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 Stanford Graduate School of Business.

The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) is apparently content with its essay questions, because it has made no changes to them or to the allowed word count this season. Having made slight tweaks to its prompts in recent years, the GSB’s MBA admissions committee seems to have found an approach that elicits the information it wants.

With respect to word count, Stanford is unique in that it asks you to limit yourself to 1,600 words total but allows you to determine how you would like to distribute them among the various questions. Stanford does offer some guidance”recommending 750 words for Essay 1, 450 words for Essay 2 and 400 words for Essay 3”but you can take the school at its word (small pun intended!) and use a different distribution if you feel that you can better reveal yourself through, for example, a 650-word Essay 1 and 500-word Essay 3.

Stanford’s admissions committee offers some great advice on how to write its application essays here://www.gsb.stanford.edu/mba/admission/dir_essays-p.html. We feel that the committee’s most important guidance is the following:

Because we want to discover who you are, resist the urge to package yourself in order to come across in a way you think Stanford wants. Such attempts simply blur our understanding of who you are and what you can accomplish. We want to hear your genuine voice throughout the essays that you write and this is the time to think carefully about your values, your passions, your hopes and dreams.

In truth, this is good advice not just for Stanford’s essays, but for all business schools’ essays. Rather than trying to portray yourself as something in particular (which you may or may not in fact be), focus on showcasing who you actually are and give the admissions committee the information and picture of you it needs to make its decision. Stanford is not interested in classifying its applicants as certain types but in discovering individuals and what they have to offer.  And now, on to the essays

Essay 1: What matters most to you, and why?

When candidates ask us, What should I write for what matters most to me?, we offer a pretty simple tip”start brainstorming for this essay by asking yourself that very question: What matters most to me? This might seem like obvious advice, of course, but many applicants get flustered by the question, often believing that an actual right answer exists that they must identify, and never pause to actually consider their sincere responses, which are typically the most compelling.

So, we advise that you brainstorm in depth and push yourself to explore the psychological and philosophical motivations behind your goals and achievements”behind who you are today. We cannot emphasize this enough: do not make a snap decision about the content of this essay. Once you have identified what you believe is an appropriate theme, discuss your idea(s) with those with whom you are closest and whose input you respect. Doing so can help validate deeply personal and authentic themes, leading to an essay that truly stands out.

Once you have fully examined your options and identified your main themes, do not simply provide a handful of supporting anecdotes”or worse, recycle the stories you used in a similar essay for another school. A strong essay response to this question will involve a true exploration of the themes you have chosen and reveal a thorough analysis of decisions, motives and successes/failures, with a constant emphasis on how you conduct yourself. If you are merely telling stories and trying to tie in your preconceived conclusions, you are most likely forcing a theme on your reader rather than analyzing your experiences, and this will be transparent to any experienced admissions reader. In short, be sure to fully consider and develop your most sincere answer(s), outline your essay accordingly and then infuse your writing with your personality, thoughts, feelings and experiences.
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Note: This post is by Liza Weale, Senior Consultant at mbaMission

The news is out: as our friends at Poets & Quants shared this week, selectivity at top business schools dropped during the 2011“2012 application cycle, with a few exceptions.

While almost all the top-ranked MBA programs saw a decrease in selectivity, the biggest change was at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business. Two years ago, Ross reported an acceptance rate of 32%, but for the most recent application cycle, the reported rate was 41%.

So, if you’ve been considering applying to business school, you may be thinking you’d be a shoo-in now, right? If only history could predict the future.

What exactly will the acceptance rate look like at Ross next year? Will the school see a flood of applicants hoping to benefit from the higher acceptance rate”therefore actually lowering the acceptance rate? Or will candidates choose to apply elsewhere? Will Ross see a higher yield (the percentage of admitted students who enroll at the school) and have to ask people to defer their offer, as the MIT Sloan School of Management was forced to do this past summer?

The reality is that you cannot possibly know how many people”or especially, how many qualified people”are applying to a particular program in a given application season.

Business school is a long-term investment; it’s not day trading. If you’re hoping to capitalize on short-term market fluctuations, you are likely going to be disappointed. So, instead, assume that the schools are going to be just as competitive as ever and put together the most compelling application possible. Here are some thoughts to help you get started.

1.  Get to know the schools in-depth to find the right fit for you”visit campuses, sit in on classes, talk to alumni, scour the information available online. Not only will this firsthand research help you better identify the proper programs for what you are seeking, but it will also come in handy when you are asked to explain in your essays and interviews why Yale/Ross/Anderson/Kelley/etc. is the best fit for you. And a side note: if the MBA programs are feeling pinched for applicants, their students will surely benefit in the end. Whether through new or improved facilities, added courses, star faculty, or other significant investments, the schools are eager to do what they must to attract the best and the brightest.
2. Invest in the GMAT”follow a plan that builds both skills and endurance over time. All too often, candidates assume that because they did well on the SAT, they’ll do well on the GMAT; as a result, they fail to study properly, are disappointed with their results and find themselves scrambling after their first attempt. Assume that you’ll be studying at least a half dozen hours a week for a few months, and realize that only 10% of test takers achieve that coveted 700 score.
3.  Be thoughtful about your candidacy. Are you, say, a consultant”as are so many other applicants? If so, think about the stories from your life that highlight your atypical qualities and achievements. Perhaps you traveled to China for two months to work on a start-up or helped your little sister rebound academically after some low grades. Do you come from a nontraditional background like education? If so, focus on showcasing experiences that illustrate your critical thinking skills”skills an admissions committee might not otherwise assume that you have.

Bottom line: do not stress (or relax!) too much about the numbers. Getting into business school is hard work, and it always will be. Gaming the system is impossible, so don’t waste your time wondering about questions you can’t answer and things you cannot control. Direct that energy instead to crafting the best application you can, and you will be fine. In fact, you may even enjoy the process.

Note We at Manhattan GMAT are very excited to welcome mbaMission Founder/President Jeremy Shinewald to our blog to offer his analysis on some recent MBA application news. Here’s what he has to say.

Last week, Bloomberg Businessweek published two articles on declining MBA application volumes, going so far as to call the current application environment a drought. In its first article (Columbia, NYU MBA Applications Plummet), Bloomberg Businessweek noted that Columbia Business School (CBS) and New York University’s Stern School of Business (NYU Stern) saw declines in the number of applications last year of 19% and 12%, respectively, from the previous year. Meanwhile, the number of applicants to Harvard Business School (HBS) declined by 2% and to Wharton by less than 1%. In a separate article (At Top Business Schools, an MBA Application Drought), Bloomberg Businessweek revealed that the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and the Yale School of Management (SOM) saw drops of 3.5% and 9.5%, respectively. So, is this truly a drought or is this just a blip”and what does it all mean for you?

Let’s start by taking a look at some incomplete numbers (some schools do not release data on application volumes) for a few schools mentioned in the articles:

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Our good friends at mbaMission have released their 2012 Essay Analyses for MIT’s Sloan School of Business, the Johnson School of Management at Cornell, the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. We’ve compiled these five analyses into one handy 2012 Essay Analysis Resource for you. Enjoy!

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan) Essay Analysis, 2012“2013

The MIT Sloan School of Management has tweaked all of its essay questions this year and has dropped one question entirely, going with what appears to be a trend this application season toward giving business school candidates less opportunity to provide qualitative information about themselves. Many applicants will be disappointed to see that Sloan’s quirky cover letter essay prompt remains. We will start our analysis there

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Our good friends at mbaMission have released their 2012 Essay Analyses for Columbia Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Wharton, Stern School of Business, Yale School of Management, and the Ross School of Business. We’ve compiled these six analyses into one handy 2012 Essay Analysis Resource for you. Enjoy!

Columbia Business School Essay Analysis, 2012-2013

Applicants to Columbia Business School (CBS) this year must complete one short-answer question and two essays. Perhaps CBS is returning to the mind-set that less is more by getting rid of the third full essay from last year and adding a 200-character, career goal mini essay instead.

Stanford Graduate School of Business Essay Analysis, 2012-2013

The Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) has tweaked its essay questions and word limits this year, moving from an 1,800 word count across four essays to a 1,600 word count across three. Some quick math will reveal that you have more words per essay now”maybe the admissions committee felt it was not getting the true depth of candidate experiences previously? The most important broad advice we can give you is to be sure that you keep the reader learning. Keep your audience in mind”your admissions reader will be going through hundreds of essays this application season. If he/she gets to your essay three and has to read about the same theme yet again, he/she will be bored or frustrated or both. So as you write, be sure that you are introducing new experiences and dimensions of your profile. This will greatly improve the likelihood that you will be able to hold your reader’s attention throughout.

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Our partners and friends over at mbaMission have posted their annual Harvard Business School Essay Analysis. Here is is what they had to say…

Harvard Business School (HBS) kicks off the MBA application season again, and this time it is doing so with a significant overhaul of its entire application. HBS has shrunk its written requirements from four mandatory essays of 400 to 600 words to two essays of 400 words each, but has added a new post-interview 400-word write-up (for the approximately 25% of applicants who are selected to interview), giving interviewees a mere 24 hours to submit their last word to the school.

Managing Director of MBA Admissions Dee Leopold has long held that essays play too prominent a role in the business school admissions process, but does giving candidates just two essays (analyzed later in this post) truly reduce the emphasis? We suspect that having only 800 words with which to make a lasting impression on the admissions committee, candidates will worry that they do not have enough space to successfully convey a full picture of themselves. We therefore expect that applicants will fret even more than usual over their essays, debating whether the two stories they have chosen to share will be sufficiently powerful and compelling, and giving their essays an incredible amount of attention. Meanwhile, to make up for this lack of space”and thus allay their fears that they have not shared enough information about themselves in their essays to persuade the admissions committee to admit them”they will likely stuff their resumes, interview sessions and recommendations with as much crucial information as they can squeeze in. In some ways, then, HBS is just forcing candidates to play a game of whack-a-mole”the school is trying to push information out of the essays, but the information will undoubtedly pop up elsewhere!  As long as the admissions process is competitive and requires that applicants submit qualitative data, candidates will seek to gain an edge any way they can.

Here is our analysis of HBS’s essay questions for this year”we hope it will give you that edge.

To read the complete analysis, please visit mbaMission’s blog.

It’s application season, and our partners at mbaMission have been working hard to give you the best chance at your MBA applications. As essay questions come out, they have been systematically writing analyses of each question for each school. You can find more on their blog, and you can see the latest essays they have analyzed below. Just click on the name of the school for the analysis:

• University of Michigan (Ross) Essay Analysis, 2011“2012: questions include, “introduce yourself,” “what are your career goals” and “what are you most passionate about?”
• Duke University (Fuqua) Essay Analysis, 2011-2012: questions include “what inspired you to take your career path,” “how will your background and values enhance other Duke students’ experience” and “why Duke?”
• Dartmouth University (Tuck) Essay Analysis, 2011“2012: questions include “why are you getting an MBA,” “discuss a meaningful leadership experience,” and “describe a failure you have experienced.”
• University of California Los Angeles (Anderson) Essay Analysis, 2011“2012: questions include “what event/experience has shaped your character,” and “what are your career goals?”

The folks at mbaMission always recommend getting started with your MBA applications as early as possible. By taking action now, you can dramatically improve your chances of gaining admission to a top MBA program in the coming years. It is never too soon (and certainly not too late) to take several crucial steps to shape your MBA candidacy. So they’re presenting a five-part series to provide a step-by-step timeline to help guide you down the long road of applying to business school. These guidelines assume that you are setting out a year ahead of the January deadlines. Even if you are starting later, you should be able to leverage this timeline to help you prioritize each step along the way. This week, they lay out what you should be doing May through July. For more information on mbaMission and how they can help you in this process, click here.

View Part 2 here.

May

Brainstorm and Start Writing Essays
We at mbaMission always tell our clients, You can’t turn a bad idea into a good essay. We insist on taking our candidates through a lengthy brainstorming process (which begins with a thorough questionnaire) to discover the stories that make each candidate distinct. Even as you uncover your stories, it is still important to consider them from as many different angles as possible. While this will help ensure that you understand the various weapons in your arsenal, Read more

This post orignally appeared on the mbaMission blog.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported on the shifting career balance of Harvard Business School’s incoming Class of 2013. Notably, the class will have a higher percentage of students with manufacturing and technology backgrounds, and fewer students with finance backgrounds. According to HBS managing director of MBA admissions and financial aid, Deirdre Leopold, the school does not run with quotas or targets. It is worth noting that this shift is not all that significant “ the finance industry still has the strongest representation in the class.

mbaMission Founder and President Jeremy Shinewald frequently comments on how candidates erroneously try to game the admissions system. The Journal quotes him as saying, You’re going to see guys who worked on one private-equity deal with an auto manufacturer try to play up their auto experience and look ridiculous. Candidates buy into stereotypes for their target schools and become things they think the school wants. As candidates examine the stats, they should keep in mind that they can only be who they are and that they cannot go back in time and change careers. So, they are best creating an authentic picture of themselves in an attempt to set themselves apart from all others (not just those in their fields).

This post orignally appeared on the mbaMission blog. Read the introduction below and find the full post here.

Columbia Business School (CBS) whittled its essay questions from four to three to two over the past five years but is now back to posing three essay questions. Maybe the school’s admissions committee felt that, with just two questions, they were not learning enough about applicants? This year, CBS is offering a variety of creative options in its final essay question, giving candidates greater flexibility”and thus greater control over what the admissions committee will learn about them.

Here are the Questions: Read more