This book has outlined a method for creating a competitive business school application involving a series of steps in four phases. Section One develops a picture of what the admissions committees at top business school programs are looking for, and their basis for selecting candidates. This gives an idea of the culture of business schools themselves, how they work, what they are committed to providing to the school in the incoming class pool, and there- fore the many considerations they have in admitting or rejecting applicants.
Business schools want to (a) pick the candidates most likely to be successful at school and in the future, and (b) create diversity and peer learning opportunities among the class itself. To get in you need to hit both of these notes.
The next phase, covered in Section Two, gives candidates a way to critic- ally understand the value in their own profile, and identify and extract the most important and persuasive parts – their key areas of competitive value – and consolidate them into clear application themes. Adequate, honest per- sonal diagnostics and profiling is the difference between a generic applicant and an interesting one. The bottom line for the admissions committee is to feel they have ‘met’ and like the candidate, and they can only feel that if the candidate knows him or herself well enough to present candidly. You must do the work to find what’s relevant, meaningful, different and memorable in your story, and frame this value within a profile message that is resonant with Adcom’s needs.
Once you have a differential value profile, a clear strategic positioning and a compelling message, the lessons of Section Three are how to communicate this in the essays and interviews. Knowing the best way to advance your value package via the essay questions posed – what to say and which essay to say it in – requires a close understanding of the essay questions and what they are really asking you for. There are, in fact, only a limited set of question ‘archetypes’ and recognizing these is the key to understanding how to divide up a profile between them.
The fourth and final phase involves the nitty-gritty of actually writing the essays in a way that advances your prospects. The clearer your story is to you, the better you will write it. But many applicants have a well-worked valuable story and are still not able to tell it in a way that attracts and holds the reader (and inside the tight word allotment). This requires the techniques of essay structuring, brevity and writing craft outlined in Section Four.
The following is a summary of the most important keys to a good applica- tion. If you do nothing else, focus on these twelve things:
1. Show self-knowledge. The Greek Oracle at Delphi said ‘know thyself’
and this is the golden key to admissions. If you know who you are and where you’re going, and why it requires an MBA, you’re more than halfway to getting in. The profiling tool in this book is a quick and effective way to achieve this basic self-knowledge. If you don’t clearly understand your strengths, weaknesses, achievements, preferences, goals and motivations, you’ll end up looking and sounding like a generic candidate. Ding.
2. Show past success. In an ideal world, business schools would have the time to fully investigate the merits of each candidate who applies. In reality, they can’t do this: they have to rely on your past successes and past people who testify to your successes (the referees) as a shorthand indicator of your future success.
3. Show leadership experience and aptitude. Leadership is the ability to motivate and coordinate the efforts of others towards a common goal.
It is the key management skill and the key to management success.
Wherever you have done this successfully so far in your life, the admissions committee should know about it.
4. Prove it with evidence. You think you’re great, and you surely are. But your opinion is self-serving at best. What counts is the evidence.
Any positive opinion of yourself you offer must be immediately backed with evidence. The strongest evidence is concrete: promotions, awards, etc. But stories and anecdotes will do the trick too.
5. Position yourself away from the competitive categories. Business schools have oversubscribed and undersubscribed categories. Bankers and management consultants will be common. Tibetan monks and ballet dancers will be under-represented. But even if you’re not radically dif- ferent, look for ways to emphasize the differences in your profile and so exit from the herd.
6. Have clear, interesting, ambitious future goals. Nothing turns Adcom off like a candidate who wants to become a consultant or doesn’t know what he wants. They don’t like to think you will waste their precious education. They want you to make a difference in the world in some unique and relevant (to you) way. Reassure them that you will do so by telling them exactly what this will be. Don’t say too little. Seize the opportunity the essays present. If you give more than a muttered safety-first statement, you’ll get more back. The reader can only get out what you put in.
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7. Focus on telling your story and don’t try to give them ‘what they want to hear’. Candidates invariably get bent out of shape by trying to second-guess ‘what Stanford needs’ or ‘what’s hot at Kellogg’, etc., and often neglect to say who they really are and where their own strengths lie. In fact, all schools are looking for a mix of strong candi- dates of all types and backgrounds (to achieve class balance). There- fore, their requirements are so similar as to be identical for all practical purposes. If you get your profile right, you can get in anywhere.
8. Don’t praise the school. They are fully aware of their value and their charms. What they want to know is why you are valuable and how you will add value to them. Keep your comments about the school at the level of showing the fit between you and them – how the program will contribute to you and how you will contribute to it.
9. Don’t try to be too competent. Successful is good. Perfect is highly dubi- ous. Particularly in your twenties, with just a few years of life and work experience behind you, you cannot have fully ‘arrived’ yet in any sense. If you are too good, not only is it suspicious, but you leave them no role to add to your skills and build your profile.
10. Be personal. Give Adcom real insight into your character, passion, per- sonality and self-understanding. Don’t think you can escape with the standard platitudes, keeping a cool, distant reserve. You won’t fool anyone.
11. Be unique. How do you know if your statement of purpose is not unique? Easy: if what you say could be said by the next applicant or the one after that, it’s generic. If what you say could only have been said by you, it’s unique.
12. Be likeable. MBA applicants often walk around with the myth that they have to be industry tycoons-in-training to get into a good busi- ness school. Not so. A pleasant attitude and open, fair-minded, reflect- ive values will take you much further. People always choose people they like as colleagues and co-workers and Adcom is no different.
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