This might be the most important part of this five-part essay... the longest one too!
Part IV of VFive Keys to Success690 GMAT, 2.85 uGPA, Asian and male. One might imagine that I was doomed from the very beginning. I certainly started thinking this after getting two dings from CBS and Stern before I received an interview invitation from Fuqua. After going 1.5 out of 6 in the previous cycle, I had to make sure that everything was perfect in this round. Fortunately, everything worked out in the end. And since this whole process is over for me, I have the following tips for those of you who sometimes wonder if a single school would even accept you.
Have a superstar resume.If you think that your GMAT, GPA, etc. are weak, have a superstar resume. You already know what your uGPA is and you obviously know what your ethnicity and gender are, so if you feel that these will weigh you down, work hard so that your career progression will impress the AdCom. A low uGPA can be excused, but mediocre professional work will cause your downfall. Besides, if you rock at work, chances are, your recommendation letters will be extraordinary as well. You are effectively hitting two birds with one stone here so work your ass off.
Quantify, quantify, quantify! The best way to illustrate your impact to your company’s operations is to let them know how many people you have managed, or the dollar amount that your group earned over a certain time frame, or the percentage of increase in a certain process’s efficiency because you took the initiative to research on how to make things better. At the end of the day, a bullet point that shows the profits that the company gained because of you is worth more than three vague job description bullet points. So remember to quantify, but also remember that quality is greater than quantity. Be as precise as possible so you can add as many quantified quality achievements as possible.
Finally, when creating your resume, always remember that not everybody is privy to the kind of work that you do. Therefore, avoid jargon that only you and your colleagues will understand. Make it understandable to the regular people. Have somebody, who does not work in your industry, read your resume. If they ask you to explain too many things, then that means your resume is too technical and might confuse other reviewers. Granted the AdCom members are professionals, but it is always better to assume that they will not understand your industry’s terminologies either.
Note: Do not lie on your resume, but do not downplay your achievements either. What I learned from this whole experience is that some of my accomplishments are actually more impressive than I initially thought. Embellish, but do not fabricate.
Know your story.Your resume is very important because it shows the AdCom what you have done and what you have the potential to do. When you write your essays, though, you will not have as much room to talk about all your accomplishments. Therefore, you need to be able to write a brief but effective summary, focusing only on the most important and relevant parts of your career progression.
The story that I refer to is the story that you will write (or legacy that you will leave behind) after business school. AdCom will want to know how you will represent the school after you graduate. Hence, they need to know how you intend to lead in the future. But more importantly, they need to know how you plan on executing this and how they fit in this plan. Finding the solution to poverty is an inspiring claim, but unless you can tell them about the organizations, with which you aim to work, and the various programs that you want to implement, it is really a hollow statement that will seem beyond your reach. Before making such a proclamation, you have to make sure that (1) your prior work experience or volunteer activities are relevant to this goal so that they know that you have laid the foundation for your future; and (2) this is a goal that is not out of this world. Number two sounds pretty basic, but a lot of people still struggle to come up with something that is actually realistic.
Ultimately, knowing your story well will lead to exceptional interviews. Nothing impresses an interviewer more than somebody who knows where they want to go and has a plan and the resources to get there.
Connect with the schools.The websites provide you with plenty of information. In fact, they have more than enough for you to complete your essays. However, the best way to really learn more about the schools is to reach out to the alums and current students.
When you read about the strength of the alumni network on the websites, it’s just not as effective. Hearing the current students tell you stories about how the alums made numerous calls to their contacts to help get the students their internship offers are more likely to convince you of the network’s strength. Not only that, the websites won’t share the disappointing aspects of the schools with you, but the alums and students will.
The alumni/current students are valuable resources. Anecdotal stories from them can give you information that will allow you to identify how particular schools’ programs can be customized to really fit your goals, which could lead to you writing remarkable essays and interviewing with a fire. Take advantage of this opportunity.
On a different note, if you do not feel a connection with a particular school, do not apply there! It does not matter if the ranking is high. At the end of the day, there is a possibility that you will be spending over $150K and two years of your life at one of the schools to which you are applying. That is too big of an investment in money and time to risk going to a school that does not excite you at all. If you do not get into your dream school on your first try, but you absolutely believe that you are qualified to go there – self-awareness is necessary here – it might be better to try again than to settle for your safety school, which you might not be all that happy to attend to begin with.
Note: If you have a colleague, who is an alumnus of one of the schools, to which you are applying, have them recommend you. If the school allows alums/current students to send in supplementary recommendations, ask two or three of your new contacts to send them on your behalf.
Help them help you.Applicants tend to avoid asking for help because they (1) feel that they do not need the extra help because they are rock stars, (2) are too sensitive to accept constructive criticism, or (3) just do not have the time because they are in a rush. Whichever of the three it is, suck it up and ASK FOR HELP.
Asking for help will enable you to fill in the gaps. By having at least one fresh set of eyes read through your essays, you increase the likelihood of catching little errors that have become invisible to your naked eye because you have read your essays far too many times. Also, there are some things about your story that are clear to you but still need to be explained to the regular reader. For this reason, you need somebody else to find these gaps for you.
Asking for help will allow others to challenge you to improve your writing. If you want to have compelling essays, you need to impress your friends and family. Surely your friends and family love you, so if you ask them to be brutally honest, they would not hesitate to give you constructive criticism. Although getting back an essay with so many red marks might bruise your ego, it is not as bad as getting rejected because of unclear and uninspiring essays. Your friends and family want you to succeed so help them help you.
Submit and move on.This might be the hardest thing to do. If truth be told, I am guilty of not following this. However, no matter what happens, stop re-reading your essays after you submit your applications. Chances are that your essays will have errors. And when you do find them, you will panic and start getting paranoid that these errors will cause your demise.
First of all, always keep in mind that there really isn’t much that you can do about your essays after you click the submit button. Since you can do nothing else to affect these documents, it makes no sense to keep re-reading these essays and get even more stressed out.
Second, a lot of the errors that you will find are very minimal. Unless you explicitly say that, “School X is my dream school,” in an essay for School Y, the Admissions Committee will understand that you are not perfect and that your essays will have some mistakes. Chill out and read a book instead of your essays.
Third, you deserve a break from these essays. You have spent the last few months 100% dedicated to your MBA applications. Now that you have submitted your applications, you should think about the other things in your life that are more important than the MBA. Go out on a date with your significant other. Take a trip with your friends. Play with your children. Aside from ambushing them with endless rambles on how hard it is to articulate why you need an MBA at this point in your life or how School Z is so totally going to reject you because you misspelled a renowned professor’s last name, you have paid very little attention to your friends and family for far too long. They deserve to be rewarded for all their support. Spend quality time with them.
Last, if you did your best to put together the best applications that you are capable of submitting, then there must be no regrets after you hit the submit button. Do not give yourself an excuse to question your competence by meticulously reading through your essays to find forgivable miniscule errors. It is unproductive, and you run the risk of doubting yourself even more.
Note: If you really want to improve your profile, focus on the aspects that you can affect. You can take the GMAT again if you feel that a higher score will help your cause. You can also do more volunteer work to gain more experience. If you do this, my recommendation is for you to sign up for extracurricular activities that are actually relevant to your career goals. Again, quality trumps quantity. If you want to convince AdCom that you are socially responsible, you might as well demonstrate how you have the potential to contribute to society through your professional activities as well. Finally, you just have to continue working hard. You never know… you just might get a promotion or a salary increase. All these things could help you get in, provided that the school allows applicants to send updates.
To be continued... _________________