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Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school. However, the educational experience you will have is what is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Today, we focus on Terry Taylor from the Haas School of Business at the University of California (UC), Berkeley.

After stints at Columbia Business School and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, Terry Taylor joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business in 2007, where he is currently the Milton W. Terrill Chaired Professor of Business Administration. Considering that Taylor, who has a PhD from Stanford in management science and engineering, is often named in student blogs and online student chats as a favorite among the school’s aspiring MBAs, he not surprisingly won the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2009 and again in 2011. He was also named the fifth most popular professor at a top U.S. business school by Bloomberg Businessweek in 2011.

Taylor’s academic interests include the economics of operations management and supply chain management. His “Operations Management” course looks at operational issues confronted by manufacturing and service companies. In addition to reportedly having both a curriculum and classes that are well organized—the latter of which include “no down time,” according to a second year we interviewed—Taylor can make technical subjects very interesting, sometimes even using references to Seinfeld episodes to illuminate concepts. A second year told mbaMission, “He’s pretty young and has a style that mixes high energy with a dry sense of humor.”

For more information on the defining characteristics of the MBA program at UC Berkeley Haas or one of 16 other top business schools, check out our free mbaMission Insider’s Guides.

Although putting yourself at the center of the stories in your MBA application essays is certainly important, a common mistake applicants tend to make is beginning too many sentences with the word “I.” As a general rule, you should never begin two sentences in a row this way. Consider the following example:

“I worked for three years at ABC Plastics, a small injection molding company. I was responsible for overseeing the overall management of ABC Plastics, from day-to-day operations to strategic planning. I managed 100 people. I worked very long hours, but I learned more than I could have ever imagined.”

Now, consider the same statement reworked to avoid using “I” at the beginning of subsequent sentences:

“For three years, I worked at ABC Plastics, a small injection molding company. My responsibilities at ABC included overseeing the overall management of the company, from day-to-day operations to strategic planning. Because I supervised more than 100 staff members, my days were long, but the experience taught me more than I could have ever imagined.”

As you can see, the second example reads much better than the first—and none of the sentences in the second example begin with “I.”

Our next tip applies to the entire essay, instead of just the beginning of a sentence. As a general rule, “etc.” should never appear in the text of your MBA application essays. Consider the following sentences:

1. I helped draft prospectuses, analyze key company data, value companies, etc.
2. I look forward to courses such as “Small Business Management,” “Leading Teams,” “Multiparty Negotiations,” etc.

In the first example, “etc.” replaces information that the reader values. The reader cannot make the leap and just assume where the writer’s experiences lead and what they include. In the second example, “etc.” trivializes the school’s resources and may even suggest to the admissions committee that the applicant is just too lazy or disinterested to properly do their research.

We are at a loss to think of one instance in which “etc.” could be used appropriately in a business school essay. Very simply, ensure your essays do not include this term.

Many MBA candidates do not properly rethink and revise their resumes for their business school applications. Because they already have a resume saved on their computer, they often dismiss this important element of their profile. We are here to warn you not to underestimate the value of this document—the admissions committees actually review applicants’ resumes rather carefully, because they serve as a road map of each candidate’s career.

As we have noted in the past, your resume is not the place to “stuff” all your life experiences. Somewhere between cramming your resume with information and ignoring it altogether lies the ideal: crafting a clear, easily scannable, action-/results-oriented resume that tells a story. This kind of document will capture the attention of an admissions officer who has reviewed hundreds of similar files.

One of the most common errors 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, your accomplishments, and even your character. Each bullet point in your resume needs to highlight achievement more than positional expertise.

As you prepare your resume to be included in your application, think about your audience and recognize that your resume can be a strategic tool to reinforce certain characteristics that are important to you—characteristics that may complement information provided in other parts of your application. For example, if you aspire to a career that is international in nature, you may place more emphasis on your international experience in your resume. Or, if you come from a field that is not known for its management orientation—you were a teacher who administered a school’s $50,000 student activities budget, for example—you may use your resume to emphasize disciplines that are important to an MBA admissions audience.

Some candidates are surprised to realize that one page can communicate so much and therefore deserves a significant level of attention, but investing some time in this short but crucial document is definitely worth the effort.

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

That seems like it should be a typo. Maybe I meant Confucius, the Chinese teacher and philosopher? No, I really do mean confusion. Journalist Annie Murphy Paul contributed a post to NPR’s Mind/Shift blog: “Why Confusion Can Be a Good Thing.”

Why Is Confusion Good?

Murphy Paul supports her thesis with an important point: When we do not know the “right” way to do something, we open up our minds to many potential paths—and sometimes an alternate potential path is better than the “official” path.

When a test such as the GMAT is concerned, the discomfort inherent in figuring out that best path allows us to determine why a certain approach is preferable. That knowledge, in turn, helps us to know when we can reuse a certain line of thinking or solution process on a different (but similar) question in the future.

How Can I Use Confusion to Help My Prep?

Murphy Paul offers three suggestions (the following quotes are from the article; the rest is just me):

(1) “Expose yourself to confusing material.”

On the GMAT, you have no choice: you are going to be exposing yourself to confusing material every day. So I will tweak Murphy Paul’s suggestion slightly: embrace the confusion. Rather than feeling annoyed or frustrated when that feeling of confusion creeps in, tell yourself, “Okay, I am on track here. I am going to figure this out—and when I do, I am going to remember it, because my current confusion is actually going to help me remember better once I do know what I am doing!”

(2) “Withhold the answers from yourself.”

Sometimes looking at the answer immediately is appropriate. If you are doing drill sets and you want to make sure that you learn from one problem before trying the next, then check the solution immediately.

Other times, though, you are not doing yourself a favor by jumping right to the answer. In particular, when you know that you do not know… then do not look at the answer right away! Struggle with it for a while first.

Look stuff up in your strategy guides/books. Ask a friend or search a forum. Spend as much time as you want, then pick an answer—even if it is just a guess—and have a rationale for why you eliminated the answers that you eliminated. If possible, also have a rationale for why you chose the answer that you did.

Got that? Okay, now go look at the answer. But wait! Do not read the solution yet—just look at the answer first. Maybe you will want to go look at the problem again because

• you were sure you got it right, but you did not; can you find the mistake?
• you guessed and got lucky; was that pure dumb luck, or were you actually able to increase your odds via a strong educated guess? Alternatively, maybe you knew more than you thought you did!
• you did get it wrong, but your knowledge of the correct answer prompts an idea about how to do or think about the problem.

(3) “Test yourself before you learn.”

This approach lets us know what we know and, more importantly, what we do not know going into our study of that lesson or chapter, and that can actually help us to learn more effectively.

I suggest starting a new chapter with a few of the problems listed as practice or drills at the end of the chapter. If those go well, then try a lower-numbered Official Guide problem. Keep going until you hit a couple of substantial roadblocks. Then dive into the chapter with a serious curiosity to figure out how to get around those roadblocks!

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

Ironically, to do a great job on Reading Comprehension (RC) on the GMAT, we actually have to learn what NOT to read. So many people struggle with what and how to read, but a big part of the battle is knowing what you can skim or skip!

I am going to give you a quick overview of what I mean by “what NOT to read,” and then I am going to point you to some resources containing full examples of the technique.

Learn the Process

First, read the introduction entitled How to Read a Reading Comp Passage. (Hint: Take some notes! You are going to be trying this out on a real passage in a few minutes.)

Next, you are going to try a couple of examples; one contains a Manhattan Prep passage, and one contains an Official Guide (OG) passage.

When you do the exercises, keep a few things in mind:

(1) Look for language clues that help distinguish between “high level” and “detail.” You want to read the “high level” information and skim or skip the “detail.” The “detail” clues tend to be more obvious: for example, for instance, one type of something, and so on.

(2) The bigger the words get, the more likely we will want to skim. They are going to use technical language, but that language will almost certainly be described in easier words at some other point—ignore the technical stuff and go look for that easier description.

(3) Despite #2, we are still expected to have a decent vocabulary. If you run across an unknown-to-you word that is not otherwise defined, then you are forewarned: learn this vocabulary word before you take the GMAT.

Test It Out!

All right, let us try some examples. I am going to have you do the Manhattan Prep example first. Once you think you have mastered that, then try the OG example.

Also, if you have access to Manhattan Prep’s OG Archer study tool, I have posted a video discussion of the passage used in the article to which I linked. Try it yourself first (using the article), but you then might want to reinforce the lesson by watching the video.