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mbaMission Admissions Consultant
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Yale School of Management Essay Analysis, 2019–2020
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11 Jul 2019, 13:01
11 Jul 2019, 13:01
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| FROM mbaMission Blog: Yale School of Management Essay Analysis, 2019–2020 |
 The Yale School of Management (SOM), like Harvard Business School, takes a bit of a “go big or go home” approach with its application essay question in that it poses just a single query to its applicants, giving them only one shot to make their desired impression on the admissions committee. The Yale SOM prompt is less open-ended, however, and requires candidates to focus on a significant past commitment and its underlying reasons and value. It also limits applicants to 500 words, so you will need to be clear, direct, and rather succinct in your response, without much preamble or extraneous text. Read on for our full analysis of the Yale SOM essay question for 2019–2020. Describe the biggest commitment you have ever made. (500 words maximum) In a Yale SOM blog post about the school’s essay prompt when it was originally introduced, Assistant Dean for Admissions Bruce DelMonico noted that the “seemingly simple and straightforward question” was composed with assistance from one of the program’s organizational behavior professors. Yale’s admissions committee clearly takes the application essay seriously and is thoughtful about the types of behaviors it wants to see in the school’s students. In an online Q&A session with several leading admissions officers we hosted last year, Bruce declared himself “agnostic” about whether applicants should discuss a personal commitment or a professional one, noting that he wants to gauge the level to which candidates commit themselves, rather than the context of the engagement: “We don’t have a preference for professional or personal accomplishments. . . . We are not making value judgments about what that commitment is, but it is more about how you approach that commitment, how you have demonstrated that commitment, and what sorts of behaviors underlie that commitment.” You may initially think this prompt is rather narrow in scope, allowing you space to share the story of just a single professional or community project and nothing more. Although you can certainly discuss your dedication to a particular project or cause, you are definitely not restricted to this approach. Consider this: you can also be committed to an idea (e.g., personal liberty) or a value (e.g., creating opportunity for others), and approaching your essay from this angle instead could enable you to share much more of and about yourself with the SOM admissions committee. For example, you might relate a few anecdotes that on the surface seem unrelated—drawing from different parts of your life—but that all support and illustrate how you are guided by a particular value. Or, to return to the example of personal liberty as a theme, you could show how you take control of your academic and professional paths, adhering steadfastly to your values and vision. Whatever you choose to feature as the focus of your commitment, your actions and decisions, manifest via a variety of experiences, must allow you to own it as a genuine part of who you are as an individual. Identifying a theme that you think no one else will ever use is not your goal here; presenting authentic anecdotes that powerfully support your selected theme is what is important. If you elect to focus on a single anecdote, the commitment you claim must be truly inordinate. Being particularly proud of an accomplishment is not enough to make it an effective topic for this essay. You need to demonstrate your constancy and dedication in the face of challenges or resistance, revealing that your connection to the experience was hard won. Strive to show that you have been resolute in following a sometimes difficult path and have doggedly stayed on course, citing clear examples to illustrate your steadfastness. Nothing commonplace will work here—you must make your reader truly understand your journey and leave them more impressed by your effort than the outcome. Within its application, the Yale SOM also poses the following question: How did you arrive at these career interests? How have you or how will you position yourself to pursue them? (250 words maximum) Although this is not presented by the school as an official essay question, its length (at 250 words) and topic lead us to feel a little guidance might be helpful with this submission. Here, the admissions committee is essentially asking for context for your professional aspirations, which typically involves some level of information about your work history, and wants to learn how you expect to use the Yale SOM experience and degree to move your forward on your path to achieving your goals. Keep in mind that the admissions committee will already have your resume on hand to review, and this should provide the basic information as far as your previous positions/titles, responsibilities, and accomplishments. What the school is looking for here is the more personal side of the story—what has motivated you along the way and is motivating you still, prodding you to pursue an MBA as part of your efforts to continue on your chosen professional path. In an application tips blog post, Kate Botelho, associate director of admissions at the Yale SOM, offers this advice when considering your response: “You may want to think about the answers to questions such as ‘How did these interests develop?’ ‘What kind of exposure have you had to them?’ ‘What steps have you already taken to explore these interests?’ ‘What enables you to pursue them successfully?’” Given that this prompt essentially covers some of the elements found in a typical traditional personal statement essay, we encourage you to download a free copy of the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide, which offers in-depth advice on how to address these sorts of topics and provides examples. Optional Information: If any aspect of your candidacy needs further explanation (unexplained gaps in work experience, choice of recommenders, academic performance, promotions or recognitions, etc.), please provide a brief description here. (200 words maximum) Yale’s optional information prompt invites you to address any potential problem areas in your profile if you feel you need to. The use of the adjective “brief” clearly conveys that the school wants you to focus on imparting key information rather than offering a detailed and long-winded explanation of the issue in question. This is absolutely not an opportunity to share another cool story or otherwise try to impress or pander to the admissions committee. If you do not truly need to explain an issue or a perhaps confusing element of your candidacy, we do not recommend that you submit an option essay; if you do have issues to clarify, keep things concise. In our free mbaMission Optional Essays Guide, we offer detailed advice on when and how to take advantage of these kinds of opportunities, with multiple examples, to help you mitigate any problem areas in your profile. For a thorough exploration of the Yale SOM academic program/merits, defining characteristics, crucial statistics, social life, academic environment, and other key features, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Yale School of Management. The Next Step—Mastering Your Yale SOM Interview: Many MBA candidates find admissions interviews stressful and intimidating, but mastering this important element of the application process is definitely possible—the key is informed preparation. To help you on your way to this high level of preparation, we offer our free Interview Primers. Download your free copy of the Yale School of Management Interview Primer today. |
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Georgetown McDonough Essay Analysis, 2019–2020
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12 Jul 2019, 08:01
12 Jul 2019, 08:01
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| FROM mbaMission Blog: Georgetown McDonough Essay Analysis, 2019–2020 |
 Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business has made some substantial changes to its application essay questions this year, broadening candidates’ opportunity to present their strongest qualities to the admissions committee for evaluation. Applicants must still provide one 500-word written essay but now get to choose from three question options. Rather than being strictly required to discuss a single defining moment, they can write about leading outside of their comfort zone, a failure-as-learning-opportunity situation, or their personal brand within the context of the Georgetown McDonough MBA experience. The school’s video essay remains unchanged and allows candidates to creatively showcase their individuality and personality. Finally, although the school offers only one optional essay this season, rather than two, the prompt gives candidates the leeway to discuss anything they feel is necessary, so it should be sufficient to meet everyone’s needs. Our full essay analysis follows, in which we offer ideas and advice for addressing all the school’s prompts. We want to hear your story. When responding to our required essays, be authentic and take time to reflect on your goals and past experiences. Craft a response that explains how these experiences led you to pursue an MBA. Our goal at Georgetown McDonough is to craft a diverse class with people who have had varying personal and professional life experiences. As such, we want to give our applicants the opportunity to select one essay (from a list of three) that allows them the ability to best highlight their experiences, characteristics, and values that showcase the value proposition that they can bring to the McDonough community. Please select one of the following three essays to complete in 500 words or less and include the essay prompt and your first/last name at the top of your submission. Essay Option One: It can be said that life begins outside your comfort zone. Describe a situation when you were asked to lead outside of your comfort zone. What leadership characteristics did you exemplify in this situation that allowed you to succeed? Although this is a brand new essay question for the school, it carries echoes of the standalone prompt from last year, which asked candidates about a challenge they faced and how they ultimately exceeded expectations. Here, the challenge now stems from being outside one’s comfort zone, and “exceeding expectations” is expressed as “success.” As a business school student, you will regularly be pushed beyond the boundaries of your comfort zone. This will happen more often for some than others, of course, and in slightly different ways for each individual, but it will happen. McDonough wants to know how you draw on your strengths, skills, experience, and attitude at such times to meet the challenge and see things through to a positive conclusion. This is about revealing not only the leadership qualities you already possess but also your instincts in identifying the ones that are appropriate and helpful in a given situation and in applying them effectively. We want to highlight the phrase “asked to lead,” which may influence your choice of story for this essay. The wording implies that in the incidence you are describing, someone has requested (or possibly even demanded) that you step up, rather than your having taken the initiative and volunteered yourself for the role. Perhaps the school is interested in the fact that someone either believed in your capacity to deal with the issue at hand, despite your unfamiliarity with some aspect of the situation, or recognized in you qualities they felt would be positively applicable, and this could shine an interesting new light on the admissions committee’s interpretation of your experience. Note that McDonough does not specify that the experience you share must be related to your workplace or career. Leadership does not need to have an official title attached to it, and it can be expressed in a community service or even family life setting just as much as in a workplace, so explore all the different areas of your life for possible stories. Then begin your essay by providing some narrative context that sets the stage for the significant moment or experience. Clearly explaining how you approached, assessed, and ultimately prevailed is crucial, so go beyond simply describing the scenario and ensure that you detail the inner workings of your decision making as you and your team progressed toward your positive outcome. The admissions committee does not ask what you learned from the experience, so we caution you against using valuable word count on this point. Instead, focus on conveying why you consider the incident “outside your comfort zone” (what was foreign or uncomfortable for you), perhaps why you in particular were chosen to lead, the skills you engaged and steps you took to guide your team to triumph, and your thought processes along the way. This way, the admissions committee will take away both a clear picture of what you accomplished and the aspects of your character that inspired you and helped enable your success. Essay Option Two: “Failure is not something to be ashamed of, it’s something to be POWERED by. Failure is the high-octane fuel your life can run on. You’ve got to learn to make failure your fuel.” –Abby Wambach Describe a situation when failure has been your fuel. What was your failure (or when did you not succeed to your full potential), and how did you use this as motivation to move forward and be successful in a future situation? From what we could find in our research, Abby actually said “the highest octane fuel” (italics ours), making the core message here even more powerful—the school is interested in hearing how you extract motivation from situations that would naturally lead some people to lose faith or hope. The quote is taken from Abby’s 2018 Barnard commencement address, and just before it, she said, “Non-athletes don’t know what to do with the gift of failure. So they hide it, pretend it never happened, reject it outright—and they end up wasting it.” McDonough clearly knows that many of life’s greatest successes require “try, try[ing]again,” as the expression goes, and that is the attitude necessary to gain and accomplish the most, not just in business school but also in the world after graduation. This essay is your opportunity to reassure the admissions committee that you have the kind of stick-to-it-iveness and drive that will position you to realize your goals. Note that the school does not ask how you would use the experience but instead how you did. So for this essay, you will need to discuss at least two situations to fully respond to the school’s query. The first is the failure that provided your subsequent incentive—your “fuel.” The second is an experience in which your behavior was motivated by the first. And this second experience needs to be one you actively pursued by choice, not one that came your way as a matter of course. Your goal is to clearly convey that you are not easily deterred by setbacks but that you instead use them as learning tools or stepping stones on the path to your desired outcome. And even though the school does not specifically ask what you learned from the failure, learning is intrinsically part of the improvement and growth process, so some inclusion of this should likely be part of your response. The failure you discuss in this submission could be an individual one or a team one, and the scale or scope of the situation is not as important as how affecting and influential it was for you personally. You must present a complete narrative that shows momentum toward a positive outcome, presents the inflection point at which the situation turned, and explains how the original plan ultimately failed, all the while revealing your particular role in the failure. Leap directly into the action of your story and immediately convey what was at stake in the situation. After all, the opportunity for true failure exists only when you have something to lose. Next, briefly explain how you failed, and demonstrate what you took away from the experience. Then, explain how those takeaways inspired you to pursue another goal and proved crucial in your attainment of it. Essay Option Three: Your personal brand reflects your values and beliefs, and impacts your relationships and community. Describe the personal brand that you will bring to business school using examples or experiences that support how you’ve developed it. How do you believe your personal brand will strengthen the McDonough community? As you complete your MBA program, how do you hope to see your personal brand evolve through the transformative experience of business school? The use of the phrase “personal brand” in this prompt may initially be intimidating to some applicants, but this query is really not as specialized as you might think. Your personal brand is essentially made up of your strongest, most representative characteristics, so this question is basically asking you who you are as an individual, what you will contribute to the school, and what you expect to gain (personally, not professionally) from being a McDonough MBA student. This is a lot to include in just 500 words, but if you focus on hitting all three points in a targeted and concise manner, you should be able to craft a compelling essay response. Start by making a list of your key characteristics, values, and interests. Do not concern yourself with trying to single out the “right” ones but rather the ones most representative of who you are. A good brainstorming tactic is to imagine meeting someone for the first time and the process of getting acquainted. What kind of information would you want to know about this person, and what facts about yourself would you be most eager to share, as a way of conveying who you are and making a connection? Take some time to delve into your personality in this way. At the same time, keep in mind what the admissions committee will already know about you from the other portions of your application, to avoid missing an opportunity to share something new. In addition to focusing on the elements of your personality that you feel are most distinct and revelatory of who you are as an individual, think about which ones mesh best with the McDonough experience and would allow you to contribute to it. Authenticity is key to your success with this essay, whereas transparent or disingenuous statements will imply that you are incapable of (or resistant to) engaging in critical self-evaluation. The admissions committee understandably also requests that you provide some context for the representative qualities you share by discussing how they have developed. In addition, and without posing the question directly, the school wants you to explain “Why Georgetown McDonough?” The admissions committee wants evidence that you have researched its MBA program thoroughly enough to have pinpointed resources and offerings that directly align with your interests and needs—and not just academically and professionally. This is the part of our essay analysis in which we once again repeat our advice about getting to know a school beyond its website and published materials. Visit campus and connect with students and alumni. Identify clubs, events, trips, and other extracurricular opportunities at the school that speak to (1) who you are as an individual now and (2) who you want to be by the time you graduate. Then clarify how your particular strengths will allow you to enhance the offerings in the first category and explain the resources or experiences you believe are vital to you in developing into the person you are striving to be. Because this prompt touches on some of the components of a traditional personal statement essay, we encourage you to download a free copy of the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide. This document provides in-depth guidance on how to consider and respond to these sorts of questions, along with numerous illustrative examples. Please feel free to claim your complimentary copy today. Video Essay: We ask that you introduce yourself to your cohort in one minute or less. The Admissions Committee would like for you to appear in person during part of your video, and we strongly encourage you to speak outside of the experiences we can read on your resume. Use this video as an opportunity to bring life to your application. For more instructions, view our Video Essay Guide.
Given that this is a video, you will obviously need to think beyond what you will say and consider the clothing you will wear, the setting or background of your video, your tone of voice, your language style, whether you will include music, and a host of other details. Brainstorm ways of nonverbally communicating some of your strongest attributes and key aspects of your life to help permeate your submission with as much information as possible. For example, if you are an avid biker, consider using a GoPro or similar camera to film your video while you are actively riding. If you are a dedicated guitar player, perhaps strum your guitar as you speak (or, if you are especially confident, you could even sing about yourself!). Think about what makes you who you are today, decide what you most want to share with your future classmates, and then let your creativity flow. On a practical note, be sure to speak clearly in your video. You naturally do not want any part of your message to be lost or misunderstood, and the admissions committee may view your communication skills and style as indicators of how you might interact with your classmates and/or speak in the classroom. Spend some time practicing in front of a mirror or a friend, but do not overrehearse. You still want to come across as genuine and natural. Optional Essay: Please provide any information you would like to add to your application that you have not otherwise included. (500 words or fewer) We tend to believe that the best use of the optional essay is to explain confusing or problematic issues in your candidacy, and this prompt offers an opportunity to do just that. However, because McDonough does not stipulate that you can only discuss a problem area in this essay, you have some leeway to share anything you feel is that you think may be pivotal or particularly compelling. So, if you need to, this is your chance to address any questions an admissions officer might have about your profile—a poor grade or overall GPA, a low GMAT or GRE score, a gap in your work experience, etc. In our mbaMission Optional Essays Guide, we offer detailed advice on how best to take advantage of the optional essay, with multiple examples, to help you mitigate any problem areas in your application. However, because the question can be interpreted rather broadly, it does open the door for you to discuss anything that is not addressed elsewhere in your application and that you feel is truly critical for the admissions committee to know to be able to evaluate you fully and effectively. We caution you about simply trying to fill this space because you fear that not doing so would somehow count against you. Remember, by submitting an additional essay, you are asking the admissions committee to do extra work on your behalf, so you need to make sure that time is warranted. If you are using the essay to emphasize something that if omitted would render your application incomplete, take this opportunity to write a very brief narrative that reveals this key new aspect of your candidacy. Re-Applicant Essay: Required for re-applicants. How have you strengthened your candidacy since your last application? We are particularly interested in hearing about how you have grown professionally and personally. (500 words or fewer) Whether you have improved your academic record, received a promotion, begun a new and exciting project, increased your community involvement, or taken on some sort of personal challenge, the key to success with this essay is conveying a very deliberate path of achievement. McDonough wants to know that you have been actively striving to improve yourself and your profile, and that you have seized opportunities during the previous year to do so, because a McDonough MBA is vital to you. The responses to this essay question will vary greatly from one candidate to the next, because each person’s needs and experiences differ. We are more than happy to provide one-on-one assistance with this highly personal essay to ensure that your efforts over the past year are presented in the best light possible. |
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Charity Auctions and the Sports “Dorkapalooza” at MIT Sloan
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13 Jul 2019, 08:01
13 Jul 2019, 08:01
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| FROM mbaMission Blog: Charity Auctions and the Sports “Dorkapalooza” at MIT Sloan |
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MIT Sloan students organize charity auctions typically twice a year. Each “ocean” (the approximately 70-person cohort with which students take their first-semester core classes) selects a charity to support and identifies items to be auctioned, such as lunch with a professor, a home-cooked meal by a student, and more unusual offerings, like having a professor chauffeur you to class in his classic car. First-year oceans compete to see which one can raise the most money, and second-year students organize a similar auction. All together, the auctions raise tens of thousands of dollars each year for such charities as the California Wildfires Fund, Children of Uganda, Pencils of Promise, Bridge Over Troubled Waters, and the Sloan Social Impact Fellowship. MIT Sloan students are active in organizing conferences as well. Did you know that some of the biggest names in sports have met annually since 2007 for an event at the school that former ESPN columnist Bill Simmons once described as “dorkapalooza”? At the student-run Sports Analytics Conference, participants discuss the increasing role of analytics in the sports industry, and students have ample opportunity to network with the elite of the sports world. The 13th annual conference was held over two days in March 2019 in Boston, where more than 3,500 attendees witnessed industry experts, leaders, and professionals participate in more than 30 panel discussions. Among the event’s speakers were the president of ESPN, the president and CEO of the Miami Dolphins, and the president of Ticketmaster. The panels covered such topics as “Ticketing Analytics: The Power of Open Distribution,” “Breaking Away from the Pack: Sports Entrepreneurship,” “Metrics Are the Mike: Football Analytics,” “Sports Mythbusting,” and “Scoring Sponsorships: Metrics to Maximize Brand Value.” Other conference events included a research papers exhibition, such workshops as “R for Predictive Modeling” and “How to Advertise Effectively on Facebook and Instagram,” the First Pitch Case Competition, and a “Hackathon.” A second-year EMS (Entertainment, Media, and Sports) Club member told mbaMission, “The event is one of the largest student-organized conferences in the country and was named the third most innovative company in all of sports (behind only the NFL and MLB Advanced Media) by Fast Company [magazine].” For a thorough exploration of what MIT Sloan and 16 other top business schools have to offer, please check out our free mbaMission Insider’s Guides. |
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