EssaySnark

You are here: Home / Snarchives for general snark

Nobody sets out to be a bad person.

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

Have you seen any of these Fyre Festival documentaries? Pretty incredible, how all of it went down. The entrepreneur dude who tried to pull it off is called a pathological liar. The most incredible part of all is, even after he got prosecuted by the FBI, he launched a totally new swindling scheme. Apparently his moral compass is calibrated a bit differently than our own.

These tales tend to be rife with irony.

Take the case of a journalist or nonfiction author who plagiarized and fabricates. Every so often we hear of such a case. A big incident happened in 2012 when science writer Jonah Lehrer’s books were pulled. It was discovered that he even made up Dylan quotes for his articles. He admits that his acts “caused deep pain” and he says he did it out of “arrogance”, “a willingness to take shortcuts” and “carelessness” — all reasons why we detest plagiarism. (The big irony of course is that those candid comments came from him during a speech he was paid $20k to give talking about decision-making.)

It’s really easy to get a certain smugness when sitting outside of the circle where such a thing happened. It’s easy to look with an eye of disdain upon the participants in the Fyre Festival fiasco. How could someone do that? How could you be so naive? Why didn’t you say something? How come you didn’t blow the whistle?

The thing is, it’s easy to get sucked in. You get a charismatic enthusiastic charmer and you can get swept away with an idea that, if you stepped back and gave it some distance, or put on your thinking hat, you’d easily recognize it wasn’t so brilliant.

Like all the nonsense with that elite colleges admissions scandal.

So today’s post is a reminder to poke your head out of the morass that it’s mired in, and make sure you’re keeping things on the straight and narrow.

(You’d think we were some type of morals-and-philosophy blog, the amount of time we spend on this stuff. But honestly, in the modern era of The World is On Fire!! we feel that it’s important to be public about these, well, important things.)

 
So here goes:

When you fill out your MBA applications, telling the truth is important.

Seems obvious — too obvious to even have to say it. But that’s how poor decisions are made.

It’s not that we expect BSers who come to the EssaySnark blahg will be trying to bribe admissions officers or sports teams to get in.

It’s more insidious than that.

You get some idea that you need to show the adcoms that you’re a really impressive candidate so you start making up career goals that you think “sound good” — like, you want to be a some CEO at some big corporation some day.

That’s not exactly a lie, since anybody can say anything about what they want to do in the future, and who knows, maybe you legitimately are aiming high. That’s not going to keep you out of bschool if everything else lines up well and you convince the adcoms about what you’ve done in the past that sets you a part. (Most schools really don’t want such long-term and lofty visions for a career goals statement, but that’s not the main point we’re trying to make today.)

Where things can get slippery is where you get a little creative with the facts of your past.

Maybe you tried to start some type of do-gooder organization at some point. You got together with a few friends and put the basic sketch of a plan together where you would launch a non-profit to raise money for underprivileged kids to pay for their school fees. A noble cause for sure! You had the best of intentions. But after about six months there was some disagreements with your buddies, and one of them took a new job and suddenly had no free time to devote to the project any longer, and you hit some walls in trying to get started. Nobody wanted to give you more than a few bucks. It was harder than you expected. The shine of the fresh idea started to wear and it became work instead of fun, and then it languished by the wayside of your life, and suffered the slow demise of yet another abandoned initiative. It still exists for you in concept, and it was something you always intended to go back to and revive, and make real, but you know it’s not a real thing that actually went anywhere.

Yet in your MBA apps, you have a section of your resume about it with dates coming into the present day, and in an essay you talk about this NGO that you started. You kinda sorta fail to mention that it floundered and never got off the ground.

That’s lying.

You really need to be telling the truth in your apps.

You realize that schools do background checks, right?

You don’t need to inflate your history — and it could easily backfire on you if you do.

Same deal with massaging the dates of employment to try and cover up a gap, maybe because you were laid off and are embarrassed about it. Or that you feel you don’t make enough money, so you round up (significantly). Or you’ve heard that it’s possible to make too much money and you don’t want that to keep you out of school.

You don’t need to lie to get into bschool. Really truly you don’t.

Yes the process of constructing your messaging in the applications requires some careful planning, and there’s an art to choosing what to say and definitely also how to say it. That’s part of what we mean when we say that you need to construct a pitch — it’s messaging and it’s being selective in what you share and the way you present it. (Pro Tip: This is why a) you need to plan for multiple drafts of every single essay, and b) getting the help of a qualified reviewer who knows how to pitch to a top MBA adcom is critical.)

If you’re talking to an admissions consultant who advises you to go ahead and apply to Columbia Early Decision as an “insurance policy” even if Columbia isn’t your first choice, then please consider carefully the ethics that this person is demonstrating. Just because an admissions consultant tells you it’s OK does not make it OK. Don’t leave your own morals outside the door when you enter into an agreement with any type of coach or advisor.

We believe in karma — to the extent that each and every decision you make affects you. You are the only person who has to live in your skin, inhabiting your life experience. Every time you cut corners or fudge the truth even just a little it decays your core. It takes the shine off your being. Do this often enough and you’ll end up a nasty person without even realizing how you got there. Maybe all that matters to you is your own success in whatever external way you’re defining it. But we would suggest that that’s not the recipe for true happiness in this life.

“Being careless is a choice; it’s choosing not to care.”
– Jonah Lehrer

A reminder that we’re trying to help

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

Last year we did a Post-Mortem Reject Analysis for someone after Round 1 decisions did not go as expected. This person was a reapplicant; they had tried the year before, and then the reapp was also rejected. Here’s part of what we said after some back-and-forth questions once they got our assessment and were questioning some of the reasons that we laid out as causative factors for why they weren’t getting interview invites.

Finally — and this is likely not going to be easy to hear: There was an episode related by your recommender where he gave you feedback and you argued with him. [in the Post Mortem, BSers send in their entire app package, including LORs if they have them — which technically they’re not supposed to, but many applicants do] That type of debating seems to be part of your make-up — and it’s a positive thing! But taken to extremes, it can keep you from the greatest successes in life, which involve personal growth and the evolution of the self. We only mention that because a) the schools care a lot about EQ, and that story demonstrates the opposite; and b) it mirrors our own experience of interacting with you. Every time we assert something about why things haven’t gone your way, we get all this pushback from you with reasons why or questions about how we came to such conclusions.

We gave our professional view of your application in a detailed written report; we reviewed not only your current app but also the original one too. And the reaction seemed to be to question everything we said and push back, instead of using the opportunity to reflect on where we may have offered advice that could be useful to change and to grow.

We get it, this process is HORRIBLE! We’re telling you how things were screwed up and you apparently did everything wrong — and this stuff is so personal! It’s only natural to be defensive about it. We know you put in a lot of work on both applications, and we can see you’ve been successful in life, and are doing interesting things. But that’s not really the point. Learning to be open to feedback is a fundamental first step in making the most of this precious incarnation. Hopefully these comments are received in the way they were intended: To help you.

Notably, this individual’s attitude in interactions with us from this point forward changed completely. It was really quite wonderful to work with them thereafter. It appeared that they heard what we said in the way we intended it: constructive criticism.

Sometimes BSers don’t — and, we acknowledge, sometimes we lack the skill in delivering it in the way that it can be received.

Or put it more accurately: Sometimes we say things in a sh!tty way that we regret. When that happens, we try to re-do it, but it’s always a source of regret.

And, sometimes, we know that people get triggered.

It can be really hard not to think that we’re calling your baby ugly. (Because sometimes, err, well, sorta we are.) This process is so personal. You’re laying all of yourself on the line. You’re trying to jump through all these hoops that the schools have laid out for you. It’s beyond stressful, especially when the stakes are so high.

Getting feedback is just one of those things in life. Pretty much 100% of the time, in the moment when you hear it, it SUCKS.

Everybody gets defensive. It’s the natural mechanism that we’ve all been taught within our psyches.

The trick is, a) KNOW that this will happen – that you’ll get defensive, and b) find a way to manage yourself in that moment, to let it pass, and c) resolve to come back again later and spend time with the feedback when those emotions aren’t running so high.

We hear over and over again from BSers that this is what they have to learn how to do, and when they do, that’s where they discover the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Here’s an excerpt from a review posted by a Success Story BSer after working with us last year:

Just one piece of advice to the brave supplicants -“take EssaySnark’s criticism POSITIVELY and that will do the magic for you. Cry, get over it, and start working on their comments – seriously!!”.

 
 
That’s like the best review we’ve ever gotten. Because it’s from someone who clearly “gets it” – that all we’re doing, when ripping your materials to shreds, is showing you what’s not working, and pointing the path to improvement.

There’s nothing in life better than seeing a report of an admissions success. We want ALL OF YOU to be receiving such happy news at the end of this process this year.

Please take everything we say to you with that in mind. We’re not telling you that you suck. We’re saying that the essay needs work, and that there are skills you can learn to make it better.

Don’t click on crap.

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

Want to change the world? Here’s what you can do: STOP READING STUPID DRAMA-PORN.

Doesn’t matter how you feel about the Kardashians. By clicking on an article about any of them — good or bad — you are feeding an industry that survives on peddling trash.

It’s not that those people are trash.

It’s that they are not selling ANYTHING.

Or more accurately: What they are selling is an illusion. It is fake.

They are selling a lifestyle, or an image, dangling a fantasy of what your life could look like — from the outside — if only you took the right vacations or bought the right product or had the right filter on your photos.

The reason that there is so much NOT-NEWS in our culture is because people respond to it. All the politidrama hitting the front page of major media outlets about who said what behind whose back is NOT NEWS. It’s cloak-and-dagger conspiracy theories or backstabbing feudalism playing out on a larger stage for all of us aghast spectators to watch.

It is NOT NEWS. It is NOT NOURISHING. It is NOT HEALTHY.

You get ZERO nutrient value from consuming it.

We’re not talking about cat videos on reddit or Let’s Plays on youtube. Those have questionable value but they’re not — at least in our opinion — actively damaging our culture. They’re entertaining. Shallow, perhaps, but essentially harmless (mostly).

You may think that an up-in-arms article about the machinations of the White House or the stupid thing that some Leader of the Free World has tweeted today is also harmless. Or even that you need to follow the tweets of the LotFW so that you know what’s happening out there.

But trust us. You do not. Tweets are not what’s happening. Tweets are tweets; ephemeral; fleeting. Tweets do not create policy or change. Tweets seem to be solely a means of distracting everyone from what’s really happening. If you want to know what our government is up to, read the smaller headlines on the front page of the paper. The ones that talk about legislative changes and rules being rolled back. That’s where the real action is today, yet nobody seems to be noticing. Everyone is caught up in the drama about who said what behind whose back.

Or maybe your fetish takes a different form. Maybe you’re secretly obsessed with Nicki Minaj. Or you binge on prank videos when you’re by yourself in your apartment at night. Or you devour all the articles about the manueverings of your favorite quarterback’s personal trainer who’s trying to take over a whole football franchise. Or you can’t stop watching Ellen DeGeneres and you hope nobody ever finds out. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with any of those things (though our perspective is that prank videos are just plain mean).

What we’re suggesting today is that you pay attention to what you actually consume on the Internet. Just because there’s a tantalizing breathless headline about some actress who got her personal phone hacked and her photos are now strewn across the Internet, or some ridiculous thing that someone inside or outside the White House is claimed to have said, or some youtuber posted something totally stupid and racist, or this beauty blogger is throwing shade on that one, does NOT mean you have to click on it and read it or watch the whole damn video that lays out the imagined crimes that one influencer has afflicted upon another.

These things exist because people respond to them. They have no value. They are not making the world a better place (or whatever it is you professed you want to do in your MBA apps).

Watching drama videos on the internet is simply perpetuating the drama. There is no redeeming value for others to participate in drama. It’s drama. It’s emotion for emotion’s sake. To be a voyeur on other people’s emotions is not helpful. It’s not helping them, and it’s not helping you. It’s just giving you a cheap thrill. It lets you be In The Know, so that you can be on the Us side of an us-vs-them scenario. These are hardwired feelings that are built into all of us, where we need to know where the power structure is and which alliances will serve us better — but in this social media era, they are being exploited to the detriment of us all.

The worst of all is clicking on articles that profile the latest mass shooter. Don’t do it. Many of these people are doing it for the infamy of the crime. They want to become famous because of the atrocity. Don’t indulge your sick curiosity in this way. It’s not necessary. You will learn nothing useful by reading about a detailed bio of a disturbed person who committed another disturbing crime.

This is not just a national media issue but a hyperlocal one, too. If you see someone in your social network being treated poorly, then instead of being a bystander to it, say something. Stand up for someone who’s being victimized on the Internet. Do it respectfully, in a way that shows compassion to the one who is bullying as much as the one being bullied. Simply reminding people that “I’m sure you’re really a very nice person IRL and I doubt you would say this to this person’s face. If all of us want the world to be a better place, then perhaps we can try make our online world a little better as a first step.”

The right to free speech means that people can say whatever they want, but you don’t have to participate in it.

If fewer of us are responding to the clickbait, then there will be fewer advertising dollars flowing to those who are trafficking in such counterproductive commerce. Is the article whose headline you see going to uplift you? Is it going to teach you something new? Is it going to give you a new skill or help expand your view of the world in a way that will benefit you or some others?

If not, you can still click through to read it. But just before you do, ask yourself: Is this intended to build up or tear down? Is this article contributing to an illusion of the world that NOBODY truly experiences, be it some type of artificial glamour or an airbrushed exclusivity or the imagined prestige of fame? Are you going to read about someone else’s suffering for your own enjoyment?

If so, it’s your choice to make, but do it with awareness. What will this give you? What are you giving away with this click? Don’t be a vacuous cog in the machine.

How to improve yourself

by EssaySnark 4 Comments

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. (THIS PHENOMENON HAS BEEN STUDIED! CHECK OUT THIS ARTICLE ABOUT A UCLA ANDERSON RESEARCHER WHO HAS SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN OUT WHAT WE’RE SAYING HERE. )

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?

What do you do?

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

Say you’re walking down the hall at your office, on your way to a meeting. Maybe you’re running a tiny bit late, and you’re juggling an armful of file folders and notepads, with your coffee in the other hand hoping not to spill.

You turn the corner and there in the middle of the carpet is a gum wrapper.

What do you do?

If you’re like most people, you keep walking.

You see the gum wrapper, but that’s for someone else to pick up.

Doesn’t matter that it’s trash in the middle of the floor.

Doesn’t matter that this is “your” office.

There’s a janitor or cleaning person of some sort who will eventually come by and whose job it is to pick up the trash.

Not yours.

You don’t need to bother with garbage. Not in your role. Not when you’re already a tad bit on the late side and your arms are full.

* * *

Now visualize this scene:

You’re at home. You’re walking down the hall to your bedroom. There’s a gum wrapper on the floor.

Do you pick it up?

If the answer depends on, “Well, it’s my roommate’s gum wrapper” or “I don’t chew gum” or “My mom’ll get it” then there’s a problem.

But there’s actually a problem with the first scenario, too.

We’re not saying that you need to be picking up every gum wrapper.

But what if that hallway at work is instead the front lobby, and there are important people coming for a meeting. Do you pick it up then?

Under what circumstances do you take ownership for something that technically isn’t your problem?

Why do we have different rules for this? Why should it depend on how big a piece of garbage it is, or if you’re at your office, or home, or you’re at a meeting at some other company’s offices?

At what times or in what situations do you break the rules of social convention and do what you’re not expected to do, what other people typically don’t?

When do you stop caring what other people might think?

If you’re at the airport, no, we wouldn’t expect you to pick up the gum wrapper. If you did, you’d be picking up gum wrappers all day, and you’d surely miss your flight.

(Are you the type who discards gum wrappers nonchalantly at the airport because you can’t be bothered even to make sure your trash goes into the trashcan? Are you the person who tosses your garbage towards or near the garbage can, but doesn’t worry about it if it fails to make it in and lands to the side?)

If there’s a piece of trash in the hallway at work, most people pretend they don’t see it.

But let’s look at this objectively.

There’s a piece of trash on the floor.

In civilized society, we put trash in the garbage. At least, that’s the norm in America, when we’re indoors, and we also frown on littering on sidewalks and in nature if we’re out on a trail. (We understand that norms may be different in other countries. That doesn’t make it OK to discard your waste wherever is convenient. We’re all sharing this thing we call Earth and shouldn’t we equally respect it, and each other?)

You can learn who you are in so many ways.

What do you stand for?

Or in this case: When do you stoop?

It’s the actions of daily life that reveal character. If you want to “change the world” as so many of you claim, are you actively trying to change the world even in some small way today?

The shame of a low GMAT score

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

We want to talk about something here today that we’re guilty of contributing to — inadvertently, yes, but we’ve done it.

It’s the shame that many BSers feel about their performance on the MBA admissions test.

We see this in the opposite manifestation: When someone has done well on the GMAT, they’re quick to volunteer that information to us. When someone has done poorly? They often get squirrely with us about not wanting to disclose it.

Or they don’t want to admit to how many times they’ve attempted it.

A (perceived to be) low score on the GMAT can do a number on your self-confidence. It can really wreck with your insides.

You know you’re intelligent, and capable. You tried to study. You took practice tests where you did just fine, subscores decent, above average total.

And yet… the score on the actual test doesn’t budge.

So we want to set the record straight today:

YOUR GMAT SCORE IS NOT A SIGN OF YOUR WORTH.

The GMAT score predicts very little. It certainly does not predict what job you’ll land after the MBA. It does not predict how much money you’ll earn. It has nothing to do with whether you’ll find love in this life.

The GMAT score is a crude measure at best — but it’s all the adcoms have at the moment as a tool that’s “standardized” across populations.

Of course, “standardized” is in quotes because if the GMAT really were unbiased and totally fair, then why do women score lower? Why do younger people do better? And if English is not your first language, there’s no way that’s it’s testing equivalent skills for you as it would an American (though there’s argument to be made that, depending on where you grew up and were educated, you may have an advantage based on the standards, pedagogy and practices of education in your native country).

It’s so difficult when you’re logging onto MBA applicant discussion boards or talking to current students about what it took to get in, and you’re seemingly surrounded by all these 750+ scorers.

Please remember: Those who don’t do as well are not out there broadcasting their score.

It’s the ones who have mastered the art of standardized test-taking, or maybe had a lucky day in how their guesses lined up, that end up with the scores that make you feel sh!tty about yourself.

Mastering the GMAT is not mastering anything noteworthy in life. Period. End of discussion. It is not.

There are two times in the next 50+ years of your existence here on this Earth where the GMAT will matter:

1. When a nameless faceless admissions committee member reviews your application at the school you’re aching to get into — which will happen in a moment in time when you’re not even aware that it’s happening. You will be placing an order at Starbucks or drumming your fingers on the desk waiting for your boss to show up for the meeting he scheduled with you or asleep on a red-eye flying back to New York, and some admissions person will glance at your score and then move on to the important parts of your app. Your score will be seen, and taken note of, and you won’t even know that it happened. It’s not like the clouds will part and the voice of God will boom down on you and you will hear, “Your score has been assessed, and now your Fate for the rest of Eternity is sealed.” No. It’ll happen in some moment, when your admissions person is doing her job, looking at the rest of your application and chewing on the end of her pencil as she considers everything about you that you’ve submitted.

2. When you go for your MBA interview nine months later and you’re sitting across from a recruiter from a top consulting firm, asking you why you are interested in her firm — because by now, you’ve been admitted to that school you so eagerly want to go to. In your interview, depending on the career path you’re targeting and which firm this is, and what the competitive environment is in hiring at these firms when the economy goes up or goes down, your interviewer may ask about the GMAT score. And she’ll make note of it, and she’ll continue on, asking the things that really matter, about your experience and what you’ve done in the past and why you think you’re a good fit to their firm.

That’s it. Two times, one of which you won’t even be aware of (obviously #1 happens multiple times, once for each of your apps, but just work with us, for once, would you please?).

The GMAT is unfortunately near-identical to your weight or your curves or your lack of them. It’s like the biceps you don’t have or the shortness you do. It’s one of those things that the World has taught you to fixate on, as if it Means Something. As if it Matters.

We’re here to tell you, it doesn’t.

Ask someone who’s been out of bschool 10 years if they even remember what they scored on the GMAT. We’d be shocked if anyone does.

If they did, it’s because they did well, and they fixated on that as a Sign that they have something to offer.

That’s just as much a fallacy as thinking a low GMAT means you’re crap.

EssaySnark is guilty of GMAT-shaming in some of our older posts on the blahg, where we’ve said things like “If your score is too low, suck it up and take the test again.”

While, hey, there is some value to that advice, if someone scored poorly on the GMAT out of an absence of trying.

If you don’t put in the mental effort and learn the things that they’re testing you on, if you’ve been a slacker and a skater where you do the just-enough-to-get-by thing because you’re sharp and a quick study and that’s worked for you all of your life… well then, yes, the GMAT does say something about you, but not what you think. If you repeatedly get a lame-O GMAT because you’re going through the motions and not actually trying, then we don’t have much sympathy for that.

But for the many, many BSers who really do put in the effort, who sign up for courses and pay tutors and take all of the practice tests they can find, and they STILL do poorly on the actual exam… Then please know, we’re talking directly to you when we say: It’s not your fault. It’s just the GMAT is a crappy exam.

If they let you take it in your bedroom in your pajamas with your fuzzy slippers on, it’s likely you’d do just great. But no, they have it in this inconvenient test center where the AC is on too high or not at all, with a weird dude next to you making sniffly noises, when you’re all tussed up about it because you’ve already tried three times and it’s now built up to a “thing” in your mind…. Yeah. You don’t do well on it again, well, that’s NOT YOUR FAULT.

It’s the silly fight-or-flight mechanism in your adrenocortex going haywire because you’ve made this into a massive obstacle (that isn’t even real) and you prevent your own self from success because of the fear mechanism hardwired into your brain. Because we are all animals and because we’re social creatures and because there’s an instinct you’re reacting to that goes way back in time, that you need to be successful and respected in the eyes of your peers so that you won’t be kicked out of the herd.

Yeah, that.

All that is wrapped up in this one little three-digit number. The GMAT.

It’s like your entire life depends on it.

But it does not.

Remember, most people who take the GMAT flail fabulously!! The average GMAT score is only a 556! We can practically guarantee that if you’re sitting here reading this blahg, you scored at least 100 points better than that, and probably significantly more.

You have accomplished much in this life.

You would not be in a postition to even consider a high-end MBA if you hadn’t.

You have much to be proud of, dear whippersnapper.

So next time you feel ashamed or embarrassed when someone asks about your GMAT or (same issue) what schools you made it into, hold your head high, and tell them, “I did the best that I could.”

It’s none of their business what score a computer screen spit out at you.

It does not matter.

It is irrelevant.

What counts is acting from love.

When you do that, then you are affirming your true nature.

When you don’t, then you feel horrible, and you vow that next time you will.

It’s terribly difficult, especially when you’re young, and the world is uncertain, to keep focused on what’s real.

But truly, Grasshopper, you are a wondrous being, and we know you are bound for great things.

PSA: How to email

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

Our customer support folks at Team EssaySnark got this email recently:

 
 

here's a fun email to talk about

 

Today we’ll offer up some Curmudgeonly Old-Person Snark advice on how to email.

“‘How to email’?!? C’mon EssaySnark, I’ve been emailing since I was born! I know how to email.”

Ah, Grasshopper, but do you?

Please go back to that email and think through what it conveys.

 
 
 

You can scroll down to see what WE think it conveys after you have done so.

 
.
.
.
 
 
 

 
 
 

No really, did you think about it? What are your thoughts? Or are you just scrolling straight to what we think? Use your own thinking first, Grasshopper!

.
.
.
 
 
 

 
 
 

Let’s start at the beginning. Here is the situation.

1. This person is emailing a generic customer service account at some company.

2. This person is likely frustrated that they don’t have access to the product that they thought they should have access to, and harumph dang it, they NEED access, and now have to frickin jump through some hoops and d@mn what a hassle.

Who knows if that’s all of it, but likely that covers 75% of what was going on in the head of the sender. Writing this email is a reflection of that person’s state of mind at the time, which — we’re only guessing here and extrapolating based on very few facts — was probably some form of irritation, impatience, and possibly anxiety too, if this person is sending this note because they were either a) invited to interview at Stanford (yay!) and want the help of our essay guide, or b) put on the waitlist at Stanford (F__k!) and need the help of our essay guide. Or, it could simply be a Round 3 applicant who realized that the deadline is fast approaching and got wound up with the stress from that (ack!! sh!t!!).

Regardless of which it is, we can assume that some degree of emotions and a sense of franticness may have been involved, thus the brevity of the request.

Let’s move on.

As a recipient of this email, what would be going on in the head of the Team EssaySnark person?

Well, think about it. If you were a customer service type worker, what would be your reaction to getting that email?

Because — and here’s our #1 point to offer today: Even when you’re sending an email or request to some big (or small) corporation on the internet, it is always a person who reads it.

This email-sender clearly was taught good manners by their parents. There’s a “please” and a “thank you” in this message.

There’s even a modicum of a salutation.

But on the whole, well hm.

It does not exactly come across as a request now, does it?

This person was asking for assistance on their account. It wasn’t that there was a technical issue with the EssaySnark servers. It’s not that the EssaySnark service had let them down or was not functioning properly. This person had bought a subscription to one of our essay guides, and that subscription had expired. They were asking for a gimme. “Please give me access even though the access that I have paid for is over.” (Plus, 10 minutes to 5 on a Friday. That’s fun.)

It’s like walking into your gym after you canceled your membership and demanding to work out. For free. When you have not paid anything for it.

Therein lies the rub: This email comes across as a demand. Not a request.

When you’re asking for help, then the tone of your ask kinda matters, don’t it?

Yes we understand, this person was in a hurry. They were probably emailing from their phone and we know how sucky it is to try and write an email on a mobile.

But we didn’t even get a subject line on it, and we definitely didn’t get any warm-fuzzies or sense of gratitude in how it was phrased.

Technically there’s nothing wrong with what they sent in; again, they have the requisite “please” and “thank you.”

But it’s kinda like when you’re in an argument with someone and they pop off with an “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

As if the “I’m sorry” in that sentence counts as an apology.

Um, no. That “sorry” is not a “sorry” it’s a backhanded attempt at asserting your own righteousness.

 
 
 

EssaySnark may be of a dying breed, of those who care about good manners, who believe that taking a bit of time in crafting even an email correspondence is the right way to interact with a fellow human. We have a surprising number of posts talking about such things here on the blahg.

But check it out, Grasshopper.

At least for now, and into the foreseeable future, the people who control your destiny are more likely than not to be wired like EssaySnark. Those making the admit/deny decisions on your MBA apps. Those determining whether you’re a good fit for their company. Those wanting to offer you a job or who you will report to up the chain in your new company.

Not all of them care. But a lot of them do.

Call us the dinosaurs who are still occupying space in corporate America, but we exist out there. And until you Millennials have completed your takeover of the world, you’ll have to deal with us.

Making us dinosaurs happy — or at least, not being an irritating schmuck in your interactions — might help you get where you want to go in life a tiny bit easier.

 
 
You probably are totally not interested in but you may want to read anyways:

 

PS: If you’re really wanting to be kind to a customer service person on some internet site, and efficient in getting your request addressed, then include the username you used to register or the correct email address that you signed up under. Don’t make that poor schmuck dig around to figure out who you are. It may also help to keep in mind: You’re probably paid way more than any customer service person in a public-facing role is — and your job even on its worst day is probably way better than theirs. It’s always nice to be nice.

 
 

Final PS: The BSer who wrote the email that prompted this post ended up writing a very quick but very sincere thank-you after their question was answered. So we know that they were not intentionally being curt! But that’s why we’re writing this reminder, as it’s when we’re not thinking that it matters most.

Avoiding the false positives: Worst case scenario when an admissions consultant steers you wrong

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

There’s nothing worse than some admissions consultant telling you you have a shot at a top school and then not even getting the interview. It can REALLY tick you off.

And understandably so!

After all, that’s what you PAID THEM for!

MBA admissions lacks so much transparency and having a so-called expert help you focus your efforts can be a massive benefit.

Unless of course, they’re wrong.

If you’re working with someone who does not have a depth of experience to truly assess YOUR profile against the schools you’re in love with, then they can be doing more damage than good.

We’ve made our share of bad calls before, notably this one that we posted about publicly. We’ve never gotten it that wrong before or since. That was a learning experience for sure.

This is one reason why our Comprehensive Profile Review will tell you which schools are in range for you — but with a gazillion caveats, reminding you that it’s the execution that will be the determining factor. If your core stats and the essential background you are presenting shows you as QUALIFIED for a top MBA program, it’s still up to you to put the application together in a way that makes the admissions reviewer say “Yes!”

You may remember from some long-ago science class that a false negative is when a test comes back as a “no” when it’s actually a “yes” — and when you’re testing for life-threatening diseases, then this is a problem! If a test says “No, you do not have cancer” but really you do, then that’s bad.

A false positive is when the test says “Uh-oh you do have it!” but you actually don’t.

In medicine, that’s not necessarily so bad — the main issue being of course that you’re subject to treatment that you don’t actually need, and sometimes the treatment is damaging.

But in this case, a false positive would be, “Oh yes, you definitely have a shot at Harvard!!” when actually, you don’t.

Man, that one hurts, when October comes around.

In medicine, a false negative is a major problem, particularly if it’s an infectious disease. A false negative says “You’re healthy!” when actually you might be walking around spreading it to others.

In MBA apps, a false negative is something you will never, ever know about because if you believe your consultant and trust in him, and he says “Nope, not a chance, don’t even bother” and so you never apply…. and if they were WRONG….. nobody ever will know. If your consultant says “Sorry, I don’t see Harvard as being a fit” and you don’t try for Harvard, then dang. Apparently he was right! BEcause now you have not applied to Harvard, and so the consultant has made Harvard’s decision for them. The consultant decided you weren’t gonna get in, and you never tried, and so of course, you didn’t. (And yes, we frequently have the deep-seated opinion that a BSer won’t get into Harvard, and we do advise them of such, but we try to do so in a way to make them feel empowered to still apply if they are motivated to do so. Because it’s their life, not ours, to be living.)

More often, we see consultants being unrealistically optimistic, sometimes this may be intentional, but probably in most cases it’s because they have an unconscious bias: If they’re talking to you FOR FREE during a pitch for their services, then a) they’re usually looking at very limited information, often only GMAT and GPA and maybe the resume; and b) they’re trying to get you to sign up with them. Even if they are authentically wanting to only provide value to you as a person and are not fixated on making a sale, it is only human nature that they are trying to make a sale. It’s really hard (impossible?) to set that aside. And it’s also really hard to be speaking to someone on the phone and telling them, “Nope, you’re crap, nobody is going to want to admit you.”

This is why EssaySnark does not do free consults as part of a pre-sales process, and it’s why we do everything in writing.

It is much much easier to be honest and forthcoming when we can type it out on a screen and deliver the news. It’s just hard to shatter someone’s hopes in Real Life one-on-one conversation. Yes, good consultants find a way to say this but sometimes it’s couched in so many platitudes that the message is not heard.

And very often, a consultant who is working closely with a candidate over many weeks or months gets to the end of the process with them and is looking at the final product of the essays that they have created together with the applicant (because many consultants get their fingers very deep into the pie) and they have lost objectivity. They see how far the client progressed from the beginning and yes, the final drafts are better, but maybe they’re still not good enough? And they’ve been subject to how many rounds of review? The consultant is tired. They just want the project to be done with. They sign off on the essays with a note of confidence, and the client submits an app that still has no chance at all. But whether the consultant consciously knows this or not, they have tacitly given their approval and rubber-stamped it, so the client/applicant thinks they have a real shot. After all, there was a tremendous amount of WORK involved – they MUST be good essays by now!!

Or so the thinking goes.

False positive.

And yes, this is a self-serving post, and here is where we plug our Sanity Check review that gives you our unbiased opinion of whether your application has come together in a way that this school will respond to.

And if you’re on the hunt for a consultant, we have posted many times before about what to look for, and what to be cautious about (and also this).

Your consultant needs to have experience with the tier of school that you’re targeting — with the understanding that someone who is truly HBS material is likely going to make it into HBS with or without a consultant!! There are absolutely cases where the consultant helped someone who is borderline get tipped over into the HBS pool, but there are many consultants who managed to only not hurt the applicant’s chances. The applicant was going to get in, regardless, and the consultant perhaps helped them with polish and presentation.

Your consultant also needs to have extensive experience with the type of applicant you are. If your consultant has never worked with military candidates, or has only done so here or there, then honestly, how much help can they offer? Particularly when this segment of the applicant population has been booming and the competition has ratcheted up.

If your consultant has never helped someone with a really low GPA make it into a school like Columbia or Duke or Kellogg, how much help can they be if that’s the challenge you’re facing?

These are the questions you need to ask.

And yes, obviously we’ve helped people in your shoes before — regardless of what shoes you’re wearing! We’ve been doing this practically for-ev-er and we have high confidence that we’ve seen a profile EXACTLY like yours before. Whatever uniqueness you bring or challenges you offer. You can find out in our Comprehensive Profile Review, or if you just want a confirmation before you dive in with even the most basic service, hit us up with a question about your profile and how you’re so special and we will let you know yay or nay if we’ve never seen one like you before (who got in! as a result of our efforts).

Every year we get comments like this after doing a final-hour essay review for someone:

Lastly, I know you probably still feel this is a polished turd, but considering I submit tomorrow please help me get to the best product I can in the next 18 hours. (I fired my consultant because I’ve had this essay done for a month and he loved it).

Obviously that BSer sensed that perhaps something was off on the essay they’d created, enough to seek out a second opinion — but not everyone has that premonition.

Even more often, we get people sign up for our Post-Mortem Review at the end of November after their previous consultant told them they were a shoe-in, and they got nowhere on all of Round 1.

So yeah, this is a self-serving post — but honestly, we want all of you to be successful!! You found your way over to EssaySnark by some turn of fate and we feel very invested in helping you get in. We shoot straight. We keep it real. We offer feedback and advice to help you aim higher when warranted, and tools to support you in climbing. We want you to get into the best school you can!

If there’s more we can do, please ask!

 
 
You may also be interested in:

($) Cleaning up the vibe (cont’d)

by EssaySnark

To continue the “What can I do now?” conversation, we’ve got more to say on the social media front. If you don’t have anything negative to push down to the second page of search results, then you can turn your attention straightaway to the actual content. Do you have a strategy for what you are…

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.

And….. the moment is near!!

by EssaySnark 2 Comments

Can you believe that Round 2 admit decisions are starting to happen?

Can you believe that Round 2 admit decisions still haven’t happened?!??

Some schools like Columbia, NYU and INSEAD have been issuing decisions for awhile now, but dang, if you’re in the Round 2 pool and have been invited to interview at one or more schools, you must feel like the clock has gotten stuck in molasses and are incredulous at how slow the calendar pages are turning.

When you apply in Round 1, everything seems to happen more quickly. Partly that’s because — in the US at least — there are a bunch of holidays in the fall that capture the nation’s collective attention. These keep you busy. There’s Halloween that offers the fun diversion of perhaps some dress-up or parties and candy in the office, and Thanksgiving where many people have a long weekend and significant travel. And planning for the December holidays, and, well, just all kinds of stuff going on. That makes it easier to stay distracted, and distracted means the time goes by quicker.

By comparison, the sequence and timing for Round 2 is experienced in a very different way.

After the flurry of apps getting submitted after the holidays, there’s a welcome breather where you get a break from all the app craziness, and you were likely grateful to be able to resume your regular life at least a little. Maybe you even got to watch some football on Sundays.

But once we get past the Superbowl in early February, then it seems like everything slows to a crawl. Yes you were getting invited to interview, and yes there was lots of excitement and stress and work preparing for that, and discovering that your suit doesn’t really fit you anymore and dealing with that, and traveling to the schools, and maybe some intense winter weather somewhere along the way. But then once those are over, the thumb-twiddling begins in true earnest.

And for most of you, the time just d-r-a-g-s on.

Part of this must be because of the very nature of the experience: You started the MBA process at least a year ago now (some of you, many many years ago!) and now that you’re finally at this stage where you’ve got apps in the hopper and those apps have been hopping! to the extent that at least one or two of them resulted in interview invites. It’s like being on the longest of road trips, where mostly you’re just crusing across the Great Plains of flat highways and bad truckstop coffee, and the time puts you in an alternate universe of working towards something that’s seemingly never going to get here. But then suddenly, you realize that the highway has changed and now you’re on the 405 in Los Angeles and there are Priuses all over and major traffic, and you’re almost at that destination that you’ve been aiming towards. Suddenly we’re in March, and all of this is becoming real — but it hasn’t actually happened yet. It does a number on the mental state. It feels like all of your adult life you’ve been working on GMAT application stuff and now suddenly it’s about to be over — hoping and praying that that means you’re actually going to get in. You go back and forth between utter confidence that yes you’re definitely going to get accepted, after all you got the interviews at these top schools and you didn’t totally embarass yourself in the interview. And alternating from the assumption that yes it must work out, to abject fear that oh sh1t after all this work and (re)app attempts, it’s gotta pan out this time…. but what if it doesn’t?!??

We’re often told that the waiting is the hardest part. Well, that’s why. You’re in this weird limbo-state and the brain doesn’t know what to do with itself.

So today’s post is only to say, yes, this feeling of neurotic manic-depressive-schizophrenia is absolutely normal, and don’t worry, you’re not going crazy! (at least, no more so than you were before you started)

Moodswings and utter depressive moments and really wild debilitating doubts are par for the course at this stage.

Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, get through today, and you’ll have only a few more such days ahead of you before these actual results start popping in.

And we’re betting that yes indeed, this will be your year. 🙂

Keep us posted! Please fill us in when you get the news! Go to SnarkCenter and update your School Targets so we know where you get in!

And keep those cell phones charged up and turned on at all times starting this week! Many adcoms like beginning their congratulations you’ve been accepted calls early! If you don’t recognize the number or it’s from a ‘private’ number, jump on it! Answer anyway!

You may hear lots of robocall telemarketing recordings this week, but one of them will surely be an admissions person with exciting news to deliver.