Sloan 2013 (MIT) - Calling All Applicants

Congrats it's my favorite. Niu!

Not necessarily to adcom. The instructions says - anything interesting that you want to share about yourself to your future classmates and/or adcom.

Doesnt necessarily need a "why". With this one, they are interested in what other things you do in your life apart from that is covered in essays. - another dimension, if you will.

When I visited the campus last month, an adcom member said the reason they added this essays was, when Rod Garcia interviewed applicants last year, he met a lady whose application was very pretty bland, but during the interview he got to know about so many interesting things such as ballet dancing etc about her. He felt that adding this would give applicants to chance to show about the interesting things in their life.
It is not expected to be a summary of things that are already covered in resume, cover letter, essays

That makes sense, but I should clarify. I wasn't saying that it was necessary, but I think it's always helpful. For example, so many people show pictures of their travels. Lots of people travel and lots of people enjoy it. I think for those sorts of interests that are really common, it's helpful to say why you enjoy it and what you get out of it.

I went with the traditional essay regarding something I am passionate about outside of work. I wanted to do the whole ppt/video thing but had absolutely no time Ah well, I'll do that in Chicago Booth - although I hope I dont have to as I will only apply there if R1 is unsuccessful

Actually, when I did the form today, I found myself agreeing with you on the EC section. I wished there was a space to talk about those.

I do think the "job description" questions that some schools ask is completely unnecessary though.

I looked at a few videos online and the following is my opinion on:

1. Videos - I didn't find many of them to be too impressive. The basketball dunk video is funny for sure, but I didn't see what the applicant was trying to get through. You like basketball - excellent. But to be brutally honest - so what? Most people do. Why do you like basketball or, assuming you like comedy as the video is funny, why do you like comedy maybe. In my view, answering the whys are important than just stating what you like to do. That will differentiate you. Hence, I agree with the other comment on the girl dancing video - its funny, even enjoyable. But everyone likes to dance - heck there are atleast 10 other girls in each slide/video snippet in that video. Doesn't tell much beyond the fact that you love to dance, maybe the team version more than the solo one.

At the same time, there are a few videos I saw that were quite awesome. Unfortunately didn't see the card trick video - AresZhu send me a pvt link? Seems you have unlisted the video now - and another where a guy talks about the impact he has made on society.

2. Videos vs PPT - I felt the Picture + Words combination worked better. I saw on slideshare a presentation by a girl named Noor from Canada, and I liked it a lot. She has a winner for the Booth essay for sure. Most importantly, she builds up the why, shows what she did, and then how she'll contribute at MIT Sloan.

3. Traditional Essay - Full disclosure, I wrote this. However, in retrospect, I should have done option 2 as my essay is on my stand up comedy bit (again why I like it, what I achieved/did, what I will bring to the school) but in the PPT, I could have written all of this + added some jokes OR pictures.

Thoughts?

I think it all depends on your interpretations of the word supplemental and optional. The two extremes being its purpose is serious (provide additional message to the adcom) or casual (entertain the adcom and make him like you).

While all the application is about figures, and rationale, to me this part should all be about emotion. To me it should convey a feeling like "I'd like to be this guy's classmate".

I think anything is fine as long as you don't bother the adcom. For example take the Karoke video of a Korean applicant on Youtube, it doesn't convey any message other than being outgoing (any Asian loves karaoke) but if the guy explained clearly all his credentials before, and the adcom enjoys karaoke the slightest bit, he may get some sympathy. If not, he takes a huge risk (notably when doing a montage with Rod Garcia's face in the video).

A good video is the best medium IMO, but a failed video can be fatal, depends how the adcom interprets it. The PPT I've seen were mostly boring to me, but maybe I looked at the wrong sample. That said, it all depends on the adcom's tastes.

Also note that we are only talking about videos that were purposely shared in publi, which means they are less likely to be very personal and probably better executed than the complete sample.

I actually did a serious supplemental essay, and now that I think of it, I should've added in other elements about my personality. Ah well.. nothing to do now but will see how it goes. One thing I've found in life is that everything always works out in the end =)

Just an FYI - the most effective way (that I've found) to find these videos is to search "MIT supplemental, short" on YouTube and sort (aka Filter) by Upload Date.

The videos are overwhelmingly Indians....Koreans.

Some were really creative!!
But honestly I think many aren't very proper...some are quite badly edited..and people are trying to put too much information in 1 min (well, some were like 4 mins?!)

If people want to watch other videos, I found a couple over on vimeo.com.

Wow, all of a sudden this board got lively. It is awesome that everyone is expressing their opinion about what they liked and didn’t like. Though, I saw some assertions as well. Those are little dangerous and probably little bit on mean side.
Anyway, so when do they start inviting people for interviews? Sometime in December? I already found some mistakes in my app so not sure if I am going to get an invite.

Just saw some of the supplemental essays on Slideshare -> pondering on the wisdom of stuffing the supplemental essays with words (in some cases clearly more than 300) when the word limit for the essay option is 300 words... bending the rules much ?

Yes, getting a glimpse of submitted work is great.

BTW- Do any body have an idea of (approximate) date range to expect the interviews? Is it Nov, Dec, Jan?

I am looking into planning a family vacation, so wondering what dates to avoid.

I'm a reapplicant that was interviewed a couple of years ago. Invites went out on the first week of December, usually that first Monday, so I'm thinking this year people will hear on December 3rd and a bunch throughout that week.

Great. Thanks for the info.

How many days after the interview invitation, will the actual interview is going to be? a week? month?

FWIW, the reason the Adcom added this section was because of an interview where the last question to the applicant was "Is there anything else you'd like to show us?" She responded by talking about a project she was very enthusiastic about (I want to say it was fashion and web related). Rod Garcia's response was why are we only finding out this thing that she is passionate about at the very last interview question? So the point of the supplemental information was really to capture extraneous information about yourself that might not fit normally into an application.

I think any solution you pick (video, presentation, essay, etc.) is fine as long as it's really enhancing the Adcom's understanding of your depth of passion for something or to show width of interest in other things is good.