{"id":43506,"date":"2018-09-26T05:00:42","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/make-your-social-media-a-piece-of-your-mba-application\/"},"modified":"2018-09-26T05:00:42","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T12:00:42","slug":"make-your-social-media-a-piece-of-your-mba-application","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/make-your-social-media-a-piece-of-your-mba-application\/","title":{"rendered":"Make Your Social Media A Piece Of Your MBA Application"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Social<\/figure>\n

At this point, everyone\u2019s mom, grandma, and uncle is on social media. Some of us at Admissionado remember when you had to have a .edu email address to get on Facebook. Ah… those were the days…<\/p>\n

Okay, enough reminiscing. Because of its almost universal use, social media has become an important tool, and sometimes a dangerous pitfall for people applying to MBA programs. A\u00a0 recent Kaplan study of admissions officers at American universities reveals that almost 40%<\/a> of respondents looked at a candidate\u2019s online presence when making an admissions determination. Now you don\u2019t just have to worry about grandma seeing the pictures of that ill-advised Halloween costume, you have to worry about how that poor posting choice can send admissions committee members the wrong message about you, and your “personal brand.”<\/p>\n

But if you\u2019re applying for MBA programs, you’ve probably already had some work experience and have learned how to police your online presence to avoid the more obvious social media mistakes, like not complaining about your boss on Twitter, #duh! However, what you might not have considered is how your social media profile could help you differentiate your MBA application from the rest of the crowd.<\/p>\n

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>>>>>Recommended Reading: Showing That You “Don’t” Fit In Can Help Your App<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Increasingly, elite MBA programs are branching out from the traditional goals and leadership essay prompts in their applications. Cornell\u2019s SC Johnson School of Business<\/a>, for example, allows students to respond to its “Back of the Resume”<\/a>\u00a0essay in a format of the applicant\u2019s choosing. While some applicants still choose to respond by writing an essay, Johnson also accepts PowerPoint presentations, videos, or links to existing online media. This is the perfect opportunity to utilize your online brand to say something powerful about yourself. For example, say you started a burgeoning sustainable fashion company that uses social media to communicate your company\u2019s commitment to fair trade practices. You\u2019ve got some awesome photos of yourself with the linen farmers you work with in Poland. Maybe instead of writing a traditional essay for the Back of the Resume <\/em>prompt, you could tell the Johnson admissions committee a lot about your values and brand management skills through a guided PowerPoint tour of your company\u2019s website and social media presence.<\/p>\n

While the possibilities for using your social media profile in the increasingly abstract MBA prompt universe are infinite, your online presence is also just as important for more traditional MBA essay responses. For example, in your Fuqua<\/a> application, you tell an inspiring story about your volunteer experience with the Red Cross in response to Hurricane Harvey. While it\u2019s not guaranteed that the Fuqua adcoms are going to look at your Facebook profile, if there\u2019s a great photo of you hauling sandbags knee deep in floodwaters, you\u2019d better make sure that puppy is your profile picture for the application season. You know, just in case.<\/p>\n

Additionally, not every MBA essay prompt is open-ended, and most have a pretty restrictive word count. So, even if you try your best, you can\u2019t fit every accomplishment or award you\u2019ve won in your application. This makes it imperative that you keep your Linkedin account up to date and in the best shape possible.<\/p>\n

If your online profile happens to not be 100% squeaky clean, be careful not to go overboard in the cleanup by deleting all of your online photos or adopting the most private security settings. One online branding expert <\/a>from Fuqua cautions that a sparse online profile is suspicious and could tip adcoms off to someone who\u2019s trying to hide something.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, keeping your online presence work-friendly is the sensible thing to do, for your facebooking grandma\u2019s sake, and if you have plans for getting an MBA. With more adcoms looking at applicants\u2019 social media pages, we think there\u2019s an opportunity to not only use your online presence to back up the claims you\u2019re making in your essays, but to make your chances of snagging that acceptance letter even better.<\/p>\n

The post Make Your Social Media A Piece Of Your MBA Application<\/a> appeared first on Admissionado<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At this point, everyone\u2019s mom, grandma, and uncle is on social media. Some of us at Admissionado remember when you had to have a .edu email address to get on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,817,775],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mba","category-admissionado","category-admission-consultants","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43506","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=43506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43506\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}