99— EXECUTIVE SUMMARY —
Familiarize yourself with the topics you need to address.
Learn how to use the essays to market yourself effectively.
Avoid the numerous traps that are built into the essays.
One leading business school states, “While we believe that previous academic records and standardized test results are useful tools for (our) evaluation, we find several less quantifiable indicators to be of equal or greater importance. Please keep this in mind as you complete the questions…. Use these short essays to show us your personality, motivation, goals, leadership abilities, and communication skills.” (IESE, BARCELONA)
Essays offer you the chance to show schools who you really are. Take advantage of this opportunity. Recommenders can show only a part of who you are, since most of them are employers and have thus seen you in only one context, often for a limited time. Similarly, interviews are not under your control to the same extent as the essays, which can be rewritten and reexamined to make sure that the “best you” is presented.
Your essays can and should present a clear picture of you, but they do not need to tell all. Sketching in the main points with appropriate stories will show who you are. In fact, whenever possible, try to tell a story rather than write an essay. The task will seem lighter.
This is your chance to choose which parts of your past and yourself to highlight, and to determine how people should view them. This is a precious opportunity; take full advantage of the chance to color your readers’ interpretations.
This chapter analyzes the essay questions; the following chapter shows you how to write your responses. Sixty-seven examples of actual essays written by applicants are available in Part IV. The chart at the beginning of Part IV shows where to find specific examples, classified by the background of the applicant, the school applied to, and, of course, the specific question asked.
WHICH ESSAYS SHOULD YOU DO FIRST?
If you will do multiple applications, an important issue is which essay or set of essays should be your starting point. Do not write essays piecemeal—one essay from each of several schools’ applications. Instead, complete a full set of essays for one school before tackling another essay set for another school. This will allow you to:
Get your overall positioning strategy in place.
Think hard about what attributes and experiences you have to offer.
Make sure you are discussing the right stories (ones that illustrate your key points).
Balance the professional and personal elements you discuss (about 75/25 is a good rule of thumb for a typical applicant).
Start with whichever application requires you to write the most, but try to avoid ones that force you to write either very lengthy or very short answers to each question because you will develop habits that will be hard to break when writing essays for other schools.
Having chosen the school, the next step is to choose the first essay to write. Start with the career essay, which generally requires you to discuss your career to date, your future goals, and why you want to do an MBA (as well as why you’ve selected this school). Answering this will make many other questions easier to answer.
The following questions are covered in this section:
MBA Program Topics
What are your career objectives and reasons for wanting an MBA?
What would you contribute while at our school?
What do you hope to gain from our program?
Why have you applied to the other schools you have?
Provide a candid evaluation of your own admissions file
Discuss your desire to learn via the case method
What type of student club or campus community even do you envisage yourself leading?
Business and Career Topics
Describe your work experience
Describe your current job
In what other way wills you pursue your development if our school rejects you?
What one change would you make in your current job (and how would you implement this change)?
What is the most important trend facing business?
Describe the impact of technology on your chosen career or industry
Describe a situation in which you provided a solution that met with resistance. How did you address this situation?
Mixed Business and Personal Topics
What are your strengths and weaknesses?
What are your most substantial accomplishments?
Describe a creative solution you’ve devised to a problem
Describe a risk that you have taken and its outcome
What have you done that demonstrates your leadership potential?
Describe meaningful cross-cultural experiences you have had
Describe an experience in which you did not reach your objectives (and what you learned from this)
Please provide an example from your own life in which practical experience taught you more than theory alone
Discuss an ethical dilemma you have faced
Personal Topics
Describe someone you consider a hero or role model. How has this person affected your development?
Describe a defining moment that has had a major impact on your life
What matters most to you and why?
What do you do in your spare time?
Other Topics
Tell us anything else you care to
What would you like the MBA admissions board to know about your undergraduate academic experience?
Describe your role in a (difficult) team situation. How did you help a team reach its objectives?
Brief Notes on Additional Essays
What does diversity mean to you? How will you contribute to the diversity of our program?
What is the most difficult feedback you have received, and how did you address it?
Discuss a professional project that challenged your skills
What is your experience with our community? What actions have you taken to learn more about this?
Discuss a recent global event that has most affected your thinking—and why
Schools ask this question for a number of reasons. They want to make sure you have given substantial thought to your future career. They want to see that an MBA fits with the future you envision for yourself. They want to understand why now is the right time to earn an MBA.
Many people apply to business school because they are unhappy with their current situations and are hoping to do virtually anything else as long as it is different from what they currently do. Too many of them have no idea of where they are heading; they just know what they are running from. Their response to this question tends to show that they do not have a realistic career plan. They either describe their hoped-for jobs in vague, rosy terms, saying that they hope to find something liberating, empowering, with substantial responsibilities and high pay, or they mention a popular career like investment banking, for which nothing in their past even remotely qualifies them.
Other applicants discuss the virtues of an MBA, including the fact that it can increase graduates’ skills, salaries, and career options, which the reader in the admissions office knows quite well without having to be reminded. They forget to discuss why they want an MBA from that particular school, making it seem that an MBA from any program will do.
Similarly, most applicants do not think to give any contextual information concerning their careers so far, making it hard for an admissions reader to ascertain whether their planned futures make sense or not.
This is a truly critical essay. You will be manifestly unsuccessful in writing the other essays if you have not thought carefully about your future career. It will be extremely helpful to know where you are heading when you try to answer many of the other essay questions. Start with this essay. Do not go on to the other questions until you have completed—at a minimum—a good draft of this essay. (If you cannot answer this question, consider waiting to apply to business school.)
Although not obvious, the place to start is with a quick description of your career evolution so far. Even if the question does not explicitly require this, it is a good idea to offer some information on your past career to set the context for your future objectives and make them sound that much more logical and reasonable, given your background.
After this, you need to ask yourself: What do you want to be, now that you are all grown up? If you do not currently know with any degree of assurance, explore the possibilities by consulting the relevant career literature and discussing the possibilities with family and friends. Only after you have settled on an approximate goal will you be truly ready to apply for an MBA. This does not mean you must be certain of where you are headed, but you should, at a minimum, be able to articulate several possibilities that you intend to explore and that are clearly related to your experiences, strengths and weaknesses, and likes and dislikes. Show that you are being realistic in your planning.
Once you know in general terms where you are headed, how does an MBA fit into your plans? In other words, what is it you need from an MBA program in order to get where you want to go? There are innumerable reasons that would be quite sensible for wanting an MBA. For example, perhaps you want (additional):
Perhaps you seek to advance in an industry that requires people to eventually jump from a nonbusiness area to the management side of the business. You might be knowledgeable about directing plays, for instance, but want to be able to run a theater; or you wish to jump gracefully from one segment of the business world to another—for instance, from marketing to finance, or from the creative side of a corporation to business management.
The next point is to show that an MBA is right for you now, not in several years. The younger you are, the more likely this is to be a critical issue. Standard reasons for wanting an MBA now are:
Take the approach that you have already had substantial accomplishments but that you could nonetheless go much further, faster, if you had an MBA (and the sooner the better). Above all, do not make it sound as though you know little and have done less.
Be sure you tie this specific school’s offerings to your needs (for instance, its top finance program) to show you know and value the fine points of this program. Even if a particular school never asks specifically why you want to attend its program above all others, you must address this question on every application. You cannot afford to let a program think you believe the various schools are interchangeable. If you do, you risk its deciding that you are readily replaced by another candidate who seems to know the program better and value it more highly. Always show that you have “done your homework” on the school and have serious reasons for wanting to attend it over and above other schools.
Our approach will allow you to show that you know where you are going and that you therefore have a good chance of actually getting there. It will also show you to be sensible concerning what should be a matter of great concern to you—your career. Failure to demonstrate clear thinking about your career will mark you as someone not ready for an MBA. You are likely to miss out on a great deal of the value of an MBA if you do not know what you want out of it, which depends on where you are headed. Similarly, showing the admissions committee that you have not been serious in thinking about where you are headed suggests that you may not even be serious about business, which is likely to be particularly damaging if you are, say, an arts graduate working in the nonprofit sector at the moment. Addressing the strengths of a particular program rather than simply stating why you need an MBA in general shows that you have done research on the school and have taken the time to tailor your answer to the application. It also suggests to the admissions committee that you are likely to attend the program if admitted, which helps the school boost its “yield on admission” figure that counts in numerous rankings of schools.
Schools want to know what you consider a “contribution.” They also want to have certain skills and experiences represented in the student body. This essay gives you a chance to show what you bring to the mix.
The typical applicant mentions a set of boilerplates. First, he claims that he is a very hard worker. Next, he says that he will try to contribute to class discussions, and the fact that he is an accountant will be very valuable in this regard. Last, if he is really thinking hard, he may note that he is a good guy whose company will be enjoyed by one and all.
The first step is to show that that you will fit into the school’s student body. In other words, you are not hopelessly strange. You have the attributes normally expected of top managers, such as intelligence and determination. In addition, you are accustomed to dealing with others like you and you have typically compared favorably with them. In other words, you will not be intimidated by your classmates.
The second step is to show that you would add something valuable (and unusual) to the workings of the school. These workings are not just in class, but equally important outside of class. Thus, your being able to work well on a team—and in a study group or project team—will be useful here. The usual things that applicants mention are noted below but should not be the focus of your effort if you can find something more interesting to discuss. The “usual” includes:
Each of these can be worthwhile, but they are best not dwelled on unless you possess them to an unusual degree. For instance, the candidate (Joerg) whose essays we reprinted in the prior chapter notes that his engineering skills are of a very high order indeed. He can say this because the breadth and depth of his knowledge were extraordinary. (He was finishing a PhD in mechanical engineering from Germany’s finest program, had done topflight work in testing the shape stability of fibers, and had significant assignments in North America, Japan, and Africa as well as in various parts of Europe. Comparatively speaking, someone with a bachelor’s degree and three years of experience in reverse-engineering widgets might be better served looking for something else to emphasize.)
Unusual items you could emphasize might include:
Remember, too, that a skill that might be considered typical at MIT might be quite rare elsewhere.
The last component of this essay is to show that you are the sort of person who will share knowledge with others in the program. In other words, you are the sort of person who will work well with other people and value their contributions, too.
Knowledge of what distinguishes you from other applicants is particularly important in answering this question. What you would contribute to a program is best answered by thinking not of the skills many of your peers share but those that seem uniquely yours. Doing so will allow you to appeal to schools hoping to diversify their student bodies on as many dimensions as possible.
This question is meant to reveal how you view an MBA program and degree. Are you thinking of it narrowly or broadly? Do you have a clear reason for wanting an MBA?
Too many people mention the amount of money they will make after they have their MBA. Others describe the technical skill or skills they will acquire. And many just mouth the platitudes of how marvelous MBA degrees are, as if trying to convince the admissions staff of this fact.
Treat this essay just like the “why do you want an MBA, and why from our school” questions. Start by explaining what you hope to accomplish in your career and what you currently lack in order to do so. Show how an MBA will help you acquire many of the skills and other assets you lack, thus helping you to reach your goals. Then note how this program in particular will be most appropriate for you in addressing these needs. Make it clear that you will gain more from this program than others because it best fits your needs.
Do not stop there, however, because if you do you will make it seem that you are so unworldly as to think that a top-quality MBA program is nothing more than a skill transfer mechanism. In fact, as this book has emphasized, you will gain from the credential itself and the network you can tap into. You can expect to have career opportunities open up to you that someone without a top MBA will never have. You will grow as a result of interacting daily with top-notch students and faculty. And, yes, you can expect to make more money. The problem, however, is to show that you are savvy enough to appreciate the many career benefits offered by a top MBA without looking like a greedy creature intent upon nothing more than maximizing his or her salary. The best way to do this may be to note the ancillary benefits of the school’s network without talking about the money or credentials.
Following this approach will make it clear that you have a well-considered reason for getting an MBA. It fits into your own career scheme and is not something you are pursuing just because it is trendy to do so or because you need your “ticket punched.” It will also be clear you have thought through your choice of school.
Schools typically ask this question to learn two things. First, they want to learn how much you value their school relative to others you might be considering. Second, they want to understand what is important to you in an MBA program, to see whether it fits with their school.
Most applicants make one of several mistakes. Some applicants tell Boston College they are applying to Harvard and MIT. Boston College is a good school, but it does not realistically expect applicants to choose it over Harvard or MIT. Listing these other Boston-area schools tells BC that the applicant does not really want to attend it, that it is just a backup in case Harvard and MIT both say no. BC is unlikely to get excited about such applicants. By the same token, if an applicant tells Harvard that she is applying to Boston College, Harvard is likely to conclude that she does not really see herself as being of Harvard quality and that she does not have the self-confidence necessary for a top program.
Other applicants reveal they are not certain of what they want from their MBA education by listing very different types of schools. Applying to both Harvard and Darden—two case method schools that educate general managers—makes sense, but applying to Rotterdam because of its informatics concentration while also applying to ESSEC—the French school devoted to training managers to market luxury brands—suggests the applicant has not yet decided what he is seeking.
A different type of mistake is made when someone states he is applying to school X and no other, for fear of offending school X. If an applicant has good reasons for wanting an MBA, it is highly likely that more than one school will serve his needs quite well. If this is the case, he will be determined enough to want to go to any of a number of schools. Failing to list other schools, therefore, suggests that he is not really serious about getting an MBA.
Another mistake is made when applicants simply state that school X is the best, famous for its (fill in the blank), and is what they have always hoped to attend. This is a mistake insofar as it represents a missed opportunity to market oneself.
Start by showing what you need in order to meet your goals. For example, perhaps you are an experienced sales representative who wishes to move into general management. Despite your knowledge of sales, you do not know much about accounting, finance, strategy, organizational development, or the international aspects of business; you may be looking to acquire substantial skills in these areas. Depending on the kind of company and industry you are aiming for, some of these areas are likely to be much more important than others. Thus, your pitch might be:
My goal: work for my current firm, but in general management
What I am lacking: general management skills, especially in finance, marketing, and strategy
Then show how school X will be right for you. You do this by showing how it meets your requirements. If you want to become a consumer marketer, note that school X has a host of relevant courses. What besides course offerings might be important to you? You might choose on the basis of the languages used at the school, the nature of the student body (age, functional backgrounds, etc.), the reputation of a specific department—and thus the quality and number of companies looking to recruit, say, consumer marketers from the school. Refer to our earlier discussion about how to choose a school.
Apply these factors to the other schools you are considering. Note that each school will be acceptable in terms of meeting the bulk of what you are looking for, but note also that school X is more desirable insofar as it offers more consumer marketing courses or whatever. It is unlikely that any one school will be the most desirable on all counts, which gives you the opportunity to say good things about each school in terms of how it meets your needs. Your conclusion, however, should emphasize the factors that favor school X, thereby putting it at the top of your list.
This approach will help make it clear that you are serious about getting an MBA. In addition, it shows you have researched this and other schools; it reinforces your seriousness about getting an MBA at the same time that it shows you to be a sensible decision-maker who has gathered data for this important decision. This approach also shows that you value school X, and for substantial reasons—because it better meets your needs than do other schools.
There are a multitude of reasons for asking a question like this one. It is much like “What are your strengths and weaknesses?”—yet it is broader in scope. Your response will show how much you know about what a top MBA program requires of its students, and what this particular program seeks in its applicants. It will also reveal how honest you are in assessing yourself. Plus it will show how well you know yourself. Although you are expected to be an advocate for yourself, failing to be honest, self-aware, and knowledgeable about the program will suggest that you are not yet ready for it.
One common mistake, seemingly invited by the nature of the question, is to discuss in brief every piece of data in the file. Failing to concentrate on whatever is critical to your application results in a missed opportunity as well as an impression that you cannot prioritize. The other typical mistake results from a candidate failing to appreciate what makes him valuable, generally because he does not understand the nature of the school’s applicant pool. For example, he wastes his efforts pitching at length the fact that he has learned a second language (something so commonplace that very few candidates will benefit by belaboring the fact).
A better approach requires more than a recitation of the data in your file; you need to be an advocate for yourself. Go beyond the data to show how various pieces of your file are connected; show the implications of the data. Offer something new: if not new information, then at least a new way of looking at previously divulged information.
Start by asking what critical issues your candidacy faces. For instance, are you likely to be viewed as not quite up to the analytical mark (due to being in an apparently undemanding job as well as having attended a second-rate university)? If so, marshal whatever evidence suggests that you are a fine analyst. Do not waste space on getting credit for the obvious. If you are the head of a nuclear propulsion laboratory, do not go on about your understanding of physics or mathematics.
This is a perfect opportunity for you to discuss your weaknesses. Do not hope that they will go unnoticed; the chances of this are slim, indeed. Instead, acknowledge them while minimizing the damage by suggesting that you are not really weak in the given area and by putting your weaknesses in the proper career context. For instance, you can note your weak GMAT quantitative score, then suggest that you are stronger at quantitative work than a standardized test score suggests. For one thing, you work on quantitative matters all the time and are readily acknowledged by your boss as superb in this regard. For another thing, you have done well in a variety of quantitative courses. And, to top it all off, your quantitative skills will be the least important attribute to determine your success in running a theater group in the future.
Then consider what aspects of your candidacy are not yet clear. Be sure to highlight any results or efforts that will not show up on data sheets or elsewhere. For example, discuss your strength in mentoring others at work if this is a facet of your candidacy that does not provide good stories for inclusion in your essays.
A strong answer is likely to devote the bulk of the available space to no more than several issues; trying to discuss a litany of matters in-depth suggests that you either have too many weaknesses to merit inclusion in this program or lack the judgment necessary to warrant inclusion.
This approach gives you the chance to color how your candidacy will be viewed. Not only do the leading business schools make admissions decisions on more than raw numbers, but they also want to understand what those numbers mean. You can help them see you from the most positive perspective possible. Focusing on the critical issues and marshaling appropriate evidence will show you at your persuasive best. It will also suggest that your knowledge of yourself and the program’s requirements are up to snuff.
Schools that ask this question generally have two reasons for doing so. They want to learn to what extent your learning style and behavior will make you a good fit for their preferred method of instruction. They also want to make applicants aware that their school emphasizes the case method, perhaps to the exclusion of other teaching methods.
Many people view the case method as an opportunity to show off, so they note how their undergraduate case method classes were fields of triumph for them. Others consider the case method an invitation to argue and focus on the debating possibilities it offers. Each of these approaches risks revealing applicants as immature and self-involved. Only slightly better is to discuss the fun of cases, as though there will be no analytical work involved, just reading about management’s greatest hits.
Schools making substantial use of the case method believe it has many advantages for students. (On the other hand, it is a difficult method for professors to use well, requiring in-depth study and re-study of each case and practice under fire in handling the hard-to-predict contributions of students.) These do not include opportunities for self indulgence, showing off, arguing for the sake of arguing, or being entertained with great moments in the history of management.
A better approach starts by demonstrating your understanding of the method’s great strengths (as noted in Appendix I):
This list is by no means exhaustive, but neither would it be appropriate to attempt to discuss so many attributes of the case method. Instead, focus primarily on those most relevant to you. For instance, if you are planning to switch functions, note the value of being able to experience your desired function in realistic case settings. Or if you intend to work as a consultant after business school, developing your presentation skills and ability to think on your feet are likely to be of value. (For further discussion of the case method, consult pages 44–46.)
Whichever other aspects of the case method you discuss, find room to discuss the team implications as well. Being on a case team will give you the opportunity to develop your team (and leadership) skills, which are a key focus of most leading business schools and employers. Note how and to what extent you have developed some of these skills, and which others you hope to work on in business school. If you have room, you can go further and discuss how you intend to develop them in case team settings. This will show that you are sufficiently self-reflective to have a good understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses as well as a desire to work on the latter.
Showing a nuanced understanding of the case method can help characterize you as serious about your forthcoming business education and your personal and career development. Similarly, by highlighting your desire for the team-based learning typical of case programs you will cast yourself as someone who should fit in well, to the benefit of yourself and your teammates.
Schools ask this question for a number of reasons. They want to get a sense of your leadership skills and to see how determined (and realistic) you are about getting to the top of an organization. They also want to show off the range of organizations and events currently on offer, in hopes of further interesting you in the school. By the same token, this question gives you a chance to show your primary interests, given that major schools have a plethora of clubs and events on offer. (If your chosen activity is not yet offered, you can look to set it up.) In addition, requiring you to write this essay increases the chances that you will indeed hit the ground running—getting plugged into an existing organization or trying to start one on your arrival at school.
Most people assume that they will get to the top of their chosen organization rather than showing how they will do so. As a result, they seem arrogant (assuming everyone should defer to them) or naive (getting to the top will just magically occur, without regard to any potential obstacles to their ascension).
Start by choosing an appropriate organization or event. (If one does not exist, by all means propose that you start it.) If you are targeting an existing organization, research it thoroughly. Check its website for lists of past and current activities. Consider the number of members and the various positions students hold. Email several of the members to get a sense of what the organization stands for, not just what its activities entail. Even if you find an organization at this school that appeals to you, look for comparable organizations at other schools. Examine their activities and structures. Learn by their examples and by all means import whatever good ideas you find.
Once you have a good sense of the organization (and its peers elsewhere), consider what you could contribute. What skills, expertise, or contacts do you have that would be of use? Which do you hope to develop? Then ask yourself how valuable your contribution would appear to the organization as it now exists. How could you position yourself to make the most of your abilities? What would you do in your first months in the organization? How would you look to have an impact on it? What would distinguish you from the other members?
Your case will be all the stronger if you can show that you have done something comparable already. For instance, if you propose training the sailing team to participate in demanding competitions, you may not be considered credible unless you have been a reasonably successful sailor yourself. Better yet, if you have been a sailing instructor during summer vacations.
You can add further value to your proposal by showing that your ideas will help align the organization’s goals with those of the program. This is easily seen in the case of someone hoping to bring marvelous guest lecturers to the media club based on her contacts at the film studio where she has been working. Helping club members gain access to major industry figures clearly fits with an MBA program’s goal of helping its graduates gain employment at the leading firms in key industries. In the case of the sailing team, however, the goals may be different: helping fellow students improve at their chosen sport while also beating rival schools for trophies. Given the competitive nature of business students—and deans—this will also be considered fully aligned with the program’s goals. And you can further the impact of your efforts by showing how you will make the whole school community aware of the organization’s activities and goals.
The one major concern is that you don’t come across as Machiavellian, willing to sacrifice anyone or anything in order to gain power. Instead, show that you see an opportunity to contribute—and have figured out an appropriate way to get into a position that will allow you to maximize your contribution.
(Note the overlap with “What do you hope to gain from our program?” Refer to the discussion of that question as well.)
By showing that you know this organization inside and out, you demonstrate your seriousness about the school as well as the organization or activity. Equally important, showing how you intend to lead this organization offers you the opportunity to demonstrate your leadership skills and inclinations. You can demonstrate a degree of self-awareness—knowledge of your own skills (and, implicitly, your limitations). You can also demonstrate the care with which you approach an opportunity. Your entrepreneurial impulses can thus be given full flight.
This question is, of course, intended to elicit what you have done over the course of your career, and what impact you have had. It is also designed to give you an opportunity to show what you have learned about yourself and your abilities.
Most applicants simply list what they have done in the past without showing what has driven their career choices and changes. The result is a list in which the elements appear nearly unrelated to one another.
Look at our discussion of the “job description” essay. Then think in terms of telling stories rather than simply listing events dryly. A good story has conflict; that is, it has obstacles placed in the way of the hero. The hero may be unable to overcome each obstacle, but he tries hard and is unwilling to give up.
One possible approach is to find a theme that unites the elements of your job history. For instance, you show how you responded to challenges that were initially daunting. You tried hard and learned how to do what was required. As you learned better how to do the job, you started to take more initiative. In fact, once you mastered your initial responsibilities, you understood them in a broader context. Having done so, you moved up to the next level of responsibility—or you are now at the point of needing further scope for your talents but cannot move up without an MBA or years of experience on the job.
The telling of your career story should focus on where you have come from and where you are now headed. If you have changed your direction, explain what happened to change your direction. If you have had your decisions reaffirmed by experience, describe them and how they convinced you that you were on the right track.
This essay is closely related to the “your career and the reasons for getting an MBA” essay.
Telling stories that focus on obstacles and the attempt to overcome them makes this essay interesting to read. Focusing on your personal development in response to challenges is well aimed for an audience of educators, who are preconditioned to appreciate your developmental capabilities.
This approach also sets up your need for an MBA. You have been overcoming obstacles by learning how to perform new jobs, and you have acquired new skills and knowledge; now you need to take another step up.
This question may not help schools assess the candidacies of, for example, research associates from McKinsey because the admissions committee already knows what the typical McKinsey RA does. For people in less familiar positions, however, this question enables a much clearer understanding of an applicant’s background.
Most applicants simply list a few of the elements of their formal job descriptions or just list their job titles. If you were to say simply that you were a marketing associate for a computer firm, an admissions committee would know almost nothing about your responsibilities. Do you provide field support? Do you do online research only? Do you do competitor analysis? Do you work with the research and development staffs in the development of more user-friendly products? Do you analyze the productivity of different advertising media or promotional campaigns? What do you do?
There are usually numerous elements to a given job. You must figure out and list the many things you do. Next, you must determine which are the most significant parts of your job and which are most consistent with the position you are attempting to communicate, and then characterize them as favorably as possible. The following should help you with this process.
1. Is your job important? Most people would say so only if they are egotists or are making a lot of money and enjoying a very impressive title (Senior Executive Vice President for Marketing and Strategy, perhaps).
Assuming you are not in this situation, does this mean your job is unimportant and you will have to be apologizing for it? No, of course not. A job is of real importance under a number of different circumstances. In particular, work gains significance whenever two things are true about it: (1) the degree of uncertainty is high, and (2) the potential impact on the firm’s success is great. In other words, is there a fair likelihood that an average-quality performer in your job would make a hash of things? If so, would that really affect your firm’s performance, or that of one of its components? If the answer to both of these questions is yes, then your job is of real importance.
2. What is the nature of your work? There are many different types of work. A market researcher is generally doing analytical work. A brand manager is likely to be doing a combination of analytical work and influence work insofar as she must analyze the factors for the brand’s relative success or failure in different market and competitive conditions in her country, and then try to influence the manufacturing, packaging, or whatever department to take the action she wants in order to address these factors. She will typically have no power over these departments and will have to rely on her influence skills (personality, reasoning, expertise, etc.) instead. A restaurant manager will probably be most concerned with managing people, whereas a technical manager may be most concerned with the management of physical processes.
Many other aspects of your work can also be characterized in readily understandable ways. Is your job like being in the police: crushing boredom interspersed with brief moments of sheer terror? Are you expected to perform at a steady pace to a predictable schedule or do you work like a tax accountant, 60 percent of whose work may take place in three months of the year? Are you the steadying hand for a bunch of youngsters? Are you a creative type who will respond flexibly to each new situation rather than simply refer to the corporate manual?
3. What must you do to perform successfully? In other words, what challenges do you face? For example, if you are in sales support, one of your biggest headaches might be to get the junior people in marketing—who report directly to the regional marketing manager, and report on only a dotted-line basis to the regional sales manager—to provide the current competitor analysis material to the sales department. This can be characterized as a liaison role. Or, if the relationship is particularly poor, you might describe your role as conflict resolution—particularly in light of the fact that sales and marketing often have an antagonistic relationship.
Perhaps your greatest challenges are satisfying two different bosses with two completely different agendas. If you are in a matrix structure, reporting to the regional manager and an engineering director, you can expect to be unable to please either one. The regional manager is probably concerned with making money today, and wants everyone to work as a team without regard to functional specialties. The engineering boss, on the other hand, wants her people to maintain their specialized skills and the prestige of the engineering department. Working on cross-functional teams without taking time out for updating technical skills may strike the former as standard practice and the latter as anathema. Performing your job well may require balancing these conflicting desires.
A number of other circumstances can lend importance to a job. The more senior the person you report to is, the more important a job will look. Similarly, the fate of prior occupants of your job may be relevant. If the last two occupants of your job were fired, say so. This will make your performance look all the more impressive. If the last occupants were promoted high in the organization, the job will appear to be one given to high-fliers, thereby increasing its significance.
Have your recommenders discuss these points, too.
4. Do you supervise anyone? How many people, of what type, are under your supervision? What does this supervision consist of? For example, are you in charge of direct marketing activities, necessitating that you monitor the phone calls of your direct reports and also analyze their performance versus budget and various economic and industry factors?
5. Do you have control of a budget? If so, what is the amount you control, and what amount do you influence?
6. What results have you achieved? Results can be looked at from many different perspectives. From a strategic perspective, what have you achieved regarding the market, customers, and competitors? From a financial perspective, what have you done regarding costs, revenues, and profits (not to mention assets employed, etc.)? From an operational perspective, what have you done regarding productivity of your unit, of your direct reports, or of yourself; what have you done regarding the percentage of items rejected, bids that fail, and so on? Similarly, from an organizational perspective, have you taken such steps as altering the formal organization or introducing new integration or coordination mechanisms? Provide numbers whenever possible to buttress your claims.
7. How has your career evolved? Did you have a career plan in place before graduating from college or university or soon thereafter? If so, did you pursue it wholeheartedly? Did it include a focus on developing your skills and responsibilities? What, if anything, has altered your original plan? What was your reaction to events that altered or affirmed this plan? When dealing with the development of your job with a given employer, be sure to note the employer’s reasons for promoting, transferring, rewarding, or praising you as well as the fact of these things.
It is important to take this question very seriously. The answers will provide you with much of the ammunition you will use in responding to other questions. Your current job is of inherent interest to business schools. They will always want to know what you are doing, and with what success, because that suggests a great deal about your talents and interests, the way your employer views your talents and attitude, and why you might want an MBA.
Taking a broad view of the job description enables you to put the best light on your responsibilities and performance. It also allows you to build the basis for later essays, where you will be able to save space by referring to this write-up rather than listing the same things when space is at a premium.
This question helps schools determine two things about you: first, how carefully you have planned for your future, and second, how determined you are to succeed.
The typical applicant notes that he will reapply next year if school X turns him down this year.
The starting point is to state what your goals are and what you lack in order to meet them. (For a full discussion of this, refer to the “why have you applied to the other schools you have” analysis.) This will help to demonstrate that you have given serious thought to your future career.
Your needs can probably be met, at least to a reasonable degree, by another MBA program. You should thus almost certainly note that you are applying to other schools.
You should also consider whether some part-time educational programs would meet at least some of your needs. A local school’s offering of introductory marketing courses may not suffice to make you into a crack consumer marketer, but will almost certainly be better than nothing.
Another possibility may be training programs that your company offers. Or you could shift jobs (either within your company or by switching companies) in order to learn about a different function or even a different industry. As you will recall from our discussion of why to get an MBA, further job experience is not likely to provide you with the conceptual understanding that is part and parcel of an MBA. Companies seldom feature lectures on quantitative methods for managers or applications of the capital asset pricing model. MBA programs are set up to increase dramatically your intellectual capital, whereas companies are set up to make money, preferably sooner rather than later. A new position or company is not likely to provide you with all that you hope to get from an MBA program, but something is better than nothing.
The last option is self-study. You can always read the interesting popular books in a given field or, better yet, the textbooks used at business schools. This is a difficult way to learn, however, and it is unlikely that you will be able to learn advanced quantitative methods in this fashion.
The conclusion is always that you would prefer to get an MBA, but you will do whatever you can to gain as much knowledge as possible.
This approach shows that you have considered your future with care. It also shows that you are hungry for improvement in your knowledge and skills, and that you are determined to succeed and action-oriented. If going to school X will not work, you will go to school Y. If you cannot go to a top school, you will continue learning on this or another job. The picture you convey is therefore one of a person striving to reach his or her potential. Remember that you are applying to an educational institution, so showing that you are hungry for knowledge and determined to improve yourself by acquiring it is a “can’t miss” proposition.
This question is designed to reveal how savvy you are about organizational matters and how analytical you are about your company’s operating and strategic needs.
You may be too junior to have run a department or a company, but that should not stop you from thinking about its operations and environment. How much perspective do you have on these things? Can you write a persuasive analytical piece showing that you have been able to step back from your own tasks to take a more senior manager’s view? If not—if you can see only your own job’s details—you are missing a chance to show that you are, in fact, senior management material.
Most applicants fail to define what this question is really asking. The question itself is open to several interpretations. For example, does it ask you to improve things for you or for your company? How realistic must you be in your suggestion? Must this be an aspect you can indeed change, rather than something that only a very senior manager could affect? All too many applicants end up interpreting the question to mean, “How can you make your own job easier to do?” Consequently, they make themselves look self-centered and concerned only about the minutiae of their jobs, since any meaningful change would require someone else’s intervention.
Virtually all applicants run into the implied follow-up question: If this proposed change is such a good idea, why haven’t you done all you could to implement it? Failing to answer this can make an applicant look hypocritical or ineffectual. If he claims that a change in the pattern of his sales calls will dramatically improve his results, why has he never tried to convince his boss of this? Is it that he does not really care about the company’s success or that he cannot imagine persuading his boss to make any change? In either case, the force of the applicant’s suggestion is diminished by failing to address the issue.
Focus on the benefits for the company rather than personal benefits. In other words, show that the reason the change makes sense is that the company’s balance sheet will improve, or some other equally important advantage will accrue—not that your job will become easier.
You may have spotted only one change the company should make. If so, you should certainly discuss it. On the other hand, if you have several possibilities, choose the one that will best do the following:
If you do not have any obvious changes in mind, how can you develop some? For one thing, you can look at the examples of this essay included in Part IV. Beyond this, consider the following possibilities:
If you are describing proposed changes in, say, the design of your job or the way in which you are evaluated or controlled, you will want to show that the current standards cause suboptimal performance in a way that your proposed change will not. You may also need to show that the proposed change will not lead to new problems or that any such problems will not be as large as the ones currently faced.
Deal with the implementation issue head-on. In other words, answer the implicit follow-up question as to why, if this change is such a good idea, you have not yet made it happen. Maybe you have just learned of the need for this change, in which case you have not had the time to do anything about it. For example, maybe you just started this job, or you have just received new responsibilities; or perhaps a recent problem first exposed the need for change. Another possibility is that you have been aware of the problem for some time but have been engaged in gathering the necessary data to analyze the situation fully.
The question’s phrasing is hypothetical: “What change would you make?” This seems to eliminate the possibility of discussing a change that you have recently made. In fact, business schools would love to have you discuss a change you have actually enacted; the only reason that they phrase the question as they do is because so few applicants have a real example to talk about. If you have actually implemented a substantial, praiseworthy change, by all means discuss it.
This approach shows that your primary concern is the company’s welfare. It also shows that you have analyzed your environment and are aware of the areas of strength and weakness. Using a real example is better than using a hypothetical one insofar as it shows you actually take action and have an impact.
This question is designed to find out whether you have thought about the “big picture,” are aware of the issues currently facing industry, and have the ability to discuss a big topic in a sophisticated fashion.
Most people discuss the most headline-grabbing item they can think of. In recent years this might have been the moral imperatives of business—with special reference to apartheid in South Africa or oil extraction in Nigeria, or the Asian financial crisis. Their discussion, moreover, tends to resemble the headlines of tabloid newspapers: “Global Disaster Forecast! Major Changes Needed Now!” No research informs the essay. The other, lamentable approach is that of cribbing all too obviously from a recent lead story in Business Week or a similar magazine. This tactic makes it appear that you have no original opinions on the matter and can only regurgitate commonplace ideas. Both of these mistaken approaches also tend to reveal little about the applicant because it is unclear why the topic was chosen in the first place.
If you have any well-developed views on a subject that relate well to your positioning effort, then by all means discuss them. If you are in the energy business, for example, and firmly believe that global warming will dramatically alter the mix of fuels the developed world will use in the short- to medium-term, then you will probably want to choose this as your topic.
Most applicants do not have such a clear-cut opinion. Instead, they have some not overly well-informed opinions about a handful of topics, any one of which could fit well here. If this is your case, choose the topic that shows you off to best advantage. It should enable you to (1) express sensible but not blindingly obvious views, (2) enhance your positioning, (3) show why you want an MBA, and perhaps (4) show why this school is right for you. This is a rather daunting set of criteria. You may not satisfy each one, but at least it gives you a target. A quick look at one of the many possible topics reveals how to get started.
Globalization is an old favorite response to this question. It is a truism that the increasing globalization of business is continuing to have a substantial impact on how business is conducted. Is this the right topic for you? It would be highly appropriate for someone applying to a school outside her country, or one that uses a language other than her own for many of its courses. It would also be highly appropriate for someone applying to an internationally focused program, such as the Lauder program at Wharton or one of the European schools whose whole raison d’ětre is training international managers.
How will you discuss globalization? You might begin with an explanation of how you became aware of this issue in the first place. Have your own company’s operations been dramatically affected by foreign competition? Then discuss in what other ways business is being affected by international competition. Next move on to the underlying trends that will cause greater globalization, and finally examine the impact globalization is likely to have on your industry overall. Your degree of specificity will depend in large part on the allotted space. This discussion will help you to demonstrate why you want to attend a school that has a serious international focus.
What are some of the other possible topics?
Is this list exhaustive? By no means; a sensible list might be two or three times this long. Don’t assume that your chosen topic is inappropriate simply because it is not listed here.
Does it matter which topic you choose? Yes and no. It matters that you choose something that strikes admissions committees as being quite important—at least after you have explained why it is important. But what is likely to matter more is how you discuss the topic you have chosen.
When discussing any of these topics, remember to follow good essay-writing practice. Be specific, referring to events in your own (business) life when possible. For example, if you are discussing globalization, do not wallow in the future demise of the “American-ness” of baseball (or whatever). Instead of looking just at the negative side of change, look, too, at the opportunities and challenges that will come in its wake. You should be able to give a sophisticated treatment to your subject, but this is likely to be the case only after you have done some reading. Has the Economist written extensively about this subject? If so, you should know its views, as well as those of other sophisticated journals, and provide relevant quotations or references to demonstrate your awareness.
This topic should be a godsend, in that it allows you to do so much to further so many of your positioning efforts while ostensibly discussing an abstract concept. You can show, for example, that you have a real need to learn more about organization design and development, thereby necessitating an MBA. At the same time you will show that you have given real thought to a complex issue.
Today’s MBA programs want candidates who are technologically savvy or, at a minimum, aware of the way in which technology will affect their careers. In addition, they worry about a candidate who, in a period when technology discussions and concerns are part of the general culture, has given little thought to an issue that should be part and parcel of career-planning efforts.
The typical applicant makes one of three major mistakes. He mentions the most obvious effects of technology (“e-commerce has allowed my company to compete with bigger firms in the industry by reaching a potential market that exceeds our previously limited trading area”), but fails to demonstrate a broader understanding of how current and future technologies will shape his career or industry beyond the next year or two. Another mistake is to assume that technology will have little impact on his industry because it has not yet done so. Yet another mistaken approach is to focus on the detail of the technology itself rather than the technology’s larger impact.
Reach beyond the technologies immediately affecting how you do your job. Consider what other technologies are likely to be introduced in the next few years. Ask how each of these will affect some of the basics of your industry:
Then consider the impact of these technologies upon careers in your industry. What (new) skills will be rewarded? What sorts of people now in the industry will become redundant?
After doing this analysis, consider which changing demographics, political ideas, and other factors will have a major impact upon the technology-driven changes. Consider also to what degree your forecast changes will be unique to your industry rather than common to all industries.
To develop additional understanding of the relevant factors, look to the most sophisticated journal devoted to your industry; consider also the research reports that Wall Street firms and technology consulting firms publish. For background reading, consult such sources as the Financial Times, the Economist, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal.
This approach allows you to demonstrate your understanding of the potential impact of a host of factors, technology in particular, upon your industry and upon your likely future career. This big picture synthesis is, of course, the sort of thinking required of senior managers. It contrasts well with the focus on detail that characterizes many applicants’ essays.
Schools want to identify future leaders among their applicants. The easiest way to do so is to find people who have already acted as leaders, whether or not they had official leadership responsibilities or titles. Insofar as leadership all too often requires pushing others to accept an idea or plan that you have, seeing whether and how you have done so provides loads of information about whether you try to lead and how effective you are.
Some applicants make the mistake of claiming they had a marvelous idea but the fools they work with were so stupid as to reject it. This denigrates their colleagues, of course; it also suggests that the applicants are either foolish to be working with such people or should be able, at the least, to outmaneuver them and get their ideas accepted. Other applicants fail to recognize that the quality of the idea they present needs to be up to scratch. Revealing that they have failed to understand the nature of the problem confronted, or that their proposed solution is likely to be unworkable or cause yet greater problems, sinks their efforts.
There are three primary requirements for a good response to this question. The first is that you have properly analyzed the problem you or your organization face. Second, you need to have designed a solution that makes sense. It needs to be reasonable on its face, or be something you can explain easily in the essay as meeting the requirements of the situation. This includes not exceeding the constraints that the context places upon you. For instance, a company on the brink of bankruptcy probably cannot afford to make a major investment that will not see positive cash flow for five years. (The focus of the question is not on the difficulty of the problem or complexity of the solution you have devised, so do not feel compelled to search for something exotic.)
Third, you need to show the variety of actions you undertook (and perhaps those you considered but decided not to use) to persuade others to accept your idea. There are a host of influence strategies available to you; your choice depends on numerous factors, including your relative skill at using each and your relationship (boss, coworker, subordinate) to the people you need to persuade.
Here are some concrete examples of how you might have tried to influence your boss:
If you were unable to get your boss’s buy-in and decided to bypass her, recognize that you may appear dangerously disloyal. It would probably have been better had you considered alternatives to actually bypassing your boss:
Keep in mind that most applicants to top business schools are fairly analytical sorts. As a result, they tend to rely on reasoning with people as their sole persuasion strategy. There are actually many types of strategy available. Consider to what extent you have employed bargaining (for instance, trading your effort for someone’s support), forming a coalition (using others to influence people on your behalf), getting someone to like you and support you out of friendliness, being assertive (establishing deadlines, making demands, being emotional), or appealing to a higher authority (above your boss’s head).
It is better if you can show yourself as having been able to put your idea into practice (and better yet if it can be seen to have worked out), but even trying and failing can be acceptable if you clearly worked hard and well to succeed. Giving up too easily suggests that you are not determined to have an impact. Following the approach outlined above, however, shows you to be a skillful proponent of your ideas, who is able to employ multiple methods to sell an idea.
This question is clearly designed to elicit your opinion of yourself. Modest people, and people from cultures less egocentric than that of the United States, have a hard time responding to the first half because it obviously asks you to brag a little. Less self-assured applicants find it hard to be honest and to mention their shortcomings. This question provides a good gauge of how self-confident (or arrogant), accomplished (or boastful), decent (or manipulative), mature, self-aware, and honest you are.
Most applicants list a large number of strengths and one or two weaknesses. Their weakness is generally a strength dressed up as a weakness (“I am too much of a perfectionist”; “I work too hard”).
Start by choosing two or three primary strengths. Use these to organize your essay by grouping other strengths around them. For example, if you claim that you are very determined, you might discuss your patience in working hard for a long time in order to achieve something important related to this determination. The problem is not generally finding something good to say about yourself. Usually the problem is limiting yourself to a manageable number of strengths. You want to have few enough that you can discuss them in a persuasive fashion rather than just listing them. Using two or three as central organizing devices (i.e., themes) helps to achieve this goal.
Remember that simply listing strengths is a very weak way of writing. To make your strengths credible and memorable, use illustrations of them. Instead of bragging about being determined, note (with detail) your five-year battle to overcome childhood leukemia.
The bigger problem, however, is finding a weakness to discuss. Simply calling a strength a weakness (“I work too hard”) is not sufficient. This tactic is used by countless applicants, and its insincerity is nearly guaranteed to repel those reading your essays. For one thing, you have failed to follow instructions; you were asked to list a weakness and failed to do so. In addition, a failure to recognize your own weaknesses means you are blind to something very important. We all know that even the most accomplished and successful people have weaknesses. It is far better to recognize your weaknesses and thus be in a position to try to overcome them than to pretend they do not exist. If you recognize that a weakness exists, you are in a position to make a constructive change. Being willing to discuss a weakness is thus a sign of maturity and, consequently, a strength in itself.
Do not carry a good thing too far, though, and discuss huge flaws such as your drug addictions. Your choice of a flaw may depend on exactly how the question is phrased. If you are asked for a weakness, you can certainly discuss the lack of skills or knowledge that currently limit your managerial success and that have occasioned your desire for an MBA. This is an easy version of the question. The hard version asks you about your personality strengths and weaknesses. The focus on your personality means you cannot simply respond by discussing what skills you want to acquire. To respond to this you must discuss a true personality flaw. One approach is to look at the dark side of one of your strengths. If you are a very determined person, does that mean your drive is accompanied by a terrible temper? Or perhaps it means you are too willing to trample on peers’ feelings? If you are a strong leader, does that mean you do not always value the inputs of your subordinates? If you have been very successful doing detail-laden work, have you overlooked the big picture? Are you so concerned about quality that you find it overly difficult to delegate or share responsibility? Are you a creative entrepreneur obsessed with your vision who alienates more traditional colleagues?
Be sure to avoid discussing a weakness that will be a major handicap at a given school. For example, if you are applying to a quantitatively oriented program, be leery of talking about your difficulties with numbers.
Be careful to discuss your weakness differently from your strengths. The correct space allocation is probably about three- or four-to-one strengths to weakness. You will note that I say “weakness” because you should discuss only one or two weaknesses. When doing so, do not dwell on your description of it or of the problems it has caused you. Do so briefly, thereby limiting the impact that the specifics will have on admissions officers. Then note what steps you take, or have taken, to try to overcome it.
You want to describe yourself as having numerous strengths that relate well to your positioning effort without sounding arrogant.
Grouping your strengths in an organized fashion will give you the chance to cover a lot of ground without taking a scattershot approach. Emphasizing strengths is obviously appropriate. Writing about them in some detail, with appropriate illustrations, will make them memorable. The use of illustrations also makes your claims realistic rather than boastful.
Describing your weakness in a cursory way, and being detailed about the steps you take to overcome the weakness, will gain you points. It shows you to be willing to face up to your flaw without the flaw itself being emphasized. This offers you the best of both worlds.
This question obviously gives you a chance to “blow your own horn.” You can brag a bit about what you have accomplished in life. Moreover, you have the chance to put your own spin on what you have done. A particular accomplishment is all the more impressive when you explain the obstacles you had to overcome in order to succeed.
The question also allows schools to learn more about you insofar as you must explain why you consider something to have been a substantial accomplishment. Some accomplishments are of obvious significance. Winning the Noble Prize for Physics is obviously significant; you probably do not need to elaborate on the fact of having won it. Other accomplishments are much more personal. For example, if you had stuttered as a youth and finally ended your stuttering in your twenties, this might be an extremely significant accomplishment for you personally. You have probably done things that have had more impact upon the rest of the world, but for you this accomplishment looms larger. You will probably want to talk about it as an example of your determination and desire to improve yourself. This essay gives you the chance to do so.
This question gives you an opportunity to discuss matters that are unlikely to be listed on your data sheets or mentioned by your recommenders. Even if you just discuss accomplishments of a more public nature, including something listed in your data sheet (or discussed by your recommenders), you can personalize it in a way in which just listing it (or having someone else talk about it) does not do.
Most applicants use the whole of their essay to try to demonstrate that their accomplishments are impressive, yet focus on matters that are utterly commonplace (among this applicant group, in particular) and that often took place long ago. Thus, they discuss making the high school basketball team or graduating from college. Another mistaken tendency is to list a string of things rather than to explain one or two in detail, thus essentially duplicating the data sheets.
The first step is to determine which accomplishments you will discuss. Your criteria for choosing appropriate accomplishments will be familiar. Which ones will help your positioning effort? Which will be unusual and interesting for admissions committees to read about? Was this accomplishment truly noteworthy and also important to you?
The following criteria are also helpful guides:
If you are trying to show that you have had a lot of relevant business experience despite being only 23, you will probably want one (or preferably more) of these accomplishments to be in the business realm. Not every accomplishment will fulfill all of our criteria, but you should be able to meet most of them in the course of the full essay.
In writing the essay, go into sufficient detail to bring the events to life, but do not stop there. Discuss why you consider this a substantial achievement, why you take pride in it, and what you learned from it. Did you change and grow as a result? Did you find that you approached other matters differently afterwards?
The admissions committee will read this for more than a brief description of the items you list on your data sheet. It will want to learn more about these accomplishments and more about the private you, if you discuss significant accomplishments of a personal nature here. It will want to know what motivates you and what you value. It will also want to see how you have developed as a person and as a professional.
This question gives you a lot of latitude, as our criteria suggest. Using it to show more of the real you will help you avoid the usual problems people create for themselves in this essay. You do not want to restate the facts you have already listed on your data sheet; you want to show you have been ready to face challenges, determined to overcome obstacles, and able to accomplish things that mattered to you. The essays in Part IV suggest a limitless number of potential topics; the excerpted essays were successful because they revealed their authors’ characters while explaining the personal importance of their achievements.
Because of the rapid change of business practices in the modern economy, MBA programs are naturally concerned about the creativity of their candidates. This is particularly true in an era when many business school students intend to find “the next big thing”—the next great idea for a business—in order to launch their own firms as soon as possible after business school. By asking this question, schools signal that they particularly desire a certain type of applicant. This question is also a means for determining to what extent candidates have performed above and beyond the requirements of their jobs and thus are the stars that schools have always sought.
The typical applicant tells a story about a solution to a problem without showing that the solution was in any way creative. For example, she explains how she tackled an impending deadline by dividing up project tasks among the individuals on a team according to their talents and interests. Although this represents a solution to a problem, it is a stunningly ordinary one. There is nothing creative or even inspired about it.
Still other applicants focus only on the “creative” part of the question, and do not bother to illustrate that this creativity has solved a problem. One applicant, for instance, wrote an essay about his poetry writing.
It is obviously necessary to actually answer the question—to show that a creative approach in fact solved a problem. But do not stop there. Describe the nature of the problem; show that it was indeed a difficult one to crack. Show also that obvious approaches would not have been successful. In so doing, you show that you have tried to turn the problem around and looked at it from every angle, thereby showing good problem-solving skills—and also showing that you did not just get lucky in eventually finding a creative solution. The creative solution will look all the more impressive when set in this context.
After describing the solution you found, be sure to show the impact your solution had. Business schools want to have creative people, it is true, but even more they want creative people who have a major impact upon their environments.
Consider the fellow working for a hair products firm that sells a permanent-wave product that is much less harmful to hair than other permanent waves are, but which faces marketing problems because it is considered to have relatively little holding power. Others in the firm considered trying to convince the market that this product had sufficient holding power by mounting major marketing efforts. This fellow, on the other hand, decided that the most effective way to tackle the problem was to build a machine that measured the shape stability of hair, thereby allowing the firm’s product to be compared scientifically against the other products. The result—that it was 80 percent as effective (with dramatically less damage to the hair)—convinced hair salons of its value. This is an extreme example; it is not necessary to have devised a new machine (and received a patent for it) to look like a creative problem-solver. Utilizing a new distribution channel, finding a new way to get the data to resolve an issue, or applying a new analytical technique could all qualify.
Discussing a truly creative solution demonstrates that you will fit well in the more forward-thinking parts of modern business (and business schools). It also suggests that you challenge yourself to approach problems from a variety of perspectives. Possessing such an open mind makes you a good collaborator on team projects. Showing, too, that you have had a substantial impact via your creative approach marks you as more than a dreamer—it shows you to be someone whose creativity and other attributes are harnessed to being productive.
As with so many other questions, one function of those about risk-taking is to signal the type of candidate the school wants. In this case, it signals that the school wants people who are not afraid to take a risk. The school recognizes that those who have never taken a risk are very unlikely to do what is necessary to achieve something stunning. For example, the person who runs for president or prime minister risks the embarrassment of being beaten terribly and, perhaps, of losing a safe seat in Congress, Parliament, or Assembly. The person who founds a business risks bankruptcy.
The typical applicant goes to one of two extremes. One extreme is describing a situation that involved virtually no risk to him. For instance, he mentions that he went beyond what his boss wanted done on a project—as if doing extra work placed him in jeopardy. The other extreme is describing a situation in which he had no real chance of success. For instance, he invested all of his savings in a plan to airfreight cement across the continent.
Your choice of a topic is critical: You need to strike the right balance. You need to show that you took a not-insignificant risk without looking like a cavalier idiot who would jump out of an airplane without a parachute. If you were successful, you do not need to worry quite so much about what precisely you chose to do and why. (You do need to demonstrate that there was a real risk of failure, though, to avoid giving the impression that you were not taking a risk.)
It is acceptable to have failed; it is unacceptable never to have tried to accomplish something that would entail efforts outside your personal comfort zone. Yet if you failed, you should be careful in your explanations of why you ran this risk, the analysis you did before starting in, and so on. If the risk looks particularly foolish, better that it be something that you undertook long ago. Similarly, you cannot afford to discuss a risk you took if it appears to be part of a pattern of risk-taking from which you learn no lessons. Thus, a senseless answer would involve betting your salary on lottery tickets month after month, as no analysis is likely to make this look like a well-calculated risk, you can hardly demonstrate marvelous data analysis or research skills, the outcome is unfavorable, and your continuing to bet shows that you resist learning anything from the experience.
Whether your story is that of a career, academic, or personal risk, consider highlighting:
Meeting the criteria discussed above will show that you are a savvy risk-taker, neither afraid to take a risk nor willing to plunge ahead without determining whether the risk is worth running. Showing how you determined whether to take the risk and the results of your action gives you the chance to demonstrate a whole range of skills and attributes critical to your positioning.
Top schools expect to produce top managers—that is, leaders. They are looking for applicants who have already distinguished themselves as leaders, since past performance is the best indicator of what people will be like in the future.
All too often, applicants discuss being part of a group that achieved something noteworthy without making it clear that they themselves were leaders in this effort.
This question is deceptively similar to the “substantial accomplishment” essay. The “substantial accomplishment” essay, as I explained above, asks you to describe a real achievement (and what it means to you). The “leadership” essay, on the other hand, is not looking so much for an “achievement” as it is for an understanding of how you led an effort to achieve something. In other words, your emphasis should be on your leadership rather than the achievement itself.
To write this essay, you must understand what leadership is. One obvious example is managing people who report directly to you. Less obvious examples involve pushing or inspiring nonsubordinates to do what you want done. How? Leading by example, using your influence as a perceived expert in a relevant field, influencing through moral suasion, or influencing by personal friendship. You might have led people through direct management or through influence. Describe your method—what strategy and tactics did you employ? And why? You may not have been deliberate or extremely self-aware in your actions, of course, in which case you might wish to discuss what you did and why it was or was not a good choice. What problems did you confront? What did you learn about managing or influencing people? Would another strategy or different tactics/actions have been better choices? Why? Do you now have a developed philosophy of leadership?
You should emphasize that your leadership qualities are the sort that describe a future CEO rather than a high school football hero. In other words, such qualities as maturity, thoughtfulness, empathy, determination, and integrity are highly valuable. So, too, are coaching others to develop their skills, providing emotional support to a team’s vulnerable members, protecting the group from an overweening organization, being able to see the best possible outcomes and how to achieve them, valuing other people’s input, being able to influence or manage very different types of people, and integrating disparate inputs into a unified perspective.
You are generally better off choosing an example from your business career, but a particularly strong example from your extracurricular or private life could also work.
Viewing this question as concerning your understanding of leadership, and the ways in which you yourself lead, will result in an essay with the appropriate focus. It is not just your achievement that is at issue here; it is also your method of approaching and resolving leadership issues that concerns the admissions committee. If you show yourself to be aware of the leadership issues inherent in your situation and extract some suitable comments regarding what worked or did not work, and why, you will have the core of a good essay.
Schools increasingly recognize that global managers—that is, the leaders of the future—need to be able to understand and interact effectively with a wide range of people, certainly including people from other cultures. This is true not just for people’s future careers but also for their participation in the MBA program, where they can expect to deal with a large number of people from other countries. This question is meant to determine whether you have had significant experiences with people unlike you. It is also meant to signal that you can expect such experiences if you attend this program.
The typical applicant discusses being a tourist abroad or having the occasional discussion with a foreigner, reducing foreigners to being exotic and cute rather than real people. Consequently, he never needs to get to grips with what makes them different than him on some fundamental level. Instead, he resorts to celebrating the wonderfulness of diversity as an abstract and empty notion.
To show that you have had a meaningful cross-cultural experience requires you to show that you have come to understand how another culture, or a member of it, functions.
One excellent way to show that you have really come to understand another culture is by having lived in and integrated into one. If this is the case, by all means discuss in what ways you are a part of this other culture. Simple, concrete examples tend to work better than grandiose statements about your degree of integration. For instance, if your knowledge of local restaurants is better than that of anyone else in the office, perhaps you are the one entrusted with ordering the late night food that will be delivered to your team.
Having had in-depth arguments with people from another culture is another way to show that you have engaged with it. Conflict regarding big issues such as the role of the family and/or women in society, religious views, the value or appropriateness of your respective political systems, the importance of education, work-life balance, and so on makes for a fine essay.
You can show that you have gotten to grips with another culture in other ways. For example, perhaps you have had to negotiate with people from a different culture over important aspects of a project. Maybe they did not view its on-time completion as critical, or thought the level of resource committed to it excessive (or lacking). Maybe they thought you were intrusive in checking on their performance during the course of the project. Or perhaps they were unwilling to push back against more senior people regarding the composition of the team, the nature of the deadlines or expected performance, or other critical issues. On the other hand, perhaps they were unwilling to push the team to perform up to its maximum level, believing in country-club-style management (keeping everyone happy rather than emphasizing performance). Their ideas about what to expect from superiors, colleagues, and subordinates (within and outside their own culture) are potential grist for your essay-writing mill.
It is not necessary that you have resolved the conflicts you had. A resolution admittedly offers the opportunity to tie up the essay on a positive note, which is often a good thing. An agreement to disagree, however, or even a continuing conflict can work well here, too. You need not seem to be a Pollyanna who thinks that everything happens for the best, and that reasonable (or even unreasonable) people can all get along well. It is perfectly acceptable that you have understood other people’s views but not caved in to them.
By showing yourself to have engaged seriously with one or more other cultures, you show yourself to have gotten beyond both the tourist (“isn’t it fascinating how those people eat dinner at midnight?”) and the stereotype (“those Italians certainly have flair”) level of dealing with others. This offers you the chance to demonstrate that you have gained substantial perspective on your own culture and, preferably, yourself. This perspective is essential when it comes to communicating and managing across cultural barriers.
This question is essentially asking: Are you mature enough to admit that you have made a mistake? Did you learn from it? Can you change and grow? (It is similar to another commonly asked question, “Describe a failure and how you dealt with it.”)
Most applicants focus more on the mistake they made, or the failure they suffered, rather than on what they learned from it.
You have a great deal of latitude in choosing your failure or mistake. Two factors should govern your response. (1) Try to further your positioning effort. If you are trying to present yourself as a worldly international negotiator, you might wish to show how you flubbed your first negotiations with people from another culture due to your lack of understanding of how they valued different components of a deal. (You can then go on to explain that this started you on the path of investigating the values and beliefs of your negotiating partners and opponents in all future deals, something you believe has underpinned much of your success since then.) (2) Show that you have truly learned from your mistake. One implication of this may be that you will want to choose a failure from your more distant past, not last week. You will not have had much of an opportunity to learn from a recent failure, whereas a failure from two or three years ago may have afforded plenty of opportunity to learn (and to have compiled a set of relevant successes to demonstrate this development). The reason is that you generally need some time to reflect upon matters in order to benefit fully from them. (Similarly, if you choose a distant failure, you are not saying that you are currently making these mistakes. It may be better to admit to having been prone to mistakes long ago, not currently.)
Having chosen your failure, do not belabor your description of it. Remember that it is what you learned from this failure that is critical here, not the failure itself. Consider what you learned from the experience concerning yourself, your job, your company, your industry, how to manage people, and so on. One key piece of learning may have been that you came to see your need for much more conceptual knowledge, such as that which you hope to acquire by doing an MBA.
The emphasis here should be on your development. We learn more from our mistakes than from our successes. A willingness to admit mistakes and then try to learn from them is one hallmark of a mature adult. It is also the trait of someone who will benefit from more formal education.
This question has several purposes. It gives applicants a chance to show their seriousness about business and management by asking them to describe both theory and (their own) practice in a given realm. This should result in a robust discussion that shows how knowledgeable applicants are about a given field as well as how experienced and skilled they are in it. In addition, this question allows the school to highlight what it sees as its own virtues in offering courses that bridge theory and practice.
Most people tackling this essay fail to describe the theory relevant to their example. Instead, they simply launch into their story to show that they have indeed mastered something. Focusing on the story somewhat misses the point of the essay and risks the applicant looking uninterested in management theory—hardly the optimal portrait of someone wanting to attend a leading MBA program.
The usual problem is finding a suitable topic for this essay. You need an example in which the relevant theory and what you did were somehow at odds. Some possibilities:
No theory covers this situation. When various strategy consulting firms relied on the experience curve to explain cost and price changes over time, they had no good theory to explain why costs dropped, for instance, 20 percent with every doubling of cumulative experience in an industry. They often explained this by referring to “chicken sexing.” Although it was widely recognized that the example might be apocryphal, the story concerned how a new chicken-sexer was trained. (A chicken-sexer determines whether a young chick is male or female, and thus what its fate will be.) A novice chicken-sexer would simply stand behind a veteran and watch him separate chicks onto conveyor lines for males on one side, females on the other. After some days of watching this, the veteran would ask the novice about each of the chicks, “Male or female?” At first the novice would make a lot of mistakes, but as the weeks passed he would get in sync with the veteran and be ready to work on his own. At no point along the way would the veteran have tried to explain what to look for because there was no outward difference between sexes. Instead, one simply had to learn by doing—i.e., by experience rather than theory.
Theory cannot substitute for practice in this field. Unlike in the first example, where no theory is relevant, in these situations there are viable theories but they require practice to be of much value. For instance, it is one thing to be told or shown how to swing a golf club, but nothing substitutes for the practice of doing so yourself. Similarly, until you have been through some hard negotiations, you are likely to have a hard time mastering your emotions sufficiently not to give away your reactions to proposals the other side makes.
Multiple theories seem to apply, but they conflict with one another. As in the military, when you are told to “line up alphabetically by height,” there are times when theories (or instructions) do not provide an appropriate guide. For instance, when organizing a division, there are good reasons to structure it by product or by geography, but choosing either one over the other results in problems. Thus, organizing by product means that the nuances in marketing to a given country will tend to be overlooked. The alternative to organizing by one or the other is to use a matrix structure that organizes by both product and geography. The result, however, is that people report to two different bosses, leading to ambiguity, slowed decision making, and frustration. In other words, there may be no neat, theoretically correct solution.
Practice has simply outrun the available theories or models. In the financial melt-downs of 2008–2009, Goldman Sachs apparently spotted twenty-five standard-deviation moves in the market several days running. In other words, their models (and those of their peer institutions) were based on insufficient or inappropriate data.
Once you have found an appropriate topic, you will want to contrast theory and practice. You will want to show that you are reasonably aware of the relevant theory and its implications, but you are not expected to be an expert. In discussing leadership, for instance, you probably don’t need to refer to the “mechanistic and transformational leadership paradigm” as the prevailing model. If you have covered the subject in your prior studies, however, a more sophisticated discussion will be expected. In either case, a bit of research regarding the relevant theory will not go amiss.
By discussing intelligently both the theoretical underpinnings and your practical experience in a field, you can show that you are a thoughtful professional. In addition, this topic gives you the chance to show the other side to your candidacy. For instance, if you are (or appear to be) a street-smart fellow, you can lean toward an extra full discussion of the relevant theories. If you have a strongly academic profile or are relatively young, you can lean the other way and emphasize the organizational savvy, handling of people, or other practical skills you acquired or used in this example.
The ongoing debate over the proper role of business in society has made ethics an important issue in a manager’s training—or so the admissions officers will tell you. The reality may be somewhat different. Business schools periodically feel the need to talk about ethics as a result of recent scandals, although it is clearly a subject of limited interest for most of the professors. The need to appear interested in the subject, at least to critical outsiders, has probably been as important as anything else in generating the use of this question.
For some schools and some admissions officers, this question is a sincere attempt to understand your ethics. For others, the question is not so much about ethics as it is just another chance to see your writing and read another story about you.
Most people have trouble finding something to discuss, so they end up choosing something trivial. In discussing it, they think that a question about ethics must call for a holier-than-thou stance, so they sound like refugees from a sensitivity training session. Another common mistake, which could single-handedly kill your chances of admission, is to describe a situation in which you made an obvious moral transgression and then later “saw the light” and tried to redeem yourself. An example of this error would be to describe how your firm’s personnel department accidentally deposited another employee’s $10,000 bonus into your account, which you neglected to report until you heard that this other employee had started demanding that the personnel department determine what had become of her payment.
The toughest part of this essay is to find a suitable subject. Here are some possible topics:
The essays in Part IV contain interesting examples of other ethical dilemmas. Note that you can also consider writing about something that happened in your private rather than your business life. In fact, such dilemmas are a part of everyday life, so failing to find one runs the risk of appearing unaware of the moral dimension of life.
This question is asked in one of two different ways. In one version, you are asked simply to describe an ethical dilemma and what you thought of it. In the other version, you must describe an ethical dilemma and what you did in response to it. The second type is obviously more demanding than the first because you must have a situation that you ultimately managed well. Some situations may lend themselves to excellent management, but the nature of a “dilemma” suggests that there may not be a perfect way to handle it.
In writing this essay, you will want to show that there truly was a dilemma, at least on the surface. You will probably want to show that you explored and investigated the nature of the problem, since you were no doubt reluctant to make a snap decision when it appeared that any decision would have substantial adverse consequences. If you are called upon to describe what you did rather than just what you thought, you will want to show that you explored every option and did your best to minimize or mitigate the adverse consequences.
The tone of your essay is another minefield. If you sound like an innocent 7-year-old who believes it is always wrong to lie, you will not fit in a world of tough senior managers who constantly need to make hard decisions with rotten consequences for somebody. On the other hand, if you sound like a Machiavelli, for whom the only calculus depends on personal advantage, and for whom the potential suffering of other people is irrelevant, you will be rejected as a moral monster. You need to be somewhere in the middle—someone who recognizes that the world and the decisions it requires are seldom perfect, but that it is appropriate to try to minimize adverse consequences as best one can. Only in extreme circumstances would it be appropriate to walk away from the decision (and the job).
It is critical to find a subject into which you can sink your teeth. Our examples may help you find such a subject, one with layers of detail and dilemma. If you go into depth in exploring it, without sounding like a naïve child or a totally cynical manipulator; turn it about and examine it from different angles; and weigh the various options thoughtfully, you will show yourself to be senior-management material.
This question is asked in order to understand your personality, your values, and how you interact with others. Admissions committees want to see what traits you appreciate in others. They assume that the qualities you deem especially attractive in others are those you try to develop in yourself. Likewise, they are keen to know that you are capable of sustaining meaningful relationships with others in the program (and beyond) and learning from them.
The typical applicant chooses the first person who comes to mind, often his manager or one of his parents. He then discusses obviously desirable traits—such as generosity, leadership, determination, or loyalty—in vague terms. Others discuss the well-known qualities of a famous figure, such as Martin Luther King Jr., whether or not that person has actually had an impact on their own lives. In both cases, applicants write essays full of praise for the other person, but without ever showing how this person affected them, thereby revealing little about themselves. In essence, these applicants answer only the first of the question’s two parts.
Do not think of this essay as a “free-for-all.” Instead, use it to strengthen your positioning or overcome a potential weakness. Even though you have a lot of leeway in your choice of subject, discussing the right kind of person as your role model can shape your candidacy beneficially. For instance, a younger, inexperienced applicant will be helped by writing a sophisticated essay on a not-too-obvious person. Thus, she should favor a balanced appreciation of a senior manager in her firm or a partially successful politician rather than a hagiographic treatment of her father. A candidate who needs to avoid looking like a total workaholic should avoid discussing a driven entrepreneur and instead opt for someone who can shed light on his personality, values, or noncareer interests.
As a general rule, there is nothing wrong with choosing a common topic, such as one’s supervisor, father, or Martin Luther King Jr. But you need to bring the subject matter to life using relevant details and stories that reach beyond the mundane. Admissions officers are not interested in reading for the hundredth time that King was a great leader who forswore violence.
The point should not be that you were impressed by this person. Rather, you need to show in what ways his or her example inspired or impelled your own development. This development need not be career-oriented. In fact, a majority of applicants will be better off focusing on how they developed as people rather than as managers.
When answering any question, even about a relationship with someone else, at least part of the focus must be on you. This is doubly true for this question, but it does require that you show how you have reacted to the other person’s example. Here you will use the other person as a foil—he should reflect your concerns, your values, your interests, and your attributes. Show how you have reacted to his or her example. Remember that you—not your manager or your father—are applying to the program.
Choosing the right person to discuss can help your candidacy immensely, by cementing your positioning efforts or downplaying a weakness. Choosing a role model with particular personality or leadership traits can help to establish the importance of those traits to you; similarly, the related stories you tell about yourself can establish your claim to those same traits.
Business schools are in the business of educating leaders; showing your self-development efforts can demonstrate that you are likely to get the maximum from any learning environment.
MBA programs want to know who you are. As has been emphasized throughout this book, you are more than just a set of numbers to your evaluators. This kind of question helps the admissions committee determine who you are, what makes you tick, and what unique life experiences you can bring to an MBA class.
The typical applicant chooses a successful athletic or business effort and then tries to argue that it was truly inspirational and put her on the road to success. Thus, placing third in the low hurdles runoff got her on the varsity track team, an event that caused her to figure out that if she just tried hard enough, she could succeed at anything. Although it is possible to make such an event sound like it was a real milestone in your life, recognize that painfully few applicants succeed in doing so.
The other common approach is to trace the evolution of one’s entire life, cataloguing every significant event along the way, even though this represents a failure to answer the question—and forfeits an opportunity to show one’s inner self.
A good place to start on this question is to examine the inflection points in your life, points at which your life changed directions. Such changes tend to show a lot about who you are. Understanding what made you change from a prior course of action allows someone to see how you think, what matters to you, where you are headed, and why. If you have an inflection point or points to consider, ask yourself what event spurred your change of direction. For instance, perhaps the death of your uncle from a hard-to-diagnose disease caused you to dedicate yourself to founding a company to develop a diagnosis for the disease.
If it is hard to come up with an event that spurred a change in you, consider whether another event is a good representative of such a change or, alternatively, shows you overcoming a major challenge. For example, you may have suffered from a bad case of stuttering throughout your childhood and adolescence. No single event triggered this, so you cannot discuss one. On the other hand, your fight to overcome the problem may have crystallized when you had to give a presentation at your high school graduation. Of course you agonized for months in advance, practicing and willing yourself to succeed. Your success in getting through the speech might truly have caused you to know that you were finally on the downhill side of the problem and that your life would no longer be ruled by your fear of speaking.
As the last example shows, a seemingly trivial event (giving a speech) can be highly meaningful to you and have a lifelong impact. When discussing something that matters to you but is not clearly a major life event (like the death of a parent), be sure to develop the event’s context. In addition, for all events, be sure to discuss the impact they had on you. Even an obviously major event such as being adopted at the relatively advanced age of 8 will benefit from a discussion of your relationship to your adoptive parents, your involvement with adoption organizations, and your own plans for a family.
One type of event tends not to work well here—the sort that is commonplace for the applicants to top schools. Graduating from college or getting your first job are likely to fall flat unless you can invest them with personal significance, as the stutterer discussed above did. In fact, most career situations will not work particularly well. They seldom have had an impact upon your life comparable in scale to the impact of various personal situations. Also, a discussion of career situations fits well in response to other essay questions, so there is seldom a need to make them the focus of this answer.
This question begs you to tell a life story; doing so can help you greatly in your attempt to separate yourself from those with career experience similar to your own. Showing why you changed your life’s course is of inherent interest to those who want to know who you are, not just what you have done. An additional benefit is that a good discussion of changes you have made or challenges you have met shows you to be someone who understands herself well; such self-knowledge is recognized as an important step to becoming a good manager of other people.
As with the “defining moment” question, MBA programs want to know who you are and what you value. This question helps the admissions committee determine these things and, as a result, what you are likely to take away from the program. In addition, schools that ask this type of question are usually keen to see to what extent you understand yourself, figuring that those who will make the best managers are those with the greatest degree of self-knowledge.
The typical applicant touches briefly on every (in)significant element of his life: family, friends, career, education, community involvement, pets, reading, travel, spectator and participant sports, and so on. Covering a laundry list of topics is inevitably a poor idea. It leaves little room for real exploration or intelligent insight. It also suggests that you are unable to prioritize. The result is that the committee gets little sense of the core you.
If the answer to this question is limited to several hundred words, focusing on one or two elements will be required. In recent years, however, this has been Stanford’s pet question, with a suggested answer length of three to seven pages. In this case, the better approach is to utilize an overarching theme that allows you to pull together several related topics without losing focus. In writing page after page, you face a second danger (the first is discussing a laundry list of unrelated topics)—artificially narrowing your discussion to a single topic. Doing so usually causes the applicant to stop writing after just a page or two (bored with his own topic) or, if he writes at length, bores the admissions committee.
The hard part is to choose a theme that advances your desired positioning and allows you to group together the appropriate topics. The applicant who has lived through something traumatic is often able to do so, but others usually need to search harder for an appropriate theme. Thus, the applicant who has endured crushing poverty can use empowerment as his major theme. He can obviously discuss his desire to get a first-class education, gain appropriate career credentials and credibility, and so on. In addition, he can highlight how he has helped others, particularly his siblings, in their quest for success, thereby revealing a more personal side to this topic. Those who have escaped totalitarian regimes, rehabilitated themselves after major automobile accidents, and the like can use big themes such as “freedom” to good effect.
But what about the second category, the person who has no such readymade organizing devices to hand? A good example is a woman who most values the time she spends with her grandfather. She shows that he has instilled in her a strong work ethic (through his own sixty-year career as a baker), taught her how to cook (one of her favorite pastimes), forged part of her identity (through his sharing of stories about their Danish ancestors), and demonstrated unconditional love (her most valued emotion). This is another example of a theme that permits her to show herself to good advantage, although it was probably not an obvious choice for her when she first confronted the question.
Writing a lengthy essay that does not lend itself to a chronological approach is difficult. The best way to do so here is to utilize an organizing theme that enables you to pull together several related items. By doing so, you show that you have followed the instructions to discuss one item, not a bunch. Your coherent discussion of related items also gives a clearer, more focused picture of you than is possible with a host of topics.
Good managers tend to be able to make friends and to socialize easily. This is all the more important in a nonhierarchical, manage-by-influence-rather-than-power world. This question is designed to reveal more about you and to see whether you would fit into the school’s social life (and perhaps add to it). This is likely to be much more important for small schools than for large ones, for isolated schools than for urban ones, and perhaps for standalone business schools than for those that are part of a university. The reason is that a smaller, more isolated school will tend to have a very close-knit student body, so someone who does not fit well with the school culture may have a miserable time.
A person with balanced interests, who is not consumed by business to the exclusion of other things, will be able to survive the ups and downs both of business school and of a managerial career. In addition, he is likely to be good company at business school, more interesting to spend time with than a career-obsessive.
Many applicants treat this question too lightly and end up simply listing five or ten things they enjoy doing. This does nothing to help their case.
Start by thinking of the things you really enjoy. You probably have a pretty good-sized list. Choose one or two (or three) to talk about. Your selection criteria should include the following:
The appropriate activities to discuss are those that will help your positioning. For example, if you have been a corporate librarian, you may want to reassure schools that you are a very tough and determined person. If you enjoy technical mountain climbing, by all means discuss this activity rather than your Internet chess-playing. The former shows you to be a highly unusual librarian whereas the latter suggests an all-too-stereotypical one who prefers solitary, contemplative pursuits. Some pursuits that are quite worthwhile are actually not ideal choices here because they are far too frequently used. This list includes common sports and physical activities, as well as teaching for Junior Achievement and involvement with Habitat for Humanity. This is not to say you should avoid writing about these, but be sure to exercise as much creativity as possible in discussing them if you do select them. Topics to avoid, almost no matter what, include watching soap operas or situation comedies on television, sleeping, drinking with the lads, hanging out in pool rooms, and so on.
The next step is to write the essay in an appealing fashion. Since your spare time is indeed your own, any activities you pursue should inspire you with real enthusiasm, at least if you are a basically enthusiastic sort of person. (Given that business schools want enthusiastic students, you are obligated to sound enthusiastic even if you are not.)
The other key to your essay will be to show that you are highly knowledgeable and sincere about the activity. These characteristics are desirable on their own and, equally important, they show that you really do participate in this hobby, sport, or activity. This essay lends itself to “hypercreativity”; make it clear that you are not simply claiming to climb mountains or whatever you discuss.
One way to sound enthusiastic, knowledgeable, and sincere is to go into detail in describing what you do. If you are a mountain climber, you may want to describe one of your best climbs. Why did you choose to tackle this particular mountain? Why this particular route? How did you choose your team? What criteria did you employ, and why? What were the major challenges that you faced? How did you handle them? What was the aftermath of this climb? Describing these and other matters will also individualize you, because even someone choosing the same topic will have had entirely different experiences.
The other quality you should strive to communicate is that you are a very likable person. You want to be regarded as interesting and pleasant company. This is especially true for people whose positioning is that they are number-crunching accountants or otherwise relatively isolated.
Should you discuss one or two (or three) activities? This depends on the number of activities you pursue that meet our criteria and how much space it will take you to describe each one appropriately.
Choosing only one or two activities to discuss shows that you know how to prioritize and makes your discussion seem focused while giving you the opportunity to interest the admissions committee in what you describe. Discussing unusual activities will also help the committee to remember who you are.
Choosing activities that further your positioning effort has an obvious payoff. Discussing them enthusiastically permits you to build enthusiasm for you on the part of the committee.
This question is asked for three reasons. First, it gives you a chance to add important information that other essays may not capture. Second, it gives you a chance to explain a weakness or gap in your record, or why your boss did not write a recommendation for you. Third, it will ascertain whether you are able to weigh the value of the additional information you are giving the admissions committee versus the effort required for them to read another essay.
Many people write something, but few benefit thereby. Too many complain about what happened long ago or make excuses for their own failings (or simply substitute an essay from another school). Others add a litany of marginally positive exploits, thereby doing little but diluting the overall impact of their essays.
Write this essay only if you can make a substantial, positive addition to your application. Consider first whether you have any substantial weakness in your record that can be explained in a sensible fashion. For example, if you received poor grades during your last two years of college due to the need to work forty hours per week to support your newly unemployed parents, be sure to note this. Explain in a simple, direct way, however, rather than whining or complaining.
Then, ask yourself whether anything important to your positioning has been left out. If there is an important credential or conquered obstacle that you have not been able to discuss, and it will substantially help your positioning effort, then use this essay to bring it to the admissions committee’s attention. Resist the natural inclination, however, to gild the lily. Do not tell a third story showing how politically astute you were on the job. If you have explained how well you analyzed a production problem, and a recommender is describing another such effort, do not even think of describing a third one here.
What sorts of things are most likely to qualify for inclusion here? With some schools you will not otherwise have the opportunity to discuss your community activities or other things you have pursued outside your proper job. For example, you might wish to describe your management of the political campaign of a friend who ran for office in your city. Or you might wish to describe what you did in setting up a successful business that you ran on weekends. You may have a specific skill you wish to demonstrate that will not otherwise come across, or you may have rectified a weakness in your record. Perhaps you did poorly at math during your university studies but have since been sufficiently motivated to take a number of continuing education classes in math.
If you have found one item that qualifies as a valuable addition, by all means use it; but what if you think you have six or eight such items? In this case, follow the usual approach and select one, or at most two, of these. This essay is meant to augment the basic application, not substitute for it. You do not want to risk overwhelming admissions officers with too much material, nor do you want to fall into the trap of just listing items.
If you feel that using your material from another school’s application will greatly benefit your positioning effort, be sure to explain in your introductory sentence why you are including this information (i.e., what you are trying to achieve with this additional information). Admissions officers are well aware of what questions other schools ask, and will not be impressed if it is obvious you are simply tacking on the answer to another school’s question without a clear reason.
Complaining about one’s fate or offering insubstantial excuses for one’s failings are likely to annoy admissions committees. Offering real explanations, if available, is better calculated to win their favor. Similarly, lists are seldom of value. It is far better to choose one or two things and then describe and discuss them in sufficient detail as to make their nature and value clear.
Business schools are aware that the old model of how students undertake their bachelor’s degree is becoming less common. Not everyone goes through college taking four courses per term, doing an extracurricular or two, and then working during summer vacations. Now students may jam their coursework into three years, doing little but coursework; stretch it out for five or more years while working half-time or more; put primary emphasis on their internships rather than their courses; and so on. As a result, business schools want to understand the context in which a degree was earned; the grades no longer necessarily “speak for themselves.”
The typical applicant whines rather than explains, complaining about unfair professors or pleading that he was sick before critical exams. He fails to take responsibility for his own actions.
Focus on presenting the full context of your undergraduate experience. For instance, if the nature and quality of your school are likely to be unknown to the admissions committee, discuss them. Some schools, such as art or music schools, seldom produce candidates for MBA programs.
Foreign schools, unless they are regular feeders to this business school, may well be unknown to the admissions committee, too. The same is true for two-year schools that have recently converted to four-year schools.
What is true about your school may also be true about your department or the curriculum you followed. For instance, if your department attracts the best and brightest students on campus, regularly turning out graduates who win major fellowships and go on to top graduate schools, note this. Similarly, if it is the lowest-grading department on campus, demonstrate this. And, in general, explain the school’s grading policies if they are unusual or difficult to understand.
If your activities outside class affected your grades or course selection, explain the causes and the consequences. Athletics, editing the school newspaper, work, caring for a sick relative, or raising a family might well have affected your academic performance. Be sure to point to evidence that you performed substantially better when not spending as much time on nonacademic activities. Also, be careful not to make too much of a fuss about a level of activity that is commonplace among applicants to good business schools. Working eight to ten hours a week might be worth noting, but it should not be posited as the reason for a dreadful GPA.
This essay should not be largely devoted to trying to explain or rationalize your failures. Instead, you should look to demonstrate your successes, particularly if they are not obvious. For example, you may have satisfied the requirements for two majors but not have them both listed on your transcript simply because your school does not officially recognize double majors. Similarly, you may have the highest GPA of anyone in your department but not have gotten departmental honors because they are not given at your school or because, as a transfer student, you didn’t qualify for them.
This essay gives you the opportunity to reflect upon your undergraduate experience. Why did you choose the courses and major you did? What did you particularly enjoy and value at the time? What have you come to value more highly in retrospect? What would you do differently given what you now know? Would you, for instance, not simply rest on your laurels for having passed the Calculus BC exam (which eliminated the need to take any quantitative courses at your college) and take some quantitative courses? Perhaps you were trying to maximize something other than your GPA—involvement in political activities, writing for campus and professional journals, earning enough to graduate debt-free, playing varsity sports, or something else. As long as you maintained a reasonable level of academic performance, you can show that the tradeoff was appropriate. Discuss what you learned, how this influenced your choice of career (and outside interests), and what has been most valuable to you in career and life.
No matter what you discuss, be careful about the tone of this essay. Be matter-of-fact rather than whiny. Be pleased with what you learned, academically and otherwise. And if you have a generally strong academic record, resist the temptation to quibble about minor flaws in it. Don’t argue that you deserved an A instead of a B+ in some seminar. Instead, just say that the overall record reflects your abilities.
Looking at your undergraduate career as a whole, instead of focusing just on how best to excuse a low grade or a bad semester, allows you to avoid sounding defensive. Seeing what you gained from your studies and other pursuits also suggests that you are looking to your future rather than remaining mired in a doubtful past. And by fully highlighting your successes, you are able to gain credit for much that might remain hidden in a transcript and for which there may not be an appropriate place elsewhere in the application.
This question is asked so that the admissions committee can get an idea of how well you work in group settings. It is also a way for a school to advertise to applicants that it has a team-based approach to learning. Many of the projects you will do at such a school (and beyond) will require strong teamwork and interpersonal skills. Thus, the ability to work well in a team, whether as leader or member, is critical.
The typical applicant focuses on the subject matter of the group effort and forgets to describe group dynamics, the teamwork skills she employed, and what she contributed. For example, she takes great pains to go into detail about the securities laws her investment banking group researched for a particular client rather than demonstrating her skill in helping the team function well under difficult circumstances.
Similarly, many applicants focus on the results of the group effort instead of on the group’s functioning and their own contributions.
The emphasis in any kind of question about a team effort should always be on group dynamics. The best approach is to focus first and foremost on the team and the interactions between individuals, giving only as much detail about the substantive work as is necessary to make the essay readable and interesting.
Make sure to describe your role on the team, the ways in which you helped move the team forward, and the interpersonal and management skills you employed in so doing. Consider mentioning what difficulties the group encountered; how you influenced people; how you helped manage competing team priorities; how you got others—especially reticent or quiet members of the team—to contribute; how you reduced conflict or dealt with personality clashes; and how your efforts complemented those of others on the team. Consider to what extent it was appropriate to have focused more on the process of working together than on the substantive result.
Although you will naturally prefer to choose examples in which you have led a group, whether as the formal or informal leader, it is also possible to write an impressive essay showing how well you performed as a team member. After all, even a strong leader should know when to follow someone else’s lead.
You will also want to discuss your teamwork, managerial, or leadership philosophy, if you have one, to show that you have been an observant student (on the job) of these important subjects. Be sure in this case to link your general views to specific actions you took on the project.
Although a project’s results always help to show that it (and thus the team that conducted it) was successful, do not overemphasize them. Do not allow the results to take the focus away from the real issue: your ability to work successfully in a team situation.
This approach will show that you understand the importance of good team instincts, and that you have a healthy appreciation for how much real teamwork is involved in getting an MBA. It will show that you are the generous, cooperative sort who will get on well with your teammates at school and help those who are not as well versed in team dynamics acclimate.
Choosing an example in which you were the leader of the team can show off your leadership skills as well, whereas choosing an example in which you were not the leader can illustrate your ability to contribute when you are not in charge. This is an important attribute at a top program in which everyone is accustomed to being a star.
TEAM ESSAYS
With schools asking a whole range of questions about applicants’ performance on teams, it is useful to keep in mind the traditional model of team development when formulating your response. The four stages of team development are often described as “forming” (selecting members, getting used to one another), “storming” (as serious work gets under way, members battle one another about ideas and plans and how best to work together), “norming” (as members get to know one another’s habits and strengths, accepted norms of conduct develop), and “performing” (the team functions at its best, with a consensus about goals and how to function as a true team).
Although this is an optimistic view, which overlooks the fact that team development is seldom so clearly linear (backtracking is frequent), and the “performing” stage is seldom a nirvana of high performance without personality or relationship problems, it does offer a useful checklist. When considering what you had to suffer through, or manage, or what went wrong and why, consult the following list for ideas:
When attempting to describe how you led a team, consider what you did to help avoid or mitigate the problems listed above. Then consult the following checklist to refresh your memory as to the various (additional) activities you might have performed as leader:
Coordinating the team (e.g., selecting members, ensuring that members are freed of competing responsibilities, coordinating with other teams working on related issues, making sure meetings take place, running meetings, staying on top of key analyses and actions, keeping team informed of developing issues)
Obtaining resources (e.g., staffing team with appropriate members, freeing members of competing responsibilities, substituting members with different skills as team’s needs evolve, obtaining necessary funding)
Coaching members (e.g., providing help in solving specific analytical problems, coaching problem members, assisting members in handling personality conflicts, maintaining sense of urgency, shifting team toward self-management)
Implementing solution (e.g., helping team understand likely implementation difficulties, lining up support of key people outside team, helping team present analyses and plans to rest of firm, ensuring resources necessary for implementation made available)
Gaining recognition for the team (e.g., initiating formal and informal parties and celebrations as important milestones reached, praising members, making sure people outside team recognize members’ (and team’s) work, tracking results, ensuring official recognition and rewards for team’s results)
A major part of your role is to develop a dynamic, enthusiastic atmosphere in which members are inspired to perform at their best and thereby find fulfillment in helping the firm achieve its goals. This generally requires setting high standards and clear objectives, establishing a sense of the team’s value, and using your own actions to create a model of honesty and consistency for the team.
It should be apparent after reading the above analyses of essay questions that a thoughtful approach is required when confronting any essay. Remember that a question does not exist in a vacuum. Instead, it is part of the whole application and should be answered in the context of how you wish the whole application package to read.
You will have started by determining what themes you wish to emphasize and how you will maximize your reward/risk ratio. As part of this, you will have chosen the “stories” you want to tell about yourself. This initial effort provides you with the context for an essay. When it is not clear which story to tell, remember these general rules for selection:
THE ADMISSIONS DIRECTORS DISCUSS THE ESSAYS
The essays are open-ended; different lengths are appropriate for different stories. Our first essay is meant to let us know who you are and what you care about. The second focuses on the usual business school stuff: what do you want to do, and why. We want to see whether you have thought through why you want an MBA—and whether our program is right for you. We want to be sure you know that this is a graduate program, with a very serious, academic, social science underpinning to it. We want to know why you are choosing to pursue such a rigorous, academic program. SHARON HOFFMAN, STANFORD
Too many people try to impress us. Better that you should move us instead. Let us get to know you. We want to know what you’ve learned, not just what you’ve accomplished. The bottom line for me is your motivations and passions, not just your accomplishments. ROSE MARTINELLI, BOOTH CHICAGO
We want to see how well you understand yourself and whether you are able to communicate this understanding. We want you to shine a mirror onto yourself. We want to know the person behind all those achievements, who you are and what you care about—what motivates you, what you are passionate about. (We’re not here to judge what it is specifically, as long as it is not immoral or illegal.) We do care about how well you can communicate this, in writing (surely a lost skill), because communication is an important aspect of management. SHARON HOFFMAN, STANFORD
It’s compelling to read the application of someone who clearly knows how Haas will help her reach her goals. People who don’t know this are likely to be less committed to the academic needs of our program. PETER JOHNSON, HAAS
It’s important to demonstrate why you want to attend this school. We’re trying to assess credentials and fit with the school. The more [you] can show there’s a good fit, the more confident we can be about it. DAWNA CLARKE, TUCK
We place tremendous emphasis on the essays; they really make a difference to us. We look to find the person behind the achievements. At two o’clock in the morning, when you’re taking a break in the midst of a project, you don’t want to talk to a résumé who speaks polysyllabic business jargon; you want to talk to someone who’s real and compelling. SHARON HOFFMAN, STANFORD
Being able to talk about how your past and current professional experience will be useful during your two years here is important. So is a discussion of how the ramping up of one’s skill set on the program will help propel you professionally. SALLY JAEGER, TUCK
Brainstorm with other people, but think about your own strengths and try to give us insight into who you are, not who someone else (such as a consultant) tells you to be. You’ll write much better if you talk about yourself rather than someone you aren’t familiar with. It’s easy to see when people aren’t being themselves, and it hurts them. Being made to look like everyone else is not helpful to your chances. LINDA MEEHAN, COLUMBIA
Don’t give us a list of activities or accomplishments. Think instead about an activity, project, or experience that you can describe to illustrate your strengths. To show leadership in the workplace, for instance, I’d like to see you discuss a project, work group, etc., and use it as an example through which I can see your strengths and skills. This will be more memorable and unique, too. Ask your family and friends what they know about your work. Whatever you’ve told them about is probably a good essay topic. SARAH E. NEHER, DARDEN
Think before you write. Map out your responses before you start. It’s great to get advice from people, but in the end you need to write it in your own voice so we can get a good sense of who you are. THOMAS CALEEL, WHARTON
The last thing we want is to see you quoting our brochures or our website. I always tell applicants that they’re much more interesting than anything I can write because it’s their lives, which are compelling and unique. There’s some passion burning within you because you want to do something profound, you want to make a profound change in your life—personally, professionally, intellectually. That’s why you’re applying. So there’s some passion there: get it out. Shape it, hone it, but get the story out. It’ll be completely unique to who you are. And after looking at thousands of essays, the ones that pop off the page are those that are personal and passionate. ISSER GALLOGLY, STERN (NYU)
It’s a bad idea to write what you think we want to hear. PETER JOHNSON, HAAS
We read the application essays along with the GMAT AWA essays. We dislike formulaic approaches to essays, whether on the AWA or on the application form. When you’re looking at hundreds of essays, those shine through as somewhat superficial. DR. SIMON LEARMOUNT, JUDGE (CAMBRIDGE)
Applicants are welcome to converse with us about the essays before they apply. They can understand we’re not looking for another “I admire Jack Welch” essay. Nor for business, scientific essays. Instead, I really want to know who inspires you, who you are as an individual, what makes you unique, what is your true motivation. MARYKE STEENKAMP, ROTTERDAM
We give a limited amount of space for responding to our questions, so differentiating between the essential and blah-blah-blah is critical. KATTY OOMS SUTER, IMD (SWITZERLAND)
Essays are important, so don’t rush them. Think carefully about what point or points you want to get across and how you might best express them. When completed put it aside for a day or so and then reread it to (a) ensure it is saying what you intended and (b) there are no typos and other errors. SÉAN RICKARD, CRANFIELD (UK)
Too many essays are the same. See if you can step outside yourself and really look at yourself. The worst thing is trying to tell us what you think we want to hear. I love a funny essay, but I also love essays that show what you think and what makes you tick. JOELLE DU LAC, INSEAD
By all means write an additional essay if something important cannot be addressed elsewhere. A typical example might be someone whose academic career had real peaks and valleys and who consequently needed to discuss the reasons for this. We do not, however, want repetitive information, nor do we want to see essays written for another school (which happens all too often). SALLY JAEGER, TUCK
It’s appropriate to submit an additional essay to discuss an important issue not covered elsewhere. One example would concern explaining a career path prior to business school that does not appear to make any sense. It would be valuable to show why you chose the positions you did and how this relates to getting an MBA. PETER JOHNSON, HAAS
We tell people that they should use our optional essay if there’s some aspect of their candidacy that we should know about but that isn’t apparent from the rest of the application. So, for example, if there’s a specific reason why they did poorly a particular semester in college, or if their career trajectory is atypical in some way. It is definitely an optional essay, though—just because we offer it doesn’t mean you have to submit something. BRUCE DELMONICO, YALE
There’s no chart laying out the answer to this. It’s a matter of judgment. For instance, are you including something that couldn’t fit in answer to another question? THOMAS CALEEL, WHARTON
You should address something that is missing in your application or that raises questions. If you fail to address it or try to hide it, we’ll assume the worst. KATTY OOMS SUTER, IMD (SWITZERLAND)
Don’t send additional materials unless they are crucial to understanding who you are, what you do, and what you think. Few people are helped by the additional materials they give us. So think long and hard before sending something in. SALLY JAEGER, TUCK
It’s OK to submit a newspaper article about you, but almost surely a bad idea to submit a videotape of yourself. ANN W. RICHARDS, JOHNSON (CORNELL)
When considering whether to submit additional materials, applicants need to consider what this says about how they’ll come across to recruiters later on: whether they’ll be seen as able to market themselves well or as annoying. ANNE COYLE, YALE
Don’t go overboard—no wedding pictures or high school yearbooks. JOELLE DU LAC, INSEAD
This is a big no-no. Candidates should only send what has been asked for in the application. ANNA FARRÚS, SAÏD (OXFORD)
We tend not to look at extra materials. We want a perfectly level playing field. DR. SIMON LEARMOUNT, JUDGE (CAMBRIDGE)