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Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school to attend, but the educational experience itself is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Each Wednesday, we profile a standout professor as identified by students. Today, we profile Nicholas Barberis from the Yale School of Management.

The Stephen and Camille Schramm Professor of Finance at the Yale School of Management (SOM) since 2006, Nicholas Barberis (“Investor”) received his BA from Cambridge University in 1991 and his PhD from Harvard University in 1996. Barberis’s research focus is on behavioral economics, and he uses psychology to better understand trading behavior. In the core course “Investor,” which is primarily lecture based, he educates aspiring managers about asset allocation, valuation, futures and options, and returns and risk in markets. Through the course, students explore risk and reward in investment through the themes of economics, psychology and organizational behavior. Speaking of the course in a February 2012 SOM News article, Barberis said, “Psychology … can be helpful in understanding what goes on in markets. … Real-world finance is much more than just crunching numbers.” A 12-minute video excerpt from Barberis’s “Investor” course is available on YouTube.

For more information on other defining characteristics of the MBA program at Yale or one of 15 other top business schools, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school to attend, but the educational experience itself is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Each Wednesday, we profile a standout professor as identified by students. Today, we profile Robert Engle from New York University’s (NYU’s) Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

Robert Engle (“Volatility”), who received the Nobel Prize in 2003 for his studies on ARCH (autoregressive conditional heteroskedasticity, a method for modeling volatility), is director of the Volatility Institute at NYU Stern. Engle began his career in physics with a BS from Williams College and an MA from Cornell before economics drew him away. In an April 2011 interview with the school’s newspaper, Stern Opportunity, he remarked, “When I left physics I was worried that I would miss building and playing with stuff, but as it turns out, what I really love is building economic and statistical models that help us understand risk in the market!” Adding, “My colleagues are interesting, my students are interesting and the city is interesting,” Engle also stated, “Stern has also taken a leading role in understanding the financial crisis and the regulatory issues that followed. I completely enjoy that!”

For more information on other defining characteristics of the MBA program at NYU Stern or one of 15 other top business schools, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Applying to business school in fall 2013? 2014? Start planning now! By taking action early, you can dramatically improve your chances of gaining admission to a top MBA program in the coming years. Indeed, it is never too soon (and certainly not too late) to take several crucial steps to shape your MBA profile. Join mbaMission founder Jeremy Shinewald for an #MBAchat on Twitter on Thursday, February 14, at 3 p.m. EST. Be sure to also follow @mbaMission and the #mbachat hashtag to learn ways of winning over the MBA admissions committees and what you can do now to strengthen your candidacy!

Dilemma: An argument presenting two or more equally conclusive alternatives against an opponent (according to Merriam-Webster)

Over the years, we have found that one of the essay questions that gives candidates the most grief is the dreaded “ethical dilemma” question. Although most candidates clearly understand the difference between what is and is not ethical, the problem usually lies in the word “dilemma.” As you can tell from the definition provided, a dilemma occurs when two equally conclusive sides exist simultaneously—with an emphasis on “equally.” Here we offer two examples of responses to an “ethical dilemma” essay question. The first presents only one reasonable side, and the second offers two.

Example 1: “While I was working at ABC firm, my boss asked me to book our second quarter revenue in advance so that we could create the appearance of a great first quarter. I firmly told him that this was unethical and refused.”

In this example, the candidate is asked to do something that is clearly unethical. However, because the argument really has only one reasonable side—the reader would not want to hear the story if the candidate had agreed to book revenue ahead of schedule!—no ethical dilemma actually exists in this case.

Example 2: “As the marketing manager for a small pharmaceutical company, I had to set the price for our breakthrough drug. I needed to consider that on the one hand, a rock-bottom price would mean that our life-saving drug would be available to all, but on the other hand, even though a high price would serve a smaller market, it would make the drug far more profitable and would ensure that we could continue to conduct valuable research into additional life-saving compounds.”

In this second example, the candidate outlines a true dilemma. This applicant could be entirely comfortable telling the reader that he pursued either of the pricing strategies, as long as he walks the reader through his/her rationale.

The test to determine whether the experience you are considering discussing in your essay involves a true dilemma is fairly simple. Ask yourself, “Could I comfortably discuss the alternative to the path I chose?” If the answer is “yes,” you are clearly on the right track. If the answer is “no,” try again.

For more advice on how to write your essays, check out our Essay Writing Guide and Optional Essays Guide, which present clear and easy-to-understand instructions for creating time-saving (and stress-reducing) outlines and for crafting comprehensive, engaging and effective essays.

This week we offer an oxymoron of sorts: extreme humility. We suppose that one candidate could be more humble than the next, but one could never refer to oneself as “extremely humble,” because doing so would undermine the very claim to humility.

Our philosophy at mbaMission is that candidates should let their experiences—not just their word choices—captivate the admissions committees. Sometimes we find that candidates attempt to emphasize their actions with “extreme” adjectives and adverbs, and this is an approach we strongly discourage.

Example: “As others withdrew their support, I remained remarkably dedicated to our crucial fundraising efforts. I dramatically increased my participation in our strategic planning meetings and insisted that we push forward with a wildly creative guerrilla marketing plan, which brought forth tremendous results—$1M in ‘instant’ proceeds.”

In these two sentences, the writer uses the descriptors remarkably, dramatically, wildly and tremendous to make his impression. We find that a more effective approach is to eliminate these “extreme” descriptions and let the experiences do the “talking.”

Example: “As others withdrew their support, I remained dedicated to our fundraising efforts. I increased my participation in our strategic planning meetings and insisted that we push forward with a guerrilla marketing plan that brought $1M in ‘instant’ proceeds.”

In this second example, we do not need to be told that the results were “tremendous,” because the $1M speaks for itself; we do not need to be told that the marketing campaign was “wildly creative,” because this is implied in the nature of guerrilla marketing. In addition to truly showing a level of humility on the part of the candidate, this approach is also less wordy. Although the eight words saved in the latter example may seem inconsequential, we removed them from only two sentences. If we can remove four words from each and every sentence, we would be able to significantly (but of course humbly) augment your essay with other compelling ideas.