{"id":34601,"date":"2016-09-23T09:19:11","date_gmt":"2016-09-23T16:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/why-your-mba-friends-are-not-always-the-best-people-to-review-your-essays-2\/"},"modified":"2016-09-23T09:19:11","modified_gmt":"2016-09-23T16:19:11","slug":"why-your-mba-friends-are-not-always-the-best-people-to-review-your-essays-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/why-your-mba-friends-are-not-always-the-best-people-to-review-your-essays-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Your MBA Friends Are Not Always the Best People to Review Your Essays"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Last year I had a client who called me panicking - \u201cI showed my applications to several co-workers and they completely tore apart my essays! \u00a0What do I do??\u201d This applicant had a really amazing story (he got into everywhere he applied, by the way). However, each of his co-workers had different recommendations including everything from new, creative ways that he should position himself to changes that he should make in his writing style. My first question was \u201cI hate to ask, but are they MBAs?\u201d<\/div>\n
I know how this goes because it is me - hence why I work in this industry. In business school, you learn how to think \u201ccritically\u201d and \u201cquestioning-ly\u201d about every single thing - how the supply chain must have impacted the quality of food you received at a local restaurant to how \u201cone tweak\u201d in geolocating could really be the turning point of this new delivery food service in your area. I\u2019m friends with MBAs from every top school, and seriously people sit around and discuss stuff like this (over drinks). We\u2019re always thinking about new ideas - it\u2019s nerdy but true \ud83d\ude42<\/div>\n
So, I\u2019m telling you all of this because you need to know how to view your MBA friends\u2019 comments and how to ensure that you stay true to what you want to present and who you are. \u00a0When you asked them to review, they started viewing your application like a new strategy project - they aspired to give you amazing new ideas and points of creativity as well as be devil\u2019s advocate for how you think you\u2019re coming across. This is all fabulous and I tell all of my clients to seek this type of opinion, BUT to take it with a grain of salt. Do not let each opinion result in a complete rework or feeling like you need to accept each and every suggestion. The client I cited above - he ended-up keeping with his story but made subtle tweaks for each school based on the MBA alum advice he got - and as I mentioned, he did just fine. So keep in mind that your MBA friends are brainstorming - that\u2019s what they do really well and that\u2019s why they probably work in cool industries where they get to \u201cA\/B\u201d test all day long. But this isn\u2019t a strategy project - it\u2019s you describing YOUR ideas, goals, aspirations and passions.<\/div>\n
So, even though you have friends from HBS, Wharton, Columbia, Kellogg etc, my advice is that they shouldn\u2019t be the only ones reviewing your applications.<\/div>\n
On top of being hypercritical by nature and training, the other issue with taking too much stock in your MBA friends\u2019 opinions is their potential bias. Unless your MBA friends are reviewing a lot of essays (and to be fair, some senior folks in consulting companies can fit this mold\u2026 so if you\u2019re in consulting definitely ask your PLs and Principles), they are likely to have an anchor bias in what they did and what worked in their application (seeour post on how the application process has changed<\/a>since your coworker got his or her MBA).<\/div>\n
But perhaps most importantly - they are not your audience. \u00a0I will repeat - your boss, the head of your practice area, your friend\u2019s billionaire uncle who runs a hedge fund\u2026they are not your audience. \u00a0Your audience is the admissions committee, which is typically not comprised of a majority MBAs and most often not comprised of people who have worked in a lot of post-MBA jobs (consulting, banking etc).Check-out our survey of adcom profiles for more info on that topic.<\/a><\/div>\n
So, who else do you ask for feedback? \u00a0Well, co-workers in general are great, but be careful because they might make your industry-specific jargon even worse (if you both know what a synthetic CDO is, then you might not notice it as jargon). \u00a0I always tell people to start with your friends who work in other industries. \u00a0They sort of know what you do, but they are far enough removed that they need the layman\u2019s terms and your \u201cstory\u201d will need some explanation - they won\u2019t just connect the dots because they\u2019re familiar with the career path. \u00a0If they can understand what you do, how you\u2019ve progressed, and what you want to do next, than you\u2019re in good shape.<\/div>\n
The one area where MBAs can give useful feedback is in evaluating your \u2018fit\u2019 for their alma mater. \u00a0For example, does your Kellogg essay talk about how you like to work alone? \u00a0Does your Wharton essay highlight your weakness in quant? \u00a0Those are the types of high level red flags they can catch you for you. \u00a0Leave the rest to someone else.<\/div>\n
So in summary:<\/div>\n
Ask for feedback from multiple different types of friends \/ family \/ co-workers who can give you varying perspectives (eg. the person who has no clue what you do every day, the person who knows you well, etc)Don\u2019t put too much stock in any one piece of feedback - you need to stay true to yourself (even if your best friend from your dream school is positive that she needs to re-write your essays)Remember that MBAs are trained to be critical - most would never send you feedback without many suggestions. So, view those suggestions as ideas, not as something you need to do in order to succeedAsk for MBA friends to read for \u201cculture and fit\u201d - this is where they are most helpful<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last year I had a client who called me panicking – \u201cI showed my applications to several co-workers and they completely tore apart my essays! \u00a0What do I do??\u201d This…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1955,775,243],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mba","category-vantage-point-mba","category-admission-consultants","category-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34601","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\/167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}