The advice we give to many BSers as Round 1 is breathing down their necks is: If you know you can do better on your applications, then don’t rush them. Don’t submit crap apps in Round 1 just to get them submitted.
That advice came with a big caveat, though. It was predicated on the idea that you know you can do better.
Round 1 can be an advantage, but only if you were prepared and ready.
Round 2 is… make-or-break. Do-or-die. Your last gasp for this season.
What if you still don’t feel ready?
Well, we’ll offer up the helpful/not-helpful idea that maybe you’re someone who never feels ready? Maybe you are prone to self-doubt and a destructive sense of uncertainty, and that’s just how you are wired.
If that’s you, the best remedy is to put all of yourself into the next three weeks and GET TO WORK!
Submitting an application that you are uncertain about, but that you know you put in your very best effort, will still result in a sense of satisfaction for you later on. Whether or not that application results in an admit, you will know that you tried your hardest.
So what if you’re another type of BSer? What if you’re someone who gets paralyzed by the enormity of the task, and you have trouble figuring out where to start, and you feel that sinking sense of gloom that you’re going to procrastinate another day or a week or a month away, and you don’t feel prepared?
Or you’ve had the noblest of intentions but Everything Seems to be Happening All at Once and you’re being pulled in 50 million directions by work and by family and darn it, you just really are totally stressed out and frazzled by everything going on in your
For ALL OF YOU, the remedy is the same:
Get started NOW.
We have plenty of resources and lots o’ support available. Yes there’s still time to get through all the steps of the Complete Essay Package. Or just pick up the Career Goals App Accelerator, and work through the exercises.
The best (only?) remedy for the sense of foreboding and dread is to TAKE ACTION.
Take this moment, RIGHT NOW, and sketch out your ideas for an essay.
Right now, write down: WHAT MATTERS MOST TO ME, AND WHY?1
Just write four sentences on it. A short paragraph. Capture the first idea that comes to mind.
Or here’s one: Write down: WHAT CAUSED THE MOST GROWTH FOR ME IN MY PREVIOUS LIFE?2
Identify the event, or the circumstances, or the period when you feel like you transformed into someone new.
Nobody ever feels “ready” for anything truly big that they’re trying to achieve. But the winners do it anyway — and they don’t fool themselves about being prepared if they’re not.
If you know you’re not prepared, then that’s awesome! You have knowledge! That’s the first step, and now you can take the next one. Make an effort RIGHT NOW to capture some ideas on the hardest essay question that you’re writing for this season.
Or maybe you’re not even to that point yet. Maybe you don’t even know what all your target schools are asking.
Well then, take the next five minutes and compile all of those questions into a list. We have them posted here on the site, organized by each of the top bschools.
(A slight warning: If you’re currently planning on applying to more than six schools in Round 2, and especially if you’ve never written an essay for any MBA app before in your life, then please reconsider. Even if you submitted apps in Round 1 and you have some essay writing experience under your belt, we don’t really encourage anyone to cast a wide net and submit huge numbers of apps. Each app will require a tremendous amount of work — that is, if you’re going to do a good job on it. If your list looks like Kellogg and Stanford and Wharton and Tuck and MIT and Columbia and Duke…. then you have bitten off a massive amount of ambition, not in terms of whether any of those are in reach for you, but based on the sheer amount of effort required to write essays for all of them. If today you have written zero drafts, then we would suggest a target of perhaps four schools as the max. Or at least, see what the quality looks like when you get the first one done — you could even ask for our Sanity Check on that one — and then decide how many more to do thereafter, once you have confidence in your skills and ability to execute.)
If you don’t feel prepared for Round 2, then that’s OK. A sense of fear and trepidation is probably a sign that you’re sane, and appropriately evaluating what you’re up against. After all, this change-your-life project is BIG. It’s SCARY. It’s natural to be nervous about it.
There is not much time, but there is ENOUGH time. We promise.
And we are here to help if you need it.
Tell us what you think.