By taking action now, 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 candidacy. Join mbaMission founder Jeremy Shinewald as he leads prospective applicants through a Long-Term Planning seminar and then debunks admissions myths and encourages applicants to embrace “admissions realities” that lead to acceptances.
Topics of discussion will include the following:
The biggest application mistakes made by East Asian applicants
The top five strategies to differentiate yourself to a top MBA Program
Creating your ten-month (and beyond) timeline
Maximizing the impact of community activities
Accelerating personal goals
Building an alternative transcript
Taking and retaking the GMAT
Making the most of campus visits
Understanding the differences between MBA programs
More…
Date: Wednesday, January 26, 2011 Time: 7:00-8:30 a.m. EST Location: Online Price: Free!
Our friends at Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions are offering Business School Blueprint 2011, a four-night series of online seminars followed by a multi-city, in-person networking event on getting a head start on your business school career. Join us on Monday, January 24, as mbaMission Founder and President Jeremy Shinewald walks you through a step-by-step plan to keep you on track with your business school applications throughout the coming application year.
On Sunday, January 23, the Forte Foundation will kick off “Blueprint” by addressing the basics of why and where to go to business school. On the 25th, the National Association of Asian American Professionals will provide valuable tips on how to improve your resume. On January 26, you will be introduced to the GMAT and given a downloadable outline for GMAT preparation. Each seminar will be held online in Kaplan’s Classroom Anywhere environment at 9 p.m. EST.
The week concludes on Thursday, January 27, with the first-ever MBA Night, when you will have the opportunity to meet with MBA alumni from schools such as MIT Sloan, NYU Stern, Chicago Booth and UVA Darden in 15 cities, including New York, Boston, Los Angeles and Seattle. To view all the participating schools and cities, click here.
For more information on all of the Business School Blueprint events and to register, please click here.
Sincerity. Honesty. Candor. We encourage candidates to strive to incorporate these attributes into their application work, and when they do, successful essays inevitably follow. Yet, can one express too much of these attributes? The answer is “yes,” especially when candor turns to negativity. Sometimes, when candidates believe they are being candid, they are in fact revealing themselves to be predisposed to pessimism; as a result, the admissions committee has difficulty identifying with their file. Such situations are unfortunate, but typically avoidable, because an ostensibly “negative” idea can almost always be expressed in a positive and optimistic manner.
Example:
“In my current position, I am no longer learning and am afraid I will continue to stagnate without my MBA. I cannot achieve my objective of becoming a leader in the Marketing Department at my firm unless…”
Common sense would say that the admissions committee would likely not be very excited about accepting an applicant who has stopped learning or who believes that his/her career progress can be thwarted by basic obstacles.
Example Revisited:
“As I look to the future, I recognize that with MBA training, I could dramatically increase my impact on my firm. With an eye toward a leadership position in our marketing department, I am….”
In this revised example, the candidate is expressing the exact same need for an MBA in positive terms and is thus making him/herself a more warm and engaging prospect (while still candidly stating a need for further education).
Before submitting your file, check for unnecessarily negative statements. Although we would never suggest that every line in your essays needs to be “sunshine,” you should certainly avoid portraying yourself as a pessimist.
Many think that because UVA’s Darden School of Business casts itself as a general management program, the school has no specialties. General management, however, is a philosophy that suggests that no business problem can viewed in isolation—for example, a finance problem relates to marketing, a marketing problem relates to operations and so on. In the student club Darden Capital Management (DCM), Darden students can apply general management principles in evaluating equities to understand the entire firm while also specializing in asset management to further their careers in this finance-industry niche.
Through DCM, first-year students pitch long and short investment ideas to second-year student fund managers who oversee $5M of Darden’s endowment, which is divided among five funds, each with its own focal area. Approximately 20 first-year students ultimately “graduate” and run these funds themselves for credit as second-year students, reporting on their investment decisions and performance to Darden’s finance board. Students who manage these funds report that they have had an advantage breaking into asset management, because this hands-on experience gives them plenty to discuss in interviews. Managing $5M will do that…
For more information on UVA’s Darden School or 13 other leading MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.
When tailoring essays to specific schools, many candidates do not go far enough to connect themselves with their targets. Offering school-specific information is good, but merely mentioning the particular resource that will be used is not enough—you need to take the extra step, adding context to your educational objectives.
What is the difference between a mere mention and providing context?
Mention:
“With a focus on entrepreneurship, I will participate in Columbia’s Entrepreneurial Sounding Board process. Further, I am attracted to classes such as…”
Context:
“With clear plans to launch my start-up immediately after graduating from Columbia, I look forward to testing my ideas through the Entrepreneurial Sounding Board; I find this opportunity to meet with faculty and gain critical feedback and mentoring invaluable as I…”
In the first example, the candidate shows an awareness of the Sounding Board but does not provide the context necessary for the reader to truly understand how the candidate will actually use the resource; therefore, the mention is entirely superficial. Further, because the candidate has seemingly not taken the time to reflect on this resource, he/she has to move on to listing the classes he/she plans to take and thus begins to merely catalog resources rather than offering a reasoned consideration of how the school’s offerings fit his/her plans.
In the second example, the reader can better understand exactly how the candidate will use the resource mentioned; he/she has shown that he/she has done the necessary homework on the school and truly grasps how Columbia will satisfy his/her academic and professional needs. The reader is drawn to the latter example because it is more informed and serious minded; the reader can be certain that the candidate is set on his/her path and has a plan to achieve specific goals.
A first-of-its-kind, on-demand MBA application experience that delivers a personalized curriculum for you and leverages interactive tools to guide you through the entire MBA application process.
