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.
What an Aspiring MBA Can Learn from Daily Fantasy Sports
I've been around DFS to know that many "MBA types" do really well as players, due to comfort with quantitative analysis, modeling skills, and even the ability to build robust and sophisticated trading algorithms. But even if you are not a finance wizard and/or a sports fanatic, can you learn something from Daily Fantasy Sports as an MBA applicant? Oh let us count the ways:
Reacting to the Stanford GSB Dean Saloner Controversy
It's never easy to wade into troubled waters such as those present at Stanford GSB right now. And truly, we're not here to report any detail on the unfortunate scandal involving the faculty and administration of the world's most selective business school. If you want the down and dirty on exiting Dean Garth Saloner and professors Deborah Gruenfeld and Jim Phills, be sure to read the initial reporting by Poets and Quants and then the deep dive by David Margolick of Vanity Fair. Needless to say, it's a sad story that doesn't appear to be getting happier anytime soon. And it certainly leaves a bad taste in your mouth and invites all sorts of questions about GSB. But what should you actually worry about here? That's what we want to tackle.
Reactions to HBS Admissions Decisions
Time for a quick blog post in the wake of HBS sending out its three waves of decisions (October 6, 8, and 14). You can read the whole thing or you can just read this line, probably: don't take this stuff personally, understand there are a ton of great schools out there, and keep moving forward. Need more? Okay, let's break it down, with three Golden Rules for receiving a decision of this magnitude.
Ranking the Best MBA Programs for Pharmaceutical/ Biotech/ Healthcare Jobs (2015)
Entering 2015 school year, Duke Fuqua comes out on top when it comes to sending MBA graduates (as a percentage of all graduates in 2014) into the pharmaceutical, biotech and healthcare industries - 9% of its graduating class get jobs in these industries. Dartmouth Tuck, Wharton and MIT Sloan hold their own, coming in at 2nd, 3rd and 4th best.
Ranking the Best MBA Programs for Consulting Jobs (2015)
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.
Infographic: comparison of MBA graduates' salary by region and gender
According the the Financial Times - An MBA is often seen as the fastest route for women to get a seat on the corporate board, but salary data collected by the Financial Times reveal that the pay premium enjoyed by women with an MBA lags behind that of their male peers. Women who studied for a full-time MBA see their salaries rise an average 87 per cent in the four to five years between starting their programme and being back in the workplace for three years, but their male counterparts see salary rises of 96 per cent.
Why do an MBA? Is it right for me?
I detailed a list in another entry that I laid out. And it rattled off a number of items that are notable about top MBA programs.
But instead of diving into each one separately, I’m going to discuss the primary answer that you hear on actual business school campuses, from students, faculty, and alumni alike.
What is it that makes this place so special?
The answer is…. You guessed it. The people.
Should I write my own recommendations?
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.
Applying to Stanford GSB? Get to know Garth Saloner, Derrick Bolton and the "Moral Advantage"
If you are going to apply to the most selective MBA program in the world, you should recognize the impact that Professor-turned-Dean Garth Saloner has had at GSB. Stanford’s gatekeeper is long-time Dean of Admissions and GSB graduate Derek Bolton. In our opinion, his intimate knowledge of the Stanford Dynamic, along with his high-level of emotional intelligence has granted Bolton a better bullshit detector than any other admissions director in the business.
A Decision Tree for Michigan Ross Essay 1
We did this last year when breaking down the new Ross essays, so let's run it back. We thought it would be helpful 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 "what are you proud of" essay. 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.