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Questions to ponder courtesy of UVA Darden!

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Want to start thinking about your MBA app strategy without doing any heavy lifting?

Here’s a great series of questions posted on the Darden admissions blog late last year . These are meant to illustrate how they look at candidates but they’re an excellent set of questions for you to sit down and consider right now, before you’ve actually started thinking about essay topics or which schools you’ll be trying for. Not all schools evaluate on exactly these dimensions, and even Darden was only using this to illustrate the perspective they take. But these are quite interesting things to ponder! They touch on things like teamwork and collaboration and leadership and all the standard buzzwords that you’ll get so sick of hearing about as you traverse this process of applying to bschool:

  • Are you collaborative?
  • What kind of teammate are you?
  • Do you freely share your expertise?
  • Do you enjoy learning from others?
  • Do you want to be an active participant in your educational experience?
  • Are you relationship-oriented?
  • Do you value different backgrounds and perspectives?

Don’t just breeze over this list nodding your head and saying, “Hmm interesting questions!” Instead, get your MBA essay planning notebook and jot them down – consider putting each one individually at the top of its own page. Do some brainstorming. Can you think of an example from your life that fits each question?

Keep a running list as you go through the rest of the day, and week, and month.

This should be an ongoing process.

Some of these questions are actually quite deep. What does it mean to be “relationship-oriented”? Can you redefine that term? Now, can you think of an instance where you acted that way, that would demonstrate you being that way?

Don’t feel you need to be “relationship-minded” in order to get into or succeed in bschool. It’s OK if you answer “no” to that question. But give yourself space to ponder it. Maybe tonight on your commute home, set up some time for just thinking about these concepts.

But you will need to do some serious self-reflection if you’re going to be coming up with quality essay content in a few short months! That’s true at every school, definitely not only Darden.

The best essay topics are considered over time. Starting with this list will be your first effort to prime the pump and get that brain trained to spit out the good stuff.

($) MBA admissions and background checks

by EssaySnark

Different schools definitely do this differently, and not all schools even conduct background checks — but many of them do now and the process may seem intimidating. “Ohmygosh. They’re going to dig into my background. I have so many skeletons in my closet. What will they find?!?” Relax, Brave Supplicant. If you are an honest…

While much of the blahg is available completely for free, the content here is reserved for members with full blahg access only ($9.95/month for six months, cancel anytime). Please login to view this content or purchase a membership.

Now is a great time for thank-yous!

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Hopefully you’re celebrating with some big news of acceptances — at least one, and maybe multiple! We’ve been inundated with many happy emails and updates from excited Brave Supplicants who are headed to bschool in the fall, and we do hope that you also are in that position.

In the rush of your big news of successes then there’s one important task you should not forget about:

Remember all those people who recommended you for admission? The current and former bosses who spent all that time on your apps? Now would be an excellent time to say THANK YOU!! to all of those people.

And we don’t mean just the excited “OMG thanks!” when you announce to your boss you got in. Yes you will do that, obviously, but there’s more to be done at this moment of power.

Having a gesture with people who believed in you, who went out of their way to make effort on your behalf, is a way to close the loop and make sure they know that you appreciate what they did.

It’s not like those people did it because they expected to get thanked or gifted later on.

However, you’re in a moment of power — a big win has happened that you worked hard to achieve. There’s an opening with that, and if you stay humble, and appreciative, and capture some of this energy in a way that sends it back to people in your life that you admire and respect, then it is a way of honoring it, for yourself and for them.

You can say “thank you” in any way that feels right for you, that’s appropriate to the nature of the relationship. Maybe you’ll take your manager out for a drink, or sport for a really nice dinner. Maybe you’ll buy a round of drinks for everyone on your team. Maybe you’ll buy a formal thank-you card from a nice stationery store, and write your appreciate by hand. Maybe it’s a nice box of chocolates that she can take home to her family. Obviously the minimum would be a well-crafted email but our opinion is that this moment deserves more. Reflect on this person. Take some time to think of something meaningful to say. Do more than just thank them. Tell them what you appreciate about them. Share some way that they helped you to develop and grow. Include a small reference to something that they may not even have recognized that was meaningful for you. Make it specific, and personal. Highlight their value to you in some way. Make it explicit.

Or if that all seems like too much, then at least be sure you directly communicate your gratitude and appreciation. Do what feels right to you, based on the nature of the relationship you have with him or her as an individual.

Don’t believe us on the difference it can make?

 

Showing some class, and good manners, at these moments in life will make an impression, especially in this day and age when people seem to always cut corners and be in a rush and it’s easy to forget the niceties of life. But that’s not why you’re doing it. You’re doing it for you. These people did something for you when they didn’t have to, and they clearly did it well enough that the schools want to have you. They didn’t phone it in or just rattle off meaningless answers to the questions that the schools asked for in the recs. (Or maybe they did, but even if so, they still went to the effort of completing them!! and whatever they said didn’t prevent you from getting accepted.) So an acknowledgement and a heart-felt ‘thank you’ is warranted. That’s just about being a decent person.

But what will actually happen if you go to the trouble of doing something more than the minimum is you will capture the magic of this moment in your life, this phase when you’re flying high from your successes, and like embedding in amber, it will crystallize in very fine memories. Those you will have for the rest of your life.

Beginnings and endings are important. You’re in a moment of big transition and these moments will float by so fast. Having a gesture with the people who matter and who have played a role in your life at such times will change you. As they say, sweat the details. The details are all that we have.

 
 
 
 
Just to be clear, this post is not a veiled attempt to get people to say ‘Thank You EssaySnark!!’ — we’re always thrilled to hear of BSers’ acceptances and MBA wins so such emails and updates announcing your admits are certainly fun to receive, but that’s not what this post is about. If you wanna let us know you got in we would love to hear it! But if not, that’s ok too. You should still thank your recommenders, either way. 🙂

Most common mistakes in applying to bschool that won’t get you rejected but also really are not good.

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Regardless of what stage of applying you’re in, there are plenty of mistakes you can make. This post has a little bit for everyone! 😉

  • apply in round 3 — this is a weird admissions season and it’s impossible to say how things will be looking at all of these schools by the time their final round appears on the calendar, but we are highly pessimistic that there will be gobs of seats available at any of these programs at that point. We never recommend a Round 3 app because it makes your reapplication efforts all the harder, since it’s highly unlikely it’ll work out. However, there are always exceptions! Our Late Season Targets Review can be useful for input on what you have planned.
  • low GMAT and assume it’s fine — this is the place from which reapplicants are born; ’nuff said. Hopefully you’ve been through the posts on the blahg about low GMAT.
  • low GPA and not taking action — actually, reapplicants are born here too — and no, a high GMAT is not really enough to fully offset poor college academics, but it depends on what the actual stats of the profile are. Lots of posts on academics and low GPA here, too.
  • poor choice of recommenders — this is just a misstep in strategy. We often see some missed opportunities, even fairly major ones, by applicants not understanding the importance of the recommendations (and/or not effectively preparing their recommenders). Check out some of the posts here on the blahg about recommenders.
  • asking the admissions office questions you could find out on your own — no you definitely won’t get rejected for this, but some schools do track contact with candidates, and you don’t want to end up being flagged as “That Guy” (or Gal)
  • believing everything you read on applicant forums — dang there’s a lot of bad information out there! Be careful who you listen to, Brave Supplicant!

If you have a specific situation you want input on, you can use our quick-hit Private Consult service to ask a one-off question, or anyone is always invited to post questions for the ‘Snark publicly here on the blahg — we respond to all comments even those left on posts deep in the ancient ‘snarchives. We’re happy to help if we can!

Again, none of these are necessarily showstoppers, but they’re all unforced errors that can end up being roadblocks, especially if there’s more than one of them occurring at once. Stack them and you run into problems. At this late date, you may have much of your app strategy set in stone, but it’s possible that you can still make adjustments that pay off tremendously — so please enlist our help if you think we can add value!! The Sanity Check is a great way to know how your app chances are looking based on what you have pulled together so far, and if you sign up for that now, you could even get feedback well in time to make significant changes if needed, before that Round 2 deadline shows up.

Good luck to all you scrambling to make Round 2 a reality! We’ll be around if we can provide value to your efforts to submit some great applications.

 
“Action is the foundational key to all success.”

– Picasso

 
“What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing.”

– Picasso

Two things you need to do today.

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We know a lot of you are wrapping up your Round 1 applications – congrats!! You should feel very proud of yourself if you’ve managed to submit even a single application. Each one (as you now appreciate!) is a tremendous amount of work, and you deserve to feel good about the effort you’ve made. You’re also likely wondering how things will turn out, and we can’t offer much on that except to be prepared for a whole rollercoaster ride of emotions in the coming weeks — many people on the other side of this process say that the waiting you’re about to go through is the hardest part of all!

We know it’s tempting to chill for awhile after you click ‘submit’ on that final application, and you should feel good about doing some well-deserved slacking for a week-ish after your last app is in.

But before you do! Two new tasks that we’re going to add to your to-do list today:

1. If you didn’t already: Please go sign in to each of your school’s app systems and download the PDF or export your version of the application that you submitted. If you don’t do this now, you may forget to ever go back and retrieve it, and this is information that we hope you’ll never need!! But, in case you end up as a reapplicant, you must have your current-season’s app available to do a good job in strategizing for your repeat attempt. Or, on the opposite side of the spectrum, if you end up getting admitted, then you may want to have a record of your fabulous submission to share with a friend who’s going through it themselves later on. (Not that it’ll provide much value to anyone else. But you never know when something like that will be useful.) The app you submitted will be available to you probably all the way through May 2019, but it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever think to go back and retrieve it — and if you don’t, and end up needing it, you will be SOL forever. The schools won’t be able to access it from any archive. It’ll be gone to you forever. So, take the time, log on to each one, and file it away (place it somewhere on your drive in your permanent records that are being backed up in case your computer crashes — you do have a backup system in place already, don’t you? If not, then today’s post contains three tasks for you to take care of!!).

2. If you haven’t already: Register to vote! Regardless of where you lean politically, your vote counts! This is obviously being directed to our American readers, but anyone living in a democracy anywhere in the world needs to vote. In America, a midterm elections is coming up in November through which important federal offices will be decided that will determine either Republican or Democratic control of one or both houses of Congress — but at least as important, many state and local governments have critical contests and initiatives on the ballot this Fall as well. Here’s some insight from college students who were interviewed about the importance of voting and why it matters . If you’ve just started your first term at bschool (and you’re American) make sure to register where you live now, or find out how to vote by mail through an absentee ballot submitted in your hometown. Do this now! These things take time to process, and while the election is not until Tuesday, November 6th, most county boards require that registration happen well in advance of that date.

These are things that are in the category of “being proactive” and “taking care of stuff” and they’re never fun to do, necessarily, but doing them prevents a lot of regret later on.

And then you can go back to your Netflix bingeing again.

 
“When I look around I always learn something, and that is to be yourself always. Express yourself and have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it. Start from the root of your being and ask, how can I be me?”

– Bruce Lee

Wisdom from Elon Musk

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Whatever you think of the man, he’s accomplished some interesting things.

And we tend to agree with this advice:

 

 

In our Essay Decimator essay reviews, we are not trying to give you “negative feedback” — we’re trying to give you feedback to help you improve!!! And the feedback we give is not on your character or performance, the way Elon is alluding. Instead, it’s as objective as possible, on your output; on your workproduct. And it’s very targeted for a specific purpose: To help you get in!

It’s not too late to get help on those applications. And it’s never too late to change. All that’s required is to loosen up, be flexible, be open.

If we can help, we’re around!!

 
“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well, others will do their thinking for them.”

– George Orwell