Calling all Columbia (CBS) MBA Applicants: (2018 Intake) Class of 2020

What up, CBS applicants!?
Jon Frank here, comin' atcha from Chicago.

Got a little gift for ya to help get the CBS application party started. With a school like CBS (one that is INCREDIBLY competitive and where having strong scores is not enough to set you apart... especially when you're an International applicant), your essay will be a very important piece of the puzzle. Perhaps the most important. And, let's be honest, those essays are not easy. Yes, they seem straightforward (especially with the super short short-answer!), but sit down and try to say something smart in 50 characters. Tell me how easy that is

So... let's get back to that gift I mentioned, eh?

Below, Admissionado's CBS Essay Analyses. Normally, we don't just share these with the world. But you're not "the world." You're members of GMAT Club, and in my book, that makes you a VIP. So... enjoy the royal treatment, my special friends. And when you get into CBS, a simple thanks will do

Here we go:

Short Answer Q: What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (50 characters)
Short Answer Essay Analysis: That’s right, folks. 50 characters. This question used to be 200 characters. Then it was 100. A few years ago it was 75.

CBS is not fooling around – they want you to get to the point. And fast. 50 characters isn’t dinner, a stroll around the park, a lovely nightcap against a backdrop of smooth jazz, into “who knows.” It’s more… the 1-hour motel model. Lay it on ’em.

Perhaps the most liberating way to approach this is to see this NOT as an opportunity to impress, but rather to inform. All they want is a RUDDER to help frame the rest of your essays. That’s all. It’s the equivalent of “state your name and occupation” – a measure taken just so everyone has their bearings.
Ergo, don’t overthink it.

The prize here is clarity, not intrigue. Don’t feel the pressure to wow. And don’t waste precious air-time writing stuff like “My immediate post-MBA professional goal is to…” because that would have been half your response. 1-hour motel, folks. Getterdone. Résumé-like brevity, but… good-résumé-like CLARITY.

One last thing—there’s a difference between “post/position” and “goal.” The best answer here nails both. Too often, we see candidates simply list the name of a position at a company, which is mostly meaningless. We need a touch of context to understand what the “aim” is, “why position X” within your 50-character response. So, roughly speaking, it may take on this structure: “position x in order to y.” Or, “achieve x at y (type) company.”

Once you lock your strategic application positioning in general, and develop a clear, precise brand for what makes you the strongest possible applicant… just say it as clearly and leanly as you can. In going from longer character allowances in the past to the current limit of 50, CBS is sending a message, which is that anything that gets in the way of their understanding of what your immediate goal is, is simply unwelcome.

Use one of their examples from two years ago as a guide:

“Work in business development for a media company.”
“Join a strategy consulting firm.”
“Launch a data-management start-up.”
Got it? Noice. Onward…


Essay Q #1 Through your résumé and recommendations, we have a clear sense of your professional path to date. What are your career goals over the next 3 – 5 years and what, in your imagination, would be your long-term dream job? (500 words)


Essay Q #1 Analysis: This is mostly a standard goals essay. But interestingly, they tweaked the question from last year. Last year, they wanted you to split time between explaining your goals and how you envisioned CBS helping you achieve those goals. This year they’ve zapped that second piece out and replaced it with… doubling down on the goals themselves. Neat. Let’s drill into that a bit, shall we?

First of all, they’ve made a point to steer you away from rehashing your résumé here. “Because we can read, and have your résumé and recommendations in front of us… We have a clear sense of your professional path to date. In other words, we get what you’ve done up to this point (so please don’t waste our time by repeating that stuff here, because you’ll be revealing just how much you don’t get that simple concept)”… is kinda what the folks at Columbia Business School are really saying there. Now, there IS a reason to slip in some of your achievements, but only to the extent that doing so further CLARIFIES your goals and/or CONVINCES the reader that you have a shot at succeeding AT achieving those goals (we’ll come back to that).

[They’ve also gone back to the tried-and-true 500-word limit, rather than leave it open to 100-750, which we’re guessing ended up being 750+ every single time.]

Okay, so how to crush Essay #1 for CBS? Well, this may require some re-wiring of your brain, so strap in.

You want to the reader to be utterly impressed, okay, we’ll grant you that. But HOW you go about impressing him/her is where it gets tricky. Your instinct might be to impress through pitching the coolest-SOUNDING job/plan. In other words, you may want to tantalize these guys/gals with a killer tech idea; or something revolutionary; or something so creative and unique, it stops them in their tracks. Nope. Don’t try to impress through the plan. Instead, impress through the INEVITABILITY OF that plan. If your background (and therefore your skill set, prior achievements, general career arc, etc.) maps perfectly to the plan you’ve laid out for the next 3-5 years, you’re going to be thought of as “bankable.”

Think about it… business schools don’t just allow for your career goals to shift, they fully expect them to. That’s often the whole point of business school: to prime “future successes” to be as mighty as possible. What they want are SURE THINGS.

This should be a game-changer as you approach your essays. You’re no longer selling “the buyer” on the quality of the plan itself, but rather, on your ability to pull that plan off, because your background and your skill set, and your interests, and your future aspirations, and your dedication to success are all in perfect alignment.

To put a fine point on it, the reader of the perfect CBS Essay #1 won’t say, “Wow, what an impressive 3-5 year plan. I hope this kid succeeds!” The perfect essay elicits THIS response: “Wow, this kid is gonna pull that plan off. Or any other plan s/he commits to. Let’s go get them before someone else does.” See the difference?

Now as far as the long-term dream job is concerned, don’t just talk about what that job is. Attack it from the angle of what changes (in the world, in others, etc.) as a result of your succeeding IN that dream job. Let’s say your dream job is to be the future CEO of a brand new game-changing telecom company. Don’t just tell us what that company does, and what you imagine your role to be as CEO of that disrupting change agent. Pitch us the DISRUPTION. Sell us on “the thing you dream will happen WHEN YOU’RE SUCCEEDING.” If we buy into THAT, then we’re gonna want to help you get to that long-term dream job…

As far as balance/structure goes, this will get you out of trouble for a decent first draft (as always, remember that no two applicant essays need look alike–this is just a general suggestion if you’re stumbling out of the cages):

Sell us quickly on either a TEASER version of your long-term vision, or the OPPORTUNITY you’re hoping to pop, or a PROBLEM that needs fixing. (50-75 words)
Now, quickly catch us up to speed on what you’re up to now, and how you’re hoping to push things forward in the next 3-5 years. (Important to forget business school, for a second – pretend an MBA didn’t exist for the purposes of this particular paragraph; just give us the 3-5 year plan.) But, don’t just give us the step-by-step plan. Convince us that your skill set will allow you to transition from wherever you are right now to step 1 of that plan, and then to step 2, and then step 3, etc. This is the crux of it. Remember, it’s not the plan. It’s the inevitability of your SUCCEEDING at it, that counts. (2 paragraphs, 150 words apiece)
Finally, expand the canvas to include your long term dream job, selling us on “the result of your succeeding AT your dream job.” Sell us on your passion for this thing. Sell on your confidence for why you’ll succeed. (100 words or so)
Somewhere along the way, wherever it makes sense, it won’t hurt to layer in the area or areas where you need some fortification (from, say, a top-notch business school), in order to really achieve your goals, fully. (2 sentences, max)
More important than nailing the structure on a first draft, is getting the foundation correct. So focus on making a convincing argument that:

You have assessed your strengths and weaknesses with considerable thought and insight, and
You have thought through your goals very carefully and have a clear sense of risk, what’s realistic/not realistic, have a back-up plan if things don’t work out exactly as you’d like, etc.
As long as you nail those two things, the rest (the rewriting process where it all starts to tighten up and get sexy) will fall into place easily.

Essay Q #1: The full-time MBA experience includes academics, recruiting and networking. What are your personal priorities and how do you anticipate allocating your time at Columbia Business School? (250 Words)
Essay Q #2 Analysis: If there’s one time in your life when you should be utterly self-centered, it’s now.

This is not the time to list opportunities at Columbia Business School… in order to show off your depth of familiarity with their program. They already know all of it. No points to be won there.

What they DON’T know is how YOU – specifically, YOU – will be taking advantage of those things in order to improve your ability to succeed according to your aspirations.

Here’s a neat trick for this particular CBS essay question. Start this essay by establishing what it is you need from “a” business school, and why. Here’s an example of how that might look (think of this as a “logic map”):

My short-term goal is to achieve X.
Here’s what I’m lacking right now that’s preventing me from achieving that stuff.
Therefore, I need access to ABC in a business school. I need the business school curriculum to feature stuff like DEF. I need the location of the business school to afford me access to real-life-exposure to GHI. I need for my classmates to have JKL interests and backgrounds in order for me to establish these types of relationships, etc.
That would be your first paragraph. The setup. Call it 100 words or so.

Then, connect the dots between SPECIFIC aspects of ONLY Columbia Business School and those things you laid out in that first paragraph. Make it sound like a packed itinerary. Make it clear that if business school is a moist cloth, you know exactly how you’re going to wring it dry, to YOUR advantage. That’s the key, so I’ll say it again… to YOUR advantage. Make it clear how your engagement with CBS, in the ways you’ve laid out in paragraph 2, helps YOU go from (a) your position today to (b) your position after you’re done with the CBS MBA program.

Maybe that’s a short third paragraph that buttons it all up to make it plain to the admissions commitee that you have thought this all through. Remember, folks, no one is going to remember what you write down here. And no one will follow-up on whether you make good on these plans. Think about that. The point isn’t to impress them with the plan itself, but rather to show that you have that “mark of success” tattooed all over you, given how thoughtful, logical, and sound your plan appears to be.

The losers of this essay will name drop or mention programs and opportunities, but never dig deep on how any of those things will benefit them. The winners, however, will approach this essay in a manner that says “I’m going to be a leech to suck your program dry; here’s my plan, and this is how it will benefit me.”


=============

And that's that. Helpful, eh? If you have any questions on it or CBS or J-Term or anything, just reply here or shoot me a DM. And if you want more Essay Analysis Goodness, check out more schools here. We're updating 'em daily as new prompts are released, so keep checking back.

GOOD LUCK!!

-- Jon Frank