Monday MBA Resource: Knowledge@Wharton Podcast
Most Common Mistakes on Round 1 MBA Essays
I just saw a whole lot of MBA essays over the past few months and now that Round 1 is (mostly) finished, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to jot down the most common mistake I saw for each of the most common essays I worked on with clients. Round 2 clients can get a leg up by simply avoiding these traps.
Use a matrix approach to show balance across your MBA application
One thing we generally recommend to clients is to use a traditional matrix approach to ensure you are communicating a balance of core essentials to the MBA admissions committees. If you use this approach, you will be much more organized as you apply and will also be able to quickly ascertain where you may be coming up short.
How does it work?
5 Pieces of Advice for MBA Reapplicants
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.
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!
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:
Why You Just Got Dinged (Probably) from Business School
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.
MBA Candidates, Read These Quotes for a New Perspective on Leadership
This is a quick one, but a worthy one. "Leadership" might very well be the most "cussed and discussed" (hat tip, Harry Truman) word in the MBA landscape, given the prominence given to the concept by schools and candidates alike. But what I find surprising is that the word - which can be viewed so many ways - often takes on this strange meaning in b-school contexts, which is sort of a stand in for "accomplished." The idea of leadership has become titles and roles and responsibilities and kudos. Sort of a "he who has the most ribbons is the leader" kind of a dynamic. And while I will be the first to admit that leadership can indeed sometimes be about accolades (often leadership qualities get people recognized and/or recognition can give someone a platform from which to lead), it sort of misses the point. And nothing hammers that home like the Golden State Warriors, who were recently crowned NBA champs.
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.
A Decision Tree for the Ross 2014-15 Essays
I wanted to try something a bit different today when breaking down the new Ross essays, which is to post the decision tree I am going to be asking my clients to use this year.
Why would I just share this with the public, you might ask? In part because the real value of our services with Ross (unlike with some other schools) is going to be in implementation rather than in the setting of strategy - so I don't feel I am cheating my clients at all. Further, we just don't have that many clients select Ross, to be honest. This is confusing to me, as Ross is an amazing school and a true value pick ... but that's a column for a different time. Today, I want to present a really simple way to work through Ross' seemingly wide open essays. I'll be using one part common sense and one part program knowledge, but both are born out of lots of experience just being someone in this world (by "in this world" I mean working in "higher education" and with "people trying to maximize their lives and abilities"). Let's get into it.
A Decision Tree for Your Chicago Booth Presentation Essay
It's very rare that we blog at the height of the deadline season, but something is coming up a lot that a quick post might help people with - and that is what to do with Booth Essay 3 when your presentation isn't coming together like you want.
With the deadline bearing down, not everyone is able to make things happen exactly the way they want and the compulsion to use a "great essay" (from another school) rather than create a Powerpoint presentation is quite strong. However, there are many experts on record - including us, in our Booth Strategy Memo that all clients receive - saying that you basically must use a presentation format. So, what should you do?
Should You "Think Bravely" on Your Kellogg Application?
We just finished the Round 1 gauntlet (for the most part - yes, we're talking to you, NYU Stern applicants!) We noticed in the October flurry that many of our clients were concerned about Kellogg's new marketing slogan. In case you haven't noticed, Kellogg recently launched a new "motto" that reads: "Think Bravely: we believe that business can be bravely led, passionately collaborative, and world changing."
The introduction of this laboratory-cooked slogan caused much hand-wringing among Round 1 applicants, so now that we have a moment, we wanted to address it and help out those of you applying to Kellogg in Round 2. So, should you focus your applications on "Thinking Bravely"? Let's break it down.
5 Tips for Applying to MIT Sloan
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, wow, this program is insanely good.
Most importantly, because of its unique end-of-October deadline and equally unique two-round admissions process, we would wager that application quality on Sloan apps is far lower than on other top programs (which is a massive problem if you want to be admitted there). Candidates often don't even start on their Sloan apps until after the October 3-12 gauntlet of deadlines and then they race to finish because they fear waiting until the "last" round.
With those things in mind, we are breaking out another of our 5 Tips posts, with an eye toward improving the quality of Sloan applications.