What is your application's Achilles heel?

The June 25 issue of BusinessWeek (p.12) has a small blurb on a new IBM study that says people who play games such as Wow learn skills needed to manage a modern multinational. They "get good at gathering information from far-flung sources, assessing risk, and moving quickly to the next challenge."

Except I don't play WoW. However, I've been playing Pokemon on the Nintendo DS :D It was a nice brain break during my GMAT studies.

I'm not too confident in my work experience since I spent my first 4 years in a pretty boring job with a few promotions (mostly due to the nature of the industry/culture). However, my last 4 years have seen rapid growth and advancement. Hopefully I can explain the shortcomings of my early work experience and highlight the last 4 years of my accelerating career.

I think I have a lot of those working against me, but the biggest would be the work experience. I've been out of college for two years and haven't really been in the work force. I've been a nanny, watching my niece. Which doesn't look good to a business school. So the work experience is not there as well as the leadership experience. Plus I'm only 24 (in a month that is). Hopefully these don't hurt me too badly.

Venguyen - Interesting thing about video games you posted there.

I heard a similar thing on NPR today, they were talking about some new middle school and high school in New York that teaches kids how to create video games as the focus of the curriculum. The whole point of the story that they kept repeating was that "Creating video games is the new literacy." By this, they meant that kids who can create video games can understand a dynamic system.

I'm not totally discounting the value of knowing how to create video games, but it seems pretty asinine to me the way it is explained in the story. The reporter says, "For instance, when Super Mario eats a micro mushroom, he falls through a hole into another world. That's a dynamic system." Uh yeah whatever, if I have kids I'm just going to tell them to read books.

The story:

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=11259040

My 'heels':
1. Ultra-competitive demographic (in terms of academics)
2. Too young/Too Old

Prince of Persia rocked.
King's Quest
Space Quest
Lesiure Suit Larry
Police Quest
Simcity (the original)
SimEarth (man was this a letdown)
SimAnt
Doom
Myst (oh man this was the most frustrating game at a young age)
Alone in the Dark

How is Civ 4?

Nothing annoys me more than someone trying to legitimise playing computer games as a personal development thing.

No amount of information gathering on orks, playing table tennis with a mouse, leading the Babylonians to win the space race will improve you any more than the lack of social skills consequent.

They're are just fun. Away with the toss about improving skills - it is statistical abuse by players.

Along those lines, no amount of Nintendo wii will ever suffice as "exercise." Seriously, I read about these people claiming they lost 20 pounds by drinking slim fast and playing 10+ hours a day until they beat every neighbor within a fifty mile radius.

Get a real tennis racket and run around on the court like your supposed to, damn it!

Right, I know. It sounds like a spoiled 19 year old's "summer internship."

Which is unfortunate, because if it wasnt for the family aspect, it would be a fantastic story. I started with a business with two PCs using an AOL email address and running 3 different billing/customer tracking/inventory system (they had to enter every order 3 times) and no backup whatsoever. When I was done, I had installed and configured a SBS2003 server with RAID and tape backup, setup email addresses for each office and sales employee and group email boxes for specific functions, they had 1 integrated sales, inventory and customer management system, a wired and wireless network, automatic centralized anti-virus updates and PC patching, internet faxing, and shared printing. I saved them at least 10-15k in consultant fees that they couldn't afford. The office now runs more efficiently with 2 people than it did before with 3. They save a couple thousand dollars a year by being able to print plain paper templated invoices instead of buying custom printed tractor-feed invoices and POs.

I guess the point is, this was a major project, and it helped save that business. But, unfortunately, since it was for a family member, it is probably not a story I can use.

Do you have to mention that it was for a family member? Can you just say you were hired to do the job for whatever the name of the company is? I'm sure someone is going to jump all over my back for being unethical but it sounds like you have a good essay story there, and the only thing that would ruin it are the prejudices of the reader (which are understandable), so why not leave out the part that would cause that prejudice.

I think that without that information, unfortunately, it is hard to explain why I was willing to do it for free.

My sh'tty work laptop is uncapable of running it (not enough graphics power) and I'm on the road. I'll need to get back to you when I get back home and get to play it in my personal computer.

On the other hand, from what I read on the manual (and extrapolating from my experience with Civ3): it's a much more refined (i.e.: more realistic) civilization simulator. Pros: you can't get away with implausible stuff. Cons: you can't get away with implausible stuff so it's extremely hard to get an early victory, even at the easiest difficulty settings. You can't figure out a "method" to win, and each game will take ages.

L.

You probably know this and are just writing it here since you suspect there'll be more than one "techie" among us, but just in case you don't know: the stuff you wrote above is an application killer. Too much jargon.



This stuff, on the other hand, would be appropriate in an application.

On your question: I used a family business example in one of my essays and I got in at that school. I used it to answer the "tell us about the first time you experienced leadership" (or something like that), and it seemed to have worked. I did have at least two other essays dealing with "proper" work experience (i.e. not with the family business), though.

Hope it helps. L.

There is still a zero (meaning nobody voted) next to the "Poor essay writing abilities" as of the time of my writing.

Low GMAT score - Haven't taken it yet but 700+ should be doable

Unbalanced GMAT score split - Same as above

Low undergrad GPA - This is the one. 2.5ish in Mechanical Engineering. Meh! Grades improved towards the end. I chalk it up to being young and immature - that's it, that's all.

Too young/too old - I'm 30 and will be 31 upon enrolling. Oldish but not too old I don't think.

Lack of community service - Does Democrats Abroad count?

Lack of interesting extracurricular activities - Does travel count? I restored an old Mustang over the course of a few years - even took auto body classes at the local community college to do so (I will be sending that transcript to them!). I also front Bavaria's only bluegrass band

Little significant leadership experience - I don't think so. I've got quite a bit of very unique leadership experience.

Poor essay writing abilities - I think I can put together a good one or ten in the end.

Unimpressive work experience - Well, it's wholly unrelated to what mainstream applicants come to the table with. That can help and hurt. I clearly have to justify the pursuit of an MBA in the application.

Ultra competitive demographic - White American male. I've got 4 years of experience living and working abroad so I think it's less of an issue than it would be for a comparable domestic applicant.

On the whole I think I stand a decent chance at a few schools. I hope a shoe-in at my safety school and I'd be more than happy to go there. If not for that low uGPA I think I'd be sitting pretty. Alas... *sigh*

That's a really interesting observation, and it's something that has been pointed out before. Everyone believes they will be able to distinguish themselves through their essays, but just like any other application component, only 5-10% will be really outstanding.

That why it used to always kill me when people would say "your GMAT is in range, just write some killer essays and you'll get into your dream school!" As if writing kickass essays is a simple matter. I'd say it's a pretty small percentage of the people who are both 1) great writers and 2) have lots of interesting stuff in their background to share. If if both of those criteria are met, it's not a given that your application reader will give full marks for your masterpiece.

Application readers are overworked and might not give your application all the attention it deserves. Many schools use student readers, and the English capabilities of some students, at even the best schools, do not inspire much confidence that great essays will be recognized. Everyone believes they will distinguish themselves through their essays, but sometimes it truly feels like a crap shoot.

I voted "Ultra competitive demographic" before I saw the one related to essay writing skills. Thats why the essay option stills shows a 0 against it.

Having cleared that little discrepancy, I want to reiterate that essays writing will probably determine my B-school destiny. I am no slouch with a key board, but having seen examples of successful B-school essays, I know that I have a long way to go.

I feel so strongly about this that I enrolled in a writing course in the last few months.

Hard to tell, but here's what I think my strengths and weaknesses are. Can we vote for more than one? =)

Low GMAT score - Dunno yet, taking it early early August. Aiming for 720-740

Unbalanced GMAT score split - Again, unknown, but likely

Low undergrad GPA - Not a problem (3.9/3.5 from top undergrad/grad school))

Too young/too old - could be a problem, I'm 30 and will turn 31 next Spring. I'm about 1 year older than most school's average/median age, with 1 year more work experience than the average too. I don't know if having a masters degree and starting work later will "excuse" me from this age thing.

Lack of community service - Not a big problem, been active doing extracurriculars from volunteering to mentoring since I was an undergrad.

Lack of interesting extracirricular activities - Not sure if it's "interesting" or not, but hopefully I can market it to be interesting.

Little significant leadership experience - I'm ok here.

Poor essay writing abilities - I might be weaker at this, but I'll have friends who are good writers critique me and do many drafts.

Unimpressive work experience - I'm average here. have leadership experience at work and have shown to be pretty outstanding, but nothing compared to some of the crazier applicants out there.

Ultra competitive demographic - While I'm not an Indian IT/EE person, I'm Chinese American with an engineering background and currently working in business. I've heard it's still ultra competitive, so I need to stand out somehow.