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Support for MBA Podcaster comes from The MBA Admissions Studio and their founder, Avi Gordon's, book “MBA Admissions Strategy”. The book 'MBA Admissions Strategy' takes candidates step-by-step through the process of producing a successful MBA application, with emphasis on profile building and essay development. It outlines a proven system for applicants to identify the competitive value in their profile and construct a compelling application platform from this. The book analyzes the key essay questions applicants face and shows them how to fit their profile message to them: how to know what to write, which essay to write it in, and how to write it well. It's a must-read for all applying for an MBA at a competitive school.

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Welcome to MBA Podcaster—the only source for cutting-edge information and advice on the MBA application process. Your whole admissions package should give the admissions council a pretty good idea of who you are. Your undergraduate record and your GMAT scores give an impression of your academic skills. But the essays and recommendations, especially, are key to revealing the person behind the application. That means that your goal is to give the admissions committee the clearest picture of who you are. We’ll let you know how to do that by exploring what makes a good essay. We’ll also hear from admissions directors about common mistakes applicants make and who to approach to get an excellent letter of recommendation.

The essays are the one part of your application package that you can control in its entirety. GMAT scores and undergraduate grades are what they are. The essay question is where you have the ability to build the story you want to convey to the admissions committee, and the committee often reads your essays three or four times. Linda Meehan is Assistant Dean and Executive Director of Admissions at Columbia Business School. “The review process is a very thorough one here at Columbia. And the application is completely, thoroughly reviewed at least once where the entire application, including all the essays, are reviewed. There’s a second reader. The second reader, often times, will re-read some of the essays, particularly, if they have any questions regarding what the comments were on the essays that were read the first time. And then, it goes to a third reader which is me. And if there is something of note in one of the essays, I then, could read the essay. If I have a problem with the decision of the first two readers about what to do with the application, we would put that aside for a committee meeting.”

With several eyes on your essays, it’s fair to say that even the tiniest mistakes will be noticed. Linda Meehan says you’d be surprised at how many people don’t seem to proofread their essays, or they even neglect to use spell check. Careless mistakes can come at the cost of a bad impression. You can appear sloppy, hurried and unprepared. But Linda Meehan says watch out for these other careless mistakes she’s come across in the past. “There are people that ramble on and really just don’t know how to write. There are people that are long-winded. They think this is a very self-promoting kind of thing. They miss the question because they have an agenda. Other bad essays that I’ve seen are people who think they have a sense of humor and they think they’re funny. But when somebody is reading this, they’re not funny. That’s painful when that happens. I read an essay this past year that really wasn’t an essay. It was in a very unusual style. And the first essay seemed like: ‘Well, this was kind of clever.’ And by the time we finished reading all of the essays in there, nobody really enjoyed what they had done. So, being cute or being that different in your approach to writing an essay may not work for you.”

There are a couple of key points that a reader looks for in an essay. #2. They’re looking for information that gives them insight about you. And #1. Linda Meehan says it’s really very simple. “I think the first point is: Did they really answer the question? Some of the questions that each school asks are related. If you apply to Columbia or if you apply to Harvard or if you apply to wherever, there’s going to be at least one question that everybody’s going to ask in a different way. The rest of them, I think, do change. We may be looking for very similar things in the essays, but the questions are different. And a mistake that a lot of people make is that they try and use one answer to fit all. So, one of the things that makes a good essay is answering the question. And I know that sounds extremely obvious, but you’d be surprised.”

Linda Baldwin is Director of Admissions at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. She says she doesn’t think people read the question, and maybe that’s why applicants don’t answer the question. Baldwin suggests taking a wholistic approach to your essays. “Read all the questions in advance, so that you can have in mind how you would like to tell your story; how you would like to unfold your story in each of the questions, because questions are an avenue for telling your story. So, if you only take one question at a time and compose a response, you’re not giving yourself enough time to think about how you want to share your story through each of these vehicles. That’s one thing; the other is to realize that there are some limits in terms of how you should respond. So, you shouldn’t go on and on and on. You need to be concise and straight-forward in your thoughts. And I think the most important thing that is often times a mistake when writing an essay—not giving it enough thought. It’s one of those processes that is wonderful for you. It’s a learning process at the same time, and it should begin early on. As soon as you are able to access the question from any school, you should begin to think about them. Subconsciously think about them when you’re walking across campus. Or when you’re driving to work, think about those questions. And then, begin to compose responses and gather your thoughts. Timing is important—giving yourself enough time for these questions—because what we’re trying to get at is who you are. And if you’re doing them the night before, we’re definitely not tapping in.”

Making careless mistakes won’t bump you out of the race, but first impressions are always lasting says Columbia’s Linda Meehan. “If about 80-85% of the applicants who apply to Columbia are 1) admissible and, 2) a great portion of those are people we would love to have here, but we don’t have enough room for; then there are lots of fabulous people who we don’t admit. That’s a true statement. Therefore, how do you decide who you take and who you don’t take? And one of those things was: Did they really turn you off in their application because they did something silly like that in writing their essays, or that they were arrogant or self-promoting to the point that it was distasteful? Those aren’t reasons to turn someone down; but they, actually, don’t make you endeared to the person, either.”

Knowing what not to do will, hopefully, give you a leg up in the essay-writing process. But now, let’s talk about writing. Paul Bodine is Senior Editor at Accepted.com, an admissions consulting essay editing service. He’s also written the book “Great Application Essays for Business School”. Bodine says your very first step is to think. “You want to begin developing a short kind of business marketing message or a handle that would key themes, strengths or experiences or interests that you want all of your essays to communicate. Ideally, you want a compact, multi-dimensional message that reflects uniqueness factors. And that could be from your professional life, personal life, community, school—things that make you distinctive to the admissions committee. And you can get that by talking to your friends or family. They can help you work out what those themes or stories might be. They can focus on anything from hobbies to living over seas to maybe your family background—maybe you had unusual obstacles growing up. You can even focus on traits, for example, if you have a good sense of humor. If you can aim for four or five of these themes to sort of unify all of your essays, then that’s probably a good place to start. And then, once you have those themes, you can actually really start to get into the stories that are going to illustrate them.”

All business schools want to see qualities like leadership and team work, but Paul Bodine says some schools are notorious for evaluating certain types of themes over others. And he says it would be to your advantage to tailor your essays to each school you’re applying. For example, if you’re applying to Harvard Business School, you want to be really projecting leadership stories across the board. Other schools like Kellogg or Duke are kind of known for their community or team work focus, and there are several other schools like that. So you, obviously, want to be telling stories that are showing you as someone who gets along well with others and that kind of thing. But, actually, I think the best way to kind of customize your essays to a school is really make a strong taste that the school has the resources you need to prepare yourself for your MBA goals. And by that, I mean you actually refer to resources at the school that are directly relevant to your goals. I’m talking about learning tracks or maybe professors of certain courses, or a business plan competition; because there, you really are referring to certain specifics at the school. You’re not just talking about general terms like leadership. You’re actually customizing your entire application to that school.”

Columbia Business School’s Linda Meehan says be careful when writing with a particular theme in mind. All business schools are really looking for the same skills. “These programs were designed to build the future leaders of tomorrow. That’s part of the mission statement at Columbia Business School. So we’re looking for the same thing; we just don’t necessarily market that out front, because it’s a given. If you take a look at our alumni, and who they are, and the leadership positions that they’re in; you’ve got to be aware that that is what we’ve been doing all these years—looking for the leadership potential among an applicant pool. In terms of team work, all of our programs—including Columbia—are built on team work. They’re all put into clusters. We want to foster that kind of an environment in a business school. When people are giving hints that this school wants that and that school wants this and so forth and so on, we’re all looking for the same things. There isn’t a magic thing that one includes in an essay because you’re applying to one school or the other. We’re all looking for the same thing. We’re all, virtually, admitting the same people. There are exceptions to that, of course, because it’s a matter of numbers.”

Applicants from all walks of life decide to turn to business school. And Paul Bodine says though the majority are those with banking and consulting backgrounds, he sees doctors, professional athletes, scholars, people in religious fields, those that were in the military—just to name a few—all wanting to get an MBA. And Bodine says if you have an unusual background, you can use it to your advantage. “I actually think people who come from unusual professional backgrounds are actually at an advantage. This is, basically, because schools are looking for an interesting learning environment. They don’t want people who are just from one field. And I think that the way to focus on bringing that out is to devote maybe some space in the application to educating the committee about your company or your industry, if it really is unusual, so there can be some sort of creating of context in the essay. Actually, another advantage of coming from a small firm or from an unknown firm is you probably got more cross-functional exposure or more leadership roles. And that, actually, makes you stronger to the committee. But I think once you get over the hurdle of making the committee understand what your background is, what the company does—making it real—then it’s basically a plus.”

Linda Meehan says Columbia is one school that really likes to see an assorted student body. “If you know about Columbia at all, you know it’s a school that thrives on the heterogeneity of its applicant pool. And heterogeneity is a word that we use at Columbia. We don’t really use the word diversity an awful lot because diversity, we think, refers to ethnicity. Heterogeneity has to do with your background. It has to do with ethnicity. It has to do with gender. It has to do with the kinds of things that make you interesting. So, the idea that everybody who applies here and who gets in here is going to be a banker or a consultant; it’s not what we’re looking for. We’re not looking for everyone to be like everyone else. How should they do that in their essay? They will do that by talking about their experience, and talking about their passions and what they do, or why that has influenced them to help go in to the direction that they want to go in to when they get out business school.”

Optional essays are there for you to provide some new information. You could address some extenuating circumstances, bad grades, a low GMAT score or some extraordinary experience you want to share. Paul Bodine says take advantage of the optional essays. Remember to write about something that’ll give value and provide another perspective to your application. Turn negatives into positives. And he says when addressing bad grades, “Some good reasons for bad grades would be real extenuating circumstances like a family emergency or a health problem or something like that. Definitely, you would want to be mentioning those. Things like: ‘I partied my freshman year,’ you can approach as sort of a maturity story. ‘I didn’t have focus or maturity when I started out. But look, I got it! In my second and third year, my GPA started going up.’ So then, it becomes sort of a positive story. I think that’s the key with these essays about these potentially negative topics. You turn it into something positive as much as possible. Get through the negative part as factually and as briefly as you can, and focus on the positive. For example, someone with a low quantitative GMAT score could write a few paragraphs about how they’re actually very strong in quantitative skills through their work. They do a lot of quantitative work.”

Anderson School’s Linda Baldwin says remember optional essays are there for a reason. It’s there to illuminate something that the readers may not have caught in any other part of the application. “They should use the optional essays as a vehicle to tell us something unique—not redundant—but unique and important to our decision-making process. So, if there is a gap in terms of employment, for example, a candidate might use optional four to explain what they did during that gap. Or if there is, perhaps, a unique series of events that lead to an academic semester being lower than others, then they would use that option to, perhaps, explain what occurred. Or, on the positive side, a person may have done great at work and used their leadership example on a work situation, but had done tremendous things in terms of extracurricular and felt compelled to, perhaps, share and highlight some of the things they had done in terms of extracurricular leadership. And that might be an appropriate place to highlight it.”

Letters of recommendations run alongside essays in their importance. Many applicants put all their effort in their essays and don’t try as hard to get that good recommendation. Paul Bodine says a general, unspecific letter is like the kiss of death. “There’s a tendency for applicants to think that a prestige title will make some difference to the admissions committee, and I just don’t think that that’s ever a good idea. The admissions committee might be impressed that you’re well-connected enough to get the CEO to write a letter of recommendation, but if that CEO doesn’t really have anything personal or specific to say about you because she doesn’t know you very well, then it doesn’t really help the committee evaluate your application. So you kind of failed, even though it might be kind of impressive at first glance. So really go for the person who knows you well and can talk really concretely about your experience.”

Anderson School’s Linda Baldwin says select someone you’ve cultivated a relationship with. It should be someone who knows the quality of your work. She says it’s a good idea to start thinking about all this early on—like right when you start working at a company. “We consider the recommendation process a sign of how you manage, because recommenders are people who you must manage in order to get the best one from. First of all, you need to identify people who know you well. And you also need to look at what a recommendation form looks like. What are the questions that are being asked on the recommendation form? There will be some people who cannot answer those questions. And every school is different. But our questions definitely would be targeted to the individuals who are supervisor, managers, and in some cases, if you’re entrepreneurial, a client or someone who looks at the financial aspects of your business. So, there are some instances where the recommendation is not from somebody who is a supervisor or manager. But that person would be the person who is best able to answer the series of questions. So, that’s the first thing. And then, make a short list of who you think would be appropriate people who you know who could answer these questions. And then, take time to put together a resume and set up a time where you might speak to the person either by phone or in person about writing a recommendation for you. Give them an idea of what the time lines are. Give them an idea about why it is that you’re pursuing an MBA. That should all be done, because it’s managing this relationship and managing this project. If you can’t manage it, then we know that there are some problems. There may be problems down the line in terms of your ability to do so. The biggest problem with recommendations is that, often times, individuals select people who can’t respond fully. How would you recommend that person get a recommendation then in that situation where they really feel like they don’t have anybody? Then that person has shown us that they don’t know how to manage relationships very well. Bottom line! The reality is that most people have to begin to think early in their careers. And it’s not just the salary. It is the mentorship, the training, the input and the feedback that is making them better over time. And that’s not just from their employer, but it’s also from the things that they’re involved in extracurricularly or in terms of community. So there are people who can write your recommendation who have a deep knowledge of who you are and what it is you have to offer. But it’s only because you have allowed them to know you, and to assist you, and to watch you grow. Now, if you’re throwing it all together, you will have a throw-together application. And that’s one of the down sides, and maybe that’s not the year you should apply. Maybe you should step back and give yourself another year to get it together.” Baldwin says view the essays and your letters of recommendation as part of a project. The project entails research, writing and maintaining relationships. “I don’t think it is as difficult as one might think. There are usually 3,000 or more students who apply. And I think that students complicate it by making it seem more difficult. It’s a fairly easy, straight-forward process. And the number of applicants is evident on that.”

For more information, advice and to register for your weekly MBA Podcast, visit mbapodcaster.com. This is MBA Podcaster. Thanks for listening and stay tuned next time when we discuss the top things you should be doing now to help you gain admittance next year.