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What leadership is (not).

by EssaySnark 2 Comments

EssaySnark spends very little time on social media and we were reminded of why this is when we stirred up a hornet’s nest yesterday among, of all people, college professors. After seeing their responses to our tweet we are very happy that you Millennials are making your way through the workforce and will one day soon be in charge.

Because the attitudes of these professor-people got us royally depressed.

Any admissions folks out there who happen to click onto EssaySnark, we hope you’ll share this with your faculty — or at least use it as a point of conversation.

Or maybe we’re totally off base in which case we hope that people will use rational arguments to show us the light.

Here’s where it started – we’re recreating the exchange in this post because some of the tweets have been deleted. The original thread is here .

1. A College Professor account retweeted another professor’s tweet that retweeted this — this is from a student:

Student making soft joke about terse reply from prof to her email

What the student was complaining about, in case it’s not clear, is that she spent time trying to make her request to her professor politely, and (EssaySnark imagines) she felt somewhat dismissed by the response. You can see from her subsequent tweet here that she was just making a joke. It’s not that big of a deal — but apparently us calling out the professors about it is!!!!

We’re extrapolating here but: A two-word reply to a carefully-crafted email has a way of making the recipient feel like the effort they put in was not worth it. (The “sent by iPhone” thing became an unfortunate distraction; this isn’t about replying by iPhone, it’s literally what the reply was. This happens just as much through Outlook or gmail or whatever.) The professor’s reply wasn’t rude; it just wasn’t thoughtful. It did not demonstrate respect for the student. There was no malice, but it also was unnecessarily terse.

It’s kind of like when you’re out at a restaurant and the waitress comes to take your order and you read what you want off the menu then put the menu aside and go back to talking to your friend, without making eye contact or saying “thank you” to the waitress. It’s the same sort of behavior. It’s purely transactional, it’s here’s an answer to your question now go away behavior.

It’s particularly ironic when so many professors on twitter complain about their careless, thoughtless, frivolous, ungrateful students who have unreasonable expectations.
 

2. Naively, EssaySnark replied saying we’re on the student’s side:

EssaySnark tweet: "Actually, we're on the student's side on this one."

Because Earth to Professors: You’re working with kids! You’re supposed to be the adult in the room!

And OMG did this thing blow up (at least, as far as the tiny little insignificant slice of the universe where college professors complaining about their students dwell!).

We foolishly replied back to a bunch more but it was distressing to see how far afield the debate got flung within mere moments, and also how flawed the reasoning was from so many of these professors (and how some of them chose to take our generalized statements very personally as if we were attacking them on how they interact with their students — um, no?).

 

But this.

This is why we decided that we needed to post.

Because students are PEOPLE and you are MODELING BEHAVIOR to them.

 

“My time is more valuable”?????

And then this…

tweet from professor b!tching about student

And finally, let’s just all take our toys and go home why don’t we:

Twitter reply from professor: "Okay you win, next time I'll do that and deny the student's request"

Dang we’re bothered by this, not because we think this twitter-professor-person would actually do that, but at the reaction.

We point out that being polite and treating students as equals is good behavior, and this is how they respond?

The claim that “my time is more valuable” is ridiculous. No wonder you’re all bent out of shape about your students emailing you. How dare they! You are a very important person!! “DYKWIA??????”

If these are the prevailing attitudes among professors then there are major problems within the culture in colleges in America.

Distressing indeed.

All the bschools we’ve ever experienced are very, very focused on culture. Apparently that’s not universal in higher ed. Certainly the student population in MBA programs is older, they’ve been out in the world, they’re at a different place in life, presumably they won’t be making frivolous requests or wasting professors’ time. Like, apparently, asking for an appointment to meet, like the student did who started all this. The nerve!! But hey, folks, college kids are people too! Perhaps part of this is that college students today are younger, and/or many times have unrealistic expectations or demands or need more hand-holding, or are just in a different place and mindset than the aging faculty who are teaching them. That whole generation gap thing, and this is how it manifested yesterday on social media.

Or perhaps it’s as the Dalia Lama has said, that compassion is only felt between equals.

Dunno.

But we sincerely hope that grumpy professors do some soul-searching around what their mission in life is and who they seek to serve, and how they might do that. Aren’t you a teacher because you want to teach? Yeah we get it, lots of demands, maybe you really want to be doing research. Or maybe it was just a bad morning.

This terse-email-reply thing is not important. It appears to be a symptom though.

Here’s our hope for all of you:

As you progress in your career and assume positions of greater power, please don’t also assume an attitude of superiority. Yes, professors are busy, as are senior managers in a firm. Yes, as someone who works under that person, you should be respectful of their time, and not send unnecessary emails, or whatever.

But no matter what!!! NO MATTER WHAT!!! When you are in a position of power, it is YOUR DUTY to earn people’s respect every day. You do not get to be flippant or rude or dismissive just because you’re earning a high salary. If someone calls attention to something you’re doing that others might interpret this way, then a better reaction, instead of getting defensive and petty, would be to please stop and examine it and question maybe the way you’re coming off is not ideal. THAT MAYBE OTHERS HAVE FEELINGS and that the way those in power interact with them does matter. It does matter.

Oh we’re so bothered by this.

While we’re on this rant, from the ‘snarchive for those writing essays: If you are human, you do not have underlings.
 
 

We soon realized the error of our ways in responding to something on twitter and backed out:

We’re still getting notifications of dozens and dozens of replies so if you’re looking for a drive-by experience, go ahead and click over to those threads. We’re not participating anymore. Apparently we can’t take the heat in the kitchen.

This was an unplanned post today. Thank you for reading to the end. For MBA applicants, perhaps this can gain insight into possible topics for your essays for schools that care about teamwork and interpersonal skills and being NICE (thank you Tuck!). Interpersonal interactions MATTER.

Where did you encounter an unpleasant situation? How did you turn it around? Or if you failed to do so, as EssaySnark clearly did, how did you navigate through thereafter, what action did you take if any to try to make change to the system, or at minimum what did you do to channel your own feelings of frustration?

What small injustice in the world have you helped to right*?

The stories you tell in your MBA essays need not always be these huge massive gold-ribbon accomplishments. Sometimes a very small incident can lead you into a fascinating topic that the adcoms (at certain schools) would be eager to have you discuss. What goes on in your workplace that you thought was wrong, and how did you change it?

To wrap up our soapbox diatribe today, this is what we were proposing be done in the situation of the original student’s emails – it’s not difficult:

It’s simple recognition that it’s a PERSON on the other end of your inbox.

It’s something that you can start to adopt into your email practices today.

 
 

*Not trying to imply that we did any righting of wrongs or fixing of injustices in the world with our tweet; if anything, our calls for politeness got voted down by the mob. The “right a wrong” thing is to prompt you to do some further thinking!! And also to examine your own values. Maybe EssaySnark is off on all of this, maybe a professor’s time is more valuable and should be protected!! Clearly we don’t think so but if you have a different view then find out what it is, and use that as your investigation into your own character and behavior and mine all of that for your essays!! This is what they mean when they say that essays require self-reflection. You start in on a topic and you think about how you feel on it, and what ways you’ve acted, and what examples from your life are related. Presenting evidence of your own behavior is how you demonstrate your character to the adcom in whatever way is relevant to the questions they’re asking.

 
 

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Why we think rankings are stupid.

by EssaySnark - Discusses 6 Comments

It’s because Harvard is stupid.

There is no way that your Harvard education is that much better than what you will get at Tuck or at Duke or, heck, at Cornell.

Rankings mess with your head.

From the description of a book, aptly named Engines of Anxiety , that studied the effect of US News rankings on the law school market:

The authors find that prospective law students not only rely heavily on such rankings to evaluate school quality, but also internalize rankings as expressions of their own abilities and flaws. For example, they often view rejections from “first-tier” schools as a sign of personal failure.

Sound familiar?

What you get with Harvard (bschool, law school, any school) is ACCESS.

You get to go play with the rich boys and girls for a few years. You get “the network” so that when you try that little startup idea you have (before it crashes and burns) you can hit up these alumni with money to see if they’ll fund your starry-eyed dreams.

Is that worth it?

Hell yeah, if you’re going to use it.

But please do not fool yourself.

Harvard is not ‘better.’ It’s just what this system of class and money has designed to fool you, to continue with the illusion that class and money matter.

Exhibit A: Harvard Fellowships Have Always Been A Joke

Mostly what you get with Harvard is the smug satisfaction of the rubber stamp of Society Approval.

Sure, you have to be smart to get in.

Sure, you have to work hard.

But the Harvard kids are not smartER. They did not work hardER. They are just like everybody else — or, frequently, they’re members of the Lucky Sperm Club where they landed in a family of Harvard grads, so they’re what’s called a ‘legacy applicant’ and definitely in undergrad admissions, Harvard College loves those kids. For the class of incoming freshman that just got on campus this summer, one-third are legacy .

It’s like buying a Rolex or a Gucci handbag or a Ferrari.

A brand like that will deliver some attention to detail and refinement in the product. It’s going to be made with better materials and care of construction than what you find at your local Macy’s or the Kia dealership.

But a Rolex is just a watch.

Wearing a Rolex is a symbol to the world that you can spend that much money on a bauble on your wrist that tells you the time.

Everyone else is just looking at their phone. You get to shoot your cuff and show off this glint of luxury.

That’s all that Harvard is going to do for you.

(And the value only goes so far. If Harvard Business School were so great, why are its tweets so lame? We are convinced that they’ve got an undergrad student writing them — no offense to Harvard undergrads. But c’mon people.)

Please don’t be confused by what you are going to get.

Is there value to that prestige?

Sure. But the EDUCATION is what will change your life.

Not the association with wealthy elite.

So many people think getting in to Harvard will finally be validation. No, maybe they don’t CONSCIOUSLY think it, like, “If I go to Harvard then I’ll finally be worth something!” But it’s what’s driving the engine, under the hood.

But guess what? If you’re actually so insecure that you’re constantly seeking out external validation from The World, and you think going to Harvard will finally put all those internal voices of doubt and self-criticism to rest, no, that’s not what will happen. Instead, when you get on the campus at Harvard, you will be surrounded by a more extreme concentration of People Who You Think Are Better Than You than you’ve ever experienced in your life. You will see all these other AMAZING students who have done more impressive things (who have way more money than you) who have traveled the world, who already have a Rolex and not a Gucci bag but a Birkin. You think that’ll make you feel better?

We’re not saying not to apply to Harvard. That would be silly. We’re saying that you may want to look at your reasons for why you’re so enamored of the BRAND.

Because that’s all it is.

It is a BRAND.

A school is different than a consumer product, because a school is an experience and a community and oh yeah, an education. But very few people are focusing on applying to Harvard because of any of that. They may not be consciously thinking, “I want to go to Harvard for the prestige” but really, that’s what’s driving our social-construct personalities so much of the time.

Unless what’s really fueling your interest in Harvard is so that your unborn children will get to go to Harvard. Then by all means. Apply to Harvard.

We hope you get in!

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You don’t need to lie.

by EssaySnark 2 Comments

Despite the ridiculousness coming out of the American political establishment these days and the atrocious excuse for a role model1 that that makes: YOU DO NOT NEED TO LIE ON YOUR MBA APPLICATIONS.

Here’s a story from Air Force vet turned product marketer turned entrepreneur turned professor Steve Blank about how he was told to lie on his resume by a recruiter in the early days of his tech career.

You already know how EssaySnark feels about ethics, as in, applying to Columbia during their binding Early Decision option while simultaneously applying to Harvard (and conveniently not mentioning it to us — great way to make us remember you negatively forever): If you are planning to apply to Harvard, then you cannot apply to Columbia during Early Decision. Full stop, end of story, your application strategy is now decided. Columbia will be Regular Decision for you. This is not a question of strategy, it’s a question of ETHICS. Same deal with writing your own letters of recommendation. It may seem like the easy way to go, but it is completely inappropriate (aka unethical) and a massively bad idea.

Lying is in the same category. Besides the fact that it’s wrong2, it’s simply not necessary.

If you think lying on your apps is a trivial matter that does not affect anyone — especially when you see people in power lying blatantly on a daily basis with apparently no repercussions for it — we have to ask you to think again.

Lying degrades your moral core.

Lying works against the only system of trust and decency that we have as individuals interacting in this vast universe of uncertainty. It corrodes relationships.

Lying is disrespectful to the person you are lying to.

Lying is arrogant.

Lying is desperate.

Lying is cheating.

Lying is fooling one person only, and that person is you.

Maybe you’ll lie on your apps and you’ll get in. And then you have to go through life knowing that you lied, that you did not get in on your own honest merits.

If you’re a liar, then we can guarantee that it’s because you do not think highly of yourself. You most likely feel very poorly about yourself indeed. Do you think lying to cover up some perceived flaw will make that flaw go away?

No, it compounds the flaw. Now you have a known defect, and you have layered a lie on top of it.

You know you did it, and man that’s a lousy feeling to have. Plus, what if someone finds out?

You may think that lying is a victimless crime. No harm, no foul, right?

No. The victim is you. It affects who you are and makes you less honorable each time you do it.

What more do you have to carry through this life than your honor? What else is there if not self-respect and decency?

It doesn’t matter if you know someone who lied and got in. We’re talking about YOU.

We are up on a soap box because we care about such things, and we believe strongly that in order for the world to become a better place, that ALL OF US need to make a contribution to that, individually, in our everyday lives and the actions we take. Doesn’t matter where you fall on the political spectrum, it’s up to us as individuals to change the world.

Lying matters, because it’s your own individual stance. Are you choosing to operate with the truth as the foundation of your life? If not, what are you trading it for?

It’s kind of like John McCain’s3 speech to the Senate this week where he said this :

“I hope we can again rely on humility, on our need to cooperate, on our dependence on each other to learn how to trust each other again and by so doing better serve the people who elected us. Stop listening to the bombastic loudmouths on the radio and television and the Internet. To hell with them. They don’t want anything done for the public good. Our incapacity is their livelihood.” [emphasis added]

He was addressing his fellow lawmakers, but boy oh boy does EssaySnark appreciate the sentiment. To hell with them. Can we learn how to trust each other again?

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do

After the election last November, we came across this on Medium, The Minister of Magic Gets a Briefing on Donald Trump :

If we believe in any sense of morality, and if we believe that freedom and a good life should belong to more than just the people like us, then we must go to their defense on principle.

In the ‘Snark’s small corner of the world, the currency is truth and honor and decency, and how you present yourself, and what integrity you hold. Those are our principles. What are yours?

 

While we’re stirring a random soup of ethics and politics today:

Darden professor Bobby Parmar published this (also on Medium): How to Disobey Immoral Orders where he analyzed a famous experiment from the ’60s where study participants were asked to inflict electric shock on people who gave the wrong answer on a test. Professor Parmar says,

“‘All of us are embedded in environments where we get conflicting orders, and often it’s not obvious what the right thing to do is,’ Parmar notes, citing recent scandals like that at Wells Fargo, where employees opened bank accounts and credit lines under customers’ names without their consent. ‘A lot of us are on autopilot.’ When you factor in a paycheck or status within a group, it can be easy to put on blinders.”

Don’t be on autopilot with your apps. Don’t be so freaked out by the hype around competitiveness in admissions, and so fixated on the prize of getting in to a great school, that you get into a mindset of the ends justifying the means. You don’t need to lie to get ahead in life. Lying is the opposite of authenticity.

We know that very few BSers would go into the process intending to lie. We’re also not talking about making honest mistakes, like messing up the dates of employment when you’re filling out your app forms.

Instead, lying often happens unintentionally, or you fiddle with a fact here, and then fiddle with a fact there on a story, and it ends up morphing to fit the feedback that you were given instead of being an accurate representation of what happened.

Don’t get so strung out by the stress of this experience that you rationalize or justify. Lying is a slippery slope. It’s like heroin. Once you start, where will you stop? Better not to start at all.

 

 

We try to keep this blahg neutral to politics. But every now and then, our truth seeps out. We feel strongly that the constant drumbeat of political ridiculousness happening today is dangerous because it desensitizes all of us to what is right.

We must always take sides (Elie Wiesel)

Elie Wiesel4

 

What is your truth? Where can you stand up for it in your life? Will you adhere to it and honor yourself in your apps?


1 Sorry but WTF?!? was this Boy Scouts thing this week??? OMFG have you no sense of protocol or tradition or appropriateness at all.
2 And oh yeah, the schools do background checks.
3 In case you are unfamiliar with U.S. politics, John McCain is a long-serving Republican Senator (same party as the President) who is often called a maverick for speaking out and staying true to his conscience, even when it’s not politically expedient for him to do so; last week he had surgery on his eye and was diagnosed with brain cancer, and he returned to the Senate for this speech and a vote on the health care legislation that his party is trying to get passed.
4 Holocaust survivor; for full info please see Elie Wisel Wikipedia page

 
 
 

ETA: This came across our twitterfeed today after this was posted and is so unbelievably perfect…

 
 
 
Update 7/31/17: This showed up referenced in the Tuck Dean’s weekly newsletter, the Slaughter & Rees Report , where they spoke of the importance of restoring trust to the White House. Link is to the book they mentioned. If you’re accustomed to lying about things, then you’re already actively contributing to a dysfunctional culture around you.

Five Dysfunctions of a Team


Does it help to go with an MBA admissions consultant who has worked in MBA admissions?

by EssaySnark Leave a Comment

Short answer: No. Except in perhaps one very limited case.

Long answer: Keep reading.

There are lots of admissions consultants out there who advertise themselves as former admissions officers, as if this is some massive advantage to you as their potential client.

We actually believe that in some cases – like when the admissions consultant is in their first or second year serving clients – that this could actually be a liability. After all, just because they know how admissions works at ONE school does not give them any special expertise on any other. That comes only from years of working with applicants to those specific schools. Bschool admissions policies are all specific to their school.

And, even if it might be an advantage to work with someone who served on the admissions committee at your target school last year, that advantage will fade quite dramatically the more time goes by. Things change at all the schools. Policies adapt, preferences shift, the trends in incoming applicants morph, and the priorities of a new dean at the school or in admissions take precedent over old ways. There’s one key situation where it would be helpful, and that’s if you have a specific one-off question (like what we describe here with GRE vs GMAT scores) about how things work in the depths of the admissions process at the one school they worked at. Of course, you could also pick up the phone and ask your question directly to the current admissions staff at that school, and see what they tell you. Most admissions offices are trying to be more transparent.

Another important consideration if you’re teasing apart these marketing claims: When someone says they “worked in” admissions, what exactly does that mean?

Were they a student who conducted interviews?

Were they an outside consultant who was brought in for helping with app reviews?

Were they actually on the committee that makes the decisions on who to admit?

Was it for a couple months? A season? Many years?

There’s lots of variation and levels of takeaway knowledge and insights you can expect from each of these.

The biggest issue we have with former admissions people touting some specialized advantage to the marketplace of Brave Supplicants is that reading an application and knowing that it’s good and that you want to accept someone, or that it’s bad and you will reject them, is not the same as helping someone to strategize and develop how to create an application that’s good, that some admissions person will want to accept.

It’s like reading a novel and writing one.

You’ve probably done the former.

Have you ever attempted the latter?

What about helping some other writer figure out what’s good and bad, what should be kept and what should be tossed, in the novel that they’re writing?

These are very separate skills.

We’re not trying to toot our own horn here (well maybe a little) but we do have years and years of experience working with BSers of all flavors and stripes, to bschools of every sort you can name. We’ve seen how different schools respond to different profiles. We’ve seen the mistakes that people make – and we can help you not to make them.

The only thing that will give someone any advantage in helping you with your apps is if they’ve done exactly that before. If they’ve helped OTHER PEOPLE – not just one, but multitudes – with successful apps TO THE SCHOOLS YOU’RE TRYING TO CRACK.

You can get good at a skill only by doing it.

A coach usually needs to have played the sport in order to be any good at coaching it.

The “sport” of MBA admissions and training to be good at applying comes not from judging the apps from on high but from writing MBA essays – or helping others to write them in a way that showcases their talents and helps them stand out from the pack of the other gazillion strivers.

Not something you learn by watching. This is a contact sport. Has the MBA admissions consultant you’ve talked to been out on the field and getting muddy? Or have they just been watching from the air conditioned luxury box with the open bar and a chauffeur waiting at the end of the night?

 
 

(Any admissions directors reading this now are laughing. Yes, EssaySnark knows there are no chauffeurs waiting at the curb for you. Not for us either. Let us indulge in our elaborate little metaphor. We are not actually criticizing the admissions directors; we know plenty of them who are miffed when a colleague leaves for the dark side of admissions consulting! Hope no offense was taken here.)


 
 

This post is merely to say, evaluate any potential consultant with clear thinking and logic — EssaySnark included. Think through any claims being made and consider the way they’re marketing themselves, just like you (hopefully) would with any other purchase. There’s a lot on the line here.
 
 

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    • We were bummed to have discovered this.

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    Totally and completely random EssaySnark pet peeve

    by EssaySnark 4 Comments

    OK so, if you’ve been coming around here any length of time, you know that some stuff bothers us.

    Like, overfocusing on brand and ranking when you’re choosing the bschools you want to apply to.

    Like, neglecting good manners and not saying ‘thank you’ when someone does you a kindness.

    Like, ohdunno like several dozen other things you’ll hear us griping about on a regular basis here on the blahg.

    Well, here’s one that we’ve been stewing over for ages – years, really – and we’re finally going to post about it because even though it does not directly affect the BSer’s process of applying to bschool, it may come up for some of you – and heck, this is our blahg so we can rant about whatever we want to.

    Today’s snarky issue is,

    Why in heck do people say “Pay it forward” when they mean “Pay it back”?!????

    You remember of course when the whole concept of “pay it forward” first emerged on the scene. It was that movie, you know the one, with the kid?

    No, not Macaulay Culkin and Home Alone. The “I see dead people” kid.

    Yeah, right. Him.

    Haley Joel Osment.

    (Hmm, wonder what happened to that guy? OH. Wow. Okay.)

    Anyway, he had that OTHER movie called, what was it?

    Oh yeah.

    PAY IT FORWARD.

    And the whole premise of the movie is about doing random nice things for total strangers JUST BECAUSE.

    You’re alive on this earth, and that alone is a reason to do stuff for others.

    So you pay it forward.

    You act when you don’t have to.

    You make a gesture with the Universe.

    You try to help. Not because you have to. Not because you have a debt to repay. Not because anybody is watching or cares. Because it’s your aesthetic.

    You’re definitely not doing it because of what others have done to help you.

    You’re doing it because it’s your nature. It’s who you are.

    AND YET.

    We see all these earnest BSers talking about how they have gotten such blessings in life, how they’ve been helped by mentors and the kindness of others, and they want to pay it forward.

    Errrm, no.

    You want to pay it back.

    There’s nothing wrong with that.

    There’s no less nobility in paying it back.

    That doesn’t discount the value of what you’re doing in any way.

    It’s just not PAYING IT FORWARD.

    To pay it forward is to, like, do something because it’s what you do. Do something because you care. Do something regardless of what’s been done to you.

    It has nothing to do with resetting the scales, or balancing things out, or telling the universe you’re grateful.

    (OK, maybe it does have something to do with that, but more on a macro scale – not a micro one. It’s not about scorekeeping. It’s about who you are.)

    OK, rantover. You get the point.

    And we know that this is yet another snarkism.

    This is clearly not how others see the phrase.

    Plenty of people out there are perfectly fine with the idea of “pay it forward” to mean, making an effort to help someone else because that’s what someone did for you.

    No problem. We can roll.

    But we do have to point out: IT’S NOT THE SAME.

    This may come down simply to our obsession with language. We care about clarity, and precision. We work very hard to say what we mean – and we work hard to coach others to do the same.

    Clear words, clear writing – that means there’s clear thinking. These things are related.

    If you mean sortathesamething, yeah, OK, you’re in the ballpark.

    But please know that if we read that phrase in your essay, we gonna balk.

    Nobody is really all that selfless (or very few of us are). Call it what it is. “Pay it back” is perfectly fine and equally noble – and more accurate.

    We dig on accuracy.

    It’s just how we’re wired.

    ($) Active BSer People: We don’t offer feedback for our benefit. It’s for yours.

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    ($) The other MAJOR problem with Columbia’s essays this year

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    So much for “standardized” MBA recommendation questions

    by EssaySnark - Discusses 6 Comments

    Talk about the law of unintended consequences.

    When a collection of top schools came out with simplified requirements for recommenders last year, where they were asking only two questions – and the same two questions – we b!tched and moaned about how it was a nice idea and we could see why it might seem helpful to recommenders, but that we thought it was misguided. Our main critique at the time was not the attempt to standardize, but instead, that the two questions that these schools had standardized on were way too limiting, and that they didn’t even have any open-ended or optional questions for the recommenders to answer for just-in-case situations.

    So guess what?

    This year, the schools have made it worse.

    The state of MBA recommendation requirements this year is SIGNIFICANTLY MORE DIFFICULT for recommenders than it was BEFORE the schools made these changes in 2014.

    In fact, it’s just downright awful. The schools have screwed things up royally. Each one is out for its own needs – ok fine, that makes sense, they have to optimize their own processes and ask the questions that serve their own criteria in their admissions reviews. So what did they do? THEY CHANGED THE STANDARDIZED QUESTIONS. The first one specifically.

    No longer are they standardized – except that they sort of give the appearance of being standardized. As a result, they have now COMPLETELY COMPLICATED AND MUFFED UP THE PROCESS OF ASKING SOME SIMPLE QUESTIONS TO RECOMMENDERS.

    It’s honestly one of the most frustrating things we’ve encountered in this business in, like, ever.

    It was already bad last year, the first year of “standardization”, because of the variations that schools like Duke and Kellogg had made. Laughably, Duke even has language in its recommenders’ system where they tell recommenders that they’re doing them a favor by “aligning” their questions with what other schools ask. Sorry, Duke. You have not done that. You can quit patting yourself on the back now.

    This post contains a further discussion of recommender questions (especially Duke’s) available for our blahg members. Please log in or purchase a membership to view.

    Continuing on with the discussion for everyone… Yes we’ve opened up more of this post than we normally would since we want to let the adcoms see this! (ulterior snarky motives)

    Here’s the list of worst offenders – these schools are making it VERY DIFFICULT on recommenders:

    • Duke
    • Cornell
    • Kellogg

    If you’re applying to multiple schools on that list – or heaven forfend, all three – then just, ugh. Your recommenders are likely to have trouble navigating this mess.

    You can also add UCLA and Berkeley-Haas to a less-offensive version of that “difficult” list too; beyond the “standard” two, they’ve both got a third head-scratcher question – of course, each one is different than the other’s – that your recommenders may not quite know how to handle.

    For the record: MIT and Tuck have resisted this trend completely. They have stuck with their own unique sets of questions – which seems like it would be a burden. But it’s not. (well it sort of is, since they have A LOT of questions, which can be a bummer when there’s so many schools you’re asking for recommendations for.) But their questions are different enough that your recommender will KNOW that they’re different and will be able to proceed accordingly by writing new answers from scratch. For the schools that put their own tweaks on the questions, it adds undue complications and headaches for a diligent recommender trying to follow the instructions. The altogether-unique requirements where each school was different was actually better. Yeah it’s a lot of work for your recommenders, and in this era where there are fewer essays, which encourages more BSers to submit to more schools, then it’s offloading work in a weird way from you the applicant, to these other people from whom you’re asking favors.

    The schools reduced the number of essays per apps. This resulted in more applicants applying to more schools. That’s led to an era of ever-increasing apps at the schools, which all the schools like because it helps them with their rankings.

    But there’s this unrepresented class of participant in the mix: The recommenders. They’re getting the shaft here.

    Sheesh people. Bad bad bad. You admissions folks have taken a somewhat challenging situation with LORs and made it much worse – and the burden is placed on an innocent third party to the entire transaction. One who’s not really all that motivated to jump through your hoops. And who shouldn’t have to.

    The one positive? Last year we complained that the schools were too restrictive and did not even have an “optional” question for recommenders. This year, a bunch of schools have added that in. Stanford and Wharton led the way and those two are the most “standardized” of any. If you’re applying to both of them, your recommenders are in luck – at least insofar as those two schools are concerned.

    Unfortunately they’re like the only two programs of any that we can think of where the requirements are actually the same.

    Oh yeah, there’s another improvement: Many schools removed the ridiculous word count requirements that they’d published on the questions. We imagine that that generated a LOT of worried calls from Brave Supplicants asking what happens if their recommenders wrote more than the limit. (The answer to that question is: Nothing. There is never a penalty on your application if your recommender writes more than the school asks for. This year some schools even removed the website field limits to allow for a lot more text to be entered in their recommenders’ forms.)

    So that unneeded complication and worry-creator was eliminated. Thankfully.

    The only benefit to all of this?

    EssaySnark is selling a helluva lotta Recommender’s Instruction Sets this season.

    OK so who gets the award for the simplest recommendation requirements?

    Columbia.

    Two questions. Simple instructions in their online form. Consistent from year to year. We could be wrong about this but theirs may even be the ones that the schools modeled the “standards” on originally (it was either Columbia’s or Harvard’s, not sure which school had these two questions first, but both had them for years, not just since 2014).

    Here’s some advice from last year on preparing your recommenders.

    And oh yeah, did we mention Recommender’s Instruction Sets?

    A message to Stanford’s Derrick Bolton

    by EssaySnark - Discusses 5 Comments

    Derrick Bolton, as you may know, is the Dean of Admissions at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Nice guy, does good work. And has a stick up his you-know-what about MBA admissions consultants.

    We don’t have any current, 2015 evidence of this. Maybe his stance has changed over time – but we don’t think so. Here’s what the GSB reported that Mr. Bolton said to the Wall Street Journal in an interview about Stanford admissions several years back:

    When asked about applicants using admissions consultants, he replied, “How can someone who doesn’t know you help you be a more authentic version of yourself?”

    (We quoted that from a 2011 post on the now-defunct GSB MBA Admissions Blog, which they took down in December 2014 – we captured it here just for reference.)

    On the surface, that sounds like a very reasonable complaint. The adcoms want to see the “real you” (whatever that is) and we totally get it: How can a complete stranger help you to articulate who you are?

    But there are three problems with this:

    1. First, this statement actually sounds totally ignorant when we consider the approach that most MBA applicants take to the process of writing their essays. In our experience, EVERYONE starts off by trying to say what they think they should say. The first drafts we often get from people are stinky-poo material that make us want to hold our noses and grasp the thing by thumb and forefinger on outstretched arm, to hold it as far away from us as possible so as not to breathe in the stench. People spew forth annoyingly cloyingly yuckiness on the page in an attempt to be impressive. They don’t need a consultant to do that. Doesn’t Derrick Bolton know this by now??

    2. The other problem with this is the assumption that people know who they are. Yeah yeah yeah we get it, you know that you like chocolate ice cream better than vanilla, and that you were born in Zimbabwe and now you live in Paris, and that you got a 710 on the GMAT… but is any of that who you really are? Don’t people go to therapists to discover themselves? Yeah, therapists… or counselors… otherwise known as COMPLETE STRANGERS.

    3. Maybe it’s BECAUSE we don’t know the applicant that we can start to elicit those valuable kernels of truth lurking down in the depths. Someone who already knows you – or you yourself – may assume that X, Y, and Z are important or useful or, idunno, UNIQUE, and you may decide to emphasize that thing over others in your apps. But not only is a well experienced separate third-party person better equipped to help you figure out the “who you are” thing, that experienced person also has the benefit of seeing what other people believe is unique. We can spot patterns, and cliches, and old worn-out tired trends. We can help people not fall into the basic traps that everyone falls into – BECAUSE we don’t know you, so we don’t assume anything about who you are, you’re a blank slate, and also BECAUSE we see so many others who are trying to broadcast their “uniqueness” (and who often fail so miserably at it).

    We also fully appreciate the problems that arise with a bad admissions consultant – someone who thinks there’s a formula to getting in to a school like Stanford (we heard one consultant insist that every person he’d helped with a successful Stanford app had written about a relative in their ‘matters most’ essay and that that was the only way to do it), or someone who thinks the same approach that works for Columbia will also work for the GSB. Or who just doesn’t have much experience in working with PEOPLE to help them dig into their stories and come up with the best material to present. Or who thinks it’s OK to tell people what to write. We have a big problem with consultants who do that (and BTW, we also have a problem with clients who want that – please don’t outsource the answers for what to do with your life to someone else).

    A good MBA admissions consultant puts the client through a process (or if you’re an EssaySnark client, some may call it “the wringer” 😉 ) which is designed to guide the applicant into the depths of their soul past the muck-a-muck obvious answers, past the this-sounds-good answers, past the superficial or less-helpful or just wow that’s so unrelated to anything answers, to the good stuff. The real stuff. The honest and true. The responses that resonate. Because they are coming from YOU.

    Or at least, that’s our noble hope and intention.

    A good MBA admissions consultant never tells the client what to write. We REACT to the ideas that a client has, and give them unbiased, neutral, third-party feedback. We coach them.

    And, importantly: We give the reaction that A COMPLETE STRANGER MAY HAVE.

    Since, after all, the MBA admissions committee person reading your app will, uh, be A COMPLETE STRANGER.

    A good MBA admissions consultant will tell you when you’re full of it. When you’re a little too puffed up. Or when you’re being vague, or just generally confusing with the things you’re trying to say.

    We help you sort through your ideas and come up with the ones that have the most potential. Then we tell you if you’re being clear on how you’re expressing those ideas.

    Back to Derrick Bolton: He said much more than just that one soundbyte quoted on the GSB blog. In fact, here’s the entirety of his exchange with the journalist:

    WSJ: There are so many admissions consultants these days. Do they help?

    Mr. Bolton: Applicants approach the process saying, ‘What are the areas over which I have control?’ They see part of that as getting coaching or guidance from someone who may have seen more candidates.

    Does it help? Does it hurt? It’s candidate by candidate. What I would always ask is, ‘How can someone who doesn’t know you help you be a more authentic version of yourself?’ Some people probably can, if they’re asking the right questions. There’s a fine line.

    Hmmm. Talk about selective quoting, GSB. You’d think you could’ve included the whole thing on your blog.

    Stanford GSB, love you guys, but along with the efforts we’re seeing of being more direct and clear with the instructions on your website, we do hope that you’ll consider changing your very rigid position on the value that good admissions consultants might provide to your applicants.

    We had more to say on this topic in a follow-on post.

    The full WSJ article is here . Special thanks to WSJ journalist Melissa Korn for helping us find it awhile back, since the link on the GSB blog was dead when we tried to retrieve it.