 Rules of Differentiation before someone gets hurt.
What the Stanford GSB Wants - a True Moral Compass
If you read our editions of our “How to Apply to Harvard Business School” and "How to Apply to Stanford GSB" guides, you already know that cultivating a real reason for applying to an elite MBA goes week beyond the school's name, rank, and prestige. But more than any other MBA program in the world (yes, even HBS), GSB looks beyond having a great GMAT score, a summa cum laude GPA and a blue chip name as your employer. While these are respectable measures of a person’s perceived worth, they are not good enough reasons to apply to GSB.
Why is this?
Simply put, you could someone with a mis-calibrated moral compass or worse, what your colleagues might call an "asshole" (more on the asshole test here and the true cost of being an asshole here). That's right - more than any other school in the world, Stanford has a visceral aversion to those who define themselves by their accomplishments, as opposed to the innate values and beliefs that drive those accolades. Apparently, Stanford has their pick of the litter and they can afford to stand absolutely resolute in their aversion to those whose moral compass points true south.
Rejected? Dinged? 5 Tips for Reapplying to Business School
Ranking the Best MBA Programs for Energy Industry Jobs
The Yale School of Management comes out on top when it comes to sending graduates (as a percentage of all graduates) back into the energy industry with a job.
Michigan Ross is second, with Haas in third and UCLA Anderson in fourth. According to the employment data Yale reported, the SOM is the place to be if you're into energy and want to work for a related firm in the industry.
Ranking the Best MBA Programs for Real Estate
Michigan Ross (really?) comes out on top when it comes to sending graduates (as a percentage of all graduates in 2015) back into the real estate industry with a job.
Stanford GSB is close second, with Yale SOM in third and UCLA Anderson in fourth. According to the employment data Ross reported, Michigan is the place to be if you're into real estate and want to work for a related firm in the industry.
Ranking the Best MBA Programs - Making Our 2015 Data Public
We've had a number of requests for this, so we're making public the data we used to come up with our 2015 ranking of the "Best MBA Program for".
Basically, this blog post is a data dump of data from 2014/2015 that the career centers from each of the MBA programs we covered. We post links to where you can find those reports at the bottom.
What this blog post is not: a careful analysis of this employment data. In fact, we had to aggregate some data from particular business schools in order to make consistent comparisons across industries. So draw what conclusions you can from what we present.
Rest assured, we are keeping our most up to date career data analysis and employment numbers for our current clients.
5 Tips for Applying to MIT Sloan in 2016/2017
MIT Sloan is one of "those" schools - the ones that seem to slip into the nooks and crannies of the admissions process. People don't talk about Sloan as much as its elite counterparts. Nobody immediately thinks about it in terms of being a top 5 program until you start digging and realize, whoa, this program is insanely good.
In the past, we have chalked this up to its unique end-of-October deadline and equally unique two-round admissions process. We even went as far as to say that we would bet on the application quality at Sloan is far lower than on other top business school programs. Candidates would not even even start on their Sloan apps until after the October 3-16 gauntlet of deadlines and then they race to finish because they fear waiting until the "last" round. Simply put, a lot of applicants have viewed Sloan as an after thought, and we've done our share of walking clients back from making mistakes associated with that mindset. Well, all of that has changed.
3 Key Thoughts on the HBS Essay
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite HBS featuring the most publicized changing of the guard in admissions that I can remember, they are basically keeping their "open-ended" question style intact. In fact, more than keeping it intact, they have reverted to the more straight forward version they used in 2013 and 2014, rather than the more clever (but probably ultimately less effective) "introduction" prompt from last year.
And because they are staying in this lane, it means that my three thoughts need to stay in the same lane they have been in for years - because understanding the psychology behind this essay goes a long way to explaining how you might solve it.
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!
Recommend Reading for MBA Applicants: "The Obstacle is the Way" by Ryan Holiday
Partly because I've been reading some great books lately and partly because I want a break from writing about essays, I am starting something new - offering "recommended reading" to MBA applicants.
Now, please understand that I know you are busy. You are working, applying, and trying to live your life - possibly even still wrestling the GMAT to the ground. It's probably not the ideal time to be picking up books, right? On the contrary! You are at a unique point in your life right now - shifting between what was previous and what is next. You are probably still fully engaged with work (as you should be, as the typical upcoming Round 1 applicant still has a full year of work to go), but there is part of you that is stepping outside the day-to-day rat race and thinking about the big picture. "Now" is one big incubation period. If you are taking your apps seriously and working with a great consultant/coach, you are going to be thinking stuff in a way that might start to become pretty illuminating. I've long felt that applying to graduate school *should* be an arduous process - not just in terms of nuts and bolts, but in terms of personal introspection. It's a golden opportunity to learn something about yourself and to improve as a person.
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.
Why You Just Got Dinged (Probably) from Business School
One Easy Way to Personalize your MBA Essay Content
This is a post I write basically every year because it comes from what I'm seeing each round, every day, on basically every application. That drum beat is really rigid, hard-to-read Why School X sections on essays.
I give the same note to every single client so now I'm giving it to everybody: the simplest and most important thing you can do to improve your Why School X portion of career goals essay is to personalize any and all content. This is a great way to avoid writing something off-putting, as well as a quick and easy method for making your essays warmer, more personal, and easier to connect with.
Linking Your Chicago Booth Presentation Essay to the School's Introduction Content
I have received the following question a lot lately: "Should my presentation reflect the ideas that Booth espouses when introducing the presentation question?" The short answer is "yes," but the long answer is more complicated than that and is worthy of discussion here in this space. Not just for the way it will help Booth applicants, but because of the way it speaks to the whole idea of "School DNA" and how to assess fit with a program.