Video Introduction

Question

Hi guys,

How are you tacking the video introduction? The prompt says introduce yourself to your future classmates...and in reality that's likely a formal recap of professional background and a one or two personal touch points. BUT - the adcom has already seen our resume transcripts and cover letter. Seems like a waste of another platform to just give a recap.

What is the approach you're taking with this?

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LM10SC11 · Answer

I actually did it the other way round. One-two lines covering my professional background. The rest was more of who I am as a person and my passions.

Hope this helps!

artihcs · Answer

Hah I see - good to know! Amazing you managed to squeeze that into a minute, maybe I'm just talking too slow

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LM10SC11 · Answer

Or maybe I'm boring with only one or two passions worth talking about

jz818 · Answer

I think what they're looking for is a genuine representation of who you are, whoever that is. I only spent a line talking about my work, but if your work is a huge part of who you are, then I think it makes sense to talk more about that!

mangowango · Answer

I went with a few words that describe who I am, an interesting fact, my passions, why Sloan, and then what I wanna do next!

Obviously not too much depth, and maybe a sentence on each, but I felt like it captured all the extra stuff omitted from my cover letter and app in general.

Hope it helps, m8!

Mango

NickC137 · Answer

I went all personal. Talked about two passions that are not work related.

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chestud13 · Answer

Quick question- so I noticed (via Youtube) that some applicants made a whole edited movie for this ... Isnt this supposed to be more personal? Can I just use my webcam to record this?

zenogen · Answer

Whoever did this is not following instructions. Sloan's  application requirements webpage  very clearly states:

-"Videos should be a single take (no editing) lasting no more than one minute and consisting of you speaking directly to the camera."

Editing your video will likely jeopardize your application. Use a webcam.

souvik101990 · Answer

The videos on YouTube was from previous years applications. Since last year, the video needs to be entirely made on a webcam so it is basically you introducing yourself to the laptop of your choice.

SBCErikaOlson · Answer

My successful client have actually not gone too deep into their professional backgrounds because as you said, that is already covered elsewhere. They of course say what industry they're coming from and what they're currently doing, but it's more about what they like to do and what specifically they're looking forward to doing at Sloan (that ties back to their personal/extracurricular interests).
 Hope that helps!

jerryg123 · Answer

Hi  zenogen ! As a successful applicant (congrats!!), would you mind sharing what you discussed in your video?

Thanks!

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

Hi everyone, regarding the MIT video DO ***NOT*** TALK ABOUT WORK. Don't do it. Do not. NO! Everything else in the application is work-related and this is their chance to "feel" you, do the gut check, and you yammering on about more work accomplishments is a total waste of everyone's time. That should be in other parts of your app. Discuss passions, interests, interesting hobbies, transformative experience (if its short). give them 3 short juicy nuggets about you that others think are interesting. Also, do not CRAM and JAM everything into one minute. LESS IS MORE. Speak slowly and pretend your web cam is your lover. OK maybe not that but remember you are speaking to PEOPLE.

zenogen · Answer

Of course, happy to help! My approach was to treat the cover letter and video as one package that would be reviewed simultaneously. Therefore, I didn't want to repeat myself in either: I wrote about my professional career in the letter, and spoke about my extracurriculars in the video. And - importantly - made sure I had at least some kind of different content in my back pocket for the interview essay (in the end for that I ended up telling a deeper story about something I'd alluded to in my cover letter).

Cover letter structure:
Para 1 - one sentence on why MBA now
P2 - Why I started in job 1 after college and what I achieved
P3 - What prompted my change to pursue differnet impact in job 2, and what I achieved there
P4 - How job 1 and 2 made it my long-term objective clear
P5 - Why Sloan
Word count: 5% over

Video essay structure (1 min is about 150 words).
Sen 1 - qualified time restriction - will only talk about 1 thing: my charity work
S2 - What prompted me to start charity work (personal)
S3 - What the charity that I work with does
S4 - The impact that I personally have had
S5 - How I plan to take that charitable mind-set into Sloan
Length: 60 seconds on the dot

Write your 150-200 words, then memorize them, practice them in your head to and work every day for a week, so that when you're actually speaking on camera you can focus on body language rather than the content of what you're saying. The video essay takes many, many, many takes. I estimate that I spent about 3-4 hours doing hundreds of takes in various locations. I bought one of those flexible iPhone tripod stands that you can stand up, attach to fences/ledges etc. I did some inside the charity building, some outside the community centre, and another in a neutral location. I ended up choosing one for both acoustic and viewer-interest reasons.

bb · Answer

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