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“Ack! Why can’t you just get on the phone and talk to me, EssaySnark!??”

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We don’t do free pre-sales consultations.

We’re not interested in blowing smoke up your patootey about how awesome you are and yes you’re going to make it into Harvard just fine, don’t worry about that GMAT score.*

Heck, even after signing up for our MBA admissions consulting services, we don’t even get on the phone with you to “talk through” your ideas.

Instead, we give you a structured process where you get to learn stuff,

It’s the “teach you to fish” model, which is designed for those who are smart, and want to be independent, and not chained at the hip to a consultant for every decision they make through their app process. It also lets us keep our prices low, where everyone can sign up for just the level of support that they need, which can empower more people to try for their bschool dreams even if they don’t come from affluence and luxury.

But there’s another reason we have structured our consulting services this way.

It’s because every time you reach out with a question, you’re forced to think through what you’re literally asking.

You get to practice putting your thoughts down into words. You get to work on making your point concisely, and being specific about where you’re unclear.

It lets you practice these skills that you’re going to be using in your MBA apps.

Every time you pose a question to us, you have to put it in writing. You have to make sure you’re making sense, that you know what you’re saying. That process alone sometimes helps the answer to materialize in your brain — without ever submitting the question. It engages you in a new level of understanding of the material you’re working with, and the techniques that you’re learning.

Because writing a good MBA essay is at least as much about learning new techniques as it is in figuring out what story will be a good match for the prompt.

The keyword there of course is writing. By engaging in an all-written relationship here, it helps you to clarify your own thinking, and sharpen your abilities as a clear writer.

There’s one more ulterior motive behind this philosophy of consulting we’ve designed, and it is this:

Leadership is about making decisions in the face of confusion. It’s about navigating uncertainty, dealing with pressure, taking in all the available inputs and forming your own strategy. It is most definitely about becoming better equipped at dealing with ambiguity.

If you’re aiming for a top school like Harvard, where the case method is integral to all that they do, well, you’re not going to be able to call a friend. You’re not going to be able to go to someone else on the side for the answers. You’re going to have to learn to deal with the stress of being put on the spot, and perform even in the face of all of your doubts. All your imposter syndrome. All your difficult emotions that tell you you don’t know what you’re doing.

You’ll have to put in the time and effort figuring stuff out on your own, and in your study groups too where you’ll have peers to commiserate with, and support you (which we offer too with our collaboration partner

One reason that we stick to this online-only support format is because so much of your application success will be achieved through clear writing. This gets you the practice of getting your thinking down solid, so that you can easily articulate the ideas in your apps — there’s a method to all of the madness in the form of the constraints that we present to clients in this process!)

We want our clients to feel empowered, and our experience shows that learning to do it yourself is so gratifying. Sometimes when things feel overwhelming and confusing, all we need to do is to help you step back, with the gentle reminder: Trust yourself.

You’ve got what it takes to do this, Grasshopper.

Yes it’s work. Yes it’s hard. But you can do it.

We absolutely are here to support you. Got questions on feedback? Need help unpacking what we laid out in an essay review? We’ve got your back. You can submit questions in response to feedback privately in your SnarkCenter portal. We know how tough this can be, and are here as cheerleader and coach, and guide. We’ll tell you where things look good, and where they’re off, or not optimized, and point out that this is “telling” when you need to be “showing,” and referring you back to the tutorials and resources that walk through these skills.

Tackle that learning curve with us on your first app, and you’ll be in very good shape to tackle others on your own. Or enlist our help on four schools straight out of the gate, and we’ll be there by your side as you write write write, learn, reflect, start over, and write some more.

Questions are always welcome at any stage of our work together.

We’ve designed it so that even the process of asking questions will benefit your end product in the long run.

 
 
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*If you want to REALLY know if you’ve got a shot at the schools you are aiming for: Our Comprehensive Profile Review will dig into the details and help you understand how you’re positioned in this process!!

 
 

Prediction: What will cause you the most pain and suffering in the next six months?

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EssaySnark don’t know you.

Who is EssaySnark to say?

Ahh, au contraire, little buttercup, EssaySnark DOES know you.

EssaySnark knows your heart.

EssaySnark knows who you are.

And EssaySnark knows that what will cause you the most pain in the next six months’ time comes down to one thing:

 
 
 
 
 
 

PROCRASTINATION

 
 
 
 
 
 

How can we be so sure???

Well lessee….

1. You are reading this.

2. You want to apply to business school.

3. You are human.

Yup, that about sums it up.

You are a procrastinator.

Some of you will suffer ungodly amounts over this; others, just mild or relatively minor suffering — though all of it feels the same to the sufferer.

Despite your best of intentions, there will come a day in the next, oh, say two months… and possibly much much worse three months after that…. when you will be absolutely cursing yourself and possibly crying.

Because there will be

NO

MORE

TIME

So.

We write this today, weeks and even months before the first deadline is upon us, to exhort, implore, entice, plead, and somehow convince.

GET STARTED EARLY.

Like hey! Today is a good day!!

 
 
 
 
 
 
So how are we so convinced that you too will fall into this Procrastination Trap and be subject to suffering? Because we’re writing this on January 4, 2019, when we’re watching the fallen remains of exhausted and sad BSers all over the battlefield of Round 2, and we know that that’s your fate, too, unless you intentionally plot a course of awareness to avoid it.

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?

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.

The dejection of rejection

by EssaySnark 3 Comments

Amidst all the high-fives and congratulations flying around lately, there have also been some very sad Brave Supplicants.

If you haven’t made it into bschool this round, you’re probably feeling pretty darned bad about things.

You’re probably beating yourself up. Feeling plenty of regret. Replaying the sequence of events and kicking yourself over one thing or another. It may even be on repeat, drumming into your head with the cruelty that only you know how to inflict on yourself that you’re a worthless loser.

None of that is true.

The despair that can set in when you’ve had your hopes up that something big and happy was going to happen, and it doesn’t, can really do a number on you. That’s especially true if you got invited to interview at a top school, and it might even be worse for those of you who are now on the waitlist instead of getting a clean straight-in admit. Sometimes, we hear from BSers who are waitlisted that it feels worse than if they’d been rejected.

Being waitlisted is kind of like the phenomenon of the Silver Medal Winner at the Olympics.

There’s this thing when a competitor gets second place where they often become REALLY unhappy about it.

You wouldn’t think that would happen. From the outside, you’d assume, “Dang, they’re good, they made it in second place!!!!” Like, no, they didn’t hit first, but they are the second best in the whole wide world! How awesome is that!

Turns out, it doesn’t feel awesome. Because the second-place winner gets tormented with all of the second-guessing in the world. They don’t get to feel proud of the fact that they are really really really good; they only get to feel the woulda-coulda-shouldas and if-onlys and other forms of regret and self-hatred and cursing of fates. Because if they’d just done THIS or THAT or THIS OTHER THING then it could’ve turned out differently. Instead of being proud of the performance, they have all these crappy thoughts about how they should’ve been able to do more to knock the winner off their perch.

Apparently this doesn’t happen with the Bronze Medal Winner. Apparently if you come in third place, you’re just thrilled to be on the winners’ podium at all. You feel grateful for making it in the top three. You see the reality of the two other competitors who did better than you and you know that you put in all that you could have, and you’re glad you came out with the bronze.

If you’re sitting here with no admits and only one (or more) waitlist offers at the end of Round 2, then please remember what we say all over the place: IT’S NOT OVER YET! You still have many months ahead where this could tip in your favor. The schools are using the waitlist quite liberally these days because there’s significant uncertainty in how their class rosters will be shaping up. (You can read through our Waitlist category to learn more of our analysis and advice for those in your shoes.)

If you’re sitting here with only strikeouts and no chances for any of your Class of 2021 apps at all, then we really do understand how disappointing that can be. If you know in your heart that you put in everything you could in all aspects of each app, from tests through to essays and resume and everything, and you still came up empty-handed, then the very basic assessment is that it was the profile or the pitch. That boils down to either a mismatch in your profile to the school you were targeting, and/or that the positioning of your message in the essays especially wasn’t done effectively. The fix for that in the coming season will be to either adjust your sights so that you’re aiming to an appropriate level of school (our Comprehensive Profile Review can help you determine the right match) and/or starting over with learning the skills of presenting you on the page in the essays you’ll develop (our Complete Essay Package is ideal for taking you through that learning curve).

Alternatively, if you’re sitting here with no options for the fall, and you know in your heart that you cut corners and rushed things and didn’t start early enough or for whatever reason could not prioritize the work needed on your apps, and ran out of time and slammed in some apps in a panic, then you’re likely to be beating yourself up the most.

You may expect us to be telling you now that yeah, that’s the outcome you should’ve seen coming. You may assume we’re going to chide you for being sloppy or doing all that procrastination, and that we’re going to add more reasons for why you should be beating yourself up at this point.

But we’re not going to do that.

Whatever decisions you made that got you to this point, those are over and done. You made the most of what you were operating with at the time.

If you had great intentions of putting together really strong apps last summer, and then work and family or maybe a blown-up relationship or whatever interfered with your ability to focus, and it didn’t happen the way you had planned, then fine. That’s what happened. You made the choices that you could in the moment that you had to make them. Even if you spent all of last summer playing video games instead of writing the essays you knew you had to write, please don’t hate yourself for doing that. For whatever reason, you could not get yourself to do the thing you wanted to do then. Maybe it was an overload of stress and you just didn’t have the energy. Maybe it was feeling overwhelmed and not knowing where to begin, so you didn’t begin until it was really late. Maybe it was overconfidence, or a sense that this would be easy, so you didn’t allocate the time and put in the work. Maybe it was the exact opposite, and you succumbed to the sense that you’re never going to make it in anyway, and who are you to even be trying. So you just didn’t start when you knew that you should have.

No matter what the cause, it was the best you could do at the time.

If you could have done differently, you would have done it!

We’re not trying to give you a pass. If you screwed up, then yes, you need to acknowledge that. This isn’t our attempt to give everyone who tried for bschool a Participation Award. No. It’s just about recognizing that life is for learning, and to try and offer perspective and (hopefully) a dose of reality (the good kind, i.e., the one that really exists).

The person you are today is not the one who made those decisions; the person you are today does not deserve the suffering you are instilling on yourself. The person you are today is the victim of those unfortunate choices made before, but the person who made them does not exist. That person lives only in a past time that is no longer here. So don’t let that person continue to f_ck with you. They already did plenty of that. Don’t let them continue doing it now that their time is over and done.

You live here now.

You are the one who gets to live your life today.

Sometimes it takes a royal screw-up or some overly optimistic assumptions or playing a gambling game that doesn’t pan out in order for us to learn lessons.

If that’s what happened, fine. Now choose to learn them, and move on.

Beating yourself up about it is counterproductive and hurts no one but yourself.

It’s probably way easier for us to sit here telling you not to do it, than it is for you to actually redirect all that negativity, but we’re offering you the possibility of looking at things differently. If you feel bad about yourself, just ask yourself WHY you do. What is the thought that’s running nonstop through your head?

Identify that.

Is it: “I am a failure”?

Take that thought out of your head and look at it.

“I am a failure.”

Is that true? Look at everything in your life. Do the facts add up to support that assertion of failing?

Or maybe you’re thinking, “I am a loser” or maybe it’s “I’m never going to be anybody” or “I’m going to be stuck here and everyone is passing me by.”

Look at what’s underneath these feelings of dread or doom that is weighing on you like a blanket.

Write it down. What is the thought that’s fueling this horrible feeling?

Clearly articulate it — and then examine it.

Is that thought representing reality?

Is what you’re thinking something that’s honestly accurate, when you step back and look at it?

Try this process with the scripts that are running in your head. It often allows for an opening, a crack in the darkness where a beam of light can break in, and help soothe the worry and bring a modicum of peace.

If you haven’t gotten where you are trying to go, that only means it’s not yet your time.

Maybe this coming admissions season will be different, if you choose to make another go at bschools then.

Or maybe Life will take you in a whole new direction, if you let go of the attachment to this MBA thing that hasn’t materialized in your life.

No matter what, one thing is certain: You’re going to be just fine.

Anyone who’s ever in a position to try for a high-end MBA program is by definition a success story.

You’ve already got yourself to this point, through your smarts and determination and willingness to work. You have already achieved something, right where you’re sitting today.

Don’t lose sight of that.

Because of those skills and abilities that we know you already have, we also know you will continue on to a life full of good things. It’s inevitable.

It may not look like you thought it was supposed to.

But everything is taken care of, and you’re going to be okay.

There is nothing wrong with you.

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

You do not need to be fixed.

You definitely do not need to be packaged or branded.

You don’t need to be spun, or promoted, or polished up to a shine. (OK, maybe you need a shower, but…)

The problem with this process of applying to business school is that it sends the signal that who you are now is not good enough.

Average GMAT score? Not enough.

Decent grades? Not enough.

You pour your heart out into your essays and you still get rejected?

Clearly the schools are saying, You’re not enough.

You’re not good enough.

You’re not talented enough.

You have not done enough interesting things.

But hold up.

Let’s look at this.

From our perspective, sitting on the snarky side of the fence, there are only two requirements for getting into a good MBA program:

1. You must be willing to work hard.
2. You must give yourself enough time.

If you’re rushing, it’s highly unlikely you’re going to have as much success in this process as you could if you’d not procrastinated the entire fall season away started on the process earlier and kept working diligently until it was done.

But guess what? You didn’t. You had noble intentions, but then Life got in the way, and you had trouble motivating yourself. You were probably THINKING ABOUT your apps nearly all the time since the summer, but you too often got faced with that demon of “ohgawdidontknowhowtodothisorwheretoevenbegin” and you flinched, and you escaped into Netflix again. And that’s what happened to the month of August, and September, and then again in November. That’s not a personal failing. All that is, is being overwhelmed by what seems like a monumental task (WRITING ESSAYS UGGH!) and then the pesky habit of Time took the months away.

When we boil this down, it actually ends up revealing itself to be #1 in disguise.

For most people, procrastination is not a sign that you are a loser. It does not even mean that you’re lazy. It’s just the simple human reaction when faced with fear of the unknown. The brain is wired to seek comfort; to run from risk.

Our ancient ancestors had a thought like this:

“Ooo look there’s a tiger!”

The human brain got deeply wired to react with:

“OMG GET THE F. OUT OF HERE!”

Applying to bschool is just our modern-day tiger.

You’ve set this very big goal for yourself — you want to go on the hunt! Shoot an animal for dinner! Provide for your family!

So you set out on the savannah to find an antelope or a buffalo or a wildebeest.

You make all the preparations. You sharpen your tools (study for the GMAT). You get ready for the expedition (take the GMAT). You learn about your prey and its habits (stalk the adcoms on twitter and facebook). It rains, so you adjust your plans (take the GMAT again). You have all your gear, and you’re committed to the task, and you head out onto the plains, and you scout your targets (decide on which schools to apply). You put yourself in position. You’re all ready to go, you’re going to definitely make a run for it now, and —

“Oh crap what is that oh sh!t no it’s a lion. It’s a lion? YES IT’S A LION RUN RUN RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!”

Well dang. That didn’t work like you’d hoped. Stupid lion. You tried for a gazelle. You end up nabbing a warthog. At least you’re not going to starve tonight.

You’re just super embarrassed when you have to go back to the village without the prize you went out there to hunt.

Talk about ruining your self esteem.

Talk about a great way to make you feel like a total idiot.

You talked up a good game, but when push comes to shove, what do you have to show for yourself?

F*ck.

Now you have to ask your recommender to do more recommendations. Now you have to admit that you failed.

We are here to tell you that you have not failed.

You simply have not succeeded yet.

Getting into bschool is about picking the schools that are right for you, and then working diligently on creating a set of application materials that present who you are authentically.

That is the secret to getting in.

It’s not about saying the right thing or figuring out a formula (except to the extent that yes, this is a competitive process, and things like GMAT and GPA do matter).

It’s not about coming up with the right wording that that school will respond to.

It’s about spending the time and effort to figure yourself out.

How do you know what schools to apply to?

You need to know yourself.

How do you write an essay that the school will respond to?

You need to know yourself.

What is the only fundamental requirement to make all of this happen?

You need to be willing to do the work.

Or really, a truer statement is, you need to be willing to go into the unknown.

Writing essays is facing the tiger. It’s saying, “No no no, I know your tricks. I know you’re just an oversized pussy cat.”

This is true in ALL things. In ALL of life.

Unless you’re someone who is literally hunting her meals on the plains every day. In which case, a tiger is actually a tiger, and we hope you will run from it!!!

But in modern-day life in the 21st Century, in the challenges that most of us humans are facing, the tiger is not really a tiger.

The tiger is only in your mind.

When your brain conjures up thoughts of “Oh sh!t I don’t know what to do, this is a very big project and the whole thing of me going out into the world and doing something this big and this important scares the holy eff out of me” then all of a sudden your brain is seeing TIGER!!!! when one doesn’t exist.

The only thing stopping you from getting into a great MBA program is your thoughts. If you are letting the fear of the tiger prevent you from doing the work that’s required, then let’s go back to square one:

From our perspective, there are only two requirements for getting into a good MBA program:

1. You must be willing to work hard.
2. You must give yourself enough time.

If you did not give yourself enough time, then with almost 100% certainty we can tell you, it’s because you let the FEAR OF the tiger get in the way.

There is no tiger.

You just imagined there is one.

And you reacted as any sane person facing a tiger would do.

So #2 is just that you got confused, and you let fear win.

So what about #1?

If you’re interested in an MBA then you have already been successful to some degree or another in life. At minimum, you have successfully completed college — which sounds basic, but remember, not everyone does that. You know how to work towards a goal. You know how to apply yourself and be productive. It’s also likely the case that you have taken the GMAT at least once and scored something decent, which again shows that you are able to put in the effort to achieve a purpose. You studied for the test (even if haphazardly) and you got a score that is in range for a top MBA program.

So right there, we have two datapoints to prove it. We know that you are CAPABLE of working hard.

Then what could the problem be? If you’re CAPABLE of working hard but you have not yet managed to get into a top MBA program, it boils down to:

A. You’re CAPABLE of working hard on other things, but you DID NOT REALLY work hard on your apps (you may have PRETENDED to work hard, by writing a few essays and sending them in, but you know in your heart if you REALLY worked hard on them or not). If it’s this, then it’s a problem of self-delusion. You fooled yourself. No big deal. We do that all the time, on all sorts of things! (“This first bite of Ben & Jerry’s tastes good! This second one tastes good too! I’m just gonna keep eating it!! [ 5 mins later…] Ugh I should not have eaten the whole pint omg this feels awful.”) The remedy? Work harder!!

Or:

B. The fear of the tiger got in the way, which is another way of saying, you weren’t WILLING.

When fear comes into your skull, it seems like there are no options.

You WANT to achieve this thing, but dang. Real life. Overwhelming. It’s too big.

Or whatever the fear-thoughts manifest as in your own specific incarnation.

If you got stymied by B — not being willing to work hard (which is another way of saying that you were deterred by the fear-thought, since we already have established that you WANT this for yourself, and you are CAPABLE of it) — then we have a trick for you.

You don’t have to know how to do it.

You don’t even have to know how to be willing to know how.

You just have to be WILLING to be willing.

If you’re reading this and it’s not making any sense, that’s OK.

But if you’re reading this and it’s clicking for you in some way, then good.

Most people reading this now are either in an egg nog stupor of celebration around the holidays and having already gotten into one of their top-choice MBA programs, and they’re simply still in the habit of reading the ‘Snark every day.

But there’s a whole slew of others of you who are coming here with a sense of dread and mild panic over all of the work to be done, and many doubts and insecurities about this whole process.

You don’t have to know how to get in. You just have to identify one thing to be done at a time, and go do it.

Maybe that means writing an outline. Just one. For one school. Map out your ideas. Put some structure to it.

Maybe it means figuring out your career goals, and making sure that they are detailed and specific enough.

Maybe it means re-examining your list of schools and making sure you’re tackling the right schools for you, based on the reality of your profile, that you really have a chance of getting into.

Maybe it means filling out the app form for one school. Or going back over the app and verifying and validating the data.

Do one thing. Right now. Be like Nike and just do it.

Then make a list of all of the others.

And when you’re feeling stuck, and overwhelmed, when staring at the screen full of words that you don’t feel are right and aren’t making any sense and you’re doubting whether any of it will work anyway. And you’re tempted to just close the whole thing down and go back to your WoW game. When you’re feeling discouraged — or just unable to tear yourself away from the party and go upstairs to work on the essay. Even though you told yourself that that’s what you were going to do this weekend, that you’d spend time with your family for awhile but then you were determined to make progress on your apps in the evening, yet here it is, “evening” and you don’t feel like doing it.

Just remember: THE TIGER IS NOT REAL.

The only thing you need in order to be successful with getting into bschool (or getting to any other huge major success in your life) is you have to BE WILLING.

You have to see that it’s your thoughts that are holding you back.

If you are WILLING, then you don’t need to know how to do it. You simply become open to trying.

If you don’t feel like you’re willing — if you feel like the fear of the tiger is too strong — then there’s a solution for that, too.

You just have to be willing to be willing.

Anybody can do that.

And please do not forget.

This process of applying to bschool — even when you’re rejected — this is not a referendum on who you are.

You are perfect. Already.

You don’t have to package yourself up into somebody else in order to get in.

You just have to do the work of uncovering who you are. And sharing that on the page in an essay.

And the only way to do that is to be willing.

This is what you don’t want to have happen

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

In the world of bschools, leadership has been the byword for at least a couple generations now. Used to be, business school prepared you for management. The first business schools were created in the era of assembly lines and automation and they needed workers who were kind of like cogs in a machine; everybody needed to make sure everything else went smoothly. But then places like Harvard and Wharton and everywhere else elevated their game and said, “No, we need leaders in the world and we’re gonna task ourselves with preparing them.” And that’s been the focus since like the 1950s or so. And then in the 1960s and ’70s there were all these self-actualizing hippies especially out in California and lo and behold, Stanford started pushing personal development and interpersonal skills and all that touchy-feely stuff, and slowly that took hold and now you get empowerment type content at most every school out there. Heck, lots of bschools even teach mindfulness now!

And our new cultural era is about being happy at work. There’s a gazillion books out there, some in the Business aisle, many more in the Self Help section, all telling you how to be happy.

Full disclaimer: EssaySnark loves that stuff. 😉

There’s a Happiness Consultant on twitter (our term not hers) who posted this recently:

 
 
And EssaySnark must encourage you, at this important crossroads in your life, as you’re thinking about embarking on this very big adventure to mix things up and create change, and move from the path that you’ve been on, to a totally new path…

We need to remind you that you’re doing all this because on some level you’re not satisfied.

Right?

Whether it’s being dissatisfied with the basics like your level of income, or being dissatisfied with the direction you’re on and feeling like you’re stuck, or being wholly miserable because you work for the boss from h3ll and you want a way OUT…

Or maybe you’re so miserable working for that person that you’ve vowed to learn how NOT to be such a terrible manager, and that’s one reason you’re looking for bschool, in order to not repeat the mistakes of the past or inflict such misery upon any other person.

Regardless of the motivations, you’re looking to change.

You’re looking to go for a big jump, to improve your life.

You’re looking to go back to school and learn stuff.

Yay you!

Or…..

There’s also a possibility that you’re not.

There’s this chance that you’re only interested in the MBA because that’s what everybody else is doing and you figure it’s kind of expected.

Maybe you worked for two or three years in a traditional pre-MBA role in finance or consulting, and it’s a kind of up-or-out environment, and you’re not entirely confident you’re going to get an offer to stay, and even if you did, you know in your gut you don’t really want to, because you can’t stand the place…

Yeah, we’re back to not liking your boss. 😀

Hopefully the “I hate my boss!” feeling is only happening in a small minority of you, since that’s an awful mindstate to be working in and if you’re only starting the process of applying then most likely you’re going to be in that same place for another full year — in which case, we do hope you’ll take steps TODAY to fix the situation! (That’s a post for another time, though we have blahgged about it before, so we’ll try to dig up some reference posts for you to review now…. OK, here’s one semi-related, and this other one at least is coming from the same perspective… Basically if you can’t stand your boss, then there are things you can do to be proactive in making adjustments to how you interact with him or her, and being brave enough to have an honest-to-goodness conversation to find out the core of the issues between you… So that’s the tl;dr of how to deal with and now we don’t have to write another post on it, right?)

The reason for today’s post is it’s important to stay focused on the WHY of this project.

Not just now, as you’re coming up with your fancy schmancy talk about what are your career goals and why do you want an MBA that you’re planning for your maestro essays of brilliance.

We mean, as you go through each step of the process to keep reminding yourself of the WHY.

Part of this means not getting sucked up by the FOMO of bschool, which is often an instant recipe to lose your own core objectives and forget why you’re there.

It means not comparing yourself to everyone, and not going along with the crowd. If you know today you want do pursue ABC goals through the bschool experience, to not get sidetracked into the XYZ things that other people are doing.

It’s fine to change direction and adjust plans, and it’s totally okay if you end up throwing away all original intentions.

Just make sure you’re doing it intentionally, for a reason.

It would SUCK to end up another ten years down the road, looking around at another job that you truly hate, wondering how you got there and what happened to your life.

NOW is this incredible opportunity. You have this energy at your disposal and this interest in change.

Do some reflection. Ask yourself questions. Figure out what’s important to you.

Make adjustments as necessary but don’t sell yourself out as you go through this process.

If you don’t know who you are, start learning!

And don’t settle.

You don’t need to know where you’re going to end up in ten years. You just need to be clear on what you’re doing next, and why.
 
 
 

The Round 1 MBA Countdown is underway! If you’re thinking about applying to bschool this year and you’re not sure how to go about it, this is a great tool to keep you on track!

 
 
 

The power of positivity

by EssaySnark 3 Comments

EssaySnark doesn’t want to get all metasophical on you or anything (yes that’s a word, we just made it up) but…

We have this one client.

He tried to get in last year.

He started too late, and he got bad advice, and he submitted some really lousy apps. And of course he targeted the very best schools.

(Oh wait – you’ve heard this story before? Yeah, so have we.)

So then he comes to us and wants help this year. And we go over a strategy and he’s bound and determined to reapply at some of those schools he bombed at before, and OK fine, we say it’s unlikely but go along with it, and we keep encouraging him to try elsewhere too. At other really good schools. Like UCLA Anderson.

(Maybe this kid is a little too big for his britches. LA isn’t good enough for him. It’s New York New York New York for this one.)

Whatever. He tries again this season, with Round 1 apps like he’s supposed to, and…

Here we are in March and he’s not been accepted anywhere yet.

And do you wanna know what we think the reason is?

(Besides the aforementioned too-big issue.)

This kid has lost the faith.

This guy has a screamin’ GMAT score, his academics are decent to good, he’s done the standard pre-MBA career track and his goals are in line with what we’d expect. He’s got some relatively OK stories to tell in his apps, nothing earth-shattering, but some above-average examples of having an impact and doing good. On paper he’s competitive with his peers.

And he’s not getting in.

If a Brave Supplicant finds him- or herself in this situation, then in our brutally direct assessment, there are two possible causes:

#1. The BSer is arrogant. Yes, we’ve detected a smidgeon of that in this dude, but, nothing extreme. However, if the arrogant vibe comes out too strong in an interview, it can be the kiss of death. Perhaps there’s some of that going on.

More likely though it’s:

#2. The BSer doesn’t believe. In fact, the BSer not only does not believe he’ll get in to bschool — he actively imagines and fears and fantasizes about not getting in. 

While EssaySnark does not have direct access to this kid’s thoughts, we are quite confident in our assessment that this is what the problem is.

This guy has gotten his confidence trampled, and now he believes the worst. He has decided that he is a bschool loser, and he’s doing all in his power to create that as his reality.

If someone is in this situation, if someone has convinced himself that he’s not gonna make it, if the underlying thought patterns are of doom and gloom in someone’s mind, well… sorry Charlie, there ain’t nuthin’ we can do.

Yes, we’ve tried the cheerleading rap, we’ve tried all the rah-rah and go get ums and all. There is NO REASON why this person should not be getting an offer (at least, for the schools he finally resigned himself to in Round 2, which were much more in line with where he should’ve been targeting from the beginning — yes, we’re now talking Kellogg instead of Harvard).

Sometimes, it just takes time. Some people don’t make it in the first time through, and they get up, brush themselves off, and try again. As long as you do that with clear eyes and a realistic plan, you WILL get in — eventually. There is room for everyone at the bschool inn, you just have to find your proper home. Swear to G., this is what EssaySnark believes.

And we will be there to help you. We WANT you to be successful. (At least, the non-arrogant, non-greedy, non-unethical ones of you.)

But we canNOT help at all if you do not believe in yourself.

As Eleanor Roosevelt said, “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”

Ya gotta believe. If you don’t believe in yourself, nobody else can do it for you.

($) If you don’t think you can do better on the GMAT

by EssaySnark

When talking about what score is “good enough” for getting into a top MBA program, we said this: If your score is somewhere in between a 700 and a 770 and if you think you can score higher on the GMAT… then we strongly encourage you to suck it up and make it happen. If…

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($) The hardest part of learning to write good essays

by EssaySnark

We introduced recently the model of The Four Stages of Learning. borrowed from illuminatedleadership.co — see EssaySnark’s discussion in our recent post   Today we will remind you that learning something new is hard. In the essay-writing process, Stage 2: Consciously Incompetent is very painful for many people. Why is that? It’s because you THOUGHT…

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.