Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.
This time of year, business school candidates will start to interview with their target MBA programs. Many will inevitably fret and ask themselves, “What if I don’t know the answers to the interviewer’s questions?” The good news is that, as our title for this blog entry states, a business school interview bears no resemblance to a TV quiz show. The admissions officer, alumnus/alumna or student who will interview you will not ask you about esoteric topics and will not expect you to answer questions pertaining to management disciplines, about which you will learn more in the first year of your MBA program. The vast (vast!) majority of interview questions will pertain to your life and experiences—in other words, the interviewer will be asking you about you—so you will already have the answers in hand as you start the interview.
As your first step in preparing for your interviews, take time to reacquaint yourself with your own story, especially as you have thus far presented it to the school in question—go back and reread your essays, contemplate pivotal moments in your life and consider your major accomplishments and failures. By doing so, you will have the basic knowledge necessary to perform to your fullest during your interview.
1. Give a candid description of yourself, stressing the personal characteristics you feel to be your strengths and weaknesses and the main factors, which have influenced your personal development, giving examples when necessary. (400 words approx.)
Although the request for “main factors which have influenced your development” comes later in the question, we feel you would clearly be best off providing this context for your experiences before discussing the strengths and weaknesses you derived from them, because it is important that you show a cause and effect relationship between your formative experiences and your resulting personal characteristics. The question advises you to offer examples “when necessary,” but your story will be strongest if you consistently present anecdotes that support your statements; the details of your story will reveal your attributes. Still, your essay should not end up being just a hodgepodge of strengths/anecdotes. Ideally, you might focus on two or three strengths and one weakness in a mere 400 words.
An important note: you must be honest about your strengths (do not try to tell the committee what you think it wants to hear; tell them who you legitimately are) and especially about your weaknesses—this is vital. Transparent or disingenuous statements about your weaknesses will not fool anyone and will only reveal you to be a person who cannot critically evaluate him/herself.
Many MBA candidates do not thoroughly consider and revise their resumes for their business school applications, often dismissing this element because an existing version may already be saved on their computer. We strongly caution you not to underestimate the value of this document—the admissions committees in fact review applicants’ resumes carefully, because they serve as a road map of each candidate’s career. In an earlier entry in our Admissions Myths series, I Need to Tell It All! (Part I), we highlighted that your resume is not the place to “stuff” all of your life experiences. Somewhere between the two extremes—stuffing your resume with information and ignoring it altogether—lies the ideal: a clear, easily scannable, action-/results-oriented resume, one that tells a story that will capture the attention of an admissions officer who has reviewed hundreds of similar files.
One of the most common errors that candidates make is leaving their resume in an industry-specific format, filled with jargon and acronyms recognizable only to an expert in their field. Remember, the admissions committee is not hiring you for a task, but is trying to understand your progress, accomplishments and even your character. Each bullet point in your resume needs to highlight achievement more than positional expertise.
How can you write essays that grab the attention of MBA admissions committees? mbaMission Senior Consultant Jessica Shklar will use this basic but often perplexing question as the starting point in a workshop for prospective business school applicants. Attendees will complete a series of exercises that will challenge them to uncover their personal and nuanced stories, craft compelling opening statements, develop meaningful goal statements, connect their goals to their target school’s resources, and more.
A Q&A session will follow the presentation, after which Jessica will remain online to respond to additional inquiries.
Date: Thursday, November 4, 2010 Time: 6:30-8:00 p.m. EST Location: The Hub CityView, 30 South 17th Street (14th Floor), Center City, Philadelphia, PA 19103 Price: Free!
Harvard Business School receives more than 9,000 applications each year. How will you ensure that you grab the attention of an overworked HBS admissions officer? In our newest presentation, Writing Standout HBS Essays, we will help you conceptualize your essay ideas and understand how to execute, so that your experiences stand out. You don’t need to be actively working on a $5 billion deal or have won an Olympic gold medal to gain admission to HBS. You just need to have done the everyday things remarkably well, and you must make sure that your essays reflect your actions.
mbaMission Founder and President Jeremy Shinewald will lead this session and will remain online to answer your questions about HBS essays and any other admissions issue of importance to you.
Date: Monday, October 18, 2010 Time: 8:30-10:00 p.m. EST Location: Online Price: Free!
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.
