school reviews & insights

So when are these darned essay questions coming out?

June 17, 2017 by EssaySnark 2 Comments

We know many BSers are itching to get started on their apps and we keep getting asked, “When is School X gonna release its questions?”

We did a full post on this last year which covered app / question release dates for 2015. Based on that, here’s what you can expect from here.

Stanford, Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Ross, NYU and Haas already have released questions and maybe UCLA too (we can’t tell if their site is saying it’s same requirements for 2017 or not). We’ve already released an updated SnarkStrategies Guide for Stanford GSB, Harvard HBS and Columbia, so if you’re trying for any of those, you can most definitely get started now!

(Pro Tip: YOU CAN GET STARTED NOW ON ANY OF THEM!)

This is one reason for a rare Saturday post – it’s the weekend – we’re encouraging you to actually do that! Like, TODAY!

The other schools will all have questions coming out soon as well. How soon? Here’s when that happened in past years.

Chicago Booth	2015: July 8th app opened with essays and deadlines (no pre-announcement of details) 2016: June 17th essay questions announced 2017 estimate: SOON! (we expect essay to change)
Wharton	2015: May 7th deadlines announced; essays announced in June 2016: June 16th essay questions announced 2017 estimate: SOON! (we expect essays to change)
MIT	2015: May 7th essays and deadlines announced 2016: June 24th essay questions announced 2017 estimate: Adcom says app will be out in mid-July; ~~essay questions may be released sooner~~ APP DETAILS RELEASED 6/19/17 AND THE MAIN ESSAY DID NOT CHANGE BUT THEY’VE ADDED A VIDEO QUESTION! (we do not expect essay to change)
Tuck	2015: June 9th essays questions announced 2016: July 5th essay questions announced 2017 estimate: Around July 10th (we expect essays to change)
Darden	2015: June 15th essay question announced 2016: July 1st essay question announced ~~2017 estimate: Around July 1st~~ (we have no prediction on whether essay will change – it might or it might not) APP DETAILS RELEASED 6/19/17 AND THE ESSAY DID CHANGE!
Duke	2015: June 17th deadline announced; essays were not confirmed until app opened on July 22nd 2016: July 7th (?) essay question announced 2017 estimate: Around July 1st (we expect essays to change)
Kellogg	2015: July 8th app opened with essays and deadlines (no pre-announcement of details) 2016: June 14th deadlines announced, essays came later (ack it’s a hole in the data!) 2017 estimate: Around July 15th (we expect essays to change)

Unless noted above, these are EssaySnark’s estimates for 2017.

Now let’s get more practical:

Your essays will be better – and you can save $$$! – if you start now.

We try to make both of these points very clear:

1. You need TIME to develop good essays.

We do not recommend waiting till essay questions for your school to come out before starting on your essay strategy! If you read our school questions page for your target school, you will be able to see what they have asked before, and you’ll get an overview of what that school cares about.

Is it career goals? Many schools are very focused on that. Are you able to present your short-term and long-term goals effectively? Like, can you do it right now, reading this post? You need solid career goals for Columbia and Berkeley, and it’s likely that Wharton and Tuck will also have essays on goals. (Want help? The Career Goals App Accelerator or for many of you, the MBA Career Goals Planning Guide for Entrepreneurship, will get you started!)

Is it accomplishments and achievements? All schools are focused on that but that doesn’t mean they’ll end up as essays per se. You still need to be able to show your achievements and professional readiness in the app, even if you’re not writing an essay on it! THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR ALL SCHOOLS! (Want help? The Accomplishments & Achievements App Accelerator is your answer!)

Is it personal qualities, and life experience? Or commitment and values? Fewer schools are outwardly focused on this, and yes, it makes sense to tackle such topics through the confines of an actual essay question. But these schools already have their questions out, for the most part! Yale and Stanford and Berkeley Haas and Ross are all looking for essays on these topics. You’ll want to pick up their respective SnarkStrategies Guides as the best resource — and yes, all of those will be updated soon if they haven’t been already!

In addition: Your first drafts are going to suck.

You canNOT wait to start your essays until two weeks before the deadline and expect them to be as good as they could possibly be. You need time – that composting thing we’ve been talking about recently. You also need time for the standard cycle of:

– Write a bunch of stuff and think that it’s totally good
– Submit it for feedback and EssaySnark tells you it’s actually not
– Cry
– (two weeks go by)
– Come out from the corner where you’ve been pouting and try again
– Read read read and read some more. Devour the blahg. Study the resources we’ve been pointing to all along. Think think think (ouch this part hurts!). Try writing another draft. Throw it away out of discouragement. Sit on it for awhile. Come back – AHA! lightbulb – write something that you think may actually be on target.
– Submit it for feedback and hold your breath
– Cry again but this time in relief because EssaySnark said it’s on track and it has potential
– Revise revise revise

That is how you write good essays. That does not happen overnight.

And oh hey look!

2. You will save MONEY if you start now!

Now that we’ve actually got your attention…

Here’s some data. Two totally different BSers from last season who both made it into the schools of their dreams. One started crazy early like we don’t even know if anyone has ever started this early before (we’re talking YEARS ahead of their planned applications) and the other started ohkindalate.

Here’s how much they paid for the exact-same EssaySnark services:

	Brave Supplicant #1	Brave Supplicant #2
HBS Essay Decimator two full revision cycles on your Harvard essay HBS essay final recheck third draft review – always optional but both chose it – smart! Second Essay Decimator two full cycles on any other school, up to 4 essays	First Essay Decimator purchase: 06/01/2016 Total price paid for these services: $1,583	First Essay Decimator purchase: 08/25/2016 Total price paid for these services: $1,822

You see, EssaySnark pricing goes up as we get busier. That’s how this supply/demand thing works. We incentivize you to start early by offering lower prices as encouragement. We’re already so busy with other motivated BSers that we will most definitely be raising prices again soon (we’re even wondering if this might be the first year we have to shut the doors on new sign-ups based on capacity). You can bet that if you wait till August to sign up, it’s going to be more expensive than if you start now (heck, if you even wait till July…).

The other advantage of course is that BSer #1 was done with their essays much much earlier and was not sweating around deadlines. BSer #2 ended up paying significantly more than this in Speedy Review add-ons, whereby you can get super-fast turnarounds, because they were up against the deadlines; we did not include those charges in the above costs because they are optional. These data are core services only. Start now and you’re not going to be at risk for any such add-ons once Snarkville gets crazy and our dance card starts to fill up. You’re going to be done early, and boy, won’t your Future Self be thanking you!

If you’re sitting here thinking, “But wait, how do I work on my essays when the essay questions aren’t out yet and I only have 60 days on the Essay Decimator subscription based on EssaySnark’s terms of purchase?”

Well, there are options:

1. The Complete Essay Package has a whole heckofalotta other steps to start on BEFORE you’re gonna write a single word of a single essay. It includes all the App Accelerators referenced on this page. Those’ll keep you busy for at least two weeks!

2. We can’t guarantee this, but we’re assuming all of the schools will have their essay questions out in the next month. That gives you another month to do the essays. That should be plenty of time to work through the two-stage review process on any of the Essay Decimators we offer (HBS or Standard).

3. If you are diligently working on your essays and you simply run out of time, we will always entertain well-intentioned requests for extensions. If you’re a slacker, an extension can be purchased at an additional fee to reactivate an expired service. No, you can’t warehouse services; you can’t buy stuff now at early cheaper pricing and expect to get a free extension later if you aren’t actively working on them. That defeats the entire purpose of our subscription model and it just won’t work.

So that’s our pitch for today.

Whether you use EssaySnark or not, please take this opportunity – you have the whole weekend ahead of you! – to START ON YOUR MBA APPLICATIONS!!!!

We’re obviously around in case anyone has questions.

Good luck with those apps this year, Brave Supplicant!!

($) EssaySnark Unranked: Top MBA Programs (based on how easy it is to get in) 2017 Edition

June 9, 2017 by EssaySnark

We published our very own BusinessWeek-like MBA rankings here on the blahg and wow, it’s 3 years old now?!?? A BSer asked us to update it, so here goes. First, a disclaimer and an explanation: The disclaimer is that this is just our view of the admissions landscape, based on our own experience watching lots…

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.

($) Columbia Essay 2

May 30, 2017 by EssaySnark - Discusses Columbia

Earlier this year, before the schools started announcing their essay questions, we were all ready to write a series of posts on Columbia called “BatCoB.” Thankfully, Columbia’s new essay questions do not require it. You probably think EssaySnark has just about lost it. We were going to write a post titled “BatCoB”? What is that,…

Who’s a good fit for the Columbia J-Term?

May 11, 2017 by EssaySnark - Discusses Columbia 16 Comments

This was originally posted two years ago. We’re reblahgging it now because a) it’s relevant, and b) it’s timely. There’s some comments at the bottom from BSers who have long ago been admitted to Columbia and other programs. We’re inviting you to post your own comments too if there’s anything we can do to demystify the process of applying to Columbia’s MBA program or whether you’re a fit to the specific program formats and options they offer.

Mostly though we’re reblahgging this because, well, Columbia nis always the early bird. Yes indeedy, the Columbia essay questions are available. Today is our chance to tell you about a one-of-a-kind program offered at Columbia Business School. It’s the J-Term.

The J-Term, in case you’re not familiar, means , as in, you’re starting in January instead of the standard August start. To make that more precise, if you apply to the J-Term, then you’d be starting in January 2018 — or in like eight months from now. Instead of waiting over a year to begin.

Used to be, it was a fairly strict profile type who got admitted to Columbia’s accelerated January Start MBA program. Many years ago, in a different era of admissions at Columbia, we heard an adcom person say, “Don’t apply to the J-Term if you’re a career changer. We won’t admit you.” Yes, they were that black-and-white about it.

That’s changed.

As a broad statement, the profile that’s a potential fit to the J-Term is still the same, because it’s still a Columbia MBA, but this “no career changer” stance has softened, and as a result, some of you BSers these days may be a good fit to this track without realizing it.

The J-Term is the exact-same full-time MBA curriculum and experience as the August Start, with the only exception being that you get through it a lot faster. You skip out on the summer internship and instead take your second term core courses during that three-month period. Then you join up as a second-year student with the cohort of students who started in August just prior to you, and you graduate with them.

So basically, if you were to join the Columbia J-Term this coming January (2018), you’d be the Class of 2019 and you’d graduate with everyone who’s currently gearing up to begin their MBA this coming fall. You’d be graduating with all the rest who went through the admissions process LAST YEAR. It’s kind of like leap-frogging time, in a way.

It’s especially attractive for anyone who missed out on applying this past season (2016-’17) and/or who just couldn’t crack the MBA admissions nut and is looking to be a reapplicant in the coming season.

But it’s not just any old applicant who’s a fit to the J-Term.

It’s really only appropriate to those who don’t need that internship.

So, if you’re making a radical career jump, then it’s going to be a tough sell to convince the Columbia adcom that you can do it without the advantage of the standard internship experience. That’s really the whole point of the internship, you know: To get you ready for the big post-MBA job that you’re angling for. If you currently don’t have much to build on, in terms of industry or function experience, then it’s not going to be so easy to convince an employer to take that risk on you – especially when you’ll be competing with all the full-time MBAs who DID do the internship (both the ones at Columbia, and at every other school that the recruiter is interviewing at).

However, if you’re using the MBA to advance your existing career path, to jumpstart your advancement in your current industry – say, you’re in PE and want to go back to PE – then the J-Term is absolutely perfect for you.

If you’re already in financial services in some capacity, then we can also see a potentially viable pitch to use the J-Term to transition to another niche within financial services.

Or, if you intend to start a business through the MBA experience, voila. J-Term.

And if you’re lucky enough to be sponsored by your current employer and you will be headed back to them after graduation: J-Term.

Someone ready to join their family business after bschool: J-Term.

And finally: Any true go-getter who is a networking genius and is at the top of his or her field already, who knows how to be the mover and shaker and everyday rainmaker and has accrued some valuable research and CONNECTIONS in her intended target sector… We can see how possibly a J-Term pitch could work out for you, too. Though that one is definitely a case-by-case basis sort of thing.

We specifically wanted to offer some advice for anyone who tried for Columbia August Start last season and didn’t make it, who is now thinking that maybe the J-Term is a better fit:

This special nugget of advice is offered to our blahg members. If you’re seeing this message and you have an active blahg membership then please log in to view the special reapplicant advice. Otherwise consider becoming a member!

-end special nugget-

If you have questions on your situation and whether this might be the program for you, feel free to leave them in the comments section, we’re happy to serve as an initial sounding board.

Columbia candidates, J-Term and otherwise, it’s time to get started!

2017 Stanford GSB MBA essay questions – Class of 2020

April 28, 2017 by EssaySnark - Discusses Stanford GSB Leave a Comment

Essay A: “What matters most and why?”

Essay B: “Why Stanford?”

Yup, those are again the questions that Stanford is asking you to write about in your MBA app this year.

A few weeks ago, Stanford admissions very quietly announced that there would be no significant changes to their application this year. Those same two questions are what they asked last season, and have been asking with only slight variations for practically eons. We’ve got a whole collection of commentary on how to deal with them on our Stanford Essay Questions page. You’ll find many many posts there on these two deceptively simple questions, including a bunch of essay critiques like this one on “what matters most”, which will help you understand what not to do.

We didn’t make a big announcement here on the front page of the blahg when we heard that this year’s Stanford essay questions would be the same because, well, we know that nobody is really working on essays yet. It’s too early. You should be focusing on things like GMAT (or maybe GRE if you have a good reason for that test instead) and researching your schools. Stanford also released their deadlines and their Round 1 of September 21 isn’t even the earliest. You can expect HBS to take that slot. Or, if you’re trying for Columbia Early Decision or J-Term, then you’ll want to hustle an app in well ahead of September if you can manage it. But none of these other schools have yet hinted at what their app requirements will be. So, too early to start on those, either.

Anyway, you won’t want to start with Stanford as your first app. Too hard. Like, way way way too hard. You don’t want to deal with the difficult learning curve of learning to write MBA essays at the same time as you’re tackling the hardest essays around (not to mention, the essays for the hardest school on the planet to get into). The stakes are too high. The first application you write will not be your best. Struggle through another school’s essays first — ideally, a school with more straightforward questions. Columbia, conveniently, tends to offer those. Again, we don’t know what they’ll be doing this coming season, but it’s likely that theirs will be easier to deal with than Stanford’s.

So what should you be working on right now?

As we stated above:

GMAT (or GRE). If you’re serious about making a good impression at Stanford or any other top school, then make sure you’re bringing your best self. You’re reading this early, in the Spring. You have plenty o’ time to deal with any weaknesses in your profile. Take advantage of that now, BSer.
Read more in the ‘Snarchive of posts on GMAT & GRE
School research. If Stanford is asking you, “Why Stanford?”, then that means you need to know why you’re applying there. It’s not just because it’s the “best” bschool (whatever that means). Stanford is a special place — but then so is every other school. It’s up to you to articulate to the adcom, at Stanford and every other program you’re applying to, why you’re choosing them. If you’re going on rankings alone, then by definition, you’re taking someone else’s opinion on what school is “best” — and we can guarantee that you will have trouble articulating why that school is “best” for YOU. This can come about only through your own effort of learning about each place and what they offer, which comes from talking to people, and hopefully visiting if you can.
Read more in the ‘Snarchive of posts on Selecting Schools

If you’re feeling especially eager, then sure, you can pick up our Stanford MBA Application Guide which does have some long-term planning advice that is super helpful for those who are motivated and who are starting early. It currently covers last year’s app but as you can see from this post, the questions are going to be the same. And, even though it’s still valid and accurate, we plan to update that guide sometime this summer, once we have seen the new GSB application and all app requirements have been confirmed by admissions. When we do, we’ll also be able to integrate the most up-to-date advice and learnings gleaned from coaching a bunch of Brave Supplicants last year who are now headed to Stanford this Fall. That’s what makes EssaySnark’s MBA application guides so useful, BTW: We bring in real-world examples and nuggets of experience from the trenches, based on the work we’ve done with the prior crop of candidates. We frequently hear from BSers that our guides are the best available, and that’s why. Anyway, if you subscribe to the guide today, you’ll get instant access to any update that’s published during your 90-day subscription term, or you’ll be able to re-up for another 90-day subscription later on to get the 2017 version for $4.95. (Sorry that we can’t be definitive on when this 2017 update will go out; suffice to say, one is planned, but the timing is unknown.) Or you can hold off and plunk down your pennies for the updated version when it’s released at whatever price it’ll be published at.

Sorry folks, didn’t mean to turn this post into an infomercial.

If you’re starting to think about these very challenging Stanford MBA questions, like “what matters most” and how in heck do you write an essay on that, please stay tuned over the coming weeks, as we have a new series planned for a novel approach to applying to bschool.

It’s called, Tell the Truth.

And we don’t just mean that MBA apps are no place for alternative facts.

The best way to get into bschool — especially Stanford GSB — is to be yourself. Tell the truth about who you are, what you’ve done, why you need an MBA.

It’s not that most people intentionally make stuff up. It’s that it’s really hard to answer questions like the ones that Stanford asks unless you figure yourself out first.

Maybe what we’ll title our coming series: How to be authentic in your MBA applications

If you’re serious about Stanford then that’s the very best advice we can offer.

More to come on that important topic! Y’all come back now, ya hear.

And enjoy your weekends in this wondrous springtime pre-app-season lull. There will come a time in the not-too-distant future where you will have no life. Enjoy your freedom while it lasts.

($) The reality of GMAT scores and top schools. Featuring Darden.

April 19, 2017 by EssaySnark - Discusses Darden

About a year ago, we talked about how certain schools are putting even more emphasis on GMAT score than ever before. That was based on our experience last season (Class of 2018 admissions). We saw how that affected the Class of 2018 profiles – Wharton’s average GMAT score is now up to 724, but perhaps…

Military Candidate Question: “Why does Stanford have a smaller percentage of Vets?”

January 20, 2017 by EssaySnark - Discusses Stanford GSB, Cornell Johnson Leave a Comment

We love it when Brave Supplicants do their homework.

We got this question from a military candidate recently:

I noticed Stanford has a comparatively lower percentage of Veterans in its class than many of the other top schools (3% or so versus 5%). Any theories on why that is?

Well yes! In fact, we do have theories!

Today we’re going to share them with you – if you’re in that contingent of military MBA candidates.

If you have access privileges on your account to view our Military MBA content then you’ll see this material. If not: Happy Inauguration! Merry Weekend! Best wishes for 2017! Or whatever other type of good-will generating we can do for you. We’ll see you back here on Monday for a standard installment of snarkness.

Military MBA types interested in Stanford, read on.

[start nifty special military-only content here]

You do not have rights to view this Military MBA content or you are not logged in. Please log in, or follow the instructions on the Military MBA microsite if you think you should have access.

[end meandering and probably super boring EssaySnark blabbering about Military MBA peeps and Stanford – don’t worry, you didn’t miss anything]

As a wrap-up comment:

Trying to interpret or extrapolate anything from the Stanford dataset and class profile is not usually a very fruitful effort. Stanford admits PEOPLE not numbers. The numbers can help point you in the direction of the standards of excellence that they tend to select on – but they don’t tell the whole story.

Good luck to all who are trying for Stanford this year! From the military or any other background.

If you’re a military MBA, check out our resources and hit us up if we can help!