The Chicago GSB Slide Show

Be creative, but focus on telling them something about yourself that they wouldn't otherwise know.... do not repeat information in the essays or resume. .

The exception to that might be including info/photos that elaborate (substantially) on your extracurricular activities, if for instance, all they know otherwise is contained in a single bullet on your resume.

All too often however, the ppts I've seen have a tendency to rehash known facts. Often, they are 'clever' and creative, but the novelty of the concept wears thin within about 10 seconds - and what they really lack is meaningful content. For instance, I saw one last year where the guy used his name to spell out something like "D.A.N" = "Dedicated, Adventure...". That might be 'clever' and a bit creative, but its pretty low on the scale of actually communicating anything of consequence. There was another I saw last year where the guy turned the whole thing into a 'client presentation' (he wanted to be a consultant) about himself, complete with the regurgitation of lots of facts from his resume. It was cute that he made up a consulting company and was presenting on himself - but again, that novelty is quickly forgotten. I've seen lots of variations of this - bankers creating "mock" pitch books on themselves, marketers presenting "sales figures" on a candy bar named after themselves (hint: sales are through the roof!), , the 'pre and post MBA human capital valuation' (on themselves again, and guess what, the post MBA valuation is really high! Lets invest!) from someone wanting to do VC. Those are all cute, and you get a laugh - but they aren't particularly memorable. (In other words, odds are, you aren't the first to come up with a 'pitch book' concept). Like I said, these are all fine - intrinsically, there's nothing wrong with any of them -- but often the tendency is for the 'cute hook' to be 70% of the point of the powerpoint, with the actual content simply reinforcing the hook rather than saying something of consequence. For instance, the VC post and pre valuation investment book had a page with, basically, resume bullets before mba and resume bullets post mba. Again, very much supports the 'pre-post mba valuation' hook, but all the pre mba resume bullets were basically what was on the resume already, and the post mba ones essentially outlined his goals, which were in the essays. You didn't actually learn anything new from the slide.

So, my advice, is this: rather than get hung up coming up with something cute, figure out what you have and have not yet told the admissions committee.

The other thing I'd caution against is attempting to rehash other essays from other schools into some kind of PPT. It doesn't work. Bullet pointing your story about saving the engineering team from fudging up the doohikie doesn't lend itself to an interesting PPT.

So, include artsy photos of you? Sure, but only if you took them or if they show you doing something other than standing around looking important. Otherwise, what are you telling the adcom about yourself? You have a friend with good photography skills?