-As a leader in global business, Wharton is committed to sustaining “a truly global presence through its engagement in the world.” What goals are you committed to and why? How do you envision the Wharton MBA contributing to the attainment of those goals? (750–1,000 words)

- What are you most passionate about? Why? (250 word maximum, Haas)

Applicants find questions like these challenging because they necessitate intellectual and emotional honesty and authenticity. Most of us are rarely afforded an opportunity to reflect like this in our day-to-day careers, particularly in the early stages. To start, it is helpful to demystify ‘the admissions essay’ and what the best admissions essays really look like.

In the broadest sense, an admissions essay is a not just a meditation on your past, it is a forward-thinking advertisement. You must consider your audience—strategically aligning your strengths with a program’s culture and offerings—and also introduce a point of view that is different from the rest. What exactly constitutes “the rest?” The range of response styles from MBA applicants can be broken down into the following major buckets:

1) Applicants who fail to fully target the full prompt, e.g. adequately address the ‘why’ component, balance a situation, action and result, or focus their content (the majority)

2) Applicants who effectively target the questions, but do nothing more; their essays read like resumes in narrative form (the majority)

3) Applicants who not only fully target the prompt and cover all its dimensions, but who also use the space to humanize themselves and enrich their full application package (the rare minority)

The best admissions essays that we read each year—and the types of essays we partner with our clients to compose—share a number of commonalities: they target the prompt, but also expand upon it; they create a compelling story; they toy with new structural frameworks; they demonstrate thoughtful self-reflection and meaningful connectivity between life events; they feel undeniably authentic and the ‘voice’ is unique to the author.

However, most MBA applicants, regardless of their background or industry, have a tough time speaking about their careers with a sense of unbridled passion and inspiring conviction. However, this is the kind of energy responsible for driving the most successful careers, it is the kind of energy that admissions committees want in their programs, and the fact is, most applicants must actually ‘fake it until they make it.’ Consider the following from an MBA applicant:

“1. What are you most passionate about? Why? (250 word maximum)

I am most passionate about corporate responsibility and social justice, and exploring how businesses can profitably advance human rights. My mother fled Cambodia in 1976, leaving dozens of family members behind. As an undergraduate at the University of Texas, I learned about the brutal 1994 genocide in Rwanda and was shocked that despite the historical lessons we have learned as a society, another genocide had occurred in my lifetime. Shortly thereafter, I joined a group of students working to raise awareness about the ongoing conflict in Iraq.”

This candidate might be the envy of an applicant with a more black-or-white, less socially-driven career path; however, even the applicant with a social cause fails to connect here. With this opening paragraph, we suggested that the applicant truly target the prompt. The prompt says it all here, and we encourage all applicants to convey passion from the onset of the essay. We might ask: what are the real details of your family history? How can the transition from a family history linked to Rwanda to Iraq be strengthened and substantiated? In addition to conveying a sense of passion—you must also demonstrate a real sense of purpose. How can you show that a personal history cemented values which translated into action? What new ideas do you have to introduce to the corporate responsibility model—what companies do you think really make it work?

With any form of writing, in the admissions, academic or business context, the ability to ask the toughest questions delineates between “good” and “exceptional” prose. Ultimately, assuming that a person has a story to tell—anyone can translate that story into an exceptional essay. With our clients, we work within their individual capabilities as writers to harvest the details that bring life and energy to an essay. Asking pointed questions is a fundamental part of that process.

To summarize, think about the following best practices when crafting your MBA admissions essays:

-Before you start the writing process, think about all that you have to tell. Start with a stream-of-consciousness listing of major life events (personal and professional), accomplishments, and shifts in thinking.

-Consider your essay (and application) package holistically—do your essays and resume convey a complete, consistent brand?

-Don’t let prompts dictate structure. Though this is not your college essay, exercise some creativity and narrative elan.

-Get a second opinion from a person that knows you, and a person that doesn’t. Does your essay ask the toughest questions? Does it connect the dots between experiences, and dig deep?

- The very architecture of your thinking and your ability to form an argument must be worthy of an
MBA community and education. Push yourself to go even further with connecting the dots and anchoring your goals to your story. Become the expert. Find a role model, read business literature—and make sure that your goals are informed by a convincing business acumen or instinct.

Lastly, remember that MBA admissions writing demands a certain degree of strategy, but not rigidity. Ultimately, while there are certain pitfalls to avoid, as with all types of writing, there are no strict formulae that dictate success or guarantee a compelling narrative. So, dare to break the mold—tell your own story—and tell it well.

Sincerely,

Janson Woodlee

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

*Visit us today for a free assessment of your admissions essay, resume, cover letter and more*

Here is a list of do’s and don’ts to keep in mind as you begin to write:

The Do’s:

• Communicate that you are a proactive, can-do sort of person. Business schools want leaders, not applicants content with following the herd.
• Put yourself on ego-alert. Stress what makes you unique, not what makes you number one.
• Communicate specific reasons why you’re a “fit” for a school. Simply stating “I am the ideal candidate for your program” won’t convince the admission committee to push you into the admit pile.
• Bring passion to your writing. Admissions officers want to know what excites you. And if you’ll bring a similar enthusiasm to the classroom.
• Break the mold. Challenge perceptions with unexpected essays that say, “There’s more to me than you think.”
• If you’ve taken an unorthodox path to b-school, play it up. Admissions officers appreciate risk-takers.
• Talk about your gender, ethnicity, minority status or foreign background—but only if it has affected your outlook or experiences.
• Fill your essays with plenty of real-life examples. These will support your thesis and bring your story to life.
• Demonstrate a sense of humor or vulnerability. You’re a real person, and it’s okay to show it!

And the Don’ts:

• Write about your high school glory days. Admissions committees don’t care if you were editor of the yearbook or captain of the varsity team. They expect their candidates to have moved onto more current, professional achievements.
• Submit essays that don’t answer the questions. An off-topic essay, or one that merely restates your resume, will frustrate and bore the admissions committee. More importantly, it won’t lead to any new insight about you.
• Fill essays with industry jargon. Construct your essays with only enough detail about your job to frame your story and make your point.
• Reveal half-baked reasons for wanting the MBA. Admissions officers favor applicants who have well-defined goals. However unsure you are about your future, it’s critical that you demonstrate that you have a plan.
• Exceed the recommended word limits. This suggests you don’t know how to follow directions, operate within constraints or organize your thoughts.
• Submit an application full of typos and grammatical errors. A sloppy application suggests a sloppy attitude.
• Send one school an essay intended for another—or forget to change the school name when using the same essay for several applications. Admissions committees are (understandably) insulted when they see another school’s name or forms.
• Make excuses. If your undergraduate experience was one long party, be honest. Discuss how you’ve matured, both personally and professionally.
• Be impersonal in the personal statement. Many applicants avoid the personal like the plague. Instead of talking about how putting themselves through school lowered their GPA, they talk about the rising cost of tuition in America. Admissions officers want to know about YOU.
• Make too many generalizations. An essay full of generalizations is a giveaway that you don’t have anything to say
• Write in a vacuum. Make sure that each of your essays reinforce and build on the others. Think of each statement as one note in a song.

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Be sure to listen to the MBA Podcaster shows all about Business School Essays:

MBA Application Essays and Recommendations: Where to Begin? http://www.mbapodcaster.com/MBA_MoreInfo/MBA-Application-Essays.asp?iEpisode=5

Your Application Essays: Strategic Recommendations for Writing Your Admission Essay http://www.mbapodcaster.com/MBA_MoreInfo/EssayStrategicRec.asp?iEpisode=23

Creating the Killer MBA Application: A Step by Step Guide to Creating the Best Application http://www.mbapodcaster.com/MBA_MoreInfo/Killer_Application.asp?iEpisode=48

The finishing touches on your application: How to make the most of your application in the short time left http://www.mbapodcaster.com/MBA_MoreInfo/finishingtouches.asp?iEpisode=29

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Part of the holy grail of a good application to business school is to show why the particular nature of the b-school you are applying to fits with you and what you want out of your MBA. That is, each program has a slightly different ’signature’ in terms of curriculum, type of students, faculty interest, clubs and extramurals, internship-recruitment opportunities, alumni network and so on, and the task is to show that you understand what that signature is and why it fits with you.

You won’t get a lot of help from looking at the glossy brochure or the school’s glamour Website. That won’t make you enough of an ‘insider.’ The only way to know enough about a program is to get inside it for a while — by interacting with people who are there, or visiting the campus and talking to people who are there.

Social media networking forums have created new options for doing this. You can connect with or ‘follow’ current students or clubs via their blogs or tweets, or their identities Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. If there is a Stanford club entertaining Steve Jobs, it will be on someone’s blog. If Wharton students are on a trek, someone will have uploaded video to YouTube, and so on. Following this assiduously and interacting (politely) where appropriate will give you a window into the nature and culture of the program you are targeting in a way that just was impossible to imagine a few years ago. Beware, quality is mixed to say the least. You will get many perspectives from parties with vested interests that are not aligned with yours. Use them wisely. But overall this is the way to go.

Some admissions officers blog too, and currently Adcoms in general are rapidly revamping their own marketing (seeking to find and attract great applicants) to include social media. More and more authentic and useful insight in each school from the school itself is being offered in this way. See, for example, Chicago Booth Adcom director Rose Martinelli’s very personable blog, The Rose Report. You can follow, interact, and absorb the school’s culture in this way. (Again, be appropriate. Don’t, for example, use a blog comment facility to ask about your own personal application…)

But the downside of social media is this: If you can find and know them in this way, they can find you. Be careful about what you say online and what you have said. I’m not saying that Adcoms “google” an applicant or routinely look them up on identity sites to find out more about them or corroborate what they put down on the forms. They probably don’t. But they very well might.

Expect Adcom to treat you in some ways like a potential employee or client. It’s well known that these days prospective employers or prospective clients, or anyone who wants to look you up on the Web, can and will do so. And when they do they may find that beery and not-altogether-clean bachelor party photo on MySpace. Or they may find a Doostang profile that doesn’t adequately match what you’ve told them. And it’s quite hard, once something is out there on the Web, to take it back.

So be smart about it. Use social networking to get inside a program to research and develop your ‘fit’ argument. Be scrupulous about what is out there under your name, make it consistent with your application platform, and try to take down unprofessional material where you can.

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Thanks to The MBA Admissions Studio for this article. MBA Studio is offering a FREE review of any 500-word MBA Admissions essay as trial of service, or a free spot assessment of an MBA applicant’s strengths, weaknesses, and admissions prospects to all MBA Podcaster listeners. Email contact@mbastudio.net for more info

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In my book ‘MBA Admissions Strategy’ I offer the following advice: ‘Proofread to show your hunger’ (that is, hunger for admission, a real desire to be selected.) Typographic or other careless errors in your text immediately clues Adcom in as to how (un)careful you were with your text, and this tells them not only how organized and detail-oriented you are — whether you are a ‘finisher’ — but also how much you actually really care about your application to their particular school.

In this sense MBA admissions works just like a resume you send out for a job. If there’s one error in it, eyebrows will be raised. Two errors and you may as well not have sent it.

The longstanding ‘pet peeve’ across all schools is that the wrong school name often appears in the text. That is, Stanford GSB Adcom gets essays that say: “I would contribute to my peer learning environment at Wharton by …” Ouch.

Famously, the spellchecker will help you a bit, but is not foolproof. It will happily let you say your first mentor was your high school principle. It will not replace Booth with Tuck. Nor does it know that Haas is a business school, but Hass is an avocado.

The tricky thing is that you, the essay-writing applicant, can’t proofread your own work. Obvious errors will go undetected because you will be focused (rightly) on content and value delivery. The MBA Admissions Studio, where I provide elite business school admissions consulting, does not offer this service either – for the very same reason. Proofreading should be done by someone who is seeing the essays for the first time, and who is tasked with looking for errors (not reading for content or value assessment.)

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Thanks to The MBA Admissions Studio for this article. MBA Studio is offering a FREE review of any 500-word MBA Admissions essay as trial of service, or a free spot assessment of an MBA applicant’s strengths, weaknesses, and admissions prospects to all MBA Podcaster listeners. Email contact@mbastudio.net for more info

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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. And note his 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. 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.

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Thanks to The MBA Admissions Studio for this article. MBA Studio is offering a FREE review of any 500-word MBA Admissions essay as trial of service, or a free spot assessment of an MBA applicant’s strengths, weaknesses, and admissions prospects to all MBA Podcaster listeners. Email contact@mbastudio.net for more info

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What can applicants do to avoid the avoidable mistakes, and not only submit an error-free application, but the best application possible? Read on.

Rose Martinelli, Associate Dean for Student Recruitment and Admissions at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, said application errors tend to fall into two categories: obvious and strategic.

The obvious errors are, well, obvious: Missing deadlines. Not following instructions. Failing to use spell- and grammar-check. Getting the name of the school wrong. Not answering the essay questions. Writing what you think the committee wants to hear, rather than providing the information the committee has asked you to provide.

Applicants can steer away from obvious errors with obvious solutions: proofread carefully, checking for “find-and-replace” mistakes. Figure out what the questions are asking, and answer them. Get someone you trust to read your essays, or better yet, hire an editor. Allow enough time to complete the package.

“We see so many applications, they all start sounding alike,” said Kellee Scott, Senior Associate Director of MBA Admissions at USC’s Marshall School of Business. “We’re looking for the uniqueness, the qualities and experience that set an applicant apart from the rest of the pool.”

Having the qualities and experience that set you apart isn’t enough – an applicant has to be able to use the format of the application to show your stuff to the committee. As Linda Abraham, Founder of admissions consultancy Accepted.com puts it, “You can be the right candidate, but if you fail to show it, you still won’t get in.”

The University of Chicago Booth’s Martinelli said the second group of application mistakes is much more important to avoid but much tougher to prepare for if you are short of time. These are what she calls “strategic mistakes”.

 “The first leading indicator of a strategic mistake is trying to write one-size-fits-all essays for all the schools you’re applying to,” Martinelli said. “Believe it or not, a vast majority of applicants do this.”

The admissions directors we talked to agreed this technique is not only easy to spot, but backfires pretty quickly. Why? For one thing, each school provides a very different experience, from curriculum, to program and class sizes, to style of learning, to the types of candidates they look for. An application that fits one school won’t necessarily work for another.

“You have to understand why you want to go to the schools that you’ve chosen, and be able to demonstrate that in your application as well. It’s critical,” said Liz Riley Hargrove, Associate Dean for Admissions at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business.

Linda Abraham of Accepted.com agrees. “Unsucessful applicants fail to demonstrate fit,” she said.

How should an applicant go about “demonstrating fit” – showing that they are the right applicant for that school and program?

The first step, according to our admissions directors and consultants, is self-assessment. You have to know who you are, what your career goal is, and how an MBA can help you achieve that goal.

“The applicants who aren’t successful in our process aren’t able to show how an MBA can help them,” said Liz Riley Hargrove of the Fuqua School of Business. “We can tell by looking at the application if they really aren’t ready to take this on.”

The second step is to demonstrating fit is researching the MBA programs you’re applying to, using every tool available. In order to demonstrate fit, you need to make sure you are the right fit for the school. The only way to find that out is to first gain as much knowledge as possible about what each school offers in terms of curriculum, program, class size, and culture. Of course, you’ll do all the online research you can, and obtain any written materials available, but admissions directors agree, you have to do more than that.

Campus visits are crucial, whenever possible.

“Unsuccessful candidates don’t tend to visit the campus at all, or they visit too late in the process to really help them in their application,” said Kellee Scott of USC’s Marshall School of Business.

Using the schools’ alumni networks is also an essential part of researching schools, Scott said. “Anyone can go online and start asking questions of students,” she said.

Rose Martinelli of Chicago’s Booth School of Business said there are also plenty of opportunities to meet with alumni in person to find out what the school would be like. Most programs have alumni chapters across the country, and there are also lectures and other events applicants can attend to get a sense of the school.

“Understanding what your needs are, and drawing those to the resources and the fit of the institution is incredibly important,” Martinelli said. “It’s also the thing most often missed by the majority of applicants. Demonstrating fit, she said, is “what separates a great applicant from what I would call a good applicant.”

Once an applicant has determined which schools are truly the right fit, she needs to be able to use her application to show, not tell, the committee who she is, what she’s after, and how their school can help her get it.

“The applicants who do the best job really let their personality shine,” said Liz Riley Hargrove of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business.

“There’s a sense of authenticity in the applicant telling us who they are and where they come from that really resonates with me,” Hargrove said. 

The takeaway?

Liz Riley Hargrove of Fuqua: “Be who you are. You don’t have to be anyone else to be successful in the MBA application process.”

Kellee Scott: “Don’t make assumptions about what you think we want to hear. Tell us who you are, and why you are unique to our applicant pool.”

Linda Abraham of Accepted.com: “Don’t tell me about your passion – show me. When there’s a sincerity that comes through, and details that reveal true and genuine passion, the contrast with a boilerplate essay is very stark.”

Rose Martinelli of Chicago’s Booth School of Business: “If you’ve got the guts, drive and passion to impact the world for positive change, it’s worth the effort. The application is just the beginning of the journey, but it’s an amazing journey.”

To listen to the full podcast show with the following guests click here:

What Not To Do On Your Application

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