mbafwi wrote:
Your real career goals shouldn't matter when applying. You should write about what your background lends itself to. If you've done non-profit your whole life with a soft major and want to switch to IB, chances are adcom won't accept you because you're a big risk. Basically you want to create the best marketing theme you can given your education/background/job/etc. Just be sure to sound enthusiastic if you're lying.
Then when/if you get into a school, you can decide what you want to recruit for. The adcom doesn't keep track to make sure you follow the goals you listed on your essays, once you get in you can do whatever you want. I would give a blanket recommendation to not write about any drastic career changes (i.e. feeding starving kids in africa to IB), adcom is probably risk averse in this economy and wants to make sure people they accept can get jobs and keep up their employment stats...
I completely disagree. I think the worst thing you can do in your application is write about what you think the adcom wants to hear. If you say you want to go into consulting just because you think it's a traditional MBA career path and so the adcom will be more likely to admit you, your essays will very likely not convey nearly the same passion for that goal as someone who truly wants to be a consultant. There's a very good chance this will make it seem to the adcom that you haven't given as much thought to why you want an MBA, and are just going through the motions.
My #1 piece of advice in your application is to be yourself, and let your essays and application show the adcom who you are as a unique individual. They read thousands of applications each year, so unless you can show that uniqueness you'll likely get lost in the shuffle.