{"id":46555,"date":"2019-08-05T12:45:42","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T19:45:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=46555"},"modified":"2019-08-05T12:46:01","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T19:46:01","slug":"what-hungry-judges-can-teach-us-about-getting-into-wharton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/what-hungry-judges-can-teach-us-about-getting-into-wharton\/","title":{"rendered":"What Can Hungry Judges Teach Us About Getting into Wharton?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A few years back, a Columbia University professor conducted a study that produced some shocking results. In criminal cases, hungry and tired judges handed down sentences far stricter than when they were rested and well-fed. Specifically, as the author explained<\/a>, \u201cYou are anywhere between two and six times as likely to be released if you\u2019re one of the first three prisoners considered versus the last three prisoners considered.\u201d Further, defendants were most likely to receive a positive result at the beginning of the day, when judges were presumably most rested and well-breakfasted. That 65% chance of a favorable ruling declined nearly to 0% just before lunch, with that rate spiking again after lunch and again declining toward the end of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So,\nwhat does this have to do with getting into Wharton? Well, in my decade working\nwith clients, I\u2019ve noticed that most of the people I work with invest\nadmissions officers with a nearly mythical ability to judge their worth and to\ndo so precisely and objectively. Thus, these clients fear being denied\nadmissions because they see it as an objective repudiation of their value as\nstudents and even as people. Moreover, there has developed an immense ecosystem\nof highly dubious \u201cadmissions Kremlinology\u201d in which people parse out in highly\ndetailed ways what precisely each school looks for and how exactly you must\nthread the needle to get in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frankly,\nmost of it is nonsense. There is no Oracle at Cambridge, Wizard of Wharton, or\nGrand Poobah of Palo Alto. What you have are mostly earnest and hardworking\npeople -like the judges in the study- who are human and thus subject to human\nfailings. Indeed, because admissions is much more opaque and subjective than\nthe law, it\u2019s far more susceptible to the individual mood swings and\nunknowable, unpredictable circumstances of the room where the AdCom sits. If we\nknow that judges, who are trained in their very specific job and must deal with\nclearly delineated laws and rules, produce results that are often swayed by\nrandom external factors, why would we assume that admissions officers -for whom\nthere are no real national standards and who make their decisions in secret and\nwithout review- would somehow have and deploy flawless objective processes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So\nwhat do you do with this information if you\u2019re an applicant? My purpose isn\u2019t\nto suggest that you become overly cynical about the process or that you don\u2019t\nput in the requisite effort because it\u2019s all random. That would be as dumb as a\nlawyer deciding that all verdicts are purely a function of time and thus shows\nup to court unprepared. Instead, here are the six main takeaways:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Start with the\nbasics: storytelling.<\/strong> Doing research on\nwhat each of your target biz schools emphasize is important, but don\u2019t let a\nhyper-focus on the attributes of these schools distract you from the fact that\nyour core mission is to tell an engaging story about yourself. People respond\nto stories, and there\u2019s a very particular way to write a compelling story that\nemphasizes what you\u2019ve overcome and accomplished and gives a compelling vision\nof who you\u2019re going to be. A personal statement that is well-tailored to a\nschool, but lacks good storytelling is just a brochure of that school, and NOT\na reason to admit you.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n