Every B-School Essay Tells a Story

hiarlin: How would you recommend someone who has a relatively short amount of work experience (three years) emphasize the quality of experience?
AuthorBodine: You need to make sure that you are focusing on only a few achievements, so that you can give each the depth they deserve. You can have an experience that only lasted a couple of months but changed your career and goals. Your job is to explain how it had that impact on you. The essays aren't supposed to be overviews. They're supposed to be focused on specific events. So even if you only have a couple of years of work experience, you will definitely still have a couple of experiences or events that you can share.

Guddu: Does it matter that I was more technically oriented and shied away from leadership responsibilities until now? How do I present this in the essay?
AuthorBodine: I would not tell them that you have shied away from leadership responsibility. You have to explain why you want a management degree, if you're not really interested in management. It'll be a challenge to find leadership stories on which you can draw. But you have to identify those leadership stories. It harms your application if you come across primarily as a technical profile with weak leadership skills. And whatever leadership experience you do have, I would emphasize as much as possible in the essays.

midpitch10: I am an undergraduate. Are top B-schools open to applicants coming straight out of college?
AuthorBodine: They are increasingly open to applicants coming out of college (see BW Online, 3/30/05, "MBA Youth Movement"). Harvard Business School is one of the schools that has come right out and said that. Business schools are definitely skewing younger, but undergrad applicants have a much higher hurdle to pass. You have to show maturity in your goals. And you have to show demonstrated leadership. In a sense, you have to compensate for your youth by being really outstanding.

Rajk: What should be the tone of the essay for part-time MBA programs?
AuthorBodine: You still have to show seriousness of interest and a highly focused need for the MBA. The difference comes in explaining how you can handle the part-time program -- showing that you have the time-management skills to handle two commitments. That should be part of your essays, but the tone itself wouldn't be different. You need to focus on the reasons why you need admissions to a part-time program as opposed to a full-time one.

theashish: Can it be true that even if we write a good essay, we still might not get admitted if it's not what the school is looking for?
AuthorBodine: All schools value a well-written essay that shows that you know who you are, where you're going, and that you'll add a distinctive set of experiences to their program. It is true, however, that different programs have different cultures, and you want to be aware of a program's self-image. If you're applying to a school that emphasizes leadership, then you need to make sure your essay is not only good but that it's also talking about leadership. For the most part, you can reuse your basic set of essays for multiple schools, but you have to tweak them for each school's culture.

methos49: As a young applicant with military experience, how should I position myself in the essays? And which schools are generally more favorable toward young applicants?
AuthorBodine: One school that I mentioned that is particularly open to young applicants is HBS. But most schools are broadening the pool of applicants. A school where the average age skews older is Wharton, so that might not be a school you'd want to focus on. But in terms of positioning yourself, it's still a question of knowing what your goals are, and being able to talk about them in a concrete and savvy way. And a younger applicant has to go out of his way to explain why he needs the MBA now as opposed to two years from now. I definitely think you should include your military experience.

jps: If there are multiple essays in an application, some that are more creative and others that pertain more to career goals, do the admissions departments tend to value one type more than another?
AuthorBodine: The schools understand that any of the essays can be good at showing who you are, so they don't value one over the other. Take them all seriously and do your best on each. Those different essays are asking you to show different parts of your profile. You want to be sure that you're presenting the full mix of your uniqueness factors. The goals essay is basically the most important essay because it's the first one they read (see BW Online, 9/26/05, "Personal Achievement Essay"). It directly addresses why you want an MBA and why you want to go to their school, and it should introduce the themes that will be discussed in later essays.

A creative personal essay that explains some kind of obstacle you've overcome, a difficult childhood, or a defining moment -- and does so in a vivid way -- can be much more effective than a traditional leadership or accomplishment essay (see BW Online, 11/7/05, "Creative Essay").

learner: I stepped out of a management trainee program in a large multinational to join a startup because the opportunity to learn seemed far larger to me. How do I present this information in my essay?
AuthorBodine: As long as the reason you joined the startup ties into your career goals after the MBA, even indirectly, and you can show why that startup experience had value to you and helped shape your goals, then it can only be a positive. You need to treat your decision to move to the startup as a well-considered move. You don't want to portray it as something you did on a whim. But I don't think the schools value a startup experience less than one with a big firm. It's all about what you got out of the experience and your accomplishments there. The startup experience could have, and probably did, give you cross-functional exposure at a high level that you couldn't get with the larger corporation.

Guddu: When asked to describe a failure, does it have to be work-related or can it be personal?
AuthorBodine: I don't think it matters whether the failure is work-related or personal, but you don't want the personal failure to be too personal, like a failed relationship or something like that. What really matters is how you responded to the failure and what actions you took to learn from and build on that failure. Yes, a failure essay can expose your weaknesses. If it shows you have poor ethics or serious interpersonal problems, then that will hurt your application. But if you show that you had a maturity problem to overcome, or if you simply made a mistake, then that's not going to be held against you.

MBAShelly: How do I assess the strengths and weaknesses of my application (and specifically my essays) given that I recently applied and was rejected by a top school that doesn't provide feedback?
AuthorBodine: Consultants like myself can help. But you can also get feedback on your application to MBA students, friends, and colleagues. It's usually possible, even without the school's help, to figure out the problem. Then it's important to understand how to address those weaknesses, especially if you intend to apply again. Usually, being vague about goals or why the school is the one you want to attend is the problem. Of course, the GMAT score is often a factor, too.

SHIVA: Who reads the essays? What is the primary background of the committee members? Do they really care about the thesis, topic sentence, and supporting details? Or do they focus mainly on the content and the stories that go with them?
AuthorBodine: For B-schools, it's usually career admissions staff, not professors as it is in law school. But it's also sometimes second-year MBA students. They do care about thesis and topic sentence and details, but they're not checking them off like it's a term paper. It's primarily about the content and concreteness of detail.

theashish: Would this statement be appropriate for introduction: "I will demonstrate how my work experience and events in my life have led me to choose this career path and this college"? If not, how can I write it?
AuthorBodine: That intro is a little too plain. It's not individual enough. You should consider starting out with an example or event that helped to define your career path. In other words, dramatize or make an experience come to life in that first paragraph. That way, you'll grab the reader's interest. Then, after telling that story, you can make your general theme statement about how that experience helped define your goals.

FrancescaBW: Any parting advice for applicants?
AuthorBodine: The biggest mistake applicants make is not getting into enough detail about their own experiences, their reasons for needing an MBA, and their reasons for choosing that particular school. I really recommend that you do some introspection before you start writing and that you think in terms of creating stories about things that make you unique.

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