MBA Candidates: Knives Down!
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.
Thoughts on MIT Sloan's 2014-15 "Essays"
Quick post today, because time is short and nobody wants to read the screed I had in mind for MIT's new "essays." Why the quotation marks? Because writing your own letter of recommendation is not an essay. It's a gimmick at best, and, if I'm being honest, a bit of a mockery at worst. Yes, people write their own employee assessment reports, which is a great cheat for supervisors (heck, I had a high school "world studies" teacher who figured out that he could just the class to teach itself - no joke), but that also precedes a discussion that can (and usually does) flesh out the exercise. It's hard to imagine a company making huge promotion or bonus decisions based solely on a self-written employee report, with no discussion to follow. I mean, come on. Yet that is what MIT is basically suggesting when they draw a comparison between what takes place in the office and what they are asking candidates to do on the application. It's such a weird, weird assignment. (Okay, so I went on a bit of a screed.) That said, there are three things to keep in mind that can make it not only doable, but a chance to shine.
Fuel for the Wharton 2014-15 Essays
It's time to cover Wharton, as it looks like I've locked myself into a pattern of covering every school's set of essays. The common response to Wharton's new essay set (one of which is required, one is optional) is "another case of schools shrinking this essays!" This is technically true, as the total words went from either 1,000 to 900 (if you use the Optional) or from 1,000 to 500 (if you don't). However, the next leap is almost always "as schools continue to try to make things easier for applicants." I'm sorry, I simply don't buy that line of reasoning. Almost everyone who truly knows admissions knows that fewer words makes things harder, not easier. This is because it requires confidence and clarity to approach such a task, it requires concise and structured writing to execute it, and it makes it far less likely that you will "accidentally" come up with something great, just by virtue of spewing out words. Now, it might be a byproduct of the essay shrinking that it's easier on the readers or that a few people might (mistakenly) think it's easier to apply, but I highly doubt that is the intent.
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.
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.
Quick Thoughts on the HBS Essay
Unlike Columbia and Stanford, HBS did not make any changes to its essay from last year. As explained by Dee Leopold in her blog, they were quite simply happy with the content that this prompted generated. Those handful of people who have spoken to me on consult calls this year know that I predicted HBS would keep this essay and that it would be for this reason - I had a feeling this experiment worked well. This is because I watched the MASSIVE (all caps are necessary here) gulf between good and bad use of this space, among candidates.
Breaking Down Changes to Stanford GSB's New Essays for 2014/2015
The essays are releasing in a fast and furious fashion this year, as GSB comes hot on the heels of Columbia releasing its own essays. With Stanford this year, we see further evidence of a school and admissions office that is completely dialed in to what it wants: the core essays remain, the fat has been trimmed, and the only tiny bit of confusion has been clarified. This may sound a bit odd, but if Stanford had asked for my opinion after last year's process, I would have told them "clarify what you want on Essay 2 and do away with the tack-on shorter Essay 3." Well, that's basically what they did. Let's dive in with a bit more detail.
Breaking Down Changes to Columbia's Essays for 2014-15
As always, Columbia is the first top MBA program out of the gate with its new essay questions (for 2014-15). This is no surprise, as CBS has both a January intake and an Early Decision deadline, so they quite simply need to get their essays out earlier than other schools. This year, the new essays bring about very little by way of change, which suggests Columbia was pretty happy with the length and overall coverage of what they asked last year. That said, there are a few subtle changes that actually speak volumes and we are going to break those down below, as well as add some larger thoughts about the essay set. Let's get into it.
Download our Stanford GSB School Guide
In the hierarchy of business school rankings, no program is as selective as the Stanford Graduate School of Business. With an MBA acceptance rate that is traditionally in the single digits, GSB is the program that knows exactly the type of MBA candidate they are looking for and they know how to filter out the rest. The school expects applicants to truly know who they are as not only a business professional, but more importantly, as a person. They will accept nothing less from those who eventually gain entrance to GSB - MBA students who truly know themselves and how they plan to change their communities and leave the world a better place than they found it. If you doubt your candidacy to the world’s most selective MBA program, relax for a moment and read this guide.
Being "Ready" for INSEAD
As admissions consultants, this is a fun time of year for a lot of reasons - mainly because people are getting into top programs left and right (and seemingly with more scholarship offers than ever before), but also because the current clients are laser focused on a small set of programs. For us, almost all the work right now is on HBS 2+2, Columbia's J-Term, and, of course, INSEAD. With it's January intake and looming May 28th deadline, INSEAD is the ultimate "spring school" when it comes to helping people prepare apps. It's also a fun school, a challenging set of essays, and an app that we believe must be crafted in just the right way, which explains why we have created a full "How to Apply" guide for INSEAD. It's also why we wanted to complement that guide by discussing an element that is so crucial for INSEAD: the idea of "readiness."
Looking at INSEAD's January Intake? Download Our Guide
Every year, we work with a growing number of INSEAD applicants who decide to take advantage of the staggered intake system to submit a sterling "summer app" to what many believe is the top non-U.S. business school in the world. It is due to this rise in popularity that we added an INSEAD guide to our "how to apply" series that previously featured HBS, Wharton, and Columbia (GSB and Booth are in the works). We are also happy to say that we have enjoyed a success rate with June INSEAD applicants that is basically unprecedented. Whether this is because of the added focus (other than HBS 2+2, we really don't have any other clients applying to schools in late May or July) or because we just have INSEAD nailed, it's hard to say.
Either way, if you are considering a summer submission to INSEAD, we would encourage you to download our guide at the very least. If you are interested in full consulting services, shoot us an email at mba@amerasiaconsulting.com and we can share with you our approach for nailing the DNA of INSEAD and helping a diverse mix of applicants gain enrollment to that program. We've helped applicants young and old, in elite jobs and out of work altogether, and from four different continents and we can help you as well.
Round 3 Strategies: UCLA Anderson Beckons
We've been running a lot of Round 3 strategies on this space the last few weeks. Why? It is timely, obviously. But also, Round three is just so misunderstood that we find every conversation leads to new epiphanies for our clients. In turn, we pass along the broadest and most helpful of those pieces of information to the general public. Today, we're talking about a specific school that you might want to consider if you are firing off Round 3 bullets.
Don't Apply Round 3 ... Until You Read This Post!
The common myth surrounding Round 3 of the MBA application process is that you can't, or shouldn't, apply late in the admission cycle. "The class is pretty much full" is one refrain. "You have to be a truly unique applicant" is another. "Only European programs admit people that late" is yet another. As with anything, there are bits of truth in these sound bites ... but only bits.
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?
Where Would You Go: Wharton or Booth?
Amerasia's Adam Hoff lays down his opinion on Booth versus Wharton in an article by Poets & Quants author John Byrne.
“Chicago and it’s not close. Reasons: I believe that we are only now seeing the full force of Ted Snyder’s run there (and that we will see the same trail at Yale over time). I believe he might be the best graduate school dean of my lifetime, so it’s no surprise that Chicago has a massive up arrow next to it in my mind."
Wharton Round 2 Applicants: Proceed With Caution
It is not often that we make any major strategic adjustments from Rd 1 to Rd 2 with any of the schools, because once we have them pegged, they don't tend to move around that much. However, we are issuing a Public Service Announcement today to Wharton Round 2 applicants: proceed with caution when it comes to laying out your post-MBA plans. If your goal is even remotely hard to achieve, we strongly advise reconsidering that goal as it relates to your Wharton application. Let us explain.
Responding to Your HBS Admissions Decision
Today is one of those days on the calendar that tend to stop everyone in their tracks and dominate the headlines. Nevermind that the Kellogg Round 1 deadline is tomorrow or that some people found out today that they were admitted to MIT - no, it's all about the HBS Round 1 notification deadline. Interview or ding? Rather, interview or ding or deferral, as that appears to be a popular option this year as well. Let's make sense of things and offer some advice on how to respond from here. We'll group it result-by-result.
Mind Mapping MIT Sloan - Visualizing the MBA Program's Curriculum, Courses, Clubs and Culture
For those of you that saw my Columbia Business School mind map post from earlier this week, I wanted to also simplify MIT Sloan's retro website for any applicants currently working on their Sloan MBA essays and application. The following MIT Sloan mind map should quickly give you a lay of the land. Hopefully this will allow you to see where you fit into Sloan's clubs, curriculum and student culture.
If you find it useful, feel free to download a copy of this mind map or create your own online copy and edit as you please.
Mind Mapping Columbia Business School - A Visualization Tool for Applicants
I wanted to see if I could simplify it for those applicants currently working on their essays and application, while trying to figure out "Why Columbia?" I created a visual representation (mindmap) of the site, which ended up looking like the New York subway system, and I wanted to share it with you. Hopefully this will allow you to see where you fit into CBS' clubs, curriculum and student culture.