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.
Excerpt: How to Apply to Columbia Business School
We recently updated our How to Apply to Columbia guide and wanted to call attention to a specific section here on the blog, because it should prove helpful to people as they apply this year. We will soon be updating our free guides for HBS, Wharton, and INSEAD as well, so be on the lookout. And, as a reminder, we offer school-specific Strategy Memos for all schools for our clients. Without further ado:
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.
Everything You Want to Know About the HBS Case Method Learning Environment - Video Marathon Post
As a follow up to my earlier post today (regarding the video HBS references in their essay prompt), I wanted to unleash a marathon of HBS Case Method videos that I found during my research. So grab some popcorn and sit back - this is sure to beat the Game of Thrones marathon you had planned for tonight (but not really.) Ha.
3 Key Thoughts about Columbia Business School's 2015 Essays
As with last year, CBS is using three essays and for the most part, they follow the same general format: 500 words, 250 words, 250 words; goals, Center of Business, Cluster. But I only have to look at the massive changes I made to our Columbia Strategy Memo to know that these things changed a ton at the center.
Let's dive into our 3 Key Thoughts:
Rankings: Best MBA Programs for Entertainment and Media Jobs (2015) - UCLA Anderson & NYU Stern
UCLA Anderson comes out on top when it comes to sending graduates (as a percentage of all graduates in 2014) back into the entertainment & media industries. NYU Stern is respectable second, with Michigan Ross a surprising third. Hands down, Anderson is the place to be if you're into entertainment and media and want to work for a related firm in the industry.
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
How to Negotiate Your MBA Financial Aid Offer - A Few Tips
Today's blog post something we run every year about this time because we honestly get overrun with requests on this subject. It is about negotiating your offer of admission ... except that it's not. Because "negotiation" is not what you do when it comes to securing more financial aid from a business school. The term of art for what you are going to be doing is "asking." Let us explain. Obviously, any discussion of an offer in this context automatically means we're dealing with some good news: you've been accepted. So congrats on that! However, with the news that a b-school wants you to enroll comes the sobering reality that they also want you to *pay* for that privilege. Sure, offers often come with dollar signs attached, but the amount left in the "you" column is almost always going to be the bigger number. And that fact tends to bring up the following question: "How can I negotiate my offer?"
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.
Rankings: Best MBA Programs for Finance Jobs (2015) - Chicago Booth
Rankings: Best MBA Programs for Finance Jobs (2015) - Amerasia's attempt at ranking top MBA programs by industry and based on publicly available data. Our motivation for doing this is quite simple - business school rankings differ quite drastically from publication to publication. We started with the very numbers that the school's career centers are reporting via their respective employment reporting. You need to see the end result first. In other words, what industries are hiring MBA graduates and from what schools?
Personalizing Your Interest in an MBA Program
Time for a quick blog post that comes from what I'm seeing each day, which is really rigid, hard-to-read Why School X sections. 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.
What do I mean by "personalize?" Simple: make anything you write about the school specific to you, your experience, your desires, or what you require from a program. Never just state absolutes, generalities, or even known truths and facts - always make them personally-held viewpoints. Examples are the best way to understand this (after the jump):
MBA Candidates: Knives Down!
PSA time.
To all MBA Candidates out there, especially those of you racing to hit the HBS deadline on September 9th ... please, for the love, know when to set your essay down, put your hands in the air, and say "time." I borrow from Top Chef and call it "put your knives down!" It's that moment in the show when the buzzer has sounded and they have no choice but to put the chef's knife down, put their hands in the air, and accept that their dish is finished. In our situation, there isn't a buzzer (yet), but we can still use the principle. In fact, one of the great ironies of the Top Chef "quick fire" challenge that gave me this expression is that some of the best dishes on that show come because there IS a buzzer - it keeps the contestants from noodling and tweaking and, basically, ruining a great plate of food. So ... how can we use this for our MBA apps?
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
