Yesterday, Manhattan GMAT posted a 700 level GMAT question on our blog. Today, they have followed up with the answer:

In this overlapping sets problem, there are two kinds of sandwiches (tuna melts and veggie melts, abbreviated T and V). There are also two kinds of customers: male and female. Since each customer buys exactly one sandwich, customers and sandwiches are interchangeable. Thus, we can set up one table to keep track of both type of sandwich and type of customer, as follows:

[]        M          F          Total
T
V
Total                            300

We are looking for the ratio of two numbers on this chart: veggie melts bought by females and the total number of veggie melts.

Statement (1): INSUFFICIENT. We can fill in the chart’s total row and total columns, but the four cells in the upper left remain unknown.

[]        M          F      Total
T                                 150 (1/2 of 300)
V                                 150
Total   100       200      300
(1/3 of 300)

Thus, we cannot figure out the needed ratio.

Statement (2): INSUFFICIENT. We can use the relationship between “female tuna melts” and “male veggie melts,” introducing a variable as follows:

[]        M          F          Total
T                     2x
V         x
Total                               300

However, without more information, we cannot find the needed ratio.

Statements (1) and (2) together: SUFFICIENT. Combining the tables above, we get the following:

[]        M          F      Total
T                      2x      150
V          x                    150
Total   100      200       300

We can fill in the remaining cells with expressions — for instance, “female veggie melts” can be written as 150 - x, since the veggie row must sum to 150. Now we can add up the female column and solve for x:
2x + (150 - x) = 200
x + 150 = 200
x = 50

Thus, the completed chart looks like this:

[]        M          F          Total
T        50         100       150
V        50         100       150
Total  100        200       300

We see that 100/150, or 2/3, of the veggie melts sold yesterday were bought by female customers.

Note that we could have addressed this problem without knowing the total number of customers (300). We are only looking for a ratio between two numbers on the chart.

The correct answer is (C): Both statements together are sufficient, but neither statement alone is sufficient.

Hot off the presses, Bruce DelMonico of Yale just sent us Yale’s new essay questions, which follow:

SHORT ANSWERS
Please answer each of the four questions below with a short paragraph of no more than 150 words.  This is an opportunity to distill your core ideas, values, goals and motivations into a set of snapshots that help tell us who you are, where you are headed, and why.  (600 words maximum)

1. What are your professional goals immediately after you receive your MBA? 
2. What are your long-term career aspirations?
3. Why are you choosing to pursue an MBA and why now?  (If you plan to use your MBA experience to make a significant change in the field or nature of your career, please tell us what you have done to prepare for this transition.)
4. What attracts you specifically to the Yale School of Management’s MBA program?

PERSONAL STATEMENT 1
Describe an accomplishment that exhibits your leadership style.  The description should include evidence of your leadership skills, the actions you took, and the impact you had on your organization.  (500 words maximum)

PERSONAL STATEMENT 2

Choose one of the following topics and answer it in essay form.  Please indicate the topic number at the beginning of your essay.  (500 words maximum)

1. A central premise of our teaching about leadership at the Yale School of Management is that true leadership—leadership that helps to address a significant problem in a new way—is necessarily personal.  It is only when personal passion aligns with meaningful aspirations that individuals are able to inspire others to act in support of an important goal or cause.  What are you most passionate about, and how have you demonstrated a commitment to this passion?
2. What achievement are you most proud of and why?
3. What is the most difficult feedback you have received from another person or the most significant weakness you have perceived in yourself?  What steps have you taken to address it and how will business school contribute to this process?

4. Describe a situation in which you devised and implemented a creative or unique solution to a difficult problem.  What obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?
5. Required for reapplicants: What steps have you taken to improve your candidacy since your last application?

Each week Manhattan GMAT posts a 700 level GMAT question on our blog and follows up with the answer the next day. Are you up for the challenge?

The Farmer in the Deli sandwich shop sells two kinds of sandwich: tuna melts and veggie melts. Each customer buys exactly one sandwich. If there were 300 customers yesterday, what fraction of veggie melts sold yesterday were bought by female customers?

(1) 1/2 of all sandwiches sold yesterday were tuna melts, and 1/3 of all customers yesterday were male.

(2) Yesterday, twice as many tuna melts were bought by females as there were veggie melts bought by males.

Months ago, we raised the issue of the decline in endowments and the potentially negative impact on your business school experiences. In an article published today in the Financial Times, Rebecca Knight informs readers of a leveling of the field. Currently, some private schools—such as Harvard, Stanford and Tuck—are reeling because they depend on their endowments to fund day-to-day operations, but these endowments have now decreased by 20%–40%. Meanwhile, public schools—such as Berkeley, the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina—depend on their endowments to cover far less of their day-to-day funding and are thus able to hire professors without being outbid, for example.

Last week, we wrote about how important it is to thoroughly explore and access your personal stories in your application essays. Of course, there is always the risk of too much of a good thing, however—Admissions Committees can be put off by candidates who go too far and become too personal.

Some stories are particularly challenging for Admissions Committees. For example, we have strongly discouraged candidates from writing about divorce as a moment of failure. If an individual takes responsibility in an essay for a failed marriage, he/she would likely end up revealing intensely personal problems and issues, rather than portraying him-/herself as having learned from a constructive professional or personal challenge.

What you should always keep in mind is that in many ways, the Admissions Committee is meeting you for the first time via your application. So, a simple way to judge whether you are being too personal in your materials is to ask yourself, “Would I be uncomfortable if, immediately upon meeting someone, he/she were to share this sort of information with me?” If your answer is “yes,” you should most likely consider changing your approach.

Essay 1
a) MBA Program applicants - Briefly assess your career progress to date. Elaborate on your future career plans and your motivation for pursuing a graduate degree at Kellogg. (600-word limit)

Because Personal Statements are similar from one application to the next, we have produced the “mbaMission Personal Statement Guide.” We offer this guide to candidates free of charge, via our online store. Please feel free to download your copy today.

Essay 2 – Describe your key leadership experiences and evaluate what leadership areas you hope to develop through your MBA experiences (600-word limit)

In this essay, you might offer two simple vignettes that showcase your leadership via a narrative, then evaluate yourself and illustrate certain areas for development. Although you are expected to be critical in discussing these areas for development, you should not deride your existing skills. Rather than thinking about ways in which you are lacking as a leader, you should focus on true opportunities to become a more complete and capable one. In this essay, (much as in Essays 1 and 3), specific reference is made to your future MBA experience. So, in answering this question, you should seize the opportunity to create a connection between yourself and Kellogg by showing that you understand how the school’s resources will facilitate your development as a leader.

Essay 3 – Assume you are evaluating your application from the perspective of a student member of the Kellogg Admissions Committee. Why would your peers select you to become a member of the Kellogg community? (600-word limit)

No doubt, many candidates will wonder whether they should respond to this question in first person or third person. We would guess that most applicants will choose to respond in third person, but there really is no right answer. What is important is that your content is compelling.

Because this essay is so open-ended, we strongly recommend that you outline your thoughts and try to avoid reviewing every single element of your profile. Many candidates will fail to write a compelling essay and will instead give brief attention to their transcript, GMAT score(s), professional history, community activities, personal life, etc. You only have six 600 words, so give careful thought to what a dispassionate outsider might think about you, and play to your strengths rather than surveying everything. In short, we encourage candidates to think in terms of anecdotes for this essay and not default to simply “listing” qualities and accomplishments.

A strong self-assessment will prepare you to not merely reiterate experiences but to instead effectively bring color to certain experiences and attributes and then apply them to the Kellogg community. By doing so, you will not only reveal your strengths and place them in a unique light, but you will also show your fit with Kellogg and prove to the Admissions Committee that you profoundly understand how you will contribute.

(Note: We strongly advise that you not get bogged down in discussing your GMAT score and/or GPA.) 

Essay 4 - Complete one of the following three questions or statements. (400-word limit)
Reapplicants have the option to answer a question from this grouping, but this is not required.

a) Describe a time when you had to make an unpopular decision.

It is oh-so-difficult to be unpopular, and writing about being unpopular is even more difficult. Candidates should not make the mistake of simply writing about a challenging decision, but should make sure to write about a decision that was met with significant opposition. Of course, the reader will be interested in how you made your decision, how it was received and how you resolved the issue of its unpopularity (or did not resolve it). It is important that the reader not learn only that you made a tough call, but also that you followed through or reconsidered your decision and what you learned as a result of doing so.

b) People may be surprised to learn that I….

We suggest that candidates give profound thought to the image that they have presented thus far in their application and other essays before writing this essay. Many applicants believe that they are offering a unique window into their experiences and personality when they are really only offering a different side of the same coin: “You know that I am an engineer, but did you know that I also do training?” (This just won’t work.)

The reader needs to be truly surprised by what he/she learns about you and should be pleasantly shocked—the former college shot putter now performs in an ethnic dance troupe, for example. Of course, your story need not be as over the top as this, but the reader should certainly have the opportunity to get to know a new and ideally courageous side of you that he/she may not have otherwise expected or seen.

c) I wish the Admissions Committee had asked me……

This essay is essentially an open invitation to present anything vital about yourself—compelling stories or differentiators—that you have not otherwise been able to showcase. Basically, you could not ask for a better opportunity to explain to the Admissions Committee how you are unique. Many candidates use this essay to discuss a particular hobby or interest. If this is your choice, your inordinate passion for the activity in question must be fully and clearly expressed—otherwise, this window into your life will be boring and unconvincing. Ask yourself, “How can I show that I take this passion further than others?” This essay should not be a fallback option you choose because you have run out of creative ideas. Rather, it should allow you to offer your reader something exceptional about yourself and add depth of character to your application.

Required essay for reapplicants only - Since your previous application, what steps have you taken to strengthen your candidacy? (400-word limit)

Whether you have improved your academic record, received a promotion, begun a new and exciting project, increased your community involvement or taken on a personal challenge of sorts, the key to this essay is conveying a very deliberate path of achievement. Kellogg wants to know that you have been actively striving to improve, and that you have seized opportunities during the previous year to do so, because a Kellogg MBA is vital to you. This essay question will vary greatly from one candidate to the next, as each person’s needs and experiences will differ. We are more than happy to provide one-on-one assistance with this highly personal essay to ensure that the above requirements are met.

Cover Letter

Prepare a cover letter (up to 500 words) seeking a place in the MIT Sloan MBA Program. Describe your accomplishments and include an example of how you had an impact on a group or organization. Your letter should conform to standard business correspondence and be addressed to Mr. Rod Garcia, Director of MBA Admissions.

MIT’s request for a cover letter is a bit unorthodox and can thus be perplexing to candidates—particularly because the Admissions Committee asks for an example of your “impact” in addition to implying that you should also explore your career goals and explain “Why MIT?” Still, you need not be daunted by the cover letter—as in any traditional personal statement, you should not just blandly document your work history, but rather should reveal your strengths and indeed your impact.

You would be wise to offer a powerful example; typically, we advise selecting a story from your work life and then showing a connection between it and your post-MBA goals. Thereafter, you should make the next logical connection, tying your goals to MIT Sloan (not just listing Sloan’s attributes). A quick point about your introduction: for some reason, candidates feel compelled to start cover letters with some version of “my name is X and I am applying to MIT….” This is a typical and boring introduction that offers information the school already possesses—and thus is not one that will bolster an applicant’s candidacy or profile. By creating a different and more compelling opening, you will grab and hold the attention of an Admissions Officer who has read thousands of these essays.

While the MIT cover letter differs from the typical personal statement, some “global” fundamentals still apply. Thus, we offer our “mbaMission Personal Statement Guide” to you, free of charge, via our online store. Please feel free to download your copy today.

Essays

We are interested in learning more about you and how you work, think, and act. For each essay, please provide a brief overview of the situation followed by a detailed description of your response. Please limit the experiences you discuss to those which have occurred in the past three years.

In each of the essays please describe in detail what you thought, felt, said, and did.

Essay 1: Please describe a time when you went beyond what was defined, expected, established, or popular. (500 words or less, limited to one page)

Typically, candidates consider times in which they possessed a bold vision and achieved ambitious goals, despite being discouraged by others, or times when no one had even realized an opportunity existed. While either circumstance is reasonable as a starting point, we suggest that candidates also consider instances when they revealed themselves to be independent thinkers, capable of finding their own path and/or adhering to morals and principles they hold dear. Regardless of which path you choose, by creating a clear picture of what was expected of you and then contrasting your choice—by describing your actions and outlining your reasoning and thoughts—you can present a compelling picture of yourself as a strong-minded and adventurous “hero.”

Essay 2: Please describe a time when you coached, trained, or mentored a person or group. (500 words or less, limited to one page)

Coaching, training and mentoring need not be considered exclusively in a formal context: “I was part of my company’s mentorship program and….” You can contemplate times when you were successful in an informal way, when you simply took the new hire under your wing or started and ran a few unsanctioned pre-work training sessions. The key to writing a strong essay is showing how you connected with your audience and, again, revealing your impact. Ideally, you would prove that there was a “before and after” and that your efforts led to a significant improvement in others’ abilities to contribute and in their confidence levels as well.

Essay 3: Please describe a time when you took responsibility for achieving an objective. (500 words or less, limited to one page)

This essay question is pretty open ended and will likely be a relief for those who felt constrained by the other two far more narrow questions above. Still, you should not simply paste in your favorite leadership story. You will need to be very clear about how you “took responsibility”—that you did not just lead but that you stated your intention to lead and thus created expectations for yourself. You can then explore how you achieved your goals and delivered on the expectations you created. (Note: You do not need to exclude instances in which you only partially achieved, or did not achieve, your goals, as long as you reveal the positive attributes of the experience.) At mbaMission, we recommend that candidates present their stories via a narrative structure. Do not just tell the reader what you accomplished, truly show the reader how you did it.

NYU Stern has released its 2009-2010 essay questions. Our analysis will follow shortly.  

Essay 1. Professional Aspirations
(750-word maximum, double-spaced, 12-point font)

Think about the decisions you have made in your life. Answer the following:

(a) What choices have you made that led you to your current position?
(b) Why pursue an MBA at this point in your life?
(c) What is your career goal upon graduation from NYU Stern? What is your long-term career goal?

Essay 2. Your Stern Experience
(500-word maximum, double-spaced, 12-point font)

We take great care to shape the Stern community with individuals who possess both intellectual and interpersonal strengths. We seek individuals who are highly intelligent, collaborative, and committed to flourishing as Stern leaders. Please answer the following questions:

(a) What is your personal experience with the Stern community? Tell us what actions you have taken to learn about us.
(b) Describe what most excites you about Stern from both an academic and extracurricular perspective.
(c) How do you anticipate making your mark on the Stern community? Be specific about the roles you will take on and the impact you hope to achieve.

Essay 3. Personal Expression

Please describe yourself to your MBA classmates. You may use almost any method to convey your message (e.g., words, illustrations). Feel free to be creative.

All submissions become part of NYU Stern’s permanent records and cannot be returned for any reason. Please do not submit anything that must be viewed or played electronically (e.g., CDs, DVDs, MP3s, online links), that is perishable (e.g., food) or that has been worn (e.g., used clothing). If you submit a written essay, it should be 500 words maximum, double-spaced, 12-point font. If you are not submitting Essay 3 online, you are required to upload a brief description of your submission in your online application. Please note that on the online application checklist, you must select “Submitted Online” for Essay 3 even if you are mailing it.

Chicago Booth has released its 2009-2010 application essays. Our analysis will follow shortly.

1. How did you choose your most recent job/internship and how did this experience influence your future goals? What about the Chicago Booth MBA makes you feel it is the next best step in your career at this time? (750-1,000 words)

1a. FOR REAPPLICANTS ONLY: Upon reflection, how has your thinking regarding your future, Chicago Booth, and/or getting an MBA changed since the time of your last application? (250 words)

2. Please choose one of the following (500-750 words):

Describe a time when you wish you could have retracted something you said or did. When did you realize your mistake and how did you handle the situation?

-or-

Describe a time when you were surprised by feedback that you received. What was the feedback and why were you surprised?

Slide Presentation

We have asked for a great deal of information throughout this application and now invite you to tell us about yourself. In four slides or less please answer the following question: What have you not already shared in your application that you would like your future classmates to know about you?

We have set forth the following guidelines for you to consider when creating your presentation. The content is completely up to you. There is no right or wrong approach to this essay. Feel free to use the software you are most comfortable with. Acceptable formats for upload in the online application system are PowerPoint or PDF. There is a strict maximum of four (4) slides, though you can provide fewer than four if you choose.  Slides will be printed and added to your file for review; therefore, flash, hyperlinks, embedded videos, music, etc. will not be viewed by the committee. You are limited to text and static images to convey your points. Color may be used.

Slides will be evaluated on the quality of content and ability to convey your ideas, not on technical expertise or presentation. You are welcome to attach a document containing notes if you feel a deeper explanation of your slides is necessary. However, the hope is the slide is able to stand alone and convey your ideas clearly. You will not be penalized for adding notes, but you should not construct a slide with the intention of using the notes section as a consistent means of explanation.

Optional Essay

If there is any important information that is relevant for your candidacy that you were unable to address elsewhere in the application, please share that information here.

For many years, one of the ineluctable truths of applying to business school has been “MBA candidates must present very well-defined goals to admissions committees.” Well, it seems that change is in the air. HBS does not even require applicants to discuss goals, but asks about a broader “career vision,” and this vision need not be addressed in your essays because this question is optional.  Now, no less than six top admissions officers, whom MBA Mission has spoken with, have shown an openness to candidates discussing primary and secondary short term goals, especially if the candidate is proposing to enter into a field that is not hiring during the recession or if the candidate is a career changer who may have trouble making the switch.

So, if you are planning to write about making the leap into investment banking during the downturn, you might want to offer a reasonable back-up plan as well that will provide the same or even different but nonetheless applicable skills that will still lead you to your long term goals.  During tough economic times, the schools want to know that you are employable and part of your messaging might just be that you are flexible and have truly considered your options if Plan A does not work out. Yesterday’s heresy is today’s reality.