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Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.

As most business schools have recently released their deadlines for the 2016–2017 season, we thought we would share a piece of advice that might help alleviate some deadline-related stress. After you have completed (but not yet submitted!) your application(s), find one individual you trust—whether a professional consultant or someone with insight into the application process—to read your essays one last time and give you last-minute feedback. However, we strongly suggest that you limit yourself to requesting feedback from just one or two individuals.

Because the application process is subjective, you will discover that as you add readers, you will also add new and different opinions. Soon, a multitude of alternatives might appear, and although none of these varying ideas will necessarily be “right” or “wrong”—considering that a single candidate’s stories can be marketed in almost countless ways—they can create unnecessary uncertainty.

We are not suggesting that you ignore critical feedback, but rather that you not complicate your final days and create doubt where it may not be due. If one or two readers support your ideas and emphasize that your application needs minimal work, you are probably best off ending your feedback loop there and submitting your application.

With regard to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. In this blog series, Manhattan Prep’s Stacey Koprince teaches you how to perform at your best on test day by using some common sense.

If you are just getting started with the GMAT and are trying to figure out what to do, we have got several big categories of things to discuss: mind-set, devising a study plan, and learning how to study.

Mind-Set

If you do what most people do and try to prepare for this test in the same way that you prepared for tests in school, you are not going to get the best score that you could get.

If you are not sure what is tested on the GMAT or what the different question types look like, take some time to wander around this section of the official GMAT Web site.

Next, read this short article: “In It to Win It.” This will help you to start to adjust your mind-set so you can maximize your GMAT score. One important detail: you are only going to get about 60% of the questions right.

How can that be? Glad you asked. Read the “Scoring” section of Manhattan Prep’s free e-book The GMAT Uncovered. This section explains just how the scoring on the GMAT works—which will help you better understand why trying to get everything right is a really bad strategy on the GMAT.

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*Please note: You are viewing an essay analysis from the 2016-2017 admissions cycle. Click here to view our collection of essay analyses for the current admissions season. 

Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business has made some adjustments to its essay questions this year but has chosen to keep its rather unique “25 Random Things” prompt, which we imagine will delight some applicants but dishearten others. If you fall into the latter category, we encourage you to view this submission as the generous opportunity it is to provide a comprehensive picture of yourself as a well-rounded candidate by sharing your most meaningful values, experiences, interests, and accomplishments. Whereas Fuqua’s required second essay involved a choice of topics last season, this time, all applicants must respond to the same query—which keeps the focus on candidates’ place within the school’s program and community but does so in a different context. Rather than explaining your need for Fuqua’s program specifically or how you would embody one of its main principles, you must address how you expect to engage with and be a benefit to others in the community. In addition to these essays, Fuqua poses a few short-answer goal questions with which applicants can cover the basic professional elements of their profile. Our analysis of all the school’s prompts follows…

Required Short Answer Questions: Answer all 3 of the following questions. For each question, respond in 500 characters only (the equivalent of about 100 words).

• What are your short-term goals, post-MBA?

• What are your long-term goals?

• Life is full of uncertainties, and plans and circumstances can change. As a result, navigating a career requires you to be adaptable. Should the short-term goals that you provided above not materialize, what alternative directions have you considered? 

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Many top business schools explicitly ask candidates about the steps they have taken to learn about their MBA program. The schools use such questions because they want to know that you have a sincere desire to gain a place in their next entering class specifically, and they want to be sure that you have made a concerted and genuine effort to learn about their program. So, when answering such questions, you absolutely must demonstrate your profound interest in and knowledge of the school.

Explaining that you have fully read the business school’s website will not suffice, considering that this resource is available to anyone—and frankly, the admissions committee expects you to do this anyway. Although you could mention your web research as a starting point if something very particular or unusual caught your attention, you are better off sharing your other—ideally firsthand/in-person—experiences with the school instead. By discussing the details of your class visit(s) and particularly of your interactions with admissions officers, students, professors, and/or alumni, you will demonstrate to the admissions committee that you have truly been striving to learn more and understand your fit with the school. In essence, if you are showing the committee that you have extended yourself to learn, you have surpassed a minimum requirement.

A great starting point for learning whether a particular business school is right for you is our mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

*Please note: You are viewing an essay analysis from the 2016-2017 admissions cycle. Click here to view our collection of essay analyses for the current admissions season. 

After introducing two completely new essay questions last season, the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University has made no changes at all to its prompts this year—at least not for the written essays. Candidates who are already anxious about the school’s somewhat unique video essay component may not be too pleased to learn that Kellogg is now asking three video questions rather than two, having added a query about facing a challenge. However, as we discuss more fully later in our analysis, these questions have no wrong answers and are intended to help the admissions committee get a more authentic impression of your personality (not to intimidate you!), so we do not believe applicants should be too concerned by this part of the application. Perhaps Kellogg simply felt it needed a little extra time in the video essays to make more fully developed assessments of its candidates. Read on for our thoughts on how to address all the school’s prompts for this season.

Required Essay 1: Leadership and teamwork are integral parts of the Kellogg experience. Describe a recent and meaningful time you were a leader. What challenges did you face, and what did you learn? (450 words)

This is a fairly straightforward essay prompt. You should launch directly into your narrative and detail the specific actions you took in leading your team. Although we imagine most candidates will write about a success, some may choose to recount a leadership experience that was particularly meaningful, even if the intended goals were not ultimately achieved. Indeed, the key here is not necessarily to show that you were a rousing leader who carried your team all the way to victory, but rather that you shared a valuable experience with others and extracted the most from your team members, regardless of the outcome. The school makes a point of acknowledging within this essay prompt that “leadership and teamwork are integral parts of Kellogg,” seeming to highlight the collaboration and cooperation ideally involved in such arrangements—and thereby implying that the spirit of teamwork should be somehow implicit in your essay.

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