Calling all Ross 2010 applicants!

Same on essay #3

3. If you were not pursuing the career goals you described in Question 1 what profession would you pursue instead? (For example, teacher, musician, athlete, architect, etc.) How will this alternative interest contribute to your effectiveness in solving multidisciplinary problems?

I have gone thru pretty much every post on this forum to get an understanding of this quesiton and still confused... heres what i have come up with:

If not essay_1 then I would work for X in the capacity of Y.

I have been invlded with X from past 2 years.. and have helped them with a,b,c.

while helping them with a, I leanrt .. teambuilding motivation ...so on.

while helping with b, I leaned to efectively communicate my idea ... so on.

while helping with c, I leanred ....

the skills that i have leanerd from working with X will help me effectively solve MD problems.

Any comments ?

My understanding is that ideally, you need to go with a personal story cause the first 2 essays give you enough space to talk about your professional experiences.
But again, if you really have some challenge at work which you wanna cover here, definitely go ahead.

That will do, OR You could also talk about something really fun, something you're really passionate about which you may have indulged in earlier giving you x, y, z. Like they mention: teacher, musician athlete etc.,
Think this is a light fun essay where again, they are looking at different aspects of your personality.

My 2 cents

I don't think there's a secret formula and with a class of 500+ students, there's bound to be a variety of ways to approach this. I went with a personal interest that could also be a career. It helped to touch on some of my personal interests and motivations. I'd say this essay can be used to talk about your personal character and what makes you unique.

A few don'ts though...
You don't want to choose a career that would cause adcom to question why you're applying to business school. You also don't want to say something like, "my ideal career is to be an Investment Banker, but if I weren't doing that, I'd be a Brand Manager." Those are two very different paths people can take at b-school, so don't write about something like that, even though this is probably a reality for current MBAs. An essay like this also doesn't provide much more depth about you as a person.

Just my two cents.

Agreed on the personal aspects of the essay. Though I think it's okay to write about a professional failure.

One way to think about all your essays and your application in total is to list out the key qualities, skills, traits (professional and personal) that you want the adcom to take away when they look at your application package, including your recommendations. Figure out how you'll put together a cohesive package about yourself through each piece. That will help you decide if you want to talk about a personal or professional experience.

Colesrule and Peaceyall - Thank you so much for your thoughts ... let me go back and make sure that I move my essay to a more personal challange.

Thanks again!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

alright ... after having a little fun with "alternative career essay", it is actually looking little better.

here's how it looks now:

why motivates for X as alternate career.

My past connection with X.

expand on couple of examples of particular things that I did during my past conneciton with X.

Close with saying the a,b, c skills that i leaned during my expereince will help me solve MD problem.

by spending 30 words on what motivates for X as alternative career, i am able to bring one more unique aspect of my personality.

total words - 316

Any feedbacks?

Updated Roll call.Let me know if I missed anyone.

i second this suggestion. i had A LOT of fun with this essay. i have a really nerdy quirk that people wouldn't expect from me (based on demographics, background, and my perceived persona) so i used this interest to explain how i wanted a career in this field. i definitely think it brought balance to a rather bland application.

I submitted my app for R2 on Friday.

I just got a email that one of my recommendations is submitted. Waiting for the other one to come in

Cheers,

Unplugged

submitted my application today!

A quick bit of info from the Ross administration about next year's class, via my section leader:

As everyone has heard, we were an abnormally large class, given that the yield (78% - the percentage of students who decided to come to Ross once accepted) was much higher in 2009 than in any year past.
The administration hopes the class of 2012 will be around 480 students (MBA 2011 is over 500).

even with the super sexy new facilities you guys don't want to keep the class at 500+ ....darn

I think the class size increase presents an interesting problem for the school. With 500+ people in the class of 2011, there needs to be a significant spike in the number of companies hiring on-campus to reach past employment #s. I haven't seen an obvious rise in the # of job postings for the 1st years and it will be interesting to see how the upcoming internship season goes.

So, it makes complete sense to me that the school wants to keep the class size down to 480.

It's amazing how the yield is that high, how does Ross KNOW... fit? It's mind boggling to think about, i understand if you're hbs / stanford and to some degree wharton and your yield is that high, but ross must be dinging super amazing applicants who cross apply to the hsws of the world?

I can talk about my experiences thus far and about MAP. There's the program called RLI or the Ross Leadership Initiative - https://www.bus.umich.edu/RLI/Programs/ that takes place across the two years. This includes orientation, which is somewhat action-based learning and this month there's the Leadership Crisis Challenge which is a simulation in which selected teams get to participate in. I don't know too much about it since it hasn't happened yet.

MAP - Multidisciplinary Action Project - is probably the best example of action based learning. During the last 6-week term of the first year, you essentially do a consulting project with a company (and some non-profits or government entities). There's a list of 100-120 companies to choose from and teams are formed of ~4-6 students. The projects are wide-ranging across industry, function, and geography. Given my interest, I've been looking at energy, utilities, and clean tech. There's social enterprise ones as well as companies trying to market to the base of the pyramid. And of course there's the traditional ones you'd expect to see. We'll be ranking them over the next two weeks and know at the end of the month what project we get.

Projects can be great or not-so-great based on what the project is, how well the team gels, what your client is like, and the team's ability to plan out the project. It probably mirrors a consulting project pretty well.

There's club stuff as well, though I wouldn't say this is unique to Ross, but definitely gives you practical experience. For example, there's the Community Consulting Club where you do a consulting project for an area non-profit over the course of ~10 weeks and the Board Fellowship Program where you are a board member of an area non-profit. There's also opportunity through clubs to impact the administration or campus. For example, Net Impact members pushed the Ross administration to get the new building LEED certified and Net Impact members also were key in getting the campus-wide Office of Campus Sustainability established. And there's lots of conferences that are planned and take place practically every week.

Very helpful. Thanks for this Peaceyall.