Look, there are a lot of people out there competing for the exact same spots in MBA programs as you. And, not to be a Debbie Downer here, but contrary to what you might think, many come from very similar backgrounds as you. So how do you set yourself apart from the crowd? How do you show the man or woman reading your application that you\u2019re not just like everyone else they\u2019re going to see in that overwhelming stack of applications in front of them?<\/p>\n
You gotta be UNIQUE. And, based on what we just said, that\u2019s not as straightforward as you\u2019d expect.<\/p>\n
All of us operate under a crippling illusion that our experiences themselves are somehow UNIQUE. On one hand, there\u2019s absolutely no such thing. Stop trying, cuz you\u2019re gonna fail.<\/p>\n
Before I get to the light at the end of the tunnel, I wanna snuff out any lingering misapprehensions. Firstly, let\u2019s talk about that word \u201cexperience.\u201d It\u2019s complex, and sneaky\u2026 and rich (Ron Burgundy, anyone?). So you have to be a little wily to really get it right. There\u2019s \u201cthe experience,\u201d and then there\u2019s \u201chow you experienced\u201d \u2026 \u201cthe experience.\u201d The problem is, we get sloppy and think people are interested in the former. JUST the experience. The thing. The event. The situation. The time. The people. The circumstances. The trials. The tribulations. The grief. The joy. The challenges. The failures. The sucesses.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s\u2026 true\u2026. sort of. But here\u2019s the thing that lots of applicants miss: BY ITSELF\u2026 the experience doesn\u2019t mean ANYTHING.<\/p>\n
You could be leading a battalion of EIGHT into the maw of the ultimate enemy, up against fifteen thousand. And if what\u2019s on your mind at that pivotal moment is nothing other than \u201cDarn, this is an EXCELLENT sun and I\u2019m not gonna get ANY kind of tan inside these fatigues!\u201d then all of a sudden, I\u2019m not so impressed\u00a0 by your \u201cleadership\u201d experience.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s another problem with the experience BY ITSELF. If you led EIGHT guys into an army of fifteen thousand\u2026.\u00a0 you can be sure that someone in the same applicant pool led four\u2026 into forty thousand. And here\u2019s why that\u2019s tough. If you think that you\u2019re somehow alone in your feat, you run the risk of looking like a chump.<\/p>\n
When schools say \u201ctell us about an experience where\/that\/when\u2026\u201d they\u2019re not asking you to have somehow been a part of something that \u2014 somehow \u2014 NO ONE ELSE ON EARTH \u2014 has ever had the fortune of encountering. Because they get it. It\u2019s hard to be unique. It\u2019s hard to be Copernicus. It\u2019s hard to be Darwin. It\u2019s hard to be Erastophanes.<\/p>\n
If you happen to be one of those guys that truly changes everything, you\u2019re in pretttty good shape. You can apply in crayon on a napkin and you\u2019ll be in good shape. But for the rest of us, it isn\u2019t the experience by itself that means anything at all.\u00a0It\u2019s our experience OF that experience.<\/em><\/p>\n K, so what does THAT mean? You can literally write about ABSOLUTELY anything, because if you\u2019re THINKING ABOUT IT CORRECTLY, you now have the opportunity to be ACTUALLY \u201cunique.\u201d How? Well, you can be sure that no one else on Earth experienced the thing the way YOU did. It\u2019s the LENS that individuates. What we want to know is not what the experience was\u2026. but rather, your experience of it.<\/p>\n When you were in that battle, what was it you feared? What was it that kept you alive? When did you lose hope? Did you NEVER lose hope? Which part made you resent the military the most? Which part made you RESPECT it the most? Which part made you question your decisions? No two people in the entire history of humanity can answer these questions in the exact same way. THAT\u2019S where \u201cuniqueness\u201d comes into play.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t the experiences, boys and girls. It\u2019s how you experienced it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Look, there are a lot of people out there competing for the exact same spots in MBA programs as you. And, not to be a Debbie Downer here, but contrary…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":140,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11,817,775,113,10,243],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-mba","category-admissionado","category-admission-consultants","category-applications","category-interviews","category-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8561","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=8561"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12098,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8561\/revisions\/12098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}