{"id":38523,"date":"2025-04-02T12:28:09","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T16:28:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/?p=38523"},"modified":"2025-04-02T12:28:11","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T16:28:11","slug":"the-mbamission-podcast-how-should-you-use-ai-in-your-mba-applications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/the-mbamission-podcast-how-should-you-use-ai-in-your-mba-applications\/","title":{"rendered":"The mbaMission Podcast: How Should You Use AI in Your MBA Applications?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How might AI tools such as ChatGPT make the MBA application process easier? Can you use ChatGPT for your business school research? Can you use it to help you brainstorm for your essays? How about for actually writing your application essays? And <em>should<\/em> you use AI for your application at all? In this episode of <em>the mbaMission Podcast<\/em>, Harold Simansky, Jessica Shklar, and Jeremy Shinewald discuss when you should\u2014and should <em>not<\/em>\u2014get assistance from AI with your business school applications, and how to do so effectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div id=\"buzzsprout-player-16724167\"><\/div><script src=\"https:\/\/www.buzzsprout.com\/2368294\/episodes\/16724167-ep-41-how-should-you-use-ai-in-your-mba-applications.js?container_id=buzzsprout-player-16724167&#038;player=small\" type=\"text\/javascript\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Each week, Senior Consultant Harold Simansky takes a deep dive with some of his mbaMission colleagues into various aspects of the business school admissions process, from how to select the right schools to choosing and managing your recommenders to drafting compelling application essays and preparing for MBA interviews. A brand new episode of <em>The mbaMission Podcast<\/em> is released every Tuesday, and you can find it on all the major podcast streaming platforms, including<a href=\"https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/2pIdwgRMxCCSi0m8T0y1tS?si=1c6ee670668944c5&amp;nd=1&amp;dlsi=73c8e2a9d7fc4de3\"> Spotify <\/a>and <a href=\"https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/the-mbamission-podcast\/id1748825410\">Apple Podcasts<\/a>. More of a visual learner? Check out the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@mbaMission\">mbaMission YouTube channel <\/a>for full episodes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky<\/strong>: Hello, Jeremy. Hello, Jessica. Let\u2019s talk about artificial intelligence. First, a disclaimer: this podcast is <em>not <\/em>created using artificial intelligence. This is <em>natural<\/em> intelligence right here. [<em>Laughs<\/em>] Okay, Jessica, I\u2019m going to throw it right to you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar<\/strong>: I think when you think about it from an admissions perspective, from the applicant perspective, AI is a tool\u2014or maybe a better way to say it is it\u2019s a really good starting point, or it<em> can<\/em> be a good starting point, but it should never be the <em>ending <\/em>point. And by that I mean you can use AI to help you come up with ideas, to help you get started with a draft, to help with some editing, to find interview questions, to do basic research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky: <\/strong>Yeah, do basic research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>But if you stop with what AI does for you, you\u2019ll never, well, I think you have a phrase that says, \u201cAI can help you be mediocre.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky: <\/strong>That\u2019s right.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>So it\u2019ll help you be mediocre. And you just don\u2019t want to be mediocre in this process. I\u2019ll start with where we\u2019re going to end, which is [that] the bottom line is that AI is a terrific tool, but it is not a substitute for your own thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald: <\/strong>We can break it down even further and say that, let\u2019s say we use cases where the documents or whatever your output is is ultimately admissions committee facing and those where it is not. Harold, which one should we go with first, admissions committee facing or not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky: <\/strong>Actually I will have many clients start using ChatGPT for research, and to sort of pick up on something Jessica said beforehand, if I go now to buy a new TV, ChatGPT is going to be my go-to place. How does that affect business school? Are there similar decisions made along those lines?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar:<\/strong> Right. And I think we have really in-depth Insider\u2019s Guides that go far deeper into each school, but it can take a lot of time to read them if that\u2019s your initial phase. So to say to ChatGPT, \u201cGive me the top three differentiators between Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton\u201d or, \u201cWhat are the most popular classes at these schools?\u201d\u2014that\u2019s a good comparison tool. And then I would use our Insider\u2019s Guides maybe to go much more in depth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald:<\/strong> I would say the one thing that\u2019s important is, you know, the mediocre outcomes of it. You can say, \u201cChatGPT, tell me about the top six strategy classes at Wharton.\u201d Okay? You have to go back and check to make sure they actually are classes. Like, if you\u2019re using that, maybe you\u2019re putting it in your paper, and maybe that professor left and [the class] hasn\u2019t been offered for six years. Maybe ChatGPT made it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky: <\/strong>Absolutely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald:<\/strong> You know, you always have to be skeptical of something that\u2019s out of your control. But I agree, the research piece can be quite powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar:<\/strong> Tends to be more surface, more comparison, more of an overview, and then no substitute for our Insider\u2019s Guides or for going to visit a school or for talking to students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald:<\/strong> We put together<a href=\"https:\/\/ontrack.mbamission.com\/\"> onTrack<\/a>, we have five, six, seven, eight different videos on each school, and none of them were designed by ChatGPT. They were all done by the research of a human being. They\u2019re all accurate. There\u2019s no question that if you reference something, then you still should personalize it toward what you\u2019re doing. You wouldn\u2019t say, \u201cI outsourced this research to a friend.\u201d Or, \u201cI outsourced it to a research assistant.\u201d That\u2019s what you\u2019re doing with ChatGPT. There is a role [for ChatGPT], but you\u2019ve got to be careful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky:<\/strong> No, and listen, the reality is, it also lends itself to opportunity. I\u2019ll tell you exactly what I mean. If everyone is using ChatGPT to do research, many people should be, but they do not use our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/guides\/insiders-guides\/\">Insider\u2019s Guides<\/a>\u2014which are free; they\u2019re on our website. We have a lot of things going on on our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/\">website.<\/a> Please check it out. All of that noted, if everyone is doing research using ChatGPT, what a premium there must be to talk to somebody, to actually have a live person, have a quote in there [in your essay]. Can you imagine the admissions committee? They\u2019re sitting there, reading essay after essay, they sound exactly right, because it\u2019s all written by ChatGPT, and then<em> your <\/em>essay comes up, and you\u2019ve actually spoken to somebody. Maybe in fact you have a <em>fun<\/em> essay, and ChatGPT is many things, but it is not fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar:<\/strong> So we start with research, and then let\u2019s talk about our own internal research, which is brainstorming. As we think about essays, instead of diving right into the questions, is there a role for ChatGPT in brainstorming? And I would say yes, <em>but<\/em>. It takes a lot of input for ChatGPT to get to know you. They\u2019re not sitting at your dinner table. They\u2019re not hovering over your shoulder. They don\u2019t know who you are. So if you said to ChatGPT, \u201cGive me some ideas for what I could write for \u2018what matters most to me and why\u2019 for the Stanford essay,\u201d well, they will probably come up with five or six generic topics. That doesn\u2019t mean that\u2019s what matters most to you, or to you, or to me. So then you have to take your own idea and say, \u201cThis one actually does resonate. How? And what are examples from my own life?\u201d So again, ChatGPT can get you started when you\u2019re frozen with ideas. Before writing, which I think is going to be where many of you listening to this think about using ChatGPT, let\u2019s think about brainstorming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When you sit down with five essays or three essays for a school, and you don\u2019t even know how to think about them, maybe that\u2019s a place to start with ChatGPT. Say, \u201cWhat are some ideas?\u201d Or even, \u201cHere\u2019s my resume; what are some ideas?\u201d But again, that\u2019s very limiting, because ChatGPT is not a person who knows you, who talks to you day in and day out. They\u2019re not your friend. They only know the little bit that you give them. It can trigger you to start thinking. I think it can get you unstuck, give you ideas of what other people have done, but then you have to overlay your own abilities and knowledge of yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky: <\/strong>Right, right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald: <\/strong>I think when it comes after you\u2019ve got your outputs, and you really know what you want to say, I think it\u2019s ironic. You need to take a massive step back by asking ChatGPT to write that, write me an essay about how hard it was to start an MBA admissions consulting business, you know, the first few months of that. It\u2019s like, that\u2019s, you can get from something where you, the juices were flowing to something totally, totally generic. One of the ironies I think of as I\u2019ve seen people submit things through ChatGPT that are clearly ChatGPT is that it could be anyone. It\u2019s so vague. It\u2019s got a certain vagueness. And then every once in a while, someone will say to me, \u201cWell, I started with ChatGPT.\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, this is so specific now. You\u2019ve done so much revising and changing that ChatGPT basically wasn\u2019t there in the first place.\u201d It was like it served almost no purpose for you\u2014maybe giving you a rough structure of how to get started.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar:<\/strong> I think what it does do with the writing is help you overcome writer\u2019s block. Sometimes, as you know, how often do we just throw away the entire first paragraph in a client\u2019s essay? Now maybe they\u2019re taking that first step. They\u2019re getting something generic from ChatGPT, but it\u2019s so much easier to edit than to create. And so maybe they\u2019re using that as their first draft to get them unstuck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky: <\/strong>That\u2019s right. I actually want to pause here, because I think it\u2019s an important point, and that is good essays, good applications, start with introspection and brainstorming. As a firm, we spend a lot of time on that. Can ChatGPT help you with that? No, it simply can\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald:<\/strong> Yeah. It\u2019s not there to have creative thought. It\u2019s there to reflect other people\u2019s thoughts, and that is not your own. But what about other positive use cases? Let\u2019s be fair to technology. Other use cases, have you had applicants who, I don\u2019t know, maybe said \u201cYou\u2019ve got to truncate this five-line bullet point down to two lines for a proper MBA resume.\u201d You could put this through ChatGPT, get it down, break it into two bullet points, dabble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar:<\/strong> Then you have to look at it and make sure it\u2019s accurate and impact focused. I did this recently with one of our internal documents. You guys don\u2019t know me, but I\u2019m long-winded and detailed, and Jeremy\u2019s not. And so we sometimes butt heads on this. And he said to me, \u201cThis is four pages, get it down.\u201d And I couldn\u2019t, because I like to throw every single detail possible into everything that I do. And so I put it in ChatGPT, and I said, retain all the key bullet points, but make this shorter. And you know, it got about 85% of the way there. It did a really nice job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But it didn\u2019t know all the nuances. And I had to then do a line-by-line comparison with our original document to make sure they hadn\u2019t missed anything. So it was great. It got me started on something that I was struggling with. But I still had to spend several hours fixing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald:<\/strong> That\u2019s a great example, I think, of the generic nature versus the specific nature, but the generic still having some use. So again, giving credit to technology here. We have a massive, massive bank of interview questions from every single school and every single part-time and EMBA program within those schools, and it goes on and on. And we\u2019ve just been harvesting these questions for years and years and years. And again, even those, we have to go through and make them, you know, make them specific to our candidates. We can\u2019t just say to anyone, \u201cSo what was it like to have, you know, six years of manufacturing experience and suddenly transition to strategy consulting?\u201d You know, even <em>we<\/em> have to do that. If you wanted to start some basic interview prep, you could say to ChatGPT, \u201cGive me a list of a hundred questions that an MBA might be asked in an interview.\u201d And I don\u2019t think it would be necessarily indicative of the type of experience that you would have, and they wouldn\u2019t be that specific, but it\u2019d be enough to start practicing, enough to get going.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar:<\/strong> And that just keeps coming back to the same point. ChatGPT is a really, or any AI, is a really good starting point, but not an end point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald: <\/strong>If you were to only use AI-generated questions, you\u2019d end up at mediocre.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky:<\/strong> That\u2019s right. Listen, ChatGPT does some things very well. It takes a 2,000-word document, and it can turn it into a 1,000-word document. Accurately, yeah, really pretty good. That doesn\u2019t mean that you\u2019re done with that, but really, it\u2019s a great place to be. I\u2019d rather edit 1,000 words than 2,000 words. That\u2019s certainly the case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>Right, but you still have to make sure they didn\u2019t cut the wrong thousand words. I remember when we were first hearing about AI in applications. Jeremy, you at a staff meeting presented an essay that you had asked ChatGPT to write, and you had given it pretty specific guidelines and sent it to us. It was pretty good, but it wouldn\u2019t have gotten anyone into business school, because it was not fun. It wasn\u2019t personalized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald: <\/strong>I was trying to sit there with ChatGPT for a while and get it to the level of detail that I like to see in a \u201cwhy Stanford,\u201d a \u201cwhy Wharton,\u201d a \u201cwhy Chicago,\u201d and really push it. Maybe I\u2019m just a dinosaur, and I don\u2019t know how to push it appropriately, but you know, \u201cCan you add more resources? Can you add another class? Can you add a club? Can you add this?\u201d And it just doesn\u2019t read in a compelling way. It doesn\u2019t read like a human being who really knows how they\u2019re trying to put their argument together for why they really fit [with the school]. Again, there\u2019s that word\u2014fit. A snapshot of a million Googles doesn\u2019t fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar:<\/strong> You have to fit. And that\u2019s perhaps the easiest kind of question to answer for ChatGPT, because it\u2019s research based. Stanford\u2019s personal background [question]\u2014<em>How has your personal background impacted a recent decision or action you made in the last few years?<\/em>\u2014well, ChatGPT won\u2019t be able to do that, because they didn\u2019t grow up with you. So it\u2019s struggling to be beyond mediocre for the easiest question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald:<\/strong> One other place, let\u2019s say a school had a super hard character count or word count on an essay, which happens from time to time, and you\u2019ve got to cut out a few words. Yeah, you can use it there. Let\u2019s say you wanted to do a copy edit, but like I would even say in circumstances like that, some of the blemishes help you. In talking to admissions officers, they don\u2019t want to see something that\u2019s smooth. I remember talking to a Harvard Business School admissions officer who said to me that she doesn\u2019t really, she doesn\u2019t want to see sloppy, but she just doesn\u2019t really care about a semicolon instead of a colon. Doesn\u2019t bother her. It\u2019s part of the flavor of an applicant, and especially if you\u2019re an international applicant and English is your second language. You don\u2019t need a computer to take out the idiosyncrasies of the way you write or speak.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>I would make it even stronger than \u201cdon\u2019t need to.\u201d When I work with international applicants, I promise them that everything they submit is going to be clear and that they\u2019re not going to be contradicting themselves or using words incorrectly. But do I promise to make them sound like a native speaker? That would be against their interests. I certainly wouldn\u2019t want ChatGPT to polish an essay beyond where it would make sense, because remember, let\u2019s say you get to the interview phase with a school with those essays, and then you get to an interview, and it\u2019s clear that your English, as good as it may be, is not at the same level as your essays. That\u2019s going to be a disconnect for the admissions office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky:<\/strong> That\u2019s right. Listen, in my mind, ChatGPT allows you, almost forces you, to be interesting. If you think about it, if sort of the default now is going to be sort of mediocre, like I\u2019ve heard it before, that syntax is certainly going to be very similar. Ernest Hemingway is not popping out of ChatGPT. Foster Wallace, there is no ChatGPT. Right? So the reality is, how do you become interesting? And that really requires a lot of work, a lot of introspection. And again, things that ChatGPT will not allow you to do. It\u2019ll trick you in some ways that you think you\u2019re doing a great job. It\u2019s a terrific essay. I hit word count. I didn\u2019t have to use the magic hyphen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald:<\/strong> The other thing also, maybe this is a transition to our second part if we\u2019re ready, but schools are running AI checks. They are thoughtful about this. They\u2019ve been running checks on recommendations for years and years to make sure that applicants aren\u2019t, in fact, in some ways they\u2019ve been ahead of AI in that regard. They\u2019ve been running people\u2019s recommendations through checks to see if the voice is their own or their recommenders\u2019. And so, you know, they\u2019re checking, and if you\u2019re using something that is substantively still AI, you have a serious problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>That actually raises a question that our clients and any applicants might be interested in is, how should you advise your recommender about using ChatGPT or not?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky:<\/strong> I actually have some thoughts about that, because over the years, what I\u2019ve certainly seen is recommendations becoming more vanilla. The reality is, for all sorts of different reasons\u2014one of which now is AI, but other reasons as well, as the entire process has become more systematized, as more people have been applying, as long as there\u2019s been a history of people writing recommendations\u2014they\u2019ve become super vanilla. So at the end of the day, what I\u2019m really encouraging applicants to do is just like push much more to the recommender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Basically say, \u201cI\u2019m going to give you some ideas about what I\u2019d love for you to talk about,\u201d but at that point, don\u2019t write anything for them. Just push it to them, push it to them. We\u2019re looking for authenticity. And I think that\u2019s really the case with essays. I think that\u2019s the case with ChatGPT generally. Authenticity is the name of the game right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar:<\/strong> We can be really, really directive for applicants out there. If your recommender comes to you and says, \u201cI\u2019m going to use ChatGPT for this,\u201d your pushback should be, \u201cThat\u2019s a good place to start, but unfortunately, business schools are alert to that, and we\u2019re starting to see that those recommendations become quite generic. So if that\u2019s where you want to start, that\u2019s fine, but could we then meet and go through specific examples or anecdotes that you could put in it to make sure that this is in your voice and really reflects me as a candidate?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald:<\/strong> I would even go further and say, \u201cI really want you to have an efficient process with this. &#8230; I\u2019d like to review some of my major accomplishments with you. I\u2019d be happy to furnish you with a list of them. We can talk about them, but I would really appreciate it if you\u2019re here to support me, if you could write this whole thing from scratch and just, and that would really reflect you.\u201d Now I understand that some, can\u2019t depend on people, but I think maybe the opposite way of saying that is, \u201cIf you are going to get to the point, or if you are not going to get to the point where it\u2019s largely your own original output and where ChatGPT is still evident, it\u2019s going to hurt my candidacy. Please don\u2019t write my letter of recommendation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar:<\/strong> And look, to the applicants listening to this, we know that\u2019s a hard conversation. You want to come on to a free consultation with us and role play that conversation, we\u2019re happy to help you with it. But it\u2019s hard, and we get that. Sometimes you just have to do hard things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky: <\/strong>Now sort of moving forward in the sense of what\u2019s happening inside the admissions office as far as, how are they using artificial intelligence? Jeremy, you started talking about it as using it simply to sort of assess who wrote what, but are there other ways, maybe even more sophisticated ways that they\u2019re using it right now?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>I<strong> <\/strong>think I\u2019m actually going to switch that question around and say that what we\u2019re hearing from admissions officers when we\u2019ve spoken to them and from what we\u2019re reading is that they\u2019re doing what they can to avoid using it more by challenging applicants to avoid using it. And we see this with questions that have many more subparts that really force you to be specific, or video questions. MIT, your alma mater, has pop-up video questions that you cannot prepare for, because they\u2019re trying to test your spontaneity, test your ability to think on your feet. So, ChatGPT can\u2019t do that for you. They can\u2019t even prepare you for that. <em>We<\/em> can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald: <\/strong>Dovetailing on what Jessica\u2019s saying, let\u2019s think about Harvard Business School for one second. About a decade or so, they had a very long prompt, then they cut it back to 900 words. It was almost, like, effectively, \u201cTell us anything you\u2019d like us to know.\u201d It was more, very, very open-ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>Very open-ended.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald:<\/strong> That is the perfect kind of essay to be completely abused and ruined in an AI, in a ChatGPT world, right? Like I imagine that they foresaw that that question was just effectively out of date. It was like a dinosaur, because it was going to invite vague answers. I don\u2019t think they were afraid of ChatGPT. I think they were afraid of not getting interesting data, not getting interesting stories. And so they changed it to three very short, extremely detailed and complicated, some of these vexing prompts that you can read them several times and still kind of be like, what\u2019s going on here? What do they want here?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>They don\u2019t naturally fit together all the time as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald: <\/strong>And there are transitions in like areas in those questions like how did this, how did this experience impact your perspective on this going forward? Like they\u2019re all extremely cumbersome and confusing, because they don\u2019t want individuals to be able to have this big, kind of open opportunity. They want people to force them into a box. I bet you they might even, maybe they\u2019ll last a year or two, and then they\u2019ll change, because they\u2019ll be saying, \u201cOh, there are examples online. We\u2019re starting to get the generic versions of these.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>And two of those essays are only 250 words with multiple parts. It really forces you to avoid being generic. Every single word in there has to be specific to you and add meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky: <\/strong>Jessica and Jeremy, this is not a bad time to pause and say we as a firm have spent a lot of time sort of figuring out the HBS essays. There\u2019s three of them now, as you said\u2014300 words, 250 words, 250 words. They\u2019re very hard. At the end of the day, they are very hard in a way that other essays weren\u2019t, as well as certainly HBS in the past wasn\u2019t. And I have to tell you, through all of our work, many, many hours of work on all of our parts, and as our entire firm really looked closely at HBS essays, none of us could use ChatGPT to figure it out. The reality is, it\u2019s very personal, it\u2019s very hard, and there is no role for ChatGPT in an HBS essay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>And then I think MIT [Sloan] is another example of a very different way. They have not really changed their application that much, but it involves a cover letter and then a video and then two pop-up, well, one pop-up video question, maybe two.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald:<\/strong> A recorded video that you can do on your own and then also a pop-up video, like, you\u2019re just gonna get a prompt, and you have to respond on the spot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky:<\/strong> You know, in fact, let me use this to take a step aside and talk about the one-minute MIT video. If you may remember in the past, there was really no requirements around it. Give us one minute. Over the last few years, they said, give us one minute <em>now<\/em>, on your iPhone, one take. One take, yeah.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar:<\/strong> No transitions, no music.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky: <\/strong>Exactly. Because back in the past, you can find them on YouTube, it was like these Academy Award\u2013quality videos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>It was a creativity exercise, and that\u2019s not fair, because business school is not about how well you know how to do video editing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky: <\/strong>Exactly. And that\u2019s the case in my mind with ChatGPT. It\u2019s <em>anti<\/em>-authentic. Is that a term? ChatGPT is anti-authentic. We see from business schools, in all sorts of different ways, the use of video interviewing, that now they\u2019re looking for authentic. So this notion here of ChatGPT will make you a better applicant is simply not true, because it\u2019s going in the wrong direction. You\u2019re more <em>in<\/em>authentic. You\u2019re more artificial\u2014exactly what business schools don\u2019t want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>And so, I think that admissions officers tend not to be of the generation that grew up using ChatGPT. I\u2019m sure some people are, but for the most part, they\u2019re not. And so, that\u2019s not their orientation. They\u2019re not going to think about, how can we use this? They\u2019re going to think about, how can I get authenticity from applicants so I can really get to know them? Because their goal hasn\u2019t changed. Their goal is to build a diverse class that reflects [multiple facets] and that makes sure everybody at the school has an amazing experience. That\u2019s not going to happen if you can\u2019t read who someone is because they\u2019re too generic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald: <\/strong>So as a trend line, I think we can be saying, you know, we\u2019re, we would expect to continue to see shorter essay prompts, maybe a little more complicated. We would expect to see more video prompts, which I think has been a trend. Like there used to be one school or two schools, like Kellogg was first, then Yale and Rotman and MIT. Yeah, there are a few others. Or some of them have video interviews as well, which are effectively spontaneous prompts, shorter videos, others, and other spontaneous things. Like, I wonder if they\u2019ll be, you know, \u201cWe\u2019re gonna call you at some point in the next like 12 hours, you know, be ready,\u201d or, you know, \u201cAre you free? It\u2019s the admissions committee calling.\u201d &#8230; I would expect that we almost, this is significant conjecture here, but nonetheless, I would think that we might almost get to the point where there\u2019s like a rough cull, and then it\u2019s like, \u201cYou\u2019re all invited to campus, you know, for a day,\u201d like almost like a Super Sunday day for investment banking or something like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>The Wharton Team Based Discussion interview was actually like that, if you think about it in sort of a proxy form. And for those who are not applying to Wharton or are not familiar, instead of a one-on-one interview, for Wharton, you actually meet now, it\u2019s in a virtual room. It used to be on campus or some other satellite locations, and four or five of your closest friends, four or five other applicants, you\u2019re solving a business problem together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I understand that it sounds terrifying. It\u2019s not a complex business problem. You won\u2019t need a calculator. Or a spreadsheet. In half an hour. It\u2019s more a problem\u2014like, develop a course around these parameters or create a day of orientation. So it\u2019s not a business problem. I think it\u2019s a little bit scarier than it actually is. But there\u2019s no way to prepare for that using ChatGPT. And once you\u2019re in that session, you\u2019re dealing with the variables of five other people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky: <\/strong>That\u2019s right. Jessica, Jeremy, I\u2019m sorry, I have to pause right here. You know who does a great job of preparing people for the Wharton Team Based Discussion [TBD]? It is <em>us<\/em>. We take six of you who\u2019ve been invited for an interview. We put you in a virtual room, and we actually run it just like you will see if you get a Wharton TBD.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar<\/strong>: I will say that, although from an admissions perspective, they\u2019re not the most dynamic thing that we ever work on with our clients, it is my<em> favorite<\/em> thing because of how completely transformative it is. You see these applicants walk in, and they all have this look of terror on their face. An hour and a half later, they are walking out confident. It is the fastest and most dramatic transformation we see in the admissions process. I love it for that reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jeremy Shinewald:<\/strong> I see people who go in, and it\u2019s like everything is about deference, and, you know, like it\u2019s not that we\u2019re telling people to be impolite, but no one is prepared to advocate for ideas, because they\u2019re all afraid they\u2019re gonna seem like they\u2019re being too alpha. And it\u2019s like, you get to the point where it\u2019s a natural discussion, and that\u2019s where you need to be.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar: <\/strong>And in fact, I remember when they used to do these in person, and ours were not quite the same, because they were virtual. And then when COVID happened, Wharton decided to keep those Team Based Discussions virtual, which means our preparation for it is now exactly the same as the ones there.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky:<\/strong> Right, right, right. Absolutely. And again, to get back to theme here, that is not anything that ChatGPT can help you with. Not at all. It\u2019s simply artificial intelligence. Again, it\u2019s not artificial intelligence, it\u2019s natural intelligence. And that\u2019s really what business schools are looking for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Jessica Shklar:<\/strong> So I said at the beginning, we were going to end at the same place. And I don\u2019t think we\u2019ve evolved from that. I think that\u2019s exactly what we did. ChatGPT or AI can get you to mediocre. The AI tool is a really good place to start, but it is meaningless if that\u2019s where you finish.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Harold Simansky:<\/strong> Agreed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How might AI tools such as ChatGPT make the MBA application process easier? Can you use ChatGPT for your business school research? Can you use it to help you brainstorm for your essays? How about for actually writing your application essays? And should you use AI for your application at all? In this episode of &hellip; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/the-mbamission-podcast-how-should-you-use-ai-in-your-mba-applications\/\">Read&nbsp;More&nbsp;&nbsp;<i class=\"fal fa-sm fa-angle-right\"><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":38524,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[19,119],"tags":[436,434,465],"class_list":["post-38523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-b-school","category-essays","tag-ai","tag-chatgpt","tag-podcast"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>AI in Your MBA Applications<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/the-mbamission-podcast-how-should-you-use-ai-in-your-mba-applications\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AI in Your MBA Applications\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How might AI tools such as ChatGPT make the MBA application process easier? Can you use ChatGPT for your business school research? Can you use it to help you brainstorm for your essays? How about for actually writing your application essays? And should you use AI for your application at all? In this episode of &hellip; Read&nbsp;More&nbsp;&nbsp;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/the-mbamission-podcast-how-should-you-use-ai-in-your-mba-applications\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2025-04-02T16:28:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-04-02T16:28:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/How-Should-You-Use-AI-in-Your-MBA-Applications-.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"640\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"360\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jeremy Shinewald\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Jeremy Shinewald\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"27 minutes\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"AI in Your MBA Applications","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.mbamission.com\/blog\/the-mbamission-podcast-how-should-you-use-ai-in-your-mba-applications\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"AI in Your MBA Applications","og_description":"How might AI tools such as ChatGPT make the MBA application process easier? 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