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20 May 2016, 11:01
| FROM mbaMission Blog: B-School Chart of the Week: April 2016 Social Currency Rankings |
Rankings come in all shapes and sizes, but can any ranking truly capture social cachet? For a different perspective on the value of an MBA, we turn to the New York Times society pages, where the editors select and profile promising couples. Each month, we dedicate one B-School Chart of the Week to tallying how alumni from top-ranked business schools are advancing their social currency ranking. April turned out to be a busy month for MBA weddings, as the New York Times profiled 13 such nuptials. Business schools acted as matchmakers in two of the unions: Columbia Business School graduates Addie Downing and Marc Bidder said “I do” after meeting while pursuing their respective MBAs, while Eleanor Pishny and Justus Meyer exchanged vows after having crossed paths at Harvard Business School. Other weddings featured bride and groom MBAs from such schools as the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and the New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business. We have a feeling that the MBA summer wedding season will start to pick up steam very soon! The post B-School Chart of the Week: April 2016 Social Currency Rankings appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
21 May 2016, 08:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: My Supervisor Graduated from HBS—He Knows! |
 If your supervisor starts any bit of his or her advice with “when I applied,” you should view the coming declaration with tremendous caution. We at mbaMission know of a man now in his 70s who graduated from a virtually unknown Canadian undergraduate school in 1963 and who, with no work experience at all, applied to Harvard Business School (HBS), Wharton, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), earning acceptance at all three (though the GSB deferred his entry for one year so he could earn a little more experience first). He ultimately studied at HBS and now runs a small grain-trading business. You could not meet a nicer man, and although he is certainly wise in many respects, one thing he knows nothing about is MBA admissions. “I attended so long ago, things must have changed since then,” he says. “I did not have any work experience at all. I had studied four years of commerce, and that was it!” Why are we telling you this? Many candidates each year tell us that their bosses, who applied to business school during far different times, have given them “sage” advice about applying and that they feel they should follow it—after all, what worked for their boss in 1966, 1976, 1986, or even 1996 must still be applicable today, right? Wrong. For a long time, the MBA was actually not all that desirable a degree, so the admissions process was not quite so competitive. To give you an idea of the MBA’s relative popularity, Duke University (Fuqua) did not even start its MBA program until 1970, but its law school was founded in 1868. Yale University was founded in 1701, but it did not have an MBA program until 1976. So, the MBA is a relatively new degree that has only recently (in the late 1990s) reached its current level of popularity and prestige. What does all of this mean with regard to your boss’s advice? Although your supervisor may have gotten into one of your target schools, he or she likely did so years ago and therefore may not have had to contend with the steep competition you now face. Your boss may also not know anything about what the admissions process is like today and could be—however inadvertently—leading you astray. If your supervisor starts any bit of his or her well-intended advice with the phrase “when I applied,” you should view the coming declaration with tremendous caution. The post MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: My Supervisor Graduated from HBS—He Knows! appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
21 May 2016, 11:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: In Other News… Business School Deans Discuss the Future, Harvard MBA Students Help Ease Cold-Calling Pressure, and Wharton Focuses on Big Data |
The business school world is constantly buzzing with change and innovation. In addition to our regular news posts, we briefly touch on a few notable stories from this dynamic field in one roundup.
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22 May 2016, 07:01
| FROM mbaMission Blog: GMAT Impact: What to Do During the Last Two Weeks Before the GMAT |
With regard to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. In this blog series, Manhattan Prep’s Stacey Koprince teaches you how to perform at your best on test day by using some common sense. Application season will soon be here again, and many candidates are gearing up to take the GMAT. Are you aware that during the last 7 to 14 days before you take the real test, your entire study focus changes? Most people have no idea and keep doing more of the same—trying to fix weaknesses and lift their scores. While that should be your focus up until the last week or two, if you continue to focus on weaknesses during the last length of time, you will not likely be able to maximize your score on test day. Why? You’ve been studying an enormous number of things, right? (Sometimes, it seems like it will never end!) Toward the end of our study time frame, we have to take time to do two very important things: build a game plan and conduct a comprehensive review. To learn how to construct a game plan, take a look at the first part of this article: “The Last 14 Days: Building Your Game Plan (Part 1).” That article contains a link to the second half, which discusses how to conduct a review of your strengths and weaknesses, as well as your timing and other strategies. Ideally, you will take a full 14 days for this process, but you can compress the activities into seven to ten days if need be. Just do not try to do it all in seven days; you will have to cut down on the amount of review you do to avoid tiring yourself out before Game Day. Good luck and happy studying! The post GMAT Impact: What to Do During the Last Two Weeks Before the GMAT appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
22 May 2016, 12:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Former Thrillist Guru Mike Rothman Describes His Latest Company, Fatherly |
 Mike Rothman, Co-Founder of Fatherly Today, many aspiring MBAs and MBA graduates want to join start-ups or launch such companies themselves. Is entrepreneurship as exciting as it seems? Is it really for you? mbaMission Founder Jeremy Shinewald has teamed up with Venture for America and CBS Interactive to launch Smart People Should Build Things: The Venture for America Podcast. Each week, Shinewald interviews another entrepreneur so you can hear the gritty stories of their ups and downs on the road to success. Mike Rothman was among the first employees at online media firm Thrillist, helping the company grow from a start-up to a $100M success story. In 2013, he co-founded Fatherly, a parenting resource Web site. Rothman describes Fatherly, which has raised $2M in its three-year history, as a “digital lifestyle guide for men entering parenthood.” Tune in to the podcast episode to hear these stories from Rothman and more:
Subscribe to the podcast series to hear the latest episodes as they are released! The post Former Thrillist Guru Mike Rothman Describes His Latest Company, Fatherly appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
23 May 2016, 07:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Monday Morning Essay Tip: Be Cautious with Polarizing Issues |
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Although many MBA programs are interested in hearing about your international experiences, they are fundamentally uninterested in your personal views on “hot” global political issues. Even when an admissions committee directly challenges you to discuss current events or global politics, you must take care to offer a point of view—not a scathing manifesto. No clear rules exist as to what exactly you should discuss, but as you consider ideas, “knowing your audience” is of the utmost importance. Never take risks by discussing an economic, political, social, or cultural idea that you believe could generally be considered extreme. Of course, “extreme” is open to interpretation, and this is why choosing the issue you will discuss requires so much careful consideration. When you begin writing, keep in mind that you are not trying to win voters or recruit people to your cause—your goal is simply to show that you are engaged in the issues, can consider them in a balanced way, and are able to articulate your ideas persuasively. The post Monday Morning Essay Tip: Be Cautious with Polarizing Issues appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
23 May 2016, 11:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Mastering Your MBA Finances – Income During Business School? (Part 1) |
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Once you have been accepted to your target MBA program, things start to move very quickly, and you will need to begin planning for your transition to business school right away. Understanding the financial realities of your MBA education is an important first step, and we have created this comprehensive, five-part “Mastering Your MBA Finances” series to help you do so. In this first installment of the series, we examine typical MBA internship salaries and signing bonuses. For individualized advice, sign up for a free 30-minute budget planning session with an M7 Financial budgeting coach. Earning an MBA offers intellectual growth, a respite from the typical workday, and an opportunity to make new friends and contacts, but the main reason most candidates pursue this degree is to improve their managerial skills and make a professional leap. In short, an MBA is an investment—one that should lead to a higher salary immediately upon graduation and for many years after. Most business school students are able to offset at least part of their living and educational expenses with the income from their summer position and their signing bonus(es), and some individuals also earn scholarships. A very small number of full-time students may continue to work—and thereby draw a salary—as they complete their studies, but this is not necessarily a feasible option for all, because MBA programs tend to be all consuming. So you may be wondering, What kind of compensation can I expect to receive during my MBA program as a source for financing my education? What will my internship salary be like? How much might a signing bonus be? In this first part of our series, we explore these questions to help you develop the “revenue” side of your MBA student budget. Starting with internship salaries, let us examine the income data the MBA programs provide in their career reports. You can see in the following table that for the most part, the summer salaries for students across a smattering of top business schools are relatively similar. Counterintuitively, Harvard Business School (HBS) and the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), which typically top the rankings with regard to average post-MBA salary, are actually at the bottom of this list. (We surmise that these programs may have lower averages than one would expect, because more of their students take chances with entrepreneurial summer positions, feeling more certain that they can later land a more stable full-time position, if necessary.) If you were to create a budget line for your internship income, a safe number to use might be the $18,069 average internship salary seen with this selection of programs. Although some MBA students also receive performance bonuses during the summer, to be conservative, we will consider only the average guaranteed compensation for our discussion here.  Source: 2014 MBA Program Career Reports (for all schools listed in table), data for Class of 2015 Now we have the beginnings of a revenue picture! Of course, not all job functions draw salaries that hew to the averages—some are above, while some fall below. In our next table, we parse the data provided by Dartmouth Tuck to give you a better understanding of what you might expect across industries.  Source: Dartmouth Tuck 2014 Career Report, data for Class of 2015 In this table, you will see that consulting salaries are the most generous, while those for the other industries listed are somewhat evenly distributed, with the nonprofit sector (as is typical) paying the least. So, if you are certain that you want to enter consulting, you might be able to bump your salary expectations upward; if you are dedicated to entering the nonprofit world, you might need to adjust your expectations downward. Of course, you will not be able to assume all of your summer salary as income, because you will still have expenses to cover during this time, and you also have to pay taxes. Nonetheless, most MBAs should be able to save some money during the summer. If you do a great job in your summer internship, the firm just might offer you a full-time job, and if you agree to accept that position, you will likely receive a signing bonus. In industries such as financial services and consulting, signing bonuses are very much the norm and are by and large standardized across the industry. In other industries, however, such payouts can vary. Still, an MBA can look to a median signing bonus of approximately $25,000 as a guide, and this can certainly help pay some second-year bills.  Source: MBA Program Career Reports (top 15 programs), Class of 2014 So, if you were to take these somewhat standard compensation elements of the MBA experience and add them together, you would have a $43,000 total revenue line.  Source: MBA Program Career Reports (top 15 programs), Class of 2014 Still other revenue opportunities are available, of course—scholarships and offsets like tax credits, for example—but at the most basic level, we can assume that you will earn approximately $43,000 over the course of your MBA program if you pursue a conventional professional track. Check back next week, when we discuss unexpected revenue sources that can reshape your student budget. And if you are looking for even more strategies for funding your degree and minimizing your debt burden, download the free M7 Financial Student Loan (Reduction) Primer or sign up for a free, 30-minute, one-on-one budget planning session! The post Mastering Your MBA Finances – Income During Business School? (Part 1) appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
24 May 2016, 08:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Mission Admission: The MBA Resume, Part 3 |
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Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday. Ideally, your resume should be only one page long; admissions committees generally expect and appreciate the conciseness of this format. If you choose to submit a resume consisting of two pages or more, your reader may have difficulty scanning it and identifying (and remembering) important facts. With these space constraints in mind, we offer two fairly straightforward “space saver” ideas:
Jeremy Shinewald 138 West 25th Street 7th Floor New York, NY 10024 646-485-8844 jeremy@mbamission.com You just wasted six lines of valuable real estate! If you plan to whittle your resume down to one page, try putting your address on just one line so you can save five others for valuable bullets. And, while we are discussing resume length, resist the urge to shrink your font or margins to make your resume fit on one page. Your font should be no smaller than 10-point type, and your margins should be no smaller than 1″ on either side and 0.75″ at the top and bottom. Rather than trying to fit too much information on the page, commit yourself instead to showcasing only your most important accomplishments that best tell your story. The post Mission Admission: The MBA Resume, Part 3 appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
25 May 2016, 08:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Professor Profiles: Gregory B. Fairchild, University of Virginia Darden School of Business |
Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school. However, the educational experience you will have is what is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Each Wednesday, we profile a standout professor as identified by students. Today, we focus on Gregory B. Fairchild from the University of Virginia (UVA) Darden School of Business. As an academic director for Darden’s Institute for Business in Society, Gregory B. Fairchild (MBA ’92) is charged with promoting ways in which business leadership can connect to broader societal issues. Fairchild specializes in entrepreneurship, business strategies, and business ethics, and he researches ways to create value in underserved areas. In 2011, Virginia Business magazine included Fairchild in its “Top 25: People to Watch” feature, and in 2012, both CNN/Fortune and Poets & Quants named him one of the best business school professors in the world. Fairchild has received a number of teaching excellence awards at Darden, including recognition as an outstanding faculty member in 2008. One alumna we interviewed called Fairchild’s classes “exhilarating” and noted that he reviews his students’ resumes and can tie someone’s background to the topic of the day. She added that he is “scarily good” at cold calls and “won’t let go until he has dug all of the facts out of you.” For more information about UVA Darden and 15 other top-ranked business schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. The post Professor Profiles: Gregory B. Fairchild, University of Virginia Darden School of Business appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
26 May 2016, 07:01
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Beyond the MBA Classroom: Get Together for Small Group Dinners at Stanford |
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When you select an MBA program, you are not just choosing your learning environment but are also committing to becoming part of a community. Each Thursday, we offer a window into life “beyond the MBA classroom” at a top business school. At the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), Small Group Dinners, which the school sponsors, provide a way for first- and second-year students to interact in small groups. Each dinner must be announced publicly and must involve a small number of people who have not had such a get-together before. On his blog, one second-year student wrote that the dinners are “an excellent way to make new friends and learn more about classmates.” Some alumni keep the tradition going after graduating—regional clubs have hosted Small Group Dinners in such locations as San Francisco. For in-depth descriptions of social and community activities at the Stanford GSB and 15 other top MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. The post Beyond the MBA Classroom: Get Together for Small Group Dinners at Stanford appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
26 May 2016, 12:01
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Diamonds in the Rough: Improved Facilities at Washington University’s Olin Business School |
MBA applicants can get carried away with rankings. In this series, we profile amazing programs at business schools that are typically ranked outside the top 15. Washington University’s Olin Business School announced in 2011 that lead gifts totaling $25M from two of its benefactors would support a plan to construct two new facilities for its graduate program—Knight Hall and Bauer Hall. The $90M expansion was completed in the spring of 2014—several months earlier than expected—and added seven new classrooms, 75 faculty offices, a 100-seat café, graduate student services, lounges, an Active Learning Lab, and a new event space called The Forum. A three-dimensional rendering of the buildings, which received LEED Gold certification in December 2014, can be seen here. Boasting strong MBA and BSBA (Bachelor of Science in Business Administration) programs, the school states on its Web site that its operating principle is “research-driven thinking, applied.” Although Olin is a smaller sized program (141 full-time MBA students in the Class of 2017) and is noted for its highly collaborative culture, the expansion allows the school to grow its class size while providing more space and resources. Olin may also be well positioned to tap into St. Louis’s burgeoning start-up sector. According to a March 2013 report by career hub Dice, “The number of St. Louis–based technology jobs posted on Dice jumped 25 percent year/year. And those new tech jobs are coming at a higher price tag too: average tech salaries are up 13 percent year/year to $81,245. […] St. Louis is becoming a start-up town…” The post Diamonds in the Rough: Improved Facilities at Washington University’s Olin Business School appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
27 May 2016, 07:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Friday Factoid: Stanford GSB’s LEED-Certified Facilities |
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Thanks in part to a $105M gift from Nike founder and chairman Phil Knight (MBA ’62), the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) has constructed a new $350M campus in recent years. The 360,000-square-foot campus of the Knight Management Center, which opened in the spring of 2011, expanded the school’s existing campus footprint by 100,000 square feet. The extended campus is intended to allow the use of a wider variety of teaching methods and to increase interaction among students and faculty, including those from other Stanford University schools. Forty-two small classrooms, 7 large classrooms, 276 seats in the auditorium, and 60 faculty offices were added. The Knight Management Center is a green, environmentally friendly building, boasting state-of-the-art technology. Each classroom has three screens and dormant cameras for computer presentations, as well as plenty of natural light (in contrast to many of the previous lecture halls, which were windowless). With an eye toward preserving green space, the 870-space parking lot was built underground. The school is employing sustainable practices with respect to site development and the conservative use of water and energy. In early 2012, the Knight Management Center was awarded the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Platinum rating—the highest level of LEED certification granted by the U.S. Green Building Council—in recognition of its minimal environmental impact. To learn more about the Knight Management Center, visit the school’s official Web site. For more information on the Stanford GSB or 15 other leading MBA programs, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. The post Friday Factoid: Stanford GSB’s LEED-Certified Facilities appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
27 May 2016, 09:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: In Other News… A Hefty Donation to Cornell, Overcoming Adversity to Earn an MBA, and the Pros and Cons of a JD/MBA Degree |
The business school world is constantly buzzing with change and innovation. In addition to our regular news posts, we briefly touch on a few notable stories from this dynamic field in one roundup.
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28 May 2016, 07:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: My Months of Work Experience Will Not Be Counted! |
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“I had an internship from June to August of 2014. Will the admissions committee count it as work experience?” “I was running a lab during my Master’s program—is that part of my total number of months of work experience?” “I ran a small business that ultimately failed—will I get credit for my time as an entrepreneur?” Business schools have not seriously considered a candidate’s number of months of work experience as a factor in admissions decisions for a long time. In fact, with such programs as Harvard Business School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business increasingly open to younger candidates, work experience on a strictly quantitative level is actually being devalued at some schools. A candidate’s quantity of work experience is just not relevant—quality is, of course, what is important. An “average” employee who has merely fulfilled expectations during a five-year stint at a Fortune 500 company could certainly be said to be at a disadvantage compared with an individual who has made the most of a three-year stint elsewhere and has been promoted ahead of schedule. Think about it—which of the two would you admit? So, if you are asked on an application how many months of work experience you will have prior to matriculating, you should simply answer honestly. If you have any gray areas or are unsure about any aspect of your professional experience as it pertains to your application, you can always call the admissions office for guidance—most admissions offices are actually surprisingly helpful with this kind of simple technical question. Thereafter, stop worrying about the number of months you do or do not have and instead focus on revealing that—and how—you have had an impact in your professional life. Your essays, recommendations, interviews, resume, and other application elements will ultimately make a qualitative impact that will outweigh any quantitative data. The post MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: My Months of Work Experience Will Not Be Counted! appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
29 May 2016, 08:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: GMAT Impact: Analyzing Your Practice Problems |
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With regard to the GMAT, raw intellectual horsepower helps, but it is not everything. In this blog series, Manhattan Prep’s Stacey Koprince teaches you how to perform at your best on test day by using some common sense. Did you know that, on any particular problem, roughly 80% of your learning comes after you have picked the answer? Turns out, we do not learn much while in the process of doing a problem, especially when the clock is ticking. We are just trying to remember (and use!) everything that we learned before we started working on that problem. Afterward, though, we can take all the time we want to figure out how to get better—that is where we really learn. Did I understand what they were asking? Did I know how to do the math or reasoning necessary to get to the answer? Is there a more efficient way to do that work? Did I make any mistakes or fall into any traps? If so, which ones and why? How could I make an educated guess? In a nutshell: if you are not spending at least as long reviewing a question as you spent doing it in the first place, then you are not maximizing your learning. Take a look at this article: How to Analyze a Practice Problem. It contains a list of questions to ask yourself when reviewing a problem. Take note of a couple of things: – Yes, you still ask yourself these questions even when you answer the question correctly. – No, you do not need to ask yourself every single question for each problem you review; choose the most appropriate questions based upon how the problem went for you. Want some examples of how to do this? Glad you asked. Below, you will find links to articles containing an analysis of a sample problem for each of the six main question types. Happy studying! How to analyze the following: Sentence Correction Critical Reasoning Reading Comprehension Data Sufficiency Problem Solving Integrated Reasoning Table The post GMAT Impact: Analyzing Your Practice Problems appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
29 May 2016, 10:44
31 May 2016, 08:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Monday Morning Essay Tip: Support Conclusions with Examples |
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At mbaMission, we always encourage candidates to show their experiences rather than tell their conclusions to the reader. For example, a candidate may mistakenly choose to tell the reader, “I performed exceptionally well in my job and was promoted.” In this case, the reader is left wondering, “What exactly did he/she do so well to earn that promotion?” The reader needs to understand the whole story for the conclusion to be “proven.” We find that candidates occasionally think they are providing the whole story when they are in fact offering only a single data point: Example 1: “For me, as an avid paraglider, extreme sports are not just a hobby but a way of life.” In this case, the conclusion—that the candidate “lives” for extreme sports—is not substantiated. One data point is not enough to “prove” this conclusion. Example 2: “For me, as an avid paraglider and budding heli-skier, extreme sports are not just a hobby but a way of life.” With the addition of the mention of a second activity, the applicant’s case becomes more compelling. Example 3: “For me, as an avid paraglider, budding heli-skier, and experienced cliff diver, extreme sports are not just a hobby but a way of life.” This series of three examples makes the candidate’s passion for extreme sports undeniable. Of course, we have used a simplified example here and would suggest that a candidate put his/her experience into action and show the passion via experience—“Leaping from a ten-meter cliff, I…”—depending on the context of the essay. The post Monday Morning Essay Tip: Support Conclusions with Examples appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
31 May 2016, 08:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Mission Admission: What Type of Candidate Are B-Schools Seeking? |
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Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday. One of the most common questions we hear from business school applicants is “What type of candidate does [Harvard/Stanford/Wharton/Chicago Booth/etc.] want?” Of course, the answer to that question is that schools do not want one type of applicant. Instead, each school is striving to assemble a remarkably diverse class and thus wants to be able to identify distinct qualities in each candidate. Although simplifying a school’s approach to admissions (e.g., “Kellogg wants team players”) can be appealing, avoid trying to fit into some perceived mold—doing so will only mask your true distinct qualities and strengths. Rather than pandering to a stereotype with regard to your personal/professional experiences or changing your stated goals to match an imagined bias on the part of an MBA admissions committee, you should spend a great deal of time brainstorming to best understand how you can showcase your unique traits. By demonstrating that you offer something different from other candidates, you have the greatest chance of succeeding. The post Mission Admission: What Type of Candidate Are B-Schools Seeking? appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
31 May 2016, 11:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Stanford Graduate School of Business Essay Analysis, 2016–2017 |
 The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) may be known for educating great innovators—think Phil Knight and Jacqueline Novogratz, just for starters—but this year, the school’s admissions office is leaving the innovating to others and keeping its essay questions the same as last year’s. In fairness, maybe we should assume that the admissions office finished its innovation phase years ago and has iterated and tweaked its essay prompts enough to have arrived at its version of perfection. Who knows? And more importantly, does it even matter? The Stanford GSB’s task is to craft the questions, but your task is to answer them. With this essay analysis, we have done our best to help you do so successfully… Essay A: What matters most to you, and why? (School-suggested word count of 750) For this essay, we would like you to:
When candidates ask us, “What should I write for what matters most to me?,” we offer some pretty simple guidance: start brainstorming for this essay by asking yourself that very question. What does matter most to you? This might seem like obvious advice, of course, but many applicants get flustered by the question, believing that an actual “right” answer exists that they must identify to satisfy the admissions committee. As a result, they never pause to actually consider their sincere responses, which are typically the most compelling. We therefore encourage you to contemplate this question in depth and push yourself to explore the psychological and philosophical motivations behind your goals and achievements—behind who you are today. We cannot emphasize this enough: do not make a snap decision about the content of this essay. Once you have identified what you believe is an appropriate theme, discuss your idea(s) with those with whom you are closest and whose input you respect. Doing so can help validate deeply personal and authentic themes, leading to an essay that truly stands out. Once you have fully examined your options and identified your main themes, do not simply provide a handful of supporting anecdotes—or worse, recycle the stories you used in a similar essay for another school. A strong essay response to this question will involve a true exploration of the themes you have chosen and reveal a thorough analysis of decisions, motives, and successes/failures, with a constant emphasis on how you conduct yourself. If you are merely telling stories and trying to tie in your preconceived conclusions, you are probably forcing a theme on your reader rather than genuinely analyzing your experiences, and any experienced admissions reader will see right through this. In short, be sure to fully consider and identify your most authentic answer(s), outline your essay accordingly, and then infuse your writing with your personality, thoughts, feelings, and experiences. Stanford encourages you to give special attention to why the subject you have chosen to write about is the most important to you. This “why” element should be clear in your essay—it should be implied by what you are discussing and sharing. If you need to explicitly declare, “And what matters most to me is…,” your essay is not making a strong enough point on its own. A well-constructed essay that is infused with your values and motivation and that clearly conveys why you made certain decisions should effectively and implicitly reveal the “why” behind your chosen topic—and will almost always make a stronger point. One final note is that you can write about a popular theme as long as you truly own the experience. However, the odds are very low that you could write on a theme that the Stanford GSB’s admissions committee has never read about before. You can discuss whatever you truly care about in your essay, but you absolutely must support your topic with a wealth of experience that shows how you have uniquely lived it. Therefore, for example, you cannot successfully write about “making a difference” if you have volunteered only occasionally, but if you have truly had a significant impact on someone’s life, then the topic is no longer a cliché—it is true to who you are. So, focus less on trying to choose the “right” subject for your essay and more on identifying one that is personal and authentic to you. If you write powerfully about your topic and connect it directly to your experiences and values, your essay should be a winner. Essay 2: Why Stanford? (School-suggested word count of 400) Enlighten us on how earning your MBA at Stanford will enable you to realize your ambitions.
Because personal statements are similar from one application to the next, we have produced the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide, which helps applicants write this style of essay for any school. We offer this guide to candidates free of charge. Please feel free to download your copy today. And for a thorough exploration of the Stanford GSB’s academic program/merits, defining characteristics, crucial statistics, social life, academic environment, and more, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Stanford Graduate School of Business. The post Stanford Graduate School of Business Essay Analysis, 2016–2017 appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
01 Jun 2016, 08:00
| FROM mbaMission Blog: Professor Profiles: Margaret Neale, Stanford Graduate School of Business |
Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school. However, the educational experience you will have is what is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Each Wednesday, we profile a standout professor as identified by students. Today, we focus on Margaret Neale from the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB). One former GSB student described Margaret (Maggie) Neale to us at mbaMission as “somewhat intimidating” but quickly added “I love her teaching style! She pushes each student way out of their comfort zone to make them a better negotiator using whatever style is appropriate for the situation.” Neale’s research is based on the psychology of conflict and negotiation. She was appointed as the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management in 2012 and serves as faculty director of two of Stanford University’s executive programs—Influence and Negotiation Strategies, and Managing Teams for Innovation and Success—and as co-director of the Executive Program for Women Leaders. A first year described Neale to mbaMission as “wonderful, legendary,” adding, “She’s been around the Stanford community for a long time. She is very popular, engaging, and friendly. If you have the opportunity to take a class with her, you should. But be warned, her classes are oversubscribed.” In 2011, she became the 13th recipient—and first woman—to be presented with the business school’s Davis Award, which is bestowed upon a faculty member for lifetime achievement. For more information about the Stanford GSB and 15 other top-ranked business schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides. The post Professor Profiles: Margaret Neale, Stanford Graduate School of Business appeared first on mbaMission - MBA Admissions Consulting. |
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Hi Generic [Bot],
Here are updates for you:
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Tuck at Dartmouth
AGSM at UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE
 GMAT Club REWARDS
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