Category Archives: International MBA

International MBA, MBA Adcom, MBA Essays, MBA Interviews

Adcom members’ backgrounds and personalities – who are they really?

As an MBA applicant one of the things to get straight is who you are talking to, in general, when you write your essays. This doesn’t mean you should be looking to target or “game” your essays in a narrow sense. But getting your head around who is on the other end is a crucial part of your role in creating effective communication and therein getting admitted.

I was struck by this introduction to a Business Week interview with UCLA Anderson director of MBA admissions, Mae Jennifer Shores. [The full text of the interview is here: UCLA Anderson: Admissions Q&A – BusinessWeek.]

“The assistant dean and director of MBA Admissions at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, says she ended up an admissions officer the way most people do—unintentionally. She went to Russia to teach public policy, but was assigned to teach negotiations at a business school at the last minute. After two years, she wanted to continue her Eastern European stay and almost took a job teaching in Kazakhstan. Her graduate school loans, however, forced her back to the U.S. There, Shores’ international and business-school experience eventually led her into the admissions department at Anderson.”

Every admissions officer is different of course. But what they have in common is, well, it is unlikely that a person plans and studies for this career. Most come to it “sideways.” They typically have broad interests, are people-focused, and are good communicators. They have lived life in more than one industry and often more than one country. They are generally not business trained, although many have some background in HR or marketing.

This makes the MBA applicant essay writer’s job harder and easier. It’s easier to engage an interesting person. Almost anything topic you raise will be “valid” for them. But it’s harder if all your stories are highly technical, or closely work-oriented. If your life experience or perspective is limited, and so your ability to reflect deeply and persuasively on your life and career path is therefore also limited, you’re not going to fool the likes of Mae Jennifer Shores.

International MBA, MBA Admissions, MBA Interviews

Some great interview advice between the lines in “Harvard is my hump”

There’s a heartwarming story in today’s Philippine Star (philstar.com) by Gina Valerie Chua, who tells the story of her March HBS interview and April admission to Harvard. See the full story at this link.

Other than the feel good factor, for admissions purposes there are two takeaways. First is she beat out many apparently better candidates – as she puts it: “those NASA astronauts and genetic scientists who are dreaming of the exact same thing.” She says: “Only 900 applicants are admitted out of 10,000 from all over the world: investment bankers, UN diplomats, cancer-curing surgeons — and little old me somehow found my way through.”

I’m sure she is being modest about her own competitive profile, but the point remains. You don’t need to be a superstar. You just need to be competitive and apply well.

The second takeaway concerns reflections on the HBS interview.

Says Chua: “I remember my interview. They asked me why I insist on writing despite my career in investment banking, an anomaly in this world of perfectly drawn certainties. What I told them is the very reason you are reading this now: I wish to write about possibility. Whether we are meant to find it at home or some 9,000 miles away, there is a world waiting for us, waiting for our courage and our lack of self-restriction. We cannot help but be creators — of books, skyscrapers, wars or dynasties — and the best of who we are can only be found in the hope they leave behind.”

Idealistic waffle wouldn’t you say? Puke? Well, that’s the point. For better or worse most Adcoms like idealism. Harvard perhaps more than most. They don’t want naivete, but they do like world-changing visions. If you are not something of a dreamer at 25, you’ll never be, and they are not looking to put the HBS brand on (more) money-grabbing cynics.

And, reassuringly, they don’t penalize anomalies, nor seek a world of perfect certainties. Be yourself.