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Questions are out for Columbia, Yale SOM, HBS - and now Michigan Ross! And The MBA Countdown begins on Monday! Let's do this!

Why do you want an MBA? (No, really?)

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

In a very unscientific post-Round 2 survey, we asked BSers on the blahg why they were interested in getting an MBA.

Here’s where things ended up after a week:

Clearly this is a case where the quality of the survey results is dependent on the quality of the survey. 😉 EssaySnark is not SurveySnark. The survey could’ve been designed a bit better.

We offer in contrast:

Data from GMAC

“Alumni GME” means, alumni of graduate business programs (“GME” means “Graduate Management Education” in GMAC-speak). It includes MBA grads along with Master in Management, Master of Financial Engineering, Master of Data Analytics, and all the varied and sundry other graduate programs offered by bschools around the world.

One takeaway is, EssaySnark could do a better job of designing our little surveys. 🙂

Another is, establishing clear expectations upfront, before you embark on this expensive and time-consuming endeavor, could be worthwhile.

It sounds like most people were happy with their post-degree salary — but not all of them are. If we’re reading that correctly, almost 60% of students pursued further studies in order to increase income (a number which actually sounds pretty low) — yet almost 20% of them were not satisfied with the amount of salary increase they achieved. That’s a pretty big chunk of grads being unhappy with salary, especially when you realize that it costs a lot of money to get the darned degree in the first place. Being realistic on expectations – what kind of salary can you count on coming out of school – is likely key.

If you’re an international applicant who’s working in a very different economy, then it can make you googly-eyed to consider the average salaries at places like Harvard and Stanford.

But remember:

  1. Those are averages
  2. The highest salaries are usually offered for jobs in America
  3. Getting hired as an international worker in the U.S. has never been easy, and the outlook is especially cloudy nowadays

Just because average salary at your target school is $120k doesn’t mean that you’ll land that. You might, if you’re qualified, and if your background shows the appropriate level of skills and achievement. Just keep things in perspective.

Similarly, if you’re already making >$100k a year, then the bump-up from an MBA may not feel that extreme. If you’re in finance and looking to return to finance post-MBA, then ostensibly you’re bringing experiences and a working knowledge set that will make you a more valuable hire, and you can potentially command a higher-than-average wage at your first job after school. But those are the exceptions. To get there, you need to be exceptional. Right? Right.

It’s impossible to ascribe a monetary value to the EXPERIENCE of the MBA. It’s an enriching opportunity, being surrounded by super smart people in a fast-paced environment, where everyone is go-go-go. That alone is worth it for many, based on the personal transformation you’ll experience. You will be challenged. You will have to adapt and to grow. You’ll stumble and fall, and you’ll learn stuff. It’ll be worth it (we hope!).

If you haven’t done so already, you might want to take a little time and jot down the reasons you’ve decided FOR YOURSELF to embark on this Big Deal proposition. It’s gonna change your life.

Do you know how you want your life to change?

Being deliberate about these things, and planning for regular check-ins with yourself to make sure you’re on track with your own inner priorities, will let you make the most of it.

by EssaySnark

Trying again? Any BSer who used services on essaysnark.com last year is invited to re-enter their School Strategy in My SnarkCenter. EssaySnark will give it a look and offer our advice for the coming season!

We’re also rolling out some new features in Snarkville starting this weekend – please be patient if there are glitches!

How to improve yourself

by EssaySnark

It’s so easy to let things slide.

One way to make sure that you advance yourself every year and get better and better as a person, and closer to your own specific goals, is to place a priority on those actions every week.

If there’s something very important to you, that keeps getting pushed off into the future, then make a point to accomplish a baby step on that project every day.

If you’re applying to bschool this Fall, then it’s too easy to say, “There’s nothing for me to do now, since deadlines aren’t till September.” And then you stay a lazy bum all spring and summer, until you go into Panic Mode in August and have a life of h3ll for two months.

Instead, you could be making progress even starting now, by making it a priority to get something small done every week.

For example, identifying your short list of schools, and being clear on the reasons why. This can only evolve through the concerted effort of school research.

There’s lots of steps you can be taking today.

However, today’s post is more general in nature. We’re not talking only about applying to bschool. We’re talking about improving yourself as a person.

Say you decide you want to learn how to program. Now that’s a big goal!

Maybe you get started on it. You take a class and learn about HTML. Or you have this great idea for a website that you actually began working on in college with a buddy, but you both let it lapse when you graduated.

Or you’re a musician, and you love writing songs, but just lately, you haven’t had the time. In fact, maybe you didn’t write one since August.

Or you want to start a blog — or you started one, but it hasn’t been updated since 2015, and you don’t think anyone ever reads it…. And now it’s become like a big downer. A huge ugh. You don’t even want to think about it since it makes you feel like a slug. One more datapoint for how you don’t get stuff done.

But every time you’ve ever made progress on this heart project you’ve got, you’ve felt SO GOOD about yourself.

But maybe it’s tough to get started.

There’s always something else pulling on your time.

Well here’s an idea: (ohnoyeswe’regonnasayit) JUST DO IT.

Meaning, do SOMETHING today – even right now if you can – to advance yourself towards this goal.

Even if it’s just SCHEDULING a time in your calendar for sometime in the next 24 hours where you CAN go do it. ‘Cuz right now, while you’re reading EssaySnark, you know that you really should be preparing for that meeting with your team in 20 minutes, and you don’t have time to do something for yourself at this very moment.

What you can do is set up a reminder in your calendar for later today or tonight (or better yet, tomorrow morning) where you will have the freedom to do it.

And then make it happen!

If there’s something that only your FUTURE SELF will benefit from, it’s all too easy for your NOW SELF to blow it off. Usually your NOW SELF is all about responding to the immediacy, the urgency, the I-just-want-to-take-a-nap-ency. Your NOW SELF is an enemy of your FUTURE SELF.

And what happens, when you live long enough, is you start to look back over the years accumulating and you realize, “Dang, if only I’d started this when I first had the idea, I’d actually be done by now.”

Instead, we blow stuff off and blow it off, and we don’t change. We stay the same.

But if you’re interested in getting an MBA, there’s something about you that’s driving you. That wants to be different.

Why not honor that self?

For many people, the most precious time of the day is the morning. If you make a commitment to yourself to do something – ANYTHING – to further your own personal project as your first task of the day, then that’s guaranteed to let you actually make real progress on it over time. You need to be vigilant. Carve out the time. If it needs to happen before you leave the house for work, then find a way to do it – even if it’s only 5 minutes at first. Even 5 minutes is valuable.

The trick is to establish that as part of your routine. If you ALWAYS take 5 minutes, every morning, for two weeks, then you should be able to easily enough expand it to 10 minutes.

If you’re working on something for 10 minutes in the morning, then you’ll be thinking about it on the commute to work, and you may get some spark of inspiration that hits you during lunchtime, and then you’re so excited to implement that idea that you go home from work and you do more on your personal project that night.

Then the next morning, your 10 minutes grows to 15 minutes, and you’re on a roll with it! And you are so jazzed by it that you actually wake up before your alarm the next morning (omg that never happens!!) and instead of going back to sleep you’re wide-eyed and bushy-tailed and you GET UP and you go to work on your big idea.

And voila, in no time at all, you’ve changed.

Now you’re someone who has energy. Who’s inspired. Who’s excited by life. Now you’re working towards something.

One of the hardest parts is GETTING STARTED.

So today is an invitation.

GET STARTED.

Make tomorrow morning your first day of 5 minutes.

How will you use the time?

Useful MBA admissions resources – direct from the bschools

by EssaySnark

There’s all sorts of information and advice out thar on them interwebs about applying to bschool. We’re sure you’ve already found gobs and gobs of the stuff, and you’ve bookmarked your favorites and made a habit out of returning to those sites on a regular basis. Today we wanted to point you towards some specific ones that may have gone overlooked.

Specifically, we’re talking about blogs from the bschools themselves.

Even if you’re not planning to apply to these schools, you might want to check out what they have in their social media and what they post as advice to their applicants, and even consider subscribing to their blog feeds. While our caution that all admissions advice issued by a school is specific to their school always applies, there’s still good info to be had from these resources, and they’ve proven themselves to be consistent over time. These are some of the schools that we trust, and refer to, as we go about our jobs, and they’re blogs that you might find value in, too.

In no particular order:

  • Michigan Ross Admissions Blog. Soojin Kwon, Admissions Director at Michigan Ross, maintains probably the most transparent policy of all MBA adcoms. Her blog is awesome, and it helps with insights into how admissions works overall at any school, in terms of explaining the holistic review that admissions professionals conduct, and sometimes with warning you about not being a pest when you’re on the waitlist. That sort of thing. Lots of the info is specific to Ross but this one is worth reading for any BSer.
  • Tuck360 MBA Blog. Lots of admissions-specific stuff, including an excellent series of posts for Indian applicants especially. Other incredible articles are about career services and recruiting at bschool. This blog also has posts from students and sometimes from partners. Worth subscribing for anyone.
  • The MBA Insider Blog from UCLA Anderson. Practical and helpful tips that are applicable to many, many schools. Anderson is also working to be transparent in the admissions process and we’ve noticed the changes in their approach to the applicant marketplace. Anderson also sometimes does alumni profiles and other community-centered posts that can be interesting and inspiring. Good stuff coming out of this school.

Why is HBS not on this list? It’s not because they don’t have a blog; they do . It’s just that they don’t really give you anything useful in applying to HBS or other schools. It’s still worth tracking them because it’s where they publish important dates in their process (when will interview invites go out, for example). But HBS does things differently, and they’re probably one of the most opaque of all schools (them and Stanford) in terms of providing information that will actually affect your chances of admission.

Two additional schools have maintained a more lackluster blogging presence in recent years – Chicago Booth and Wharton . If you’re going to be applying to these schools then certainly subscribe to their blogs but if not, we don’t see too much value in what they tend to publish these days, both because posts go up infrequently and because what they tend to talk about seems quite narrow in both cases.

How about you, BSer? What school resources have you found useful? Any bschool or adcom blog that we’ve missed? Tell us in the comments!

 
 
 
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($) Title-chasing and your Letters of Recommendation

by EssaySnark

This post could also be called, “Should I not get a recommendation from the CEO?” Most of the time when a Brave Supplicant asks about tapping their CEO to recommend them to bschool, it’s not a good idea. For most early-career types, the most interaction you’ve ever had with the CEO was passing him (or…

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A BSer asks: “why does LBS take people with 600 gmat score whilst rejecting those with 700+?”

by EssaySnark

A Brave Supplicant named Rahul was recently reading the post “Why is the average GMAT score at LBS so much lower?” and he asked us this:

As a genuine question, why does LBS take people with 600 gmat score whilst rejecting those with 700+. Im fully aware of the whole idea of GMAT just being part of the criteria and that application and essays and internships and experience count too. But my point is, what could someone with 600 gmat score possibly have that someone with 700 doesn’t that warrants them a place and not someone with 700. Im going to be frank and say that someone with 600 is just not as smart as someone with 700 and does not belong in LBS, I mean seriously how can one of the best business schools in the world legit accept someone with 600 whilst for courses like MiF they have a minimum of 650. I personally got 690 and I’m terrible at maths (Q: 44 V:40) despite the gmat being biased towards those who are good at maths.

There’s a fair amount of truth sprinkled about in that question but there’s also possibly some unclear thinking or simply a lack of perspective, too, and we wanted to devote a full post on this today.

The GMAT is a very difficult test. We will absolutely give you that. However, it’s hard to go along with the assertion that “someone with 600 is just not as smart as someone with 700” — and we definitely cannot agree with the claim that they “do not belong” at LBS or any other school.

Is the GMAT measuring intelligence? Or is it measuring the ability to perform well on a standardized test?

Men are statistically more likely to score better on the GMAT.

Young people also perform better than older people.

Do these stats mean that men are smarter than women? That young people are smarter than older ones?

(If you are male, or if you are young, and especially if you are both, we suggest that you be very careful how you answer those questions, even if you are doing so only in the privacy of your own skull.)

The GMAT tests for certain types of skills. It’s not a be-all/end-all test of intellectual capacity, and it definitely does not evaluate potential.

A GMAT is just one aspect to a candidacy, and it’s a very small part of the candidate.

Just like with Billy Bush, whose entire life has now become defined by one very short ride on a bus on a studio backlot, with Tic-Tacs , it’s not fair to sum up a person on the basis of a test score.

There are multiple types of intelligence, and there are many, many different types of people. If the top schools like LBS were only looking for students who are awesome at taking standardized tests, they could EASILY fill their classes with only that type of applicant. LBS could get at least a 720 average GMAT if they wanted, without even breaking a sweat.

But bschools are interested in a variety of types, because there are many many different paths that are possible from the MBA, and it isn’t only the strong standardized test-taker that are going to excel in all those capacities.

The other very important point to make, seeing as you shared your GMAT score breakdown: The schools look not just at total scores but at the individual components. EssaySnark is not sure where you are in your application process but we are quite nervous about a 44Q for someone trying for LBS. Hopefully you’re aware that that’s a significant weakness that may cause many admissions reviewers to hesitate. It depends of course on the pool you’re in and what the rest of the profile looks like.

And that’s really the most important thing. You claim to appreciate that the GMAT is only a part, and that application and essays and internships and experience count too — but they really really do. It’s not just “experience” in the context of work experience (though that does matter a lot). It’s “experience” as in “life experience.” What if the applicant is the first in her family to ever attend college, and she had to go to a school close to home because it was all that her family could afford, or maybe she was needed to help care for a sick relative? And because of her lack of resources in high school, she never got the best education in quant subjects, and that held her back in college? Or she loved reading and decided to major in literature instead? It’s not that she lacks intelligence, it’s that she didn’t have the same opportunities. This is real.

From the New York Times recently we learn that “poor students rely on their parents for college advice, and many of them end up going to less rigorous colleges than they can handle” (h/t Akil Bello aka at the moment, Proctor Dre ). We’re betting that a less rigorous college is going to produce test-takers who do worse on the GMAT. Does that mean they are not as smart? Or does it only mean that they came from a disadvantaged financial background?

Or what about someone coming in from the military, who has a strong aptitude but studied those subjects many long years ago, and was very rusty in tackling them again for the GMAT? And on top of that, he’s been constantly deployed to war zones and conflict areas, and had a difficult time getting good mentoring or support on the test prep?

You see, people are coming into it from all different circumstances. You can’t take your own experience and extrapolate to the entire universe of applicants, and you have to be very very careful about interpreting too much — or judging others solely on — a test score.

The business school adcoms are looking at the whole person. Employers who recruit at these MBA programs are equally interested in life experience and skills, beyond just the marks on the GMAT. A test score alone is not representative of who you are.

That’s why the schools ask you to write essays, and why they have extensive interview processes, too. It’s an imperfect system, but it’s what they have to work with.

They could easily fill their classes with top scoring applicants if they chose to. That’s not how it works though. They’re in the business of education, and it’s part of their mission to contribute to society. It’s not formulaic. There are many ways to evaluate potential.

Which is awesome, because it means everyone gets a fair shot at admission.

Yes they have standards. They’re not going to admit someone who they think will have trouble with the curriculum. To be sure, they’re not admitting gobs of candidates at the 600 level. Some schools even will offer a conditional acceptance for certain candidates, where they require that you bring up your score before they’ll let you enroll. The test scores are not insignificant.

But they’re just one piece of the puzzle, and they don’t tell the whole story. There’s plenty of candidates with a 700 who come across as true jerks. Or they just don’t put in the work that’s required to communicate themselves effectively in the app. They’re not showing themselves to be differentiated. A high test score is not an instant pass, just as much as a low one is not an immediate rejection.

The adcoms know a life cannot so easily be distilled down to one small component.

EssaySnark suggests a widening of the perspective. Let’s not be so quick to paint others with such a broad brush.

We think Billy Bush, circa 2017, would agree.

 
 
Update: Akil Bello, test prep wiz, tweeted this in response:

Direct link to the post he references about underrepresented minorities and standardized tests is here .

 
Update #2: This article on leadership and controlling emotions includes a list of the “types of intelligence” as identified by Howard Gardner from Harvard in 1983:

  1. Linguistic—good with words
  2. Mathematical—good at numbers
  3. Musical—good with rhythm and sound
  4. Visual-Spatial—good at thinking in three dimensions
  5. Bodily-Kinesthetic—good at physical activity
  6. Intrapersonal—good at understanding oneself
  7. Interpersonal—good at interacting with other people

The GMAT tests two or maybe three of these.

Columbia MBA early decision deadline & acceptance rate

by EssaySnark

Now that Columbia has officially released its 2017 MBA essay questions — which are a wonderfully simplified and much-clearer version of the same questions they’ve been asking for eons — we wanted to dig into one of the most common questions any BSer ever asks: Is it easier to get into Columbia Early Decision? Well……

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