The MBA Admissions Studio

Everyone knows leadership is a key theme in MBA applications. One way or another, the b-school graduate is going to be a leader. Therefore showing evidence and understanding of, and aptitude and appetite for, the demands of leadership is central to succeeding in MBA admissions selection.

Because of this, as an admissions coach, I’m always on the lookout for insight into leadership and how to communicate it, and I found some by Paul Thornton at a blog called Great Leadership.

Thornton says business and political leaders often have a motto or plaque on their desk or office wall that encapsulates their leadership attitude. His article is below. I repost it here in full on this blog, in order to be able to ask the question: as an MBA applicant, what is the sign on your desk, or what will it be when the time comes?

More specifically, if you can distill the essence of your leadership attitude or style or motivation in this way, it makes an excellent basis for telling Adcom about it in your essays or interview in a way that will get you noticed… much better than serving up worn-out phrases about leadership as “motivating people” or “making a difference” or other standard waffle that will shift you only sideways into the bundle of applications about to be dinged.

Here is Thornton’s text:

“As a leader, what should the sign on your wall or desk say?

W. Clement Stone began as a shoeshine boy and became a multimillionaire. He credits his success to three words: Do It Now. He required everyone who worked for him to write those words on index cards and post them in their work area.

Over the past twenty years I have collected and analyzed many of the quotes leaders post on their office walls or keep on their desks. Many of these quotes are the guiding principle they followed to achieve success. Here are my top 15.

1. “It can be done!” —Sign President Ronald Reagan kept on his desk in the Oval Office.

Leaders are optimistic, upbeat, and positive. Reagan was known for his optimism and the ability to express ideas in a clear, eloquent, and quotable fashion.

2. “No Whining” —Sign on the desk of James Parker, former CEO, Southwest Airlines.

Victims wine and blame others. Leaders may get discouraged on occasion but never play the victim role.

3. Bill Gates had a picture of Henry Ford in his office. It was there as a reminder to not do what Ford did. Ford didn’t listen to his customers. He knew his customers wanted the option to buy cars painted other colors besides black. This “fatal attitude” caused him to lose market share to upstart General Motors.

4. “The Buck Starts Here!” —Sign on the desk of Donald Trump.

Leaders see opportunity and take action. Non-leaders only see the status quo and sit still.

5. “Be brief. Be Brilliant. Be Gone.” —Former sign on the office wall of Mark Goodman, CEO, Twist Image.

Leaders who are clear and concise are more credible and more brilliant.

6. “Start Talking and Get to Work” —Sign in the office of Alden Davis, former Business Effectiveness Consultant, Pratt & Whitney Division of United Technologies Corporation.

Leaders spend a significant amount of time talking and listening. Advocating, proposing, nudging, selling, questioning, listening, probing and digging are what leaders do.

7. “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupery”—Sign above the desk of Michael S. Hyatt, CEO, Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Michael states, “Leaders remove the clutter so their big ideas stand out.”

8. Hatim Tyabji, former chairman and CEO of VeriFone, Inc. —On his office wall there was a poster that consisted of twelve blocks, each with a photo of an Irish setter. The first 11 blocks show the dog standing, not responding to a command to “sit.” Finally, in block twelve, the Irish setter sits. “Good dog,” reads the poster.

Hatim states, “That is the essence of leadership. I can’t get disillusioned when I say ‘sit’ and nobody sits. So I just keep repeating the message. Leaders must be clear, consistent, and repetitive. Keep repeating the message until it sticks.”

9. “Be Realistic, Demand the Impossible” —Sign in the office of T. J. Rodgers, founder and CEO of Cypress Semiconductor.

Leaders are demanding! They expect more than others think is possible. Leaders believe most people have underutilized talents and abilities.

10. Strive for Excellence. Signed photographs of Frank Sinatra, Mohammad Ali, Albert Pujols, Ted Turner, and Donald Trump are on the office wall of Jim Stovall.

Jim is president, Narrative Television Network and author of The Ultimate Gift.

Jim states, “These are people who I’ve worked with and respect. They remind me to always strive for excellence.”

11. “A desk is a dangerous place from which to view the world.” John le Carré —Sign in the office of Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., former CEO of IBM.

Seeing the problem, touching the part, talking directly with employees and customers provides a reality you don’t get sitting in your office. We want to see our leaders directly involved in the problem like Louisiana Governor Bobby Gindal has been involved in the Gulf Oil Crisis.

12. “Prove Your Groove.” —Sign on the office wall of Peter H. Reynolds CEO/Owner, FableVision Enterprises.

Peter states, “It means don’t just say it—do it. Show us your passion in action. Leaders use the media, storytelling, and technology to foster the development of each person’s potential.”

13. “Just because it worked once, doesn’t mean it will work again!” —Sign on the desk of Shaun Coffey, CEO, Industrial Research Ltd., New Zealand.

Shaun states, “Every situation is different, and this is particularly so when dealing with change. People are different, and people change. An intervention that has been spectacularly successful may not work in a new situation. It may not even work in the same company/organization again because the people will have changed as a result of the experience. Keep changing your tactics, staying aware of how people are responding. Attack from different angles. Look for signs that something isn’t working, and try something else—don’t get stuck in your ways.”

14. “The time is always right to do what is right.” Martin Luther King Jr. —Sign on the office wall of Michael Jansma, President GEMaffair.com.

Leaders consistently stand up for their values and beliefs. It’s not a once in awhile thing.

15. “Leaders should be able to Stand Alone, Take the Heat, Bear the Pain, Tell the Truth, and Do What’s Right” Max DePree —Sign in the office of Brian Morehouse, coach of women’s basketball at Hope College, 2006 Division III National Champions.

Brian states, “That quote covers everything a leader needs to do as they approach their day in terms of courage, integrity, focus, and perseverance. And, it closely meshes with my coaching philosophy which is –Do the right thing every day, every play, on and off the court!”

Tags: communications, essay writing, interviews, mba interview, writing style

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.
.

Tags: b-school, communications, essay writing, MBA Adcom, MBA admissions essay, writing style

I’d estimate that 3 out of 5 MBA applicants to top-tier schools have traveled widely, for work or for fun. It follows that in their MBA applications they cite travel as an activity they value and put it among the important experiences they have had. They think that journeying across the world speaks for itself as proof of “diversity.” Travel “broadens the mind” and all that.

This is true. But there is a lot of value to be had in travel that MBA applicants often don’t get to. Here I tip my metaphorical hat to the mother of an MBA Studio client who gave her son the following feedback — before he came to me — which absolutely dovetails with how I exhort clients to squeeze admissions value from their travel (and other) experiences. I quote:

“I don’t think you have written something meaningful enough about your travels. You have traveled widely but it looks like it doesn’t seem to have influenced you, affected your outlook about people, society.

“Perhaps write something meaningful about poverty, and yet the ingenuity of people who have very little but are innovative, creative, hard working.

“Can you think of reasons why you chose to travel to these places, culture, philosophy, history, etc.?

“Some insight into the way you and your friend chose to travel, no fuss, not staying fancy places.

“This travel was a test also in being independent, showing initiative, taking calculated risks in foreign places. (You don’t give yourself sufficient credit for these things.)”

If all mothers had this depth of insight, I’d be out of a job. But, seriously, the task here, and everywhere in MBA admissions, is to extract the full admissions value from any activity you have done, experiences you’ve had, or choices you’ve made.

Look at your experiences, look at the skill sets and character traits of middle-to-senior managers, and make the link.

In this case an applicant following this advice would be showing Adcom not just “travel,” but a nuanced outlook on foreign cultures; an appreciation of genuinely alternative value systems and social cohesion including alternative forms of innovation; a non-materialist sensibility; an ability to ride out adversity; practice at calculated risk-management, and so on. Now this is a platform a good b-school can build on, to create a senior manager for significant 21st Century organizations.

.

Tags: Diversity, essay writing, manager, MBA Adcom, MBA Admissions, Travel

I’m sometimes asked for the greatest mistakes applicants make in MBA admissions essays, and at some point I’ll pull together my all-time list. But in the meantime, here’s a mistake that I’ve seen a lot of among clients this year so far: muddling up the demands of MBA admissions and a venture capital pitch.

What I mean is, applicants who are on an entrepreneurial track (including social entrepreneurship) and who are therefore talking about a future creating and building a firm, feel they have to make a VC pitch for their proposed venture. They seek to justify themselves in terms of potential market segments, working capital requirements, time to breakeven, and so on.

Now it is always good for MBA admissions to show detailed, careful thinking. And if your “why-an-MBA” is based on a new business, you need to talk about the proposed venture and its industry-market background in a specific and knowledgable way.

But you don’t need to make “the business case.” Adcom is not a VC firm. As long as the idea is not manifestly absurd, they can’t determine if it will actually work, nor are they ever going to try. This is not their skillset, and not their fundamental concern.

Put it this way: A VC firm will “like” a business idea if it thinks it will get out (a investment multiple of) more money than it puts in. If so, the VC will, to quote Dragon’s Den, “make you an offer,” that is, invest cash for a percentage of the business.

MBA Adcoms are not investing cash. They will “like” a business idea enough to make you an offer (an offer of a place in the b-school) if your venture seems broadly plausible, interesting, ambitious, doing something worthwhile in the world, and worthy of an MBA.

So, while you should make a general case for your new product or service, in reality the venture does not have to watertight. You can include the jumps of ambition and enthusiasm that you would have to scrub from a funding pitch.

But there is a wrinkle: Adcom is like a venture capital firm in one way. It is well known that VCs judge two things: the business idea AND the entrepreneur, because they are investing in the person or management team as much as the project. Even a mediocre idea can be a winner, if put in really competent hands. In this sense Adcom mirrors the VC, asking themselves: (whatever the applicant wants to do…) “Can he do it?” Can she pull it off?”

.

Tags: business idea, entrepreneurship, investing, MBA application mistakes, MBA goals essay, social entrepreneurship, VC, Venture Capital, why-an-MBA

Topmba.com recently asked for my brief and succinct summary input for an upcoming story on MBA application essays and letters of recommendation. If nothing else it was a challenge in writing tightly. And as it turned out, it provides a summary of some key deliverables and concerns, so I thought I’d share the experience here:

What should/shouldn’t MBA applicants include in their admissions essays?
Applicants should include points that carry admissions value. What is value? Any attributes or experiences that are relevant to peer education and not common in the applicant pool; anything that will get you noticed or make you stand out as a worthwhile addition to the classroom, on campus, and one day in the alumni network. What not to include? Don’t praise the school (they know they’re good); don’t repeat items on your resume; don’t denigrate anyone or any organization; don’t whine about life’s obstacles or blame others. Finally, don’t state the obvious — if you are talking about water you needn’t add that it is also wet.

Who should/shouldn’t they ask for letters of recommendation?
Reco’s are Adcoms only reliable way of finding out what you are like in a professional environment. Therefore, do not ask one of an old professor, your yoga instructor, your priest and so on. You need a reco from your current work supervisor (if not, explain why not) and other reco’s should come from other current or past professional supervisors who know you well. Don’t go for someone with a great title, who hardly knows you. Whoever you get — make him or her give examples and specific instances to back up their claims about you. Brief them on your application content so their communication is consonant with your own. Ask them to to address and reassure Adcom on any weaknesses apparent in your resume, if applicable.

What are the biggest mistakes that many applicants make in their essays?
One common mistake is to try be like a “business school applicant.” There is no one such thing; you will just sound generic and boring. Be yourself, and you will sound genuine and alive and interesting-to-meet. Don’t forget to give specific examples which create interest for the reader. Further, it’s pointless to claim an experience or attribute without giving some proof (a specific example or event or data or awards that demonstrates the attribute is real.) Also, don’t imagine that your reader is a financial or technical person. Adcoms members have a real mix of backgrounds, but at heart they are human resources professionals, and MBA admissions is an HR function.

What are optional essays? Should applicants bother writing them, as they are optional?
Optional essays are used to mitigate a weakness or explain something that may be confusing about your background or career path. They are not a way to get more text in. It is a statement of strength as an applicant not to have to use the optional essay. Only use it if you have something specific to address, and when you’ve addressed it, stop writing — there is no requirement to go to full essay length.

.

Tags: b-school, essay writing, mba, MBA Adcom, MBA applicant, MBA recommendations, optional essay

It’s busy season, so I have to blog short, but here’s what I have to say today as MBA application Round 1 deadlines approach — and this is to my clients as much as anyone else out there (although the clients have heard it before):

“You are not applying to join a holy order. You are not applying to Amnesty International. You are not applying to save the rainforests or unmelt the ice caps or feed the starving or create Middle-East peace.

“You are applying to business school.”

At business school, yes there will be electives around well-meaning things, but by far the main agenda is to present you with and test you on classic curriculum stuff to do with finance and operations and marketing and strategy and so on. They will not teach you to weave sisal or wash Aids babies.

Now of course you are a good human being. And you should certainly communicate to Adcom (with evidence) that you are a good human being, which includes being concerned about major domestic or world problems. And not just concerned: wanting to play your part in fixing them too. It’s fine to want to and plan to improve social welfare at home or abroad.

But you are applying to business school.

So the material question is: how will you make a business or take a business in the direction of social welfare and human development? How and why do you need business and management skills to make the difference you plan to make?

Here’s a clue to hitting the right note: one person or a group of well-meaning people can make a little difference somewhere. But a business, or a large organization innovatively led, professionally managed, properly financed and running at optimum efficiency can make a whopping difference. We’re talking “order of magnitude.”

Best of all, your MBA application will retain its credibility. If you say you want to run an education business in Ho Chi Minh City, Adcom will believe you. If you say you want to teach long-division to Vietnamese orphans, they won’t.

.

Tags: admissions red flags, electives, finance, marketing, operations, social welfare, strategy, volunteering

Keeping up with Adcoms’ blogs as I do (and I suggest MBA applicants do too) my eye stopped on this recent post by Dee Leopold, Director of Admissions at HBS.

It offers two things: First it clears up some of the shibboleths of who’s noticing what in your b-school visit and how it is weighed in admissions. (What is true of Harvard is broadly true of other schools too.) Second, just as important, it’s worth noting as a writing sample. Here’s the text:

Tags: b-school, Director of MBA Admissions, essay writing, HBS, interviews, MBA Admissions, writing style

MBA Studio’s mantra is, “when Adcom talks, listen.” Don’t just hear. Really, really listen because these are the people who are choosing the few and dinging the many. The Chicago-Booth 2011 MBA application essay questions were posted on July 7, along with a post from Rose Martinelli, Chicago-Booth’s Associate Dean for Student Recruitment and Admissions, explaining the thinking behind each, including the new “blank pages” essay:

“Our essays continue to be a wonderful way for us to learn about what makes our applicants unique and determine if they are the right fit for Chicago Booth.  Here is some insight as to what we’re looking for in each essay.”

1. The Admissions Committee is interested in learning more about you on both a personal and professional level.   Please answer the following (maximum of 300 words for each section):
a. Why are you pursuing a full-time MBA at this point in your life?
b. Define your short and long term career goals post MBA.
c. What is it about Chicago Booth that is going to help you reach your goals?
d. REAPPLICANTS ONLY: Upon reflection, how has your thinking regarding your future, Chicago Booth, and/or getting an MBA changed since the time of your last application?

“These short essays will require you to know yourself.  You will need to understand where you have been and where you are going.  Before you begin drafting the responses to these essays, take some time for self-reflection.  Why do you want to return to school?  Why is the MBA the right degree for you?

“We know that many of you will use your MBA experience to help you figure out what kind of job to pursue next.  Even though your future career plans may not be clear at this time, you should still be able to discuss your goals and how they relate to obtaining an MBA.

“For our reapplicants, question 1d is where you can tell us what, if anything, has changed since the time of your last application.  What has occurred in your life or career that has either reinforced or changed your goals?  What lessons have you learned or how have you grown since you last applied to Chicago Booth?”

2. Chicago Booth is a place that challenges its students to stretch and take risks that they might not take elsewhere. Tell us about a time when you took a risk and what you learned from that experience (maximum of 750 words).

“You’re probably wondering, “What kind of risk do you want me to discuss?”  To be honest, we’re not looking for one kind of risk in particular.  It can be a risk related to your professional, academic or personal life.  It can be a risk that resulted in either a positive or negative outcome.  We want to hear about a time when you challenged yourself and what you learned from that experience.  How has that experience influenced your future actions?”

3. At Chicago Booth, we teach you HOW to think rather than what to think. With this in mind, we have provided you with “blank pages” in our application. Knowing that there is not a right or even a preferred answer allows you to demonstrate to the committee your ability to navigate ambiguity and provide information that you believe will support your candidacy for Chicago Booth.

“Earlier this year, there was some discussion as to whether we would continue using the presentation as part of our evaluation process.  With the presentation proving to be such an important tool in helping us determine who is a good fit for Chicago Booth, we decided it was necessary to include in our 2011 application.  However, this year, we are giving applicants even greater freedom to decide what information they want to convey in the presentation.

“Since we’re providing you with “blank pages,” what you decide to address in your presentation is up to you.  Look at the other aspects of your application.  Are there messages or activities that you have not yet been able to communicate to the committee?  If so, then the presentation will be an opportunity for you to provide us with this type of information.  After reviewing your presentation, we want to have a better understanding of who you are and how you think.

“Also, please remember that it is the content – not the design – that should be the focus of the presentation.  We understand that not everyone is a design guru.  So, whether it’s through photos, images, graphs, or just words, the goal is to communicate your messages as effectively as possible.”

So what is Rose saying? The essays tell her and her committee who among the applicants is unique, and why so, and (conversely) whether they will fit in. They demand you know yourself well, that is provide evidence of genuine self-reflection. They value risk-taking and the self-insight it brings. Like many other programs these days, Chicago-Booth doesn’t expect you to have a career blueprint, but does expect you to have thought carefully about your goals, and therefore why you need an MBA now.

When it comes to the blank pages essay, Martinelli hasn’t said much, at least not yet. The core of it is clearly contained in the term “navigate ambiguity.” My take is Chicago-Booth wants to see what the applicant can produce in unguided, unstructured situations. Are you just good at following instructions (such as essay prompts); or are you even more capable? That is, can you determine and select compelling material to share with Adcom without any specific guidance. Can you set the agenda rather than merely follow it?

Tags: 'blank pages' essay, 'Why an MBA?' essay, Chicago-Booth GSB, MBA Admissions, MBA goals essay, MBA reapplicants

Wharton’s MBA essays for 2010-11 are great; and very significantly reformulated from previous years, demanding new comment and analysis here.

The required question:

What are your professional objectives? (300 words)

This is in some senses the classic Why-an-MBA? question. What’s new is that it is really short, particularly when compared with the longer questions that follow. The implication is that Wharton, following HBS and others, are putting less and less emphasis on what applicants claim they will do on graduation. They expect to heavily influence that. It is important that you have direction and motivation, but they reckon, and they’re right, that 300 words is more than enough to get that across. Notice that there’s very little space for Why (an MBA) Now? or Why Wharton? If there’s something important to say to that, you’ll have to be really succinct, or work it into one of the other essays.

The optional questions — respond to three of the following four:

1. Student and alumni engagement has at times led to the creation of innovative classes. For example, through extraordinary efforts, a small group of current students partnered with faculty to create a timely course entitled, “Disaster Response: Haiti and Beyond,” empowering students to leverage the talented Wharton community to improve the lives of the Haiti earthquake victims. Similarly, Wharton students and alumni helped to create the “Innovation and the Indian Healthcare Industry” which took students to India where they studied the full range of healthcare issues in India. If you were able to create a Wharton course on any topic, what would it be? (700 words)
   
2. Reflect on a time when you turned down an opportunity. What was the thought process behind your decision? Would you make the same decision today? (600 words)
3. Describe a failure that you have experienced. What role did you play, and what did you learn about yourself? How did this experience help to create your definition of failure? (600 words)
4. Discuss a time when you navigated a challenging experience in either a personal or professional relationship. (600 words)

.

Question 1 does a number of things worth noting. First it’s mining for what you, specifically and uniquely, bring to the program. It does not automatically follow that you would create a class around your speciality, but this will be the case for many applicants, and so is a place to show your special attributes, connections, or interests. The question also therefore allows you to show your “fit with Wharton,” not only what you will contribute but what you would like to learn or experience. Further, as the language of the question suggests, it looks toward your innovativeness, which is a core value in MBA admissions. Your choice of class must show innovation with reference to the curriculum as it stands. This of course demands that you demonstrate knowledge of what is already on offer and where the gaps might be. Finally the question tests your realism and knowledge of how b-school electives and/or off-site experiential programs work. You might say “I’ll create a class that goes to visit Nelson Mandela to learn to balance business and policy objectives” but that would show total naivete as to how things really work and what’s really possible, and your application would be in the bin.

Question 2 is a deep, almost wickedly deep, dive into your personal stuff. They are probing the tissue of your motivation, your self-awareness, and self-understanding. The actual opportunity turned down is far less important than why you choose one thing over another, which should takes Adcom right to who you are as a person and what your core values are. Don’t disappoint them in this. Obviously when you turned down an opportunity, it was for a good reason, either a better opportunity or a family obligation or something like that. So what is at stake here too is your judgment and maturity. The question specifically looks to that in asking if you would make the same choice again, in other words, “how have you grown?”

Question 3 is the similar to last year, but the sub-question is new. It is a classic failure question. I’ve written a lot on how to manage failure questions (click on ‘failure essay’ tag,) and in my book. The sub-question that asks about your definition of failure, deepens the motivational, maturity, introspection angles to the standard MBA admissions failure essay. Everyone fails. Not everyone knows why, or demonstrates the self-knowledge or emotional resilience that is core to “bouncing back.”

Question 4 is a fairly typical “challenging situation” question. Of the set it is the one that most clearly asks about your relationship with others — and therefore your role in groups, teams, and so on, although it does focus you on a particular event and a specific 1-to-1 relationship. The ability to manage relationships is key to leadership, and therefore key to business success, and thus key to Wharton Adcom.

All in all, Wharton 2010-11 has put out a really state-of-the-art set of questions. Varied. Behavioral. Hard. But don’t be scared of hard questions. If they were easy you wouldn’t be able to separate yourself adequately from the crowd of pleasantry-and-platitude writers.

Tags: career plan, Failure essay, goals, Harvard, HBS, innovation, judgment, maturity, MBA Adcom, MBA alumni, mba curriculum, Teamwork, Wharton

I try to keep this MBA Admissions blog fresh and personal (like an MBA essay should be!) and don’t just rehash or repost keyword-rich MBA admissions news. In this spirit I offer you a bit of whimsey from The Wall Street Journal “Speakeasy” where Teddy Wayne explains how his job as an MBA essay editor provided the inspiration for his novel Kapitoil.

He says:

“Of the many jobs I held during my desultory postgraduate days in the early 2000s, the one that made the deepest impression was editing MBA application essays for a Web site. For two and a half years, I downloaded essays from strangers, made comments and suggestions, copyedited grammatical errors and uploaded them without any human contact. It wasn’t very rewarding work — but it did help inspire my debut novel, Kapitoil.”

So here’s insight number one. Dare I point out that if you go the big-MBA-admissions-consulting-shop route, this is the kind of person who is reviewing your essays. The business model is: your work is outsourced to unemployed graduates in the arts and humanities. These editors may not be empowered to have interactive contact with you, and they may not be highly motivated. (Yes, there are exceptions.)

Anyway, Wayne goes on to his main point:

“The applicants’ knowledge of business jargon was deeper than my own. Everything was “leveraged”; “skill sets” were “broadened”; they were all striving to achieve “short-and long-term objectives.”

“What if, I began thinking, I wrote a novel from the perspective of a character who, like these business-school aspirants, was so immersed in the language of late capitalism, so caught up in its buzzwords and phrasings, that he not only wrote and spoke in it, but thought in it?”

… “We all do it, consciously or not. Friends who are low-paid writers speak about how “at the end of the day,” “the bottom line” is that we have to “touch base” and reach for the “low-hanging fruit.”

“The language of commerce has now fully cemented itself in our vernacular, functioning the way sports, military, mafia and street slang has in the past: as a shorthand for when we’re too unimaginative or lazy to come up with original sentences.”

Here’s insight number two. Adcom members are as sensitive to business jargon as Wayne is, and view it in an equally dim light. Read Kapitoil. Have a laugh. But don’t talk like that in your MBA essays or interview.

Tags: admissions red flags, b-school, business jargon, mba essay editor, WSJ