The MBA Admissions Studio

It’s slow season again in MBA Admissions — there is still some work incoming, and long-range questions directed at next year, but mostly for MBA Studio, as for the industry as a whole, we draw breath at this point ahead of the helter-skelter beginning in July.

Readers of this site over years will know that I don’t update much at this time of the year. But I can report overall delight at results. There have been a few exceptions — there always are in the massively competitive arena of elite MBA admissions, and MBA Studio does not turn any credible applicant away — but on the whole MBA Studio clients have got in everywhere they hoped to, including every one of the top-15 schools. You will see some of their testimonials newly posted alongside. (I don’t have space to post them all.)

I’ll sign off for now with a screen grab of a recent tweet endorsement by Ivey MBA Admissions of some of the content to be found here on this site:

Tags: Ivey MBA, MBA admissions advice, MBA applicant, mba essay editor

It’s interview season and I’ve been fielding a lot of questions, ranging from the specific (most commonly, how to prepare for the Wharton “team-based discussion” interview) to the general “what questions should I focus on?”

A lot of MBA admissions ink has been spilled on Wharton’s team-based discussion, so let me just say this: the form is different to a classic interview, but MBA adcom’s goal is the same. That is, they are looking for the same things they always were – the bright, personable applicant who stands out as a communicator and a beacon of good values, while being highly driven and achievment-oriented.

As they are looking for the same thing b-schools have always looked for, it is a bit of pouring old wine into new bottles. You prepare yourself in all the same ways as before, but in this case an additional familiarity with the team-discussion format is no bad thing.

The Wharton interview format is part of the cat-and-mouse game between MBA adcoms and admissions advisors, where adcom seeks a format less prone to preparation and admissions advisors respond by adjusting their menu. See this Wharton Premium Interview Preparation service ($500) from Accepted.com which I’m happy to be associated with.

More generally, how should you prepare for the interviews? Here are some bases to cover:

Look across the interview reportbacks that are freely available on the Web. This will give you a flavor of what to expect. But don’t over-focus on a specific question that appears to “come up” a lot for a particular school. By all means prepare yourself for it, but don’t bank on it.

Do, however, focus on the questions most candidates are asked most commonly. This is the 80-20 rule in action: a few common questions are asked again and again, and these questions are not a secret. They are ones you should be able to recognize by now: “Walk me through your resume; Why do you want to do an MBA; Why here; Why now; How will it help you towards your (What is your) career goal, short term and long term; How will you contribute to the program; What do you bring to the program that is unique?

There are many other common questions, but these are the basics. If you are deeply prepared on these, for the rest as long as you don’t roll over any landmines (aka red flags) you will do well.

What’s a landmine? Space doesn’t permit me to go too deeply into this here, but I’ve blogged about it consistently here over the years. Suffice to say, if you say something that moves you towards social prejudice or personal badmouthing or psychological instability or anything you wouldn’t want your mother to know, you’re probably too close to a landmine.

Anyway, to the points I wanted to make today. This is

(a) be ready to bring facts and

(b) 45-second stories.

Notice any persuasive politician, President Obama for example. When he talks he doesn’t say “average household food costs were better this year.” He says national food retail prices dropped 1.6% year-on-year, following 2.2% improved harvest yields in six breadbasket states despite a $12 per-barrel hike in the global oil price.

Likewise, when talking about yourself, don’ t say “I have made rapid career progress recently.” Give the interviewer good reasons to believe you.

Your other go-to proof device is use of story form. Don’t say you “faced many dangers” on a project. Say say you were off-site, starting at 6am with a rig inspection and ending at 10pm with your explosives assessment call to the Montana office. Stories naturally supply facts. They bring your real-world experience to life. And they are also easy on the listener. Everyone likes a good story.

MBA admissions interviews are 30 minutes on average, so you don’t have a second to squander. It’s likely the admissions value from any story in your life can be captured in the first 45 seconds if you tell it right. So, prep yourself around short, illustrative career and life stories you can tell in under a minute.

Tags: admissions red flags, ambition, b-school, communications, MBA applicant, why-an-MBA

As I look across my clients pushing their MBA essays for Round 2 deadlines, one common question I get is “should I use the optional essay?” (The add-on question at the end of the set, that basically says: ‘If there’s something else you’d like say, say it here.’)

So do you use it, yes or no? And if yes, what should you be talking about?

Traditionally this essay has been the place to mention and mitigate weaknesses. If your work history has been a little choppy, or your GPA a bit up-and-down, or similar, here is where you get credit by (a) ‘fessing up in advance of being ‘found out’ (Adcom sees all, so better to get in ahead of it) and (b) giving your explanation.

In this sense, the optional essay is not ‘optional’ if you have a weakness in your profile. If you have a gap in your employment history, or an ‘F’ on your record, or any such item that is not addressed elsewhere, it MUST be addressed here.

Use of the optional essay should be short and didactic. This is not the place to get poetic. Reveal the problem; make the most of the steps you took and/or are taking to ameliorate it, and stop writing. You don’t need to use the full length in this essay.

MBA admissions death comes to you via this essay if you name the problem but then find ways to excuse yourself or blame others. The admissions test is: can you take responsibility for your own mistakes? If yes, your application goes forward. If no, you’re dinged.

But, here’s the rider in choosing to use the essay or not: if you don’t have a good explanation for a problem, better to say nothing. In other words, if your salary is low (in comparison with the applicant pool) because you are working in a non-profit environment, that’s worth a mention. If your salary is low because you haven’t been promoted in 4 years, better to say nothing than draw attention to it.

All this, above, applies when you have a weakness or irregularity that demands discussion. But how about if you don’t? Can you use the optional essay to add another story, to tell Adcom a bit more about you, and make one final push for admission?

Traditional MBA admissions thinking says don’t use the optional essay in this way. It looks under-confident and can be interpreted as overreaching. But times change. And current practice seems to accept that if you have a positive point that is additional and special, that the admissions committee needs to know to have a genuinely better understanding of you, then you should put it down here.

Whatever you do, don’t use the essay to provide a summary of your application, just in case Adcom isn’t smart enough to have gotten it the first time you said it. What happens if you do that? I know you know… ding.

Tags: MBA applicant, MBA optional essay

An oldie from the files, but relevant to many of the essays I’m seeing (you know who you are!)

So I repost what I was motivated to write two years ago:

Let me quote Wikipedia: “Empty calories are a measurement of the energy present in high-energy foods with poor nutritional profiles, typically from processed carbohydrates or fats. An empty calorie has the same energy content of any other calorie but lacks accompanying nutrients such as vitamins, dietary minerals, antioxidants, amino acids, or in the case of refined grains, fiber.”

Empty calories define most fast food, sugary drinks, and popular cereals — so much so that regulators have reigned in advertising low-food-value items to children. (Food conglomerates have responded by adding back vitamins, minerals, etc. to cereals and other prepared foods.)

Why do I raise this? Because an MBA admissions essay — like any other piece of writing — is a meal for the reader. The reader’s hope and quiet prayer is that the text will deliver the informational nutrients they are looking for, with little fat or waste.

Consider something like this: “My journey to this point has been challenging, but the lessons I learned have been most meaningful — I truly have seen that a new beginning is an opportunity to start again, that life’s challenges are the best way to show one’s capability and forge memorable experiences, and that through passion and perseverance one can make a difference in the world.”

Or this: “I believe the best leaders are those who do things for the right reasons, grounded in a thorough understanding of economics, business, strategy, and innovation. I want to be a leader who is open-minded, can manage complex situations, and empowers people.”

Forget the turgid writing and cliche’s-running-amok for a moment. That can be fixed.

The point is, even if fixed, there is still nothing there. From the Adcom readers’ point of view there is no nutrition in the text, nothing that tells them anything interesting or specific or memorable about these applicants and why they should be admitted to b-school. There is no data, there is no record of action, no unique insights. Just words taking up space. That is, just empty calories.

The task of MBA essays is to explain your admissions value to Adcom, and you can’t achieve this via empty text. You must present nutrition-laden text, or expect to be dinged.

This means excoriating anything and everything that tends towards vacant, weary generalizations. Cut that to create space for reader nourishment — discussion of specific well-chosen experiences that show you in action, developing unique skills and fresh non-obvious insights about yourself, about your future aspirations, and about management and leadership.
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Tags: MBA Essays, MBA writing

There’s a debate in the MBA Admissions community as regards the benefits of applicants “selling themselves.”

On the one hand, some say the applicant is as one among dozens of cereals in the supermarket aisle, and so has to work to actively pitch herself to the Admissions Committee to stand out as a valuable admissions “package” and thus be selected.

Others say the applicant should not do a sales job. Any form of selling takes away from the authenticity of his voice, which is what Adcom really wants to hear.

As in many things, the truth is somewhere in-between. You can’t afford to be naive. Companies spend millions on marketing and sales because it works. Admissions to elite schools is very competitive, and if you pitch an admissions message that is tightly designed and produced to meet and beat Committee expectations, that will advance your admission chances.

On the other hand, if you come across like a used-car salesman with a greasy handshake and a cheesy grin, that’s obviously not going to help you at all. If you’re going to sell yourself in any way, you must sell yourself as an authentic, reflective voice imbued with “humble confidence” in your leadership skills; as a manifestation of ambition-with-integrity; as a persistent force for innovation; and so on.

If you can package yourself this way, then selling yourself will work for you.

And when selling yourself, don’t forget what is perhaps the very essence of a market proposition that works in the world — a unique selling point (USP.)

In other words, just as a venture capitalist will ask the entrepreneur of a new product: “what’s its unique selling point?” which is to say, what’s so different about this vs. all the other competing offerings in the market, such that the consumer is going to buy one? So you should ask yourself: “what’s my unique selling point for elite MBA admissions?” What is going to make Adcom pick me?

Two things come together in a USP: uniqueness and value. Uniqueness is what’s different about you compared with the general applicant: the things in your personal and professional experience that are uncommon. Value is what the Committee sees as valuable in you: what you will contribute to the program and the b-school, both while at school and in the future.

I’ve blogged at length in preceding posts about candidate uniqueness and candidate admissions value, and these topics are also handled in my book. My point here is to say: look for ways to run uniqueness and value together, and if you do, you’ve found your USP.

Tags: mba, MBA Adcom, MBA Admissions, USP

Everybody knows “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” And therefore that you need to mix non-workplace stories and situations into your MBA admissions essays.

I find I still have to nudge on this. Truth is, after 10 years in MBA admissions, I can read applicants’ minds somewhat, and I see the thought bubble above a client’s head that says: “C’mon Avi, this lifestyle story is a ‘soft’ story, while this work story clearly demonstrates my business leadership potential…”

You do need workplace stories, of course. But you need life stories in equal measure, and not just to demonstrate work-life balance. There are further reasons, which are:

1. Your work is not that interesting

What?!! Not interesting? I break it to you, if you didn’t know already, that your own work is more interesting to you than it is to other people. That’s why you do it and they don’t. There may be some exceptions, like if you worked on the international Space Station, but most people most of the time dread having their back to the wall while someone bends their ear about this or that installation where they were able to integrate the database mobility platform of… er…. you’d suddenly feel the urge to refresh your drink, if you know what I mean. Myself, I find picking the lock of elite MBA Admissions gates endlessly fascinating, but if I talk about it socially, people’s eyes glaze over.

2. Your work is relatively junior

Sorry, another home truth here. As an MBA applicant, chances are you are in your mid-late 20s, and so your work is, by definition, quite junior. You are not yet at the top of your game, nor at the top of your industry — where you would have the kind of experiences that would allow you to tell truly interesting work stories, like the time you were in the BP Boardroom when the Chairman of the Federal Reserve called… But, for now your work is pretty standard stuff, or at least it could be bigger and better. That’s why you’re applying for an MBA, no?

3. Your work will change.

By definition, if you are about to embark on an MBA, your professional life will change dramatically. Whatever you’re doing now, you won’t be doing it after graduation. So, whatever your workplace story, you are focusing the admissions reader on your past, while she is in fact looking to your professional future and trying to make a judgment about your ability to progress there.

For these reasons, while workplace essays *are* important, they are inherently limited in terms of their real purpose (to get Adcom to pick you.) The admissions committee is somewhat interested, but is going to gloss over the micro-technical or organizational details in the search for what they really want to know, which is, what is this applicant’s prospects for significant successes at a higher level?

They know, even if you don’t yet, that your current job spec will disappear and be replaced. So they focus on what is relatively fixed by your mid-20s: your character, personality, ambition, drive, and management style.

Turn it around and look at if from the reader’s point of view, as you should always do. What does Adcom at an elite b-school really want to know? (Yes, they say they want to “get to know you,” and they do. But in a way, this is the usual cr*p they alway say.) What they really, really want to know is whether you are going to be a future star, that is rapidly move onward and upward to one day do great things in your industry. Convince them of that (within your applicant sub-group) and you’re in.

The standard workplace conundrum that you solved and learned from is going to take you some way down that road. To go the rest of the way, you need to charm them with your formative life stories.

Tags: ambition, b-school, essay writing, management, work-life balance, workplace stories

Among the clients I’ve had over the past three years, at a rough estimate I’d say about half came to me stating that (a career in) Private Equity was their Why-an-MBA goal. I could shake some from it, but not others.

This year again I’ve already seen a number of ‘PE applications’ and am fielding the question that inevitably comes with it: “Is PE a strong-enough goal? Is it too common?”

To answer this, and offer a perspective on career goal value for MBA admissions in general, let’s take a moment to look at PE.

In its simplest terms, Private Equity involves raising capital to be used by professional investors to buy into established but non-listed companies. The aim of the PE firm is to return significant returns to principal investors, which is achieved using the financial muscle or management expertise of the PE firm, or both, to grow the target firm or otherwise “release” its assets. The PE firm may need to be patient while its illiquid investment grows, but the idea is to cash out as soon as profit targets are met, take a part of the pile and return the rest to principal investors.

Is this good for MBA admissions?

It’s not terrible. PE is a necessary function in a modern capitalist economy, particularly in raising efficiencies and releasing value locked up in sclerotic firms, and it clearly demands many MBA skills. Certainly business schools have no problem with ambition, or you wanting to make money.

But it’s not great either, and to explain why it is necessary to consider what Admissions Committees like better, which is to have selected the true architects of tomorrow’s industries. They want the school to have formed and shaped the people who build the next truly great thing – in any sector. They want their alumni to be smiling down from the cover of Forbes or Fortune magazine, or your local equivalent. (This doesn’t mean you have to be an entrepreneur. Any genuine leadership role works.)

If you don’t believe me, believe the cornerstone of the Knight Management Center, the new home of the Stanford Business School, which says:

‘Dedicated to the things that haven’t happened yet and the people who are about to dream them up’

This dedication tells you who will be admitted to Stanford GSB: the people who look most likely to dream up and the build the things that haven’t happened yet.

Why does Stanford GSB — and all the other top MBA programs — want to admit this kind of applicant?

Take your pick: thinking idealistically, it’s about contributing to the economy and the world in the best possible way. “Change Lives Change Organizations Change the World,” yada yada. Thinking a bit more cynically, it’s about branding because, if in 10 or 20 years time the school can point to you and say “alumnus 2015 who changed retail in America,” and point to the person next to you and say “alumna 2015 who built Logo-Tech into a worldwide franchise”… well that’s very good for the school.

Set against this, PE is relatively anonymous and opportunistic. You don’t achieve much more significant than personal wealth via PE, and if you end up on the cover of the financial magazines, it will almost certainty be for the wrong reasons.

Tags: Knight Center, MBA statement of purpose, Private Equity, Stanford GSB, why-an-MBA

Motivational guru Stephen Covey died on Monday from complications following a bicycle accident in April. Covey is best known for ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ which sold over 20 million copies in 40 languages. The book (and tapes, CDs, video razzmatazz etc.) has many critics. But seeing as the soundbite “seven habits” has become pretty much synonymous with success-lingo, I long ago thought of writing down my Seven Habits of Highly Effective MBA Applicants.

I realize now is my chance, so here they are:

Habit 1. Know thyself. This is of course the Oracle at Delphi, but Covey wasn’t original either. The fact remains that self-knowledge, particularly in this case knowledge of the parts of yourself that count for MBA admissions—and being able to find these attributes in your profile—is the core of MBA admissions success.

Habit 2. Be yourself. Another old saw, but no less true for being so. If you don’t apply as “you,” you lose the authentic power of your own voice. Many applicants try to apply as someone else, or the “ideal” applicant. Being dinged for being you is hard. Being dinged for being someone else is pathetic.

Habit 3. Gain and demonstrate experience. Successful applicants have sought out and embraced significant experiences (work and other.) You don’t need to have traveled to the International Space Station to have had a significant experience. You just need to have taken the life chances that came your way, and be able to talk intelligently about them.

Habit 4. Develop and demonstrate character. Experiences, particularly challenging ones, create character. Good character is not just good ethics. It is the fully rounded resource base for individual decision-making and action that leads to positive choices for the individual and those around him/her.

Habit 5. Assume and demonstrate seniority. Successful applicants have reached for opportunities to become senior in their spheres of activity. Seniority is not a job type or a salary level; it is any position that implies responsibility, influence, and leadership of others.

Habit 6. Be bigger than you. Successful MBA applicants have walked the walk of doing something that is not entirely self-oriented. As I’ve written elsewhere, you don’t have to have fed the starving in Ethiopia: almost any form of unpaid community involvement counts.

Habit 7. Simplify. Push yourself to know what’s really important to say in your application, and say only that. Don’t throw everything at Adcom and hope something sticks.

Habit 7+1. Covey added an eighth habit, see below. My eighth is: A touch of class. You don’t need to listen to Dvorak while pruning your bonsai and sipping chai tea (see Habit 2.) But if your favorite book is Harry Potter and your favorite show is Phantom of the Opera and you spend a lot of time on your sun tan… while there’s nothing technically wrong with this, you leave your competitors a lot of room to beat you.

For the record, these are Covey’s seven: Be proactive. Begin with the end in mind. Put first things first. Think win-win. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Synergise: learn to work with others to the benefit of all parties. Sharpen the saw: keep yourself physically, mentally and spiritually refreshed through such things as exercise, reading, prayer and good works. He later added the eighth: find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.

It is 10 years since MBA Studio was founded. It started more by chance than design, as seems to happen in this industry. I had worked on a few applications, including my own, and found I was good at it (and successful.) This was due to my media-editor background, my strategic marketing training, and my b-school cultural immersion. Anyway, quite early on I realized I was saying things to clients that had not been written down. So I wrote a book (MBA Admissions Strategy) which, happily, was snapped up by the first publisher I sent it to (McGraw Hill) and has since become a best-seller, now in 2nd edition.

On the back of the book, and gratifyingly also often by word of mouth, the client side of the business grew strongly and I was quickly forced in to a decision that has defined MBA Studio ever since: Do I adopt a flotilla of sub-consultants and spend my time managing them? Or do I stay a hands-on practicing MBA admissions advisor? I chose the latter because I was far more motivated by the intellectual and strategic challenge (and fun!) of crafting a savvy application that finds the way to pick the lock of the admissions gates and get a person admitted to an elite school, sometimes beyond even their own expectations. There is nothing better than getting the “wow, I’m in!” email, knowing I’ve meaningfully improved someone’s entire career and life prospects. (Full disclosure: I do of course have marketing and administrative support staff.)

So it’s been 10 years, and here’s to the next 10. As a point of demarcation, I’ve decided to implement some changes in service provision. Where MBA Studio used to handle all aspects of the application, as defined by the book, the focus going forward will be on the essays and allied asynchronous services. This is a business decision. Full-service provision for a one-consultant operation is inherently “lumpy” – I have to leave big spaces of time to fully serve clients who sign up in August for a large menu of services that they may use sporadically, or not at all, or in a January rush! This means every year I’ve been turning clients away. With an essay focus I’ll be able to work more consistently, and for more clients.

In another adjustment, the free essay review is withdrawn. There is simply no longer time to do them. In its place are sample reviews which demonstrate what’s on offer (see Services tab.)

To answer various email and phone questions all at once: the MBA Admissions Studio will be open for the 2013 season from mid-July. This will be Avi and MBA Studio’s 10th year of operations. Stand by for some celebratory early-bird deals!