EssaySnark

Applying to Grad School: Personal Statement vs Statement of Purpose

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Most Brave Supplicants wandering around on the blahg are planning to apply to business school for an MBA. However, we’re an all-purpose ‘Snark and we’ve had plenty of experience helping BSers trying for admission to all sorts of other types of graduate programs, including the JD/MBA, Master’s in Management, Master’s in Real Estate, Master’s of Labor Relations, Doctorate in Accounting, and on and on. Pretty much every competitive admissions process requires some type of written component to the application. The term “essay” is commonly used for MBA admissions. If you’re trying for some other type of master’s program, you may have encountered other strange beasts among the application requirements, including the Personal Statement, and the Statement of Purpose.

“What in heck?” you may ask.

“What are all these things and how will I sort out a strategy?”

It may seem intimidating at first, particularly when “Personal Statement” is so vague and undefined, and “Statement of Purpose” sounds so, well, meaningful. You may feel like you don’t really HAVE a purpose in life, which is the whole driving force behind your interest in going back to school. You may be at a point where you’re hoping that school, and more education, and the structured surroundings of academia will give you a purpose. How on Earth are you supposed to write a Statement of Purpose for your graduate application when you’re casting about aimless and wandering in life?

Never fear, Brave Supplicant – the ‘Snark is here! And we can tell you straightaway, these application torture devices are not that difficult to write.

Or at least, no more difficult to write than any other MBA essay – and certainly far far easier than grappling with the crazy questions like Stanford’s “What matters most” or Harvard’s open-ended “What should we know about you” MBA prompts.

Before we go any further, a quick disclaimer: The one endeavor that we have pretty much zilch experience in is med school. If you’ve decided you want to dedicate your life to helping humanity through the field of medicine, then we’re not the ‘Snarks for you. There’s plenty of resources out there to help you through that grueling admissions process, and anyway, if that’s your plan, you’ve likely been working towards it for some time already. It’s not like you woke up one day and decided to go to med school. It’s not a casual undertaking.

For many other master’s programs, though, your application may vary rather significantly from what the business schools require, but the essence of it will be:

  1. An online app
  2. Your transcripts from college
  3. Some recommendations
  4. A written component

There may or may not be an interview, which may or may not be optional.

As you can see, these are all basically the same elements that comprise an MBA app, too. As we mentioned above, that fourth item might be called different things but it’s essentially an essay.

Here’s some examples of instructions that different programs have given for this written component:

Statement of Purpose
A one- or two-page statement stating your reasons for undertaking graduate work, as well as an explanation of your academic interests, including their relation to your undergraduate study and professional goals. Include your full name and your proposed field of study at the top of each page.

Pretty generic, isn’t it?

Here’s another one:

Personal statements should describe your background, past work in your intended field of study, plans for graduate study and professional career, if applicable. If you are presently in a graduate program at another university, please explain why you wish to leave. If you have not yet come to a decision about your career, or if your plans are tentative, please do not hesitate to say so.

This is one of the more detailed that we’ve seen, from Cornell’s real estate school:

Statement of Purpose
One of the most important pieces of the application, the statement of purpose provides an opportunity to discuss your motivations, background, character, personal goals, and any other insights that you want the admissions committee to consider in evaluating your application. There is no set format, but statements should be no longer than 750 words. The admissions committee reads the statement of purpose to gauge an applicant’s passion for real estate, leadership potential for the real estate industry, and the ability to contribute in the classroom. Questions the committee hopes to finds answers to within the statement of purpose include:

  • Are you someone that positively impacts the people and organizations around you?
  • What experiences can you share that point to your character and integrity?
  • Do you have the traits that will inspire a legacy at whatever organization you serve during your future real estate career?

Wanna know a secret?

Most applicants’ Personal Statements are crap.

If you do even a half-way decent job of writing your Personal Statement for your graduate app, you’re going to be so far ahead of the game that nobody will be able to catch you.

The most common problem with graduate applications is the same exact problem that we see over and over again in MBA applications. The main difference is, the competition for the top bschools is so fierce that everybody trying for an MBA seeks out help on writing their essays, so the overall quality of applications across the entire pool of candidates is halfway decent (with massive variability, of course; there’s some gawdawful MBA essays that get submitted all over the place every year). For other types of graduate programs, admission typically isn’t quite so selective, which means that there’s fewer incidence of applicants seeking out help, with fewer resources on how to write a good application available. If you’re trying for a smaller program or a less popular discipline, then the crazy competitiveness simply hasn’t affected the applicant pool the way that those forces have done in MBA admissions.

All of this is to say that the level of quality among Personal Statements submitted to most of these graduate programs is markedly lower than it is in the MBA sphere. Which means that if you do a good job on your Personal Statement, you’re going to stand out like a firecracker lit on a moonless night in winter in Antarctica.

OK great, so how do you go about writing a good Personal Statement?

Especially if the program you’re applying to has a really vaguely-worded prompt or loosey-goosey instructions that don’t tell you what they want?

Well, one trick is to find a prompt for another school that is more specific and detailed, and just use that.

Here’s a discussion of a career goals essay question from a lesser-known bschool that could serve that purpose really well.

Remember, when you’re applying for a graduate program, you’re basically telling the admissions committee that you want to go learn stuff which will then let you go do stuff.

There’s only two possible paths that you would have in mind:

  • “I want to go get this specialized education so that I can pursue this specific new career out in the business world.”
  • “I want to go study this specialized discipline so that I can contribute to the body of knowledge in this field and either become a researcher or teach it.”

In both cases, your statement that you need to be admitted to their program needs to cover why you want to go there based on what you want to do with it. There are differences in how a pitch would need to be developed for someone interested in pursuing a PhD and go into research, but no matter what, your main objective with your application is to help the adcom see what your plan is. What’s the endgame? Why is this degree, from this school, necessary for you to get there?

If you can communicate that succinctly, while weaving in evidence for what you have done in the past that has set you up for success in pursuing this new endeavor today, then you’ll be the golden child in the eyes of the adcom. They will love you forever.

Being clear, and specific, and detailed in how you lay out your plans for the future – nay, your Statement of Purpose – will take you far, Brave Supplicant.

 
 
 

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Want more help from the ‘Snark on your pitch to graduate school? Our Single Essay Decimator is a great option for evaluating your strategy and execution on the Personal Statement!

($) Talking to current students about their bschool experience

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Black History Month

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Posting about Black History Month on the first day of February feels a bit performative.

It’s what the big corporations do. It’s when the universities send out their marketing emails themed around their alumni of color.

You may not even really understand what Black History Month is about. Many Americans don’t.

The truth of the matter is that all of American history is Black history, but that’s not the history that’s taught in our grade schools. It’s not the history that white Americans know. Many Americans believe that slavery ended racism, and that all races are treated equally today.

So here’s little impromptu quiz for you:

Can you name three important Americans who shaped our history, who happen to be Black — and who aren’t celebrities or named Barack Obama?

No shade on Obama and musicians and athletes. However this challenge is meant to illuminate the issue.

 
 

Maybe you’re well aware of the contributions that Black people and other people of color have made to this country. But if you’re like many Americans, the names don’t come to mind with the snap of your fingers.

Maybe you thought about it for a hot second, and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. popped into your head.

Or Rosa Parks.

And probably Obama, and maybe Tiger, and Kanye, and JayZ, and Beyonce, and Kobe, and Muhammed Ali. All of those success stories matter too. However it’s telling that many of you probably struggled to come up with lots of names of people who brought change to this country, who moved us forward as a nation, or in business.

Actually, that’s a great question in itself: Name some Black business leaders, like CEOs or technologists or startup founders. Can you think of any?

We’ve got Erika James, Dean of Wharton. And we’ve got….

Hmmm.

Unless you count self-made millionaires like Oprah and LilWayne and JayZ who are running their own corporations, there are almost no Black CEOs in the Fortune 500 today — apparently only 4. Though TIAA now will have its second Black CEO in a row.

 
 

We shouldn’t have to have a Black History Month, because Black history is American history, and it all should be taught together, equally, without Black contributions having to be called out separately — because those contributions should be integrated into the fabric of the stories we tell each other about how our country developed. We shouldn’t have to isolate Black history to be studied separately, or to have a page of the calendar relegated to remembering to talk about it.

Until that happens, though, we’ll be recognizing Black history here — maybe not on the first day of February, when all the corporations have scheduled their social media campaigns, but somewhere along the way. And we will be continuing to talk about the inequalities, and the need for concerted efforts on the part of whites in this country to bring changes to the system so that all have true opportunity, regardless of background or resources or skintone.

 
 

 

 

In case you had trouble thinking of Black historymakers and people of influence, here are a random few:

This list could be much longer, though we’re more curious in the names that you know.

Who did you think of?

Share the Black Americans who have influenced you!

And, if you’re a Black person looking to become a leader in our American business world, the Executive Leadership Council is one resource to know of.

($) Letters of support for your waitlisted application.

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Today’s post was inspired by a couple of questions we’ve received from Rd 1 waitlisters — and it’s such a tough spot to be in, especially at this stage! Not because you may not get in (hopefully you do!!) but because the seemingly endless stretch of time from the waitlist news to today can really start to get to you.

Our standard advice around being thoughtful and deliberate before sending in anything to the admissions office about your application always applies — and it applies especially strongly in this situation. The schools do track contact from prospective students, so wherever you’re at on the MBA application journey, please be careful about how you request information and the tone and content of those emails!

For waitlisters, you want every submission to count — meaning, there should be a rationale behind everything you share with the admissions team now, and you should have a clear purpose in mind before sending it.

A common question we get here is, what about getting letters of support submitted on your behalf?


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Letters of support can be powerful additions to your application — or they sometimes can backfire!!!
 
 

 
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Hopefully this lets you dig into the possibilities with a clear sense of your target!

And no matter what: Most of you waitlisters (and Round 2ers!) have not that much longer to wait!! We hope that the news you’ll be getting soon will be positive!!!!!!!

Bschool is what you make of it.

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If you’re sitting here in early 2021 thinking about applying to bschool in the fall for the Class of 2024, then here’s the very best advice we can offer for you today — and, actually, for many other (most? all? other) points in the long process you’re about to embark upon.

And if you’re sitting here in early 2021 having already gone through that process, feeling grateful that you’ll be starting an MBA program this fall yet tormenting yourself with the decision about which of your multiple-school admit offers to accept, this advice may also be useful!

We’ll call the pre-applicant BSer Case A. You’ve not yet applied to any school (or perhaps you have and you’ve only seen rejections so far 🙁 ).

We’ll call the happy success story BSer Case B. You’ve made it in and felt the rush of excitement, not once but twice or more, and then gone through many difficult days of trying to figure out this all-important decision on where to actually attend.

The Case A BSers may not appreciate this, but the Case B BSers probably do:

The most important task in the entire MBA application process is school research.

Why do we say that?

Because the only way that you’ll be able to easily navigate Case B is if you have figured out which of the schools is the right fit for you.

Yes that should happen BEFORE you apply. But often, it doesn’t.

Everyone wants to go to “the best” bschool. Many many many applicants, though, outsource the determination of “the best” to some external source. Rankings will not tell you what school is best for you. You come up with a list based on M7 or some other nonsense and you get those apps out. It’s very possible to still make it in even without doing your own firsthand research, but then if you were lucky enough (aka, your profile was strong enough and you worked hard enough on your apps) to get in to multiple schools, well, then what? Do you just go with the school that’s ranked higher?

Or, sometimes, Case A BSers figure, “All bschools are the same and I just want to go to a good one” so they paper the country with applications, which rarely works and is VERY expensive.

For Case B, the tl;dr is:

There’s a lot of factors that go into the decision of which school to choose but in the end we always tell folks to go with the gut — and to solicit opinions, but not really listen to any of ’em, ‘cuz nobody else has any skin in the game for this except for you! If you were admitted to two or more schools among the Top 10, then some people simply choose the one that they feel is “better” — so, if they get into Duke and Kellogg, many choose Kellogg. If they get into Tuck and Wharton, they choose Wharton. Etc. Often, in an admit-pairing, there’s one school that’s got more prestige, where you’ll be impressing your friends to say you are going there.

But is that automatically “the best” school for you?

Maybe it is. Certainly, if you cracked the Top 10 with more than one app, you cannot go wrong, whichever you choose! It’s not like we’re dissing any of these schools. It’s totally your decision, and if you feel that the best school for you is the one that’s ranked higher, that’s totally normal and natural and nothing wrong with making that choice.

But is it “the best” for you as an individual? Can you identify the reasons why? For you personally?

If you’ve got the curse of good luck and you’re sitting here stuck between multiple admits, then the most effective way to decide of course is to participate in the Welcome Weekend events for both schools — even though they are virtual this year, they’re still going to let you experience the school for yourself. That’s how you discover what the school culture and experience will be, where you get to know your potential future classmates and get a feel for what this school is like. And the food.

But you wanna know the better way to go?

Bschool is about people, yes. You want to see what these other admits are like and figure out if you sync with them.

Bschool is about the jobs, yes. You want to know if the employers you’re interested in are recruiting at your school to fill the jobs you’re currently planning to pursue — knowing, too, that those plans may change, and so not being overly fixated on these specifics, but researching them nonetheless.

But in the end, the paper-the-country applicant is absolutely right: Bschools are in fact interchangeable on this one very important dimension, the dimension that matters most in this process:

What about YOU? Which school will allow you to do your best work? Which school is the place that you get excited about, that has the programs and initiatives and opportunities that make your mouth drool? (and now we’re not talking about the food)

Here’s a trick:

Dig out that essay you wrote for your school.

Now that you’ve been admitted, go back over the reasons you cited for why you wanted to go there in the first place.

For 99.9% of all applicants, those reasons at the time were totally manufactured. It was an artificial process, where you read through the website until you found something that fit the point you were trying to make about the career goal that you’re interested in. It was pretty arbitrary; it was just plugging School Resource X into a box, and then going back and finding Resource Y, and Resource Z, and doing the same on the next school’s essay thereafter.

But now that you’ve been admitted, open up those essays. What did you say about this school at the time, when you were begging at the altar of an admit?

Do those reasons still apply?

Or do you have others?

Can you articulate clearly why this school is right for you?

What will you actually DO there when you get on campus and start, like, learning stuff?

Many schools have very similar programs and clubs and opportunities so it’s not like, “Oh, this school calls it this but this other school calls it that….”

No.

We’re talking about, have you actually discussed these programs and resources and clubs with actual students? Do you know what these things will do for you, what you will gain from them, why you should bother? On the surface they may sound alike but are they REALLY alike? What are the differences? Why do they matter? Based on what type of person YOU are, how are they relevant? What are your specific priorities? If you can only do one significant international trip as part of your MBA, which one will it be, and why? What school has the best opportunity for that? What is the timing for that experience, based on where you will be in the course of the overall education? How will you leverage it? Will you already have been able to take Course X that you want to do first, or will that course only be offered after the trip?

These are just basic ideas to help you analyze all of the options. All of this is meant only to emphasize: The most important part of this process is school research.

Or another way to put it is, go to the school where you will do your best work (thank you, Dean Bruner). Understanding that requires you to understand yourself first. What kind of environment do you thrive in?

All of these questions need to be asked.

Regardless of whether you’re at the very beginning of this process and just starting to kick the tires on which programs you might be interested in, or at the very end where you’re making the seemingly impossible decision and selecting between two awesome opportunities, keep that in mind: Where will you do your best work?

That’s all that matters in the end, don’t you think?

 
 
You may also be interested in:

 

($) More skills to reflect on and tips for the business world

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Here’s Part 2 of the discussion of skills that will serve you well in your career, starting today and off into the indefinite future. Did you miss Part 1? It’s here! And a related post here on communicating as a leader.


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A few practical suggestions and ideas to keep you thinking!
 
 

 
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What about you? Any tips to offer your colleagues anonymously — things you wish everyone knew, that clearly they don’t? Or something you wish someone had told you earlier? Hit us up in the comments!

And in our classic “Get off my lawn!” style, here’s some requests no, pleas hmm how about guidelines for writing emails to customer service folks or just you know in general how to not come across as kind of a jerk.

 
 

Should you be planning for pre-MBA travels?

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The pandemic’s over, right? Or it will be soon? If you got into bschool to start in the fall, you’re allowed to quit your job now and go on an around-the-world adventure before school. Right?

Hmmm. Well maybe?

This is certainly a tough call. Most if not all schools have not yet announced their plans for whether to have an in-person graduation this Spring or not. Everyone wants to assume that we’ll be back in business and resuming our pre-pandemic programs by the time fall rolls around. But can we count on it?

Current estimates we’ve heard from government figures are to expect enough vaccinations to have been administered that things will be normal again by Christmas (though who knows what “normal” will mean) — but wait, Christmas?!!

What about like Fourth of July or something?

If you’ve gotten your vaccine, you may be feeling like you are free and clear and everything should be hunky dory again for any type of activities. The threat obviously is not really over yet though, based on all the stuff with new possible strains and all that, plus the horrible experiences that so many in the U.S. have had with the cold in the South over the past week. That caused so many problems for so many people, and it set back vaccination rollout at least temporarily in some regions.

So we’re almost at March now, and we’ve only got just over 10% of the country vaccinated, most with one shot only. Things are speeding up, yes, which is great! But we’re not quite out of the woods.

Is it safe to plan for a summer getaway, and if so, where would you go, and with whom?

Probably yes, and probably you’ve already been putting some thoughts into what that trip might be. It’s a time-honored tradition for BSers to pack the bags and do something adventuresome in the month before they start their MBA. Many schools have formalized these trips, such as KWEST at Kellogg and other such branded activities.

What could happen this year is that the schools may not want to officially sanction such trips, as they used to do in the past and one day will be doing so again. Instead, this year, they may tell incoming students that if the students want to organize something on their own, the school can’t stop them, but the school maybe won’t get involved in setting things up. That whole liability thing.

What if you haven’t been vaccinated yet? Should you go?

Getting vaccinated is a personal decision but we do hope all of you are planning on it, based on the safety profiles that have been published on these drugs and the efficacy rates. Should you travel somewhere if you’re not vaccinated? That seems unwise, even if you’ve been told everyone else has gotten their shots. These are individual decisions and you don’t need us to educate you — though we may issue periodic reminders like today, to help you remember that we are still in an active pandemic, even though it’s old news now and everyone is sick of it.

The good news is that we’re so far ahead of when these pre-MBA trips would be happening that you have plenty of time to decide. The world is moving quickly on all of these issues and who knows, perhaps we’ll get an “all clear” sooner than expected!!!

The other good news is that those of you starting your MBAs this year should have plenty of future opportunities to travel and do other “normal” things again. It’s really great that the world now has recovery in its sights. Who knew, a year ago, that this would go on for A YEAR — and at the same time, how marvelous it is that it’s now headed to the history books.

Hang tight, BSer, and please keep staying safe. We don’t have much longer to ride all of this out.

 
 

You may also be interested in:

“What should I do with my summer?” (pre-coronavirus)

 
 

($) “I got this incredible new job offer. If I take it, what impact will it have on my future MBA apps?”

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We got a follow-up question recently that we decided to discuss here for all of you. This question came in a few months after delivering a Comprehensive Profile Review to a new Brave Supplicant who was just starting to kick the tires on the possibility of a future MBA app. This person had used the self-reflection that the Profile Review invited, and gone off to explore career choices and opportunities — and came back to us with the question of “What if I take this job? Will it affect how Stanford, Harvard, or Wharton perceives my application if I apply in two years?”

And here’s what we said:


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Oooo there’s some good stuff today!
 
 

 
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To sum it up and try to offer something for everyone:

Maximize your opportunities and enjoyment of life today by pursuing opportunities that excite you as they come. Double-thinking things isn’t going to settle anything. Because nobody knows! The world is changing so quickly — and so are you, if you’re playing the game right. Do what you think is going to take you to the next milestone on the map in the best way you can get there, and then see what new vistas open up before your eyes when you arrive!!

Will you be looking more closely at affordability as part of your MBA plans?

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Certainly there’s no part of our lives that covid-19 has not touched.

Even if you have not had a change in employment, it’s likely that the past year has had you re-examine some core values. Maybe you’re thinking differently about family, and how far away you want to be from them when you embark on your MBA adventure. Perhaps you’ve decided you want to go to school closer to home — or you’ve even started seriously considering an online MBA that you never would have imagined before.

One factor that has long been a given is that a top MBA program is expensive. There’s really no excuse for the high cost of higher education in this country especially. Tuitions have gone up at most every school, every single year, since as far back as we’ve been paying attention to these things. A few schools announced freezes on tuition increases in 2020 but it’s highly unlikely they will maintain such freezes for long. The other day we talked about the idea of hunting for scholarships — but dang, it sucks that that has to be part of the whole equation. Education is so important to personal growth for the individual and for the health of society and evolution of humanity. Why does it have to be so expensive??

Current trends for parents of high schoolers who are figuring out where they want their kids to go to college are to incorporate finances as a bigger part of the conversation than they have in the recent past. We’re wondering if that’s been coming up for all of you too?

When the universities closed down last year, there was tremendous hand-wringing among administrators that they’d go belly-up. The revenue model for these schools has traditionally been location-based, where students being on campus allows the school to charge all sorts of fees for everything from dormitories to cafeterias to parking permits. At the time, we were pretty solidly on the side of the schools in charging full tuition even for an online experience for Spring semester 2020 — but now that things have had time to be processed and schools have adapted, and the realities have manifested (which we also predicted) that they didn’t experience mass migrations away from higher ed as they thought, we believe it’s time for schools to really take the problem of cost seriously.

The problem with the scarcity of the prestigious schools is that a place like Stanford or Wharton can charge whatever they want — and the business schools tend to be a profit center on campus, especially with the executive education market where they can truly charge the big bucks. There are clear signs that online delivery of such programs is now not only acceptable, but it’s going to be seen as preferable — and this opens up so many more opportunities for revenue and increasing margins. Producing a good online program is not a trivial undertaking, and it’s not like there are no costs involved. However, the economics are totally different, and it’s a true opportunity that the fast-mover schools are already starting to pursue.

Online options for the full-time MBA also mean that schools can potentially increase their class sizes, as Harvard did on a temporary basis and will likely make permanent. We’re betting that many other top schools that also launched larger classes last Fall will maintain those larger sizes as the new status quo.

That benefits everyone — and it also means that there should be opportunity to reduce some of their costs. Tuition should not be the same based on these changing dynamics. (Yes, adaptation to the realities of the virus have added costs too, so it’s not like the schools are necessarily swimming in excess funding right now.)

The schools should, as a part of their mission of service to society, be working for ways to lower their costs and pass those savings on to the students. We have never ever seen that actually happen before, but they should be trying to do this.

As a result of the examination of values that many individuals are also undertaking, we’re wondering if you’re looking at education differently and evaluating your own priorities, and if there have been any changes in what you value most as you pursue an advanced degree?

If you haven’t given this much thought, we don’t blame you. These conversations rarely happen unprompted. However, maybe a post like this one will get you to musing on your requirements and what means the most to you.

The truth is that the MBA tends to have a fabulous ROI, so even at the sky-high tuition rates that the schools get away with charging, it’s still going to be a great investment in yourself for the long term.

At the same time, when you are faced with the realities of how much debt you’ll be taking on… it can make you take stock. We’ve heard of some people who get physically nauseous when they have to sign the loan documents. This is a real obligation.

We’re not saying this to freak you out — only to encourage a clear-eyed reflection!

We’d be curious, too, if you have had any shifts in your thinking? On finances or anything else?

Comments are open if you’re feeling open to sharing!!

Or just privately, thinking through these ideas, might be worth a moment or two.

The world is changing, and maybe our individual values are changing too, as a result of all that we’ve been through.

 

($) What is the visa situation for potential international MBA students in 2021?

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Pretty much all top U.S. bschools now are STEM-qualified, meaning that graduates of these programs seeking employment in the U.S. have the opportunity of staying here for up to six years total (an extra three years beyond the standard H-1B).

Note! We are not immigration experts! The information here is our best understanding of how this stuff works. You’ll get plenty of guidance from your school once you’re admitted!! Or, some BSers may find that paying for the services of a qualified immigration attorney is a worthwhile investment, depending on any complexities of your particular case.


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International students have a brighter future in the U.S. now in terms of employment.
 
 

 
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The tl;dr is that it’s going to be easier to jump through a lot of these hoops — there will still be hoops, but they won’t be so difficult to get through, and they won’t be changing every six months.