The MBA Admissions Studio

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?

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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)

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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.

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

MBA applicants are routinely asked “the failure question” either in MBA essays or interviews. It always takes more or less the same form: “tell us about a time you failed and what you learned.”

As I’ve written before here, and in my book, the test is not to see if you have any weaknesses or failures. Everyone does. It is to see whether you are mature enough to recognize your failures and so address the implied weaknesses. Also, failures are more likely to occur in new, challenging tasks, so if you present “no failures” you are simply telling Adcom that you haven’t been adequately challenged.

The other day I picked up an interesting take on failure — creating “intelligent failure” — in the article Are You Squandering Your Intelligent Failures? by Columbia Business School professor Rita McGrath, on the HBR Blog.

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Tags: Columbia GSB, Failure essay, HBR, HBS, management, Weakness essay

There’s a little gem of a podcast from the Haas-Berkeley admissions committee, “Admissions and Application Information for Prospective Full-time MBA Students,” answering the question: “What are we looking for as we evaluate candidates?” It’s only 12 minutes long and really worth listening to. It’s up on this link at iTunes (item 10) or click here.

Haas adcom aims to dispel a few mysteries and shibboleths from MBA admissions. The podcast is from 2007, but that’s no matter. Everything they say is still current, and valid for other top b-schools too. The highlights:

Haas looks at three key areas. (1) academic readiness; (2) professional accomplishments and leadership experience; (3) personal attributes

(1) They consider college GPA + GMAT (+ post-grad scores, if applicable.) They also put value on the caliber of undergraduate institution, difficulty of major, trend in your grades, and level of quantitative preparation. There is no preference for any type of major.

(2) Work experience is about quantity (most have 3- 7 years) and, more importantly, quality. They focus on your career progression, why you have made the transitions you have made, how your role has progressed and responsibility increased. Quick advancement and significant progress reflects well. Leadership can be demonstrated on many ways, and closely correlates with how much of an impact you have made in your organization(s).

(3) The Haas admissions committee, like all adcoms, wants to enroll a class with diverse attributes and backgrounds (there is no right or wrong personal or professional past.) The question is “What can you uniquely contribute? They glean this by what you reflect as important to you — what you are passionate about. High extracurricular activity suggests you will be active on campus too, but they do understand and forgive where work and travel issues prevent meaningful extra-mural or community involvement.

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Generally, it’s worth keeping up with b-school podcasts, which are coming online all the time. Some are admissions-related. Others give worthwhile insight and information about the school and its culture, which can feed into essays about fit (“Why this school particularly?”) See for example:

Haas: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/uc-berkeley-haas-school-business/id84968687
Darden: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/podcasts-darden-the-darden/id201480998
Tuck: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/radio-tuck/id154782876
Kelley: http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/kelley-school-business-mba/id206525433

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Tags: b-school podcast, Darden, Haas, itunes MBA podcast, Kelley, MBA leadership, MBA podcasts, Tuck

The “goals” question remains the core of any MBA admissions application. Continuing on past posts I’ve put up here on how to manage it — beyond the usual blah of clearly enunciating your short-term and long-term goals and connecting that to why you need an MBA — here’s something worth considering on the HBS site: the Harvard Business School Portrait Project.

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http://www.hbs.edu/mba/profiles/PortraitProject/2009portrait/

Harvard Business School (not HBS Adcom) says: “Each year we ask our classmates [this year class of 2009] a straightforward, simple question taken from the last lines of a poem by Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Mary Oliver. It seems such an easy question on the surface, but sometimes the easy questions are the hardest to answer. Indeed, although we ask for only 200 words or less, most people grapple with the question a long time. We share with you intimate and candid responses from the Class of 2009 to this question,”What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” See what the students plan to do.

Now, consider the HBS goals essay: “What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?”

What is “career vision?” In their terms, what does “vision” mean? What does “meaningful” really mean? What do they expect of you? What will, as they say, ‘cut the mustard’ in this essay?

In fact, “What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?” is effectively asking the same thing, that is: “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” You may say you want to be a hospitality logistics manager or an aviation entrepreneur … or anything. There’s no right or wrong answer. The point is why is it worth spending your one wild and precious life on? You have to justify it in those terms. That’s how you make it into a right answer.

This is true of the goals essay to any top school, not just Harvard.

For the Portrait Project HBS students get 200 words. For the HBS admissions essay you get 400 because you need to spend time nailing down how ‘what you plan to do with your one wild and precious life’ makes sense in terms of your past, the Harvard MBA specifically, and recruitment.

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Tags: career vision, goals, Harvard, HBS, HBS Portrait Project, MBA go, MBA goals essay

Psychologist Abraham Maslow created a 5-level theory of human motivation (Psychology Review, 1943) in which he proposed that peoples’ needs and satisfaction move ‘upwards’ through a common structure which he called a ‘hierarchy of needs.’ Once lower needs of sustenance and safety are met, we aspire to fulfill social, self-esteem, and self-actualization needs. The summary chart looks like this:

credit: Wikipedia

(The model made Maslow world famous. The structure of the pyramid itself has been tinkered with over time, for example by Manfred Max-Neef, who sees levels of: subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity, freedom.) But the core insight remains: once more basic levels of fulfillment are achieved, and as long as they remain achieved, humans moves up the hierarchy in search of fulfillment.

What does this have to do with MBA admissions essays, and how does this help those struggling with the ‘why an MBA?’ question in particular?

It helps because it provides a quick, reliable guide to the necessary reach of the essay. Too often applicants dwell in and around levels 2 and 3, talking of security and quality of employment, taking care of their family (including elderly or immigrant parents) and developing friendship and contact networks (incl. alumni networks), career progress, and so on.

This is all important. But there is more to say, and Maslow shows the way to developing it. Where is the rest of your motivation going to come from in your life: how will you achieve further self esteem, self-respect, and the respect of others? What will you create? What will put you, personally, to higher plain of self-actualization?

As I tell my clients: A good career and family security are great things to want. But what else is there? What comes after that? You don’t need to aspire to be Nelson Mandela or Mother Theresa, but you do need to reach into yourself and ask: ‘My levels 4 and 5 – what are they, for me? What would actualizing myself at these levels look like? And how will an MBA be part of what takes me there?’

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Tags: 'Why an MBA?' essay, Mazlow's hierarchy, MBA goals essay, self-actualization, self-insight

The criticism / weakness / failure essay is common in MBA Admissions essays because it is a test of an applicant’s maturity, self-knowledge, honesty, and ability to learn from mistakes. It is, in other words, the biggest indicator of real leadership ability and potential.

Sample questions are:

Tuck 3. Discuss the most difficult constructive criticism or feedback you have received. How did you address it? What have you learned from it?
Wharton 3. Describe a failure that you have experienced. What role did you play, and what did you learn about yourself?
HBS 2. What have you learned from a mistake?
Columbia 3. Please provide an example of a team failure of which you’ve been a part. If given a second chance, what would you do differently?

Applicants to business school very often struggle with these essays because they feel that admitting a weaknesses or sharing a time when they failed erodes their candidacy. In fact, it does just the opposite. Leaders know their weaknesses, and can admit them to themselves and others — in order to work on them, or work around them. It shows self-insight and points to seniority. No one is comfortable talking about their weak spots and failure. But nobody is perfect or has not failed. Not Bill Gates, not Richard Branson, not me, nor you, nor the admissions officer.

So it is not admitting a weakness is what will get you dinged, because it’s like waving red beacon that betrays inexperience and a junior mindset. If you “have no weaknesses” that just tells Adcom that you don’t know what they are yet or that you’re too immature to face them. It says you don’t know yourself, therefore you don’t yet know where you will mess up. You are a liability to yourself and your company

Take a tip from George Soros, self-made billionaire, philosopher, philanthropist, social reformer, and fund manager extraordinaire – famous for “breaking the Bank (of England)” by shorting the pound sterling in 1992 – who shares this candid account of his weaknesses …

“I’m a very bad judge of character. I’m a good judge of stocks, and I have a reasonably good perspective on history. But I am, really, quite awful in judging character, and so I’ve made many mistakes. It took me five years and a lot of painful experiences to find the right management team. I am please that finally I found it, but I cannot claim to be as successful in picking a team as I have been in actually managing money. I think that I’m very good as a senior partner, or boss, because I have a lot of sympathy for the difficulties that fund managers face. When they are in trouble I can give them a lot of support, and that, I think, has contributed toward creating a good atmosphere in the firm. But I’m not so good at choosing them.”

– ‘Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve,’ Wiley & Sons, NY, 1995, p.18

See, the greatest business leaders all have weaknesses and all have made significant mistakes in their careers and their lives. The point is not to prove that you don’t fail, or won’t fail. It is to prove that you have the insight into yourself to be able to recognize and compensate for your weaknesses.

What Adcom wants to know is not how you avoided failure, but how you managed it, what you learned, what insights into yourself you gained, and how you grew from there. They want to see that you have the will and the insight to locate and understand the source of your mess up – the underlying weaknesses that caused it – and that you have the maturity to face and work on the issue.

To summarize: the weakness / failure essay is not testing to see if you have weaknesses. We all do. It is a test of your self-knowledge and maturity. The committee wants to see if you can candidly face, discuss, and work on your flaws, or if you will you try to hide them or blame circumstances or other people. This is a significant test of your readiness for senior leadership.

A note on tone
Soros is candid, straightforward, and objective in his self analysis. He shares measured self-insight with the reader. He doesn’t try to slip in softening or deflecting phrases, or hide behind humor; nor is he self-excusing or whining and looking to blame others – the mark of a too-junior applicant.

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Tags: b-school, Columbia, essay writing, Failure essay, HBS, maturity, Tuck, Weakness essay, Wharton, writing style

Harvard has released their new essay questions, and deadlines for 2009-10, adding a cover letter essay (optional) which MIT Sloan’s has as a standard request for years. Still only four essays are required for HBS, and the first two compulsory questions remain the same:

1. What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such? (600)
2. What have you learned from a mistake? (400)

For essays essays 3 and 4, applicants now have five topics to choose from (up from four) two of which are new. One , a cover letter “introducing yourself to the Admissions Board,” is equivalent to the MIT Sloan signature essay.

This is no surprise. Cover letters are deeply difficult to get right because they require acute balance between brevity and detail. They test your ability to extract and communicate what is really important – demonstrating a key management skill.

The other new question: “Tell us about a time when you made a difficult decision,” is familiar ground in admissions, and something well covered in MBA Studio’s profiling process that focuses on your key life transitions (why?) and prepares you for questions like this in your essays and interview.

The full set of options for HBS essays 3 & 4 are:

Please respond to two of the following (400-word limit each):
1. What would you like the MBA Admissions Board to know about your undergraduate academic experience?
2. Discuss how you have engaged with a community or organization.
3. Tell us about a time when you made a difficult decision.
4. Write a cover letter to your application introducing yourself to the Admissions Board.
5. What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?

The deadlines are (all 5pm EST) R1: October 1, 2009; R2: January 19, 2010; R3: April 8, 2010

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Tags: accomplishments, Adcom, admissions red flags, application timeline, career plan, communications, Community Service, cover letter, difficult decision, essay writing, HBS, interviews, mistake, MIT Sloan, profile development, profiling, undergraduate experience

Getting previous MBA Studio resources up on the blog site, where they can be permalinked, so here is the transcript of a World MBA Tour online admissions essay advice service, where Avi appeared “live” as expert essay advisor. The text is “as was,” verbatim.

MBA Studio Says
Hi, welcome to the Forum on MBA Admissions Essays. We’ll get started right away. I’ll answer as fast as I can …

Question asked by Brenda Sun
Hi. I’d like to know what the adcomm focuses the most in the MBA essays- The good writing style, the touching stories, or the logical reasoning behind. Does it need to be concise or detailed with strong supporting?

Answered by MBA Studio
What does adcom focus on the most — good writing style, the touching stories, or the logical reasoning behind – actually none of these three specifically. Style is important, but just so you can be clear enough. Touching stories bring your argument to life. Logical reasoning helps to build your argument. The most important thing is the argument – why you are an excellent candidate, what you contribute, why you fit with the school and the program. Everything follows from that.

Question asked by Graeme Lockwood
Hi, I am now writing my essays for London Business School MBA. there are 2 questions I am not sure how to tackle . What well known historical event would you have liked to have been involved in and why? (500 words) First, I don’t know what the adcom tries to know from this essay and I am not sure what kind of events I can talk about. Also, I think that expressing some opinions may be risky. On the basis of your experience of working in and leading teams (either in your professional or personal life), please reflect on how you plan to contribute to your study group and the wider school community. (500 words) In this question, I want to be sure of the kind of contributions that can be made to the school community.

Answered by MBA Studio
I’ll take these one by one. First, “What well known historical event would you have liked to have been involved in and why?” This is one of the classic types of question (The question “archetypes” — as I’ve defined in my book) This question wants to get to know more about you as a person — what’s important to you, and why. The trick is to pick something that is in itself valid and significant, but also allows you to make one of your theme points.

MBA Studio Says:
As to the second part of the question: they are asking you plain as daylight “plan to contribute to your study group and the wider school community” Tell them. Never mind what you think they want you to contribute. As long as it’s a valid contribution and you can credibly make it, they want it. What they want is diversity of contributions, not one thing.

Question asked by shruti singh
How to write a good essay in MBA application

Answered by MBA Studio
Wow, you’ll have to focus this a bit for me I have written a whole book on this … which part of the essay process would you like me to address?

Question asked by Alexander Sorge
HI Avi, nice to meet you! I´m new here! I found this TOP MBA Forum very helpful and would like to join Forum members. The problem is that I´m a Spanish native speaker interested in Chinese Culture.. to request the scholarship from Taiwan requires an appealing essay, writing an essay is a very hard-job!. what shall I probably write that possible works to get the Taiwan scholarship. Or what should never mention when writing an essay.

Answered by MBA Studio
Hi Alexander, again you’ll have to focus the question, or tell me more about yourself. Try to figure out what type of candidate gets the scholarship and emphasize your overlap with that kind of candidate.
What never to mention in an essay …? Never apologise, never denigrate yourself. If you’ve messed up at something, say so. Say what you learned, and move on to the positive

Question asked by Verma Vertika
Dear Avi, As an international student and a person who is not good at writing, I want to know whether it is a big problem. Now facing the essay topics, I think I have some good ideas. But to convey them effectively and beautifully is not my strong point. Compared to some essays I have read, I feel very worried and ashamed with my writing. What should I do now? I want to give an example of what I mean here: When telling about getting out of shyness, someone who is good at writing may write “I no longer wanted to hide under the shell of a lethargic tortoise, or act as a pariah”, a sentence which seems impossible to come to my mind!

Answered by MBA Studio
Schools “get it” that applicants come with different English writing levels. It’s business school, not literature school. So all you have to do is be clear. You don’t have to have beautiful prose, or literary allusions to tortoises etc. Having said that, clarity is very very hard, as you can see by all the turgid writing all around. What I do when I help candidates with their essays and application strategy, is I help them clarify their ideas. Why are they a valuable candidate? Why does what they bring fit with the school? What are their career goals and why do they need an MBA to fulfil them? If you have a clear mind you writing will be good (or good enough.)

Question asked by Verma Vertika
Sorry Avi, let me ask one more question. Some colleges ask us to write extra essays. One of the most common topics is why we choose it (a college). We are international students, although we have try to find as much information about the college as possible, we don’t have any chance to visit the college or see things in real life. That is the reason this kind of essay is difficult. We can’t tell with all our heart! How could we make our essay effective?

Answered by MBA Studio
No problem Verma, ask away. In this question, are you asking me about the extra essay “If you want the committee to know anything and you have not had a chance to say it, say it here” … or by college do you mean the business school? They do want to know what you know what you know about their school because, for them, it’s about the FIT between you and them. If you don’t know what they are about, you can’t explain the fit. You don’t need to visit the school (it does help) but if you can’t do your best to speak to people who are there, or from there. One great way is to phone or email current students — expecially the heads of clubs and societies you are interesed in– and ask them any/all questions you like.

Question asked by DongDong Cui
Hello Avi, I am done with tests (GRE and TOEFL) and now the final thing I need to prepare is a dreaded admission essay (I need to write two, in fact) I am applying to M.Sc. program in Business Administration (Management Information Systems) and one of the questions for the essay is as follows: Describe two events in your life to date that demonstrate your ability to do well in business. I am puzzled by the word “event” in this question. I am really not sure what to write about because I can’t think of any single event to demonstrate my business abilities. I participated in several important projects and advanced quickly from one position to another at my last job but I can not call it “an event” as it was prolonged in time. Maybe you could help me to think of an idea of event that could demonstrate someone’s ability to do well in business. Something fictions is fine, I just need to understand what kind of event it could be. Many thanks for you advice

Answered by MBA Studio
Ha ha I like it “dreaded admissions essay”! And I do them for a living (btw, I don’t write anyone’s essay for them) Anyway: Them asking for “events” is a way of focusing you on a story. Even if the demonstration of your business ability came as a part of a long process, there was probably some moment, some interaction, some turning point the brings the process to life and shows you off well. That’s your event. Giving that doesn’t mean you can’t also decribe the whole prolonged time as well. In terms of selecting your event, you’ll have to tell me more about you — either here or offline. I’m at avi.gordon@mbastudio.net

Question asked by Nikolas Pearson
Hello Avi! I have been asked to write an essay on post MBA career goals. I am not clear on how specific I should get. Also since I am interested in finance, should I talk only about finance about the MBA experience as well?

Answered by MBA Studio
Hi Nikolas, be as specific as possible. Details are the golden highway to admission. (Most people give generalities, and therefore they all sound like each other.) If you give details you will sound like a guy who knows what he is about, and where he’s going. That’s the kind of person who gets in.
I’m not sure I understand the second part of you question — can you reframe it? One more point on goals: make them big and ambitious. If you have small life and career goals you don’t need an MBA.

Question asked by samuel li
Hi! As a part of a business school essay I have been asked to evaluate a situation and communicate my decision. I wanted to know if business schools expect the case study format i.e analysis, alternatives and then recommendations or if there is some other way of structuring it. Secondly in my case the decision can be either yes or no. So the only way make my case stronger would be to give support to my decision? Have I understood it correctly? Can you tell me where I could find sample studies? I’m interested in knowing how better I could structure my essay. Thanks a lot!

Answered by MBA Studio
Hi Samuel, Which school is this for? Generally, schools don’t want you to follow formula — and it won’t help you to do it, or to seek out samples that “do it right”. They want to see how you think, and evidence of your intelligence, education, and training. You format – analysis, alternatives, reco’s sound right, or right enough. The content will be more important than the form on this one. ps when you get to interviewing, if you interview with big consulting firms, they will have cases that need to be tackled in a highly codified way. But not for admissions

Question asked by william Lee
hi Avi, I have to write a cover letter for my application stating highlights of my objectives and qualifications for admission. Could you help with links or suggestions, Thanks in advance!

Answered by MBA Studio
Hi William, Is this MIT? A cover letter is a test to see if you can extract the salient points. (Senior managers need to be able to do this — executive summaries, etc.) It forces a clarity on you — you have to be able to reduce your argument for admission into a few paragraphs. That means you have to really understand what your argument is! Again clarity is the key. The scaffolding is “These are the three reasons I should be admitted to MIT … 1; 2; 3″ Then take away the scaffolding.

Question asked by Sana Tajammul
I have this question to fill out in an application for MBA at the university of Amsterdam? Now could you please provide a few hints on how I can assess self critically? Do I have to mention negative ideas in order to stress positive ones? or should I only list positive ideas? well I hope you can help me!

Answered by MBA Studio
Sana, what’s the question for Amsterdam? Generally, don’t put negative points unless they ask for them. If you mention negative things / characteristics, also say how you intend to fix them, or how B-school will help you fix them.

Question asked by Nazli Unsur
Hi Avi! I was reading up articles on the web about writing a personal statement and some of the websites suggest writing the SOP in third person while others say that its better to write it in first person so that the SOP doesn’t look too wordy….What would you suggest????? As this is one thing which can sometimes make or break my application I just want it to be THE BEST!! Thanks in advance.

Answered by MBA Studio
Nazli, You are right that the essays make or break the application: Why is that? Because there are always too many people with great scores, great work exp., and great refs. Essays are the tie-breaker between top applicants. As to the Statement of Purpose: always always always in the 1st person. You must be personal. Try to come across as if this is a “fireside” chat with the head of the admissions committee. You get 15 minutes to tell her why you should be admitted rather than the other excellent candidates who are also wanting in.

MBA Studio Says:
All right, I’ll take advantage of a break in the questions to try to summarize a few key points, valid for all competitive MBA applications.
1. You must have a clear “argument” as to why you are a worthy candidate and should be admitted.
2. Your argument will rest on a few key points or themes. While answering the questions you have to also clearly — over a number of essays — make your argument
3. Clarity is your friend. Don’t worry about being a literary buff. Just have an organized position and communicate it in an organized way.
4. Stories help you by bringing your theme points to life. Admissions readers are human — they read stories better than analysis.
5. Be personal. They want to get to know things about you that you can’t know from the Gmat, refs, transcripts etc. Essays must add value to what’s already in your file.

MBA Studio Says:
Okay, that’s the end of the hour — let’s wrap it up here. Thanks for participating. Any more questions. We’re at www.mbastudio.net

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