We’ve invited mbaMission to share their Business School Essays Analyses as they’re released for the 2013-2014 application season. Here is their analysis for Indian School of Business.

The Indian School of Business (ISB) appears to have somewhat narrowed the focus of its essay questions since last season. It again asks candidates to explain what differentiates them from others, but this year, it specifically requests two examples and characterizes what kinds of qualities it seeks, rather than leaving the query more open-ended. The ISB has also shifted its question about applicants’ post-MBA goals to focus less on the goals themselves and more on why its program is the right one to prepare candidates to achieve their ambitions. Applicants are no longer required to submit a video essay about what they believe “life” to be (we imagine a large number of candidates were relieved to see that prompt dropped), and a request for additional information that was mandatory last year is now optional. Overall, the ISB seems to want to get at the heart of who its applicants are—not just what they know and have accomplished—and to be able to evaluate “fit” with what it has to offer.

Essay 1: Attitude, skills and knowledge differentiate people. Elaborate with two examples on how you would differentiate yourself from other applicants to the PGP. (300 words max)

This straightforward prompt is really rather self-explanatory. The ISB is basically asking what attitude, skill or knowledge (experience) you possess that makes you stand out. If you can readily claim some unquestionably unique qualities—a rare skill, an unusual upbringing, an uncommon perspective—deciding on your content will be easy. From there, just focus on presenting your differentiating factors in a narrative format (avoid direct declarations like “What makes me different is X and Y…”) and providing brief but sufficient context as to how you gained or developed these traits.

If you view yourself as a more “typical” applicant, however, you may have difficulty deciding what to spotlight in this essay. Just remember that, as the saying goes, “the devil is in the details.” You do not need to reveal that you have experienced something totally unique, but you do need to show that you truly understand and “own” your experiences. For example, if you are a consultant, you are like many other candidates out there—you cannot differentiate yourself by saying, “I am a consultant.” But if you think carefully about each consulting project you were staffed on, you will perhaps recall a unique client interaction, moment with your team, situation with your senior manager, dynamic with a trainee, etc. that reveals your attitude, skill or knowledge in an interesting manner.

Hypothetically, if you, as a consultant, found a way to implement a new training module, this is not earth-shatteringly different, but it gives you the granular experience upon which to build a discussion of initiative, commitment and developing others around you. You may not be the only individual who can lay claim to possessing these traits, but the details of your experience creating and implementing that module will ensure that you are able to differentiate yourself sufficiently.

The school asks for two examples, which means you could offer one from your personal life and one from your professional life to present a balanced view of yourself. However, we would encourage you to honestly evaluate what you believe are the two characteristics that truly distinguish you most, and if they are both personal in scope—or both professional—use them. The ISB wants to know what makes you you and who you will be as a student in its program, so being honest and enthusiastic in your essay will serve you best. Forcing the issue and choosing one quality to highlight from each realm just to be safe, rather than offering what genuinely is the most special about you, would unnecessarily weaken your submission.

Essay 2: How does the ISB PGP tie-in with your career goals? (300 words max)
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We have some exciting news for you today! We have launched GMAT INTERACT™ for Integrated Reasoning, a truly interactive, video-based digital learning platform that engages you in all facets of learning.

INTERACT is our dynamic digital learning platform, and it’s unlike anything you’ve used to study online. It’s designed to engage your whole brain, keeping the student-teacher connection at the core of every lesson. It’s been called “the best self study method out right now.” Our full GMAT INTERACT program will be launching in 2014, but we’re bringing you all five IR lessons now, for free, so you can kick off your studies.

INTERACT prepares you for the newest section of the GMAT, Integrated Reasoning, which is the most significant overhaul of the GMAT in its 60 year history. The feature component of INTERACT for IR is an expert, on-screen instructor who engages with you as if you were actually receiving private tutoring. The INTERACT program, unlike simple video tutorials, actually receives answers from you and responds to them.

INTERACT has been a two year process of technological innovation, in which Manhattan Prep designers, coders, instructors, and videographers meticulously worked together to create the most interactive student-teacher focused experience available online.

Happy studying: //www.manhattanprep.com/gmat/INTERACT/

We invite you to test your GMAT knowledge for a chance to win! Each week, we will post a new Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for a free Manhattan GMAT Prep item. Tell your friends to get out their scrap paper and start solving!

Here is this week’s problem:

A sheet of paper ABDE is a 12-by-18-inch rectangle, as shown in Figure 1. The sheet is then folded along the segment CF so that points A and D coincide after the paper is folded, as shown in Figure 2 (The shaded area represents a portion of the back side of the paper, not visible in Figure 1). What is the area, in square inches, of the shaded triangle shown?

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Here are the free GMAT events we’re holding this week. All times are local unless otherwise specified.

10/21/13– Philidelphia, PA – Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/22/13– New York, NY- Essay Writing Workshop presented by mbaMission– 7:00PM- 8:30PM

10/22/13– Boston, MA- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/22/13–  Chicago, IL –Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/23/13– Irvine, CA-Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/23/13– Online- Essay Writing Workshop presented by mbaMission– 8:00PM- 9:30PM (EDT)

10/24/13– Online- Free Trial Class– 8:00PM- 11:00PM (EDT)

10/24/13– New York, NY – Free Trial Class-  6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/25/13– San Francisco- Assessing Your MBA Profile presented by mbaMission – 6:00PM- 7:30PM

10/27/13– Santa Clara, CA – Free Trial Class-  5:30PM- 8:30PM

10/27/13– Online – Free Trial Class-  5:30AM- 8:30PM (EDT)

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.

Exciting news! GMAC (the owners of the GMAT) announced on Friday that, starting immediately, we’ll get our unofficial IR scores as soon as the test is over. They already do this for our Quant, Verbal, and Total scores, so IR will be added to the mix.

As with the other scores, the IR score will be considered an “unofficial” score until you receive your official score report. You can consider these test-day scores essentially official, though, as it’s incredibly rare for something to change after that day. The folks over at GMAC are professionals; they’re not going to release scores if there’s even a small chance that something could change, upsetting students who thought they had earned a different score.

So now you won’t have to wait to find out how you did on IR. (You’ll still wait for the essay score, of course, but that’s not quite so nerve-wracking, is it?)

Need to practice IR? Try our new free GMAT Interact lessons for Integrated Reasoning.

Happy studying and good luck on test day!

We invite you to test your GMAT knowledge for a chance to win! Each week, we will post a new Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for a free Manhattan GMAT Prep item. Tell your friends to get out their scrap paper and start solving!

Here is this week’s problem:

If a, c, d, x, and y are positive integers such that ay < x and  is the lowest-terms representation of the fraction , then c is how much greater than d? (If  is an integer, let d = 1.)

(1)  is an odd integer.

(2) a = 4

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Here are the free GMAT events we’re holding this week. All times are local unless otherwise specified.

10/14/13– San Diego, CA – Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/14/13– Glendale, CA- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/14/13– Arlington, VA- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/15/13–  Chicago, IL – Essay Writing Workshop presented by mbaMission– 7:00PM- 8:30PM

10/15/13– Online-Live Online GMAT Preview– 9:00PM- 10:30PM (EDT)

10/16/13– Bellaire, TX- Free Trial Class-  6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/16/13– Toronto, ON – Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/16/13– Online – Free Trial Class-  9:00PM- 12:00AM (EDT)

10/17/13– San Francisco- Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/17/13– Online – Free Trial Class-  8:00PM- 11:00PM (EDT)
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For the past couple of weeks, we’ve been learning the 4-step SC Process. (If you haven’t read that two-part article yet, go do so now!) Also, grab your copy of The Official Guide 13^th Edition (OG13); you’re going to need it for the exercises in this article.

People often ask what they should check “first” in SC, or in what order they should check various potential grammar problems. It would take too long to check for a laundry list of error types every time, though, so what to do? You take a First Glance: a 2-3 second glance at the screen with the goal of picking up a clue or two about this problem before you even start reading it.

Open up your OG13 to the SC section right now—any page will do—and find a really long underline. Now find a really short one.

How would you react to each of these? Each one has its own hints. Think about this before you keep reading.

A really long underline increases the chances that “global” issues will be tested. These issues include Structure, Meaning, Modifiers, and Parallelism—it’s easier to test all of these issues when the underline contains a majority of the sentence.

A really short underline (around 5-6 words or fewer) should trigger a change in strategy. Instead of reading the original sentence first, compare the answers to see what the differences are. This won’t take long because there aren’t many words to compare! Those differences can give you ideas as to what the sentence is testing.

Either way, you’ve now got some ideas about what might be happening in the sentence before you even read it—and that is the goal of the First Glance.

Read a Couple of Words

Next, we’re going to do a drill.  Flip to page 672 (print edition) of OG13 but don’t read anything yet. Also, open up a notebook or a file on your computer to take notes. (Note: I’m starting us on the first page of SC problems because I want to increase the chances that you’ve already done some of these problems in the past. It’s okay if you haven’t done them all yet. You can also switch to a different page if you want, but I’m going to discuss some of these problems below, FYI.)

Start with the first problem on the page. Give yourself a maximum of 5 seconds to glance at that problem. Note the length of the underline. Read the word right before the underline and the first word of the underline, but that’s it! Don’t read the rest of the sentence. Also go and look at the first word of each answer choice. As you do this, takes notes on what you see.

For the next step, you can take all the time you want (but still do not go back and read the full sentence / problem). Ask yourself whether any of that provides any clues. Read more

We invite you to test your GMAT knowledge for a chance to win! Each week, we will post a new Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for a free Manhattan GMAT Prep item. Tell your friends to get out their scrap paper and start solving!

Here is this week’s problem:

The positive number a is q percent greater than the positive number b, which is p percent less than a itself.  If a is increased by p percent, and the result is then decreased by q percent to produce a positive number c, which of the following could be true?

I.    c > a
II.   c = a
III.  c < a

Read more

Here are the free GMAT events we’re holding this week. All times are local unless otherwise specified.

10/7/13– Online – Free Trial Class- 8:00PM- 11:00PM (EDT)

10/7/13– Los Angeles, CA- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/7/13– Irvine, CA- Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/7/13–  Online – Writing a Standout HBS Application Essay presented by mbaMission– 5:00PM- 6:30PM (EDT)

10/7/13– Seattle, WA –Free Trial Class– 6:30PM- 9:30PM (EDT)

10/8/13– West Hollywood, CA- Free Trial Class-  6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/8/13– New York, NY- MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed presented by mbaMission– 7:00PM- 8:30PM

10/8/13– San Francisco, CA – Free Trial Class-  6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/9/13– Chicago, IL-Free Trial Class – 6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/9/13– Palo Alto, CA – Free Trial Class-  6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/9/13– London – Free Trial Class-  6:30PM- 9:30PM

10/10/13– Online -Choosing the Right B-School presented by mbaMission- 9:00AM-10:30AM

10/12/13– Santa Monica, CA – Free Trial Class-  10:00AM- 1:00PM

10/12/13– New York, NY – Free Trial Class-  10:00AM- 1:00PM

10/13/13– Atlanta, GA – Free Trial Class-  5:30PM- 8:30PM

10/13/13– San Francisco, CA – Free Trial Class-  5:30PM- 8:30PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.