{"id":21177,"date":"2013-10-22T12:37:46","date_gmt":"2013-10-22T19:37:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/2013\/10\/tuesday-qa-can-my-career-goal-change-as-a-reapplicant\/"},"modified":"2014-02-17T14:53:14","modified_gmt":"2014-02-17T21:53:14","slug":"tuesday-qa-can-my-career-goal-change-as-a-reapplicant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/tuesday-qa-can-my-career-goal-change-as-a-reapplicant\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuesday Q&A: Can My Career Goal Change as a Reapplicant?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Can my career goal change as a reapplicant? My long-term goal has changed since the last time I applied. Is this okay?<\/p>\n

Answer:<\/strong><\/p>\n

So, first thing to be aware of here: the reapplication process is different in a number of ways. Some schools will have you do the same essays as everyone else. Others will have a specific reapplicant essay. But the goal of the reapplicant app, no matter what version of the app you\u2019re doing, is to show PROGRESS. Why are you a better applicant than you were last year?<\/p>\n

Adcoms WANT to see some change in your application\u2014if they didn\u2019t admit you before, why would they admit you now with the same old application material? You gotta dust that old thing off and give it a nice polishing. If you\u2019re sending in the same essays, the same work experience with no growth, the same test scores\u2026you\u2019re gonna experience some major d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu come admissions decision time. So it\u2019s great to reevaluate your app. Show how you have more to offer. Show that you have a higher GMAT score. More responsibility at work. So that when the adcom compares this year\u2019s app and your app from last year, it\u2019s clear how much more awesome you are.<\/p>\n

Which means you must have thought it through pretty seriously, right? So if it changes drastically within a year, that could raise some adcom eyebrows. It could make you seem flaky, or seem as if you\u2019re just writing what you think the adcom wants to see to get you accepted. No no no no. It\u2019s got to be for REAL.<\/p>\n

Still, it is TOTALLY fine\u2014and, sometimes, a good thing\u2014to change your long-term career goal, as long as you explain WHY, and explicitly.<\/p>\n

So for example: if you\u2019re a pharma management consultant, and your long-term goal last year was to start a hospital group in rural India, but now you want to start a healthcare consulting company, that\u2019s totally okay\u2026as long as you can show WHY and HOW you\u2019ve come to that conclusion.<\/p>\n

Work something like this into your app: \u201cAfter much consideration, I have shifted my goals this year to YYY, because I believe it is better for reasons AAA BBB and CCC.\u201d Show how the experiences you\u2019ve had within the past year have led you to this decision. Show how you\u2019ve learned. Be straightforward, be clear, and show it as an IMPROVEMENT. That\u2019s how you\u2019re gonna make the long-term career goal change work FOR you.<\/p>\n

And how you\u2019re gonna end up with a BETTER result this time around\u2026.<\/p>\n

\u2013Jon Frank<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question: Can my career goal change as a reapplicant? My long-term goal has changed since the last time I applied. Is this okay? Answer: So, first thing to be aware…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[817],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-admissionado","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/140"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21177"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21177\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22929,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21177\/revisions\/22929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}