Should business schools scrap the admissions essays?

While the post you referenced does a good job explaining the problems with essays, it doesn't really address what to replace them with. Interviews? Just about all the top programs already interview the candidates they're seriously considering admitting. Even at a school like Kellogg, which interviews (almost) all its applicants, getting rid of essays would remove a substantial amount of the information the admission decision is based on. There's no way a 30-45 min. interview could replace the 6-8 pages of goals, motivation and other personal info that the essays contain. I'd much rather have an admission process that includes essays, however flawed they may be, that better allows decisions to be made on more than just GMAT scores, GPAs and resumes. In the end, I trust the adcom to filter out cookie-cutter responses to essay questions, and the number of candidates who are admitted each year without using a consultant belies the suggestion that consultants are taking over the process.

How about we keep application essays, and scrap the essays on the GMAT. The AWA essays are almost entirely useless when the ad com has your application essays in hand and can speak to you in person in the interview.

I disagree with the view that we should do away with application essays. The best essays can't be duplicated across schools because they include deep knowledge of the school garnered through careful research and ideally a campus/class visit and interaction with current students. The application essays are the only place where you have a chance to demonstrate why the program is the best choice for you and how it plays into your future. It's where you display a genuine interest in the program and how you plan to fully engage with it if you're admitted.

Without application essays, the first cut (which turns away a lot of people) will be entirely based on numbers and demographics and the ad com will miss out on a lot of real gems where what they can contribute to the program and their classmates is not readily apparent in their numbers alone.

You've both made some excellent points. Thanks!

So for the record that's three in favor of keeping the essays and one advocating scrapping them. Of course, the one voting against the essays is an editor at Businesweek, Louis Lavelle.

Any others out there in his camp?
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I get the sense that Louis is not differentiating essays submitted by admitted students vs. the general applicant pool. He's correct that a minority of applicants submit generic essays to multiple schools, but I have to imagine those are the applicants that are most likely to be rejected because they are failing to address the "Why school XYZ" portion of the essay.

The other issue here is that MBA essays create a sort of "barrier to entry" and prevent applicants from submitting dozens of applications. Imagine what the applicant pool would look like if the top 10 schools suddenly stopped requiring essays and hundreds of applicants just decided to submit applications to the entire group, as opposed to 3-4 targeted applications. I know that the application fee is somewhat of a hurdle, but I'd be willing to bet that the average number of submitted applications per person would significantly increase.

Yes, I agree about the filtering/hurdle aspect of the essays. Law school applications from what I understand include a personal statement but I've been told that being accepted is all about the LSAT score and undergraduate grades with the personal statement essay as more of an afterthought. I wonder if that's one of the reasons you will find many law school grads in fields other than law years later. Perhaps, they didn't go through the same process of school research, soul searching, and future planning that is required for business school applicants who tackled 2,000 words of essay writing. I wonder if the best course is not for business schools to scrap the essays but for law schools (and Med Schools) to add more essay questions and to weight them more heavily in their admissions process.
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I was also just thinking about the value of even the most generic career goals essay. Even if some applicant wrote a single generic career goals essay and submitted it to 10 schools, you would still have a very valuable piece of information.

You would be able to easily assess the candidate's sense of self-awareness and ability to achieve the stated goals. For example, if someone says their long-term goal is to save the whales and the next step in doing so is to join Goldman's M&A group, well, you can probably guess that person is not being realistic and/or honest.

Also, it's pretty valuable just to have a writing sample from someone, even if it was a generic response. Maybe the applicant looks amazing on GMAT/GPA, but they can't organize their thoughts or articulate their ideas. If you scrap MBA essays, you won't have that bit of information.

I recognize that consultants would help someone overcome the issues I mentioned above, but I tend to the think that rogue-consultant ghostwriters are less prevalent than applicants who blindly apply to multiple MBA programs without much introspection.

I wish we could scrap consultants. I think they create an unfair advantage for applicants with more money.

I would never scrap the essays though. Bschool, is about what you have done and where you want to go. There are tons of high gpa/gmat with run of the mill jobs and low gpa/gmat with great jobs and leadership. The essays allow candidates to differentiate themselves despite weaknesses. It would be a tragedy for business if mba programs became less essay focused and more gpa/gmat focused.


What should be changed though is the recommendation questions. Those need to be standardized. Its one thing for a candidate to write several sets of essays but its another for an employer to write several sets of recommendations. Some of the questions are so different its ridiculous and it just makes the process more complicated than it needs to be.

Some applicants enlist the help of admissions consultants while others go it alone, often for financial reasons. In just about any challenging endeavor you can think of tutors/coaches/counselors/consultants are enlisted to help in the journey. I have always believed that it is unfortunate that some have the advantage of this help whereas others don't have a guide. My philosophy as an admissions consultant is that I am not in the marketing business, I am in the product improvement business. I help my clients become more competitive by teaching them the rules of the game and by prescribing exercises that will improve their self-awareness and the quality of their applications.

As mentioned in my post responding to Mr. Lavelle's Businessweek article, our company, MBA Prep School, is the first admissions consulting firm to use online learning technology to emulate the experience of working with a private coach for a fraction of the cost. By giving more applicants access to guidance and essay writing tools for less than the cost of submitting a couple of applications, we are trying to level the playing field, not just for the essays but also across the other components of the application: resume, reference letters, application forms, and interviews.
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I don't think the problem of duplicate essays for different schools with the smae question is really a problem at all. Actually I think it would be more troublesome if the student had different responses for a career goal or why mba essay across applications. I am still me regardless of which school I'm applying to and if I've done enough introspection the only part that should change without coming across as fake is "why this school"

Good point, Michmax3! Schools need a better signal about a candidate's intent to attend than is be provided by an applicant uploading a transcript, test score, and resume. The essays provide that, specifically the "Why Our School" essay. Many candidates derail their chances at acceptance with a generic, cut-and-paste version of this essay. Schools expect you to have done your research and to build a case for attending their particular school in that essay.

ke18sb, that is a very good idea regarding recommendation letters being standardized. I think the obstacle to that is that schools may be interested in specific qualities so their reference letter questions are designed to elicit feedback from recommenders regarding those specific qualities. A good compromise would be a series of standardized questions with one specific question allowed for each program if they choose to use it. That takes some of the burden off recommenders while still allowing schools the option of a customized question. Of course, it occurs to me that from a school's perspective they would rather candidates not be blasting off applications to multiple schools so the multiple reference letter requirement becomes provides another limiting function aligned with the admissions committees' interests.
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They will be scrapping one of the AWA essays by next summer. I believe it is the analysis of an issue essay that will be scrapped.