Crafting The Perfect Mba Essay - Webinar

Crafting The Perfect Mba Essay - Webinar - Online Custom Essay Writing Service

Crafting the Perfect MBA Essay - Webinar

hi everybody my name is Kofi cancam I am one of the cofounders of Amit advantage and we've been a very long partner L'Occitane partner with the beat the GMAT team Eric and B and today I'm really happy to go through crafting the perfect essay and I know a lot of you are preparing for round one at this point which is obviously in early October for most of the top you know top 15 top 20 schools and. some of you for something this is actually exceptionally pertinent on for others it is something that you're going to be leveraging probably over the next couple of months as you gear up to submit in round two in gen right. you will find that we're gonna go through sort of the different types of essays different ideas that you want to sort of conceive when you're thinking about putting together a specific type of essay there will be a play a time and place to ask questions all of you are mute right now. if you can just hold your questions until the end of the presentation unless it's exceptionally pressing if you can order questions we'll try to get to all the questions at the end any questions we cannot get to you could simply email us and we will we will respond in kind okay. with that let's get started I want to thank I be an Eric and beat the GMAT for offering an incredible platform and service for people and thank you again for inviting us to participate and obviously there was you know me know that I'm a Cleveland sports team fan big time in the Browns just won a game yesterday. I'm in a really good mood because our record now is one in two or off to the races I must speak a little bit about the company first not a huge amount I think a lot of you know me from beat the GMAT and obviously you can look at our website but I do want to give a little bit of background just. you feel comfortable that I know what the heck I'm talking about on admit advantage basically helps candidates get into business school very simply and if it doesn't have anything to do with your GMAT anything else we do right. anything related to essay editing mock interview school selection helping you figure out who your recommenders be helping you find money etc consider that's our focus we work with people from the beginning people saying look I think I won't go to school I don't exactly know what I want to do but I want to go all the way to the end when people are accepted and they're notified that hey they should apply for the scholarship or they're accepted to multiple schools and need help determining which is the best option for them our process is exceptionally structured we're also reformed 'el scientist we really believe in a structured process especially in an era where 70% of the people applying or qualified get only you know eight to 25% get in for the top 20 schools it's really important to be thorough about the analysis of your background and your chances and your stories in order to harness your best application we've been very fortunate to have a really strong interest from alumni of these schools who also have been admissions officers and or second-year interviewers and. we've been able to hire a lot of diversity not just sort of racially but also more importantly in my opinion anyway in terms of careers. we have people that have been in fields like investment banking venture capital impact investing we have marketers from big companies and also small companies if that people have been involved in government either as lobbyists and or as speech writers in fact we had a speechwriter for justified in for a long time technology people consulting entrepreneurship real estate etc there are three main core tenants underlying our company one everyone that works in our company has to have been in through this process themselves. they need to have been an alum or actually a current student of a top-tier school they also need to be on the other side of the table in terms of being a second year interview or an alumni interviewer or someone that has been a professional within admissions what we're known to be very client focused that's kind of one of our hallmarks we believe in it we think it makes a company more exciting and also enables us to gather great stories and anecdotes from you to help you fashion your applications and then performance if if people are not getting into school then we're not happy and all this is from you and we've been very fortunate to work with incredible candidate around the world who are current students or are alumni of all of these schools and actually even more this is not this is not the full list but it's a representative list okay I am Kofi Kant Kim I am one of the founders really briefly Erika are fairly similar both work at extent from different cities I worked at net defend which is sort of a processor Skype I sold a software company I'm really sort of in the education of Technology I was fortunate to go to Harvard College our pursue degree in neurobiology I have a master's in IDI from Harvard and I went to Wharton was a joseph Wharton fellow ran the largest inland conference and also T aid our first year core marketing course you can see sort of our consultant back on spirits drawing you see some of the people on the on the right hand side eric is a very similar back when I went to brown graduate with honors from from Wharton and you know has built a company with me for the last couple of years. in terms of the diversity of consultants that we're all from sort of similar top firms top companies we have about 30 plus people that work with us you can see a lot of their profiles on our site they're all ones of Harvard and Wharton and Stanford and Columbia and Berkeley and Chicago and Kellogg and nyeo and Dartmouth and all kinds of schools like that and again we place people and top 20 schools in the States some of the top european school said and judge lbs and INSEAD some an age and a couple now increasingly in Latin America okay in terms of sa strategies one thing I want you to understand it's really critical is that you need to have a plan before you start writing ok you should not be jumping into your essays off the bat just immediately started starting right it's almost like some of these on their CV that watch like Meet the Press or some of these other sort of Sunday talk shows when you see that people go on there they have talking points before they get there they know what they want to include almost regardless of the question it's really important that you do the same thing the first thing that we recommend you think about is your personal brain and what are the stories experiences and accomplishments as well as the leadership characteristics around which you're gonna build your application okay and. imagine that someone's interviewing a sibling your best friend a parent a partner except I said what are the stories what are the things about John then they need to know about how to understanding as a person they're going to be a mixture of personal professional and academic sort of wins and experiences and it will be related leadership characteristics it's like being analytical being innovative being persuasive being a great communicator being able to make decisions limited information you know being able to leave without authority things of that nature that basically naturally draw from those specific stories experiences and accomplishments. no matter which direction you go if you're starting with the stories experiences accomplishment it's this thing okay here's a set of 10 what sorts of leadership characteristics today define about me if you go in that direction or you go on the other direction saying I want to write an application where you know I'm saying I won't really want to go into asset management. I really need to demonstrate that I am analytical or I really want to run a company I need to demonstrate that I am sort of innovative or you know I'm going to join a company and try to fight my way to the top I need to show that I am sort of persuasive you can start on that side think of those characteristics either that are relevant for your career or that are that are ones of leaders that you really respect business leaders political leaders on you know military leaders sports leaders etc it doesn't matter you can think of those stories and think those experiences are those um characteristics and then go to the stories or you can start with the stories and go to the characteristics but your brand will be a mixture of both the stories experiences and accomplishments as well as a critical leadership components and. what we've done here is just outline a couple right. if you're saying that you want to have a story that you have a strong analytical focus if that is a leadership characteristics that you want as part of your brand then you need to basically provide examples this is a show-and-tell experiment from business it's not telling someone that your analytical having nothing to back it up you have to show and tell across the different pieces of your application which are your assays your letters of recommendation the non-si data portion of your application your resume and then your interview if you get it. you definitely a four and you certainly if you get an interview that will be the fifth piece okay and you really need to make sure that you are highlighting sorry you're highlighting basically specific things about your background and and and and leveraging stories to explain it okay. don't just say your innovative basically really demonstrate that you know for this example you basically you helped reduce emissions by X percentage and you helped increase efficiency by X percentage within your manufacturing company in a way that had not been done before that's real innovation persuasive you can sort of see the example okay the the the take-home is really make sure that you were thinking about yourself holistically think about yourself from a professional community and personal aspect and realize that for the schools which you're applying it's not just enough to be qualified you also have to you know demonstrate that you're gonna be basically someone that other people can learn from and then you're interested in in that and that you've got a really sort of well-defined persona about you outside of just being dominant in your work force in your workplace also secondly realize that you really need to differentiate yourself okay. it's a fine line the one because you want to differentiate yourself we also want to be authentic and true to yourself. the way that you do that or the ways that you try to sort of employ this this desire to differentiate yourself include really speaking about your passion what is a catalyst for pushing you to go to business what is a catalyst for your career and again your career is not your first job after school it's not saying I want to go to sort of Columbia in order to go work in McKinsey that could be the case but is your desire to work at McKinsey does that exist in the long term like you know most of you are let's say in mid-20s okay. you're gonna a graduate Business School let's say at 28. let's say you work in a company for seven years when you're 35 36 when you start to pivot towards your long-term goal what is that that is really your passion right. the first three to seven years typically consider sort of this short term it's almost like going to business school again and in terms of getting a brand getting a network getting sort of experiences but the question is what is the passion beyond that. if you can focus on your long-term passion which hopefully matches your career then it'll be a great way for you to differentiate yourself especially if you're coming from a company or industry like let's say Goldman or consulting you know where a lot of people end up applying the business school coming from those sort of domains if you highlight your passion you'll find that you're able to. you'll be able to sort of separate yourself from other analysts you know the analysts here left in to you bright at your job that's applying with you okay realize that and you know you don't have to differentiate kids everyone. we always get people to call us every day and doing these consultations and say okay how to make myself different then then this other person. last week I spoke to someone who basically was a banker and he was asked me how am I going to differentiate myself against the bankers as well as you know all these other you know this sort of the person coming from Teach for America that wants to go to business school and he asked me he didn't ask me exactly in those terms but that was the gist of his question I said look you're not competing against the social the social sort of venture person the person coming from Teach for America that wants to sort of go to business school into microfinance you're competing against other bankers right and. realize that you're you're you're you don't have to sort of differential your self. much you don't recognize who you are you want to sort of stay in your silo and realize every year these schools are gonna accept a certain percentage. a number of X type of candidates and you want to sort of be amongst the best and also realize that many of you will be competing in different buckets right. you're not just in a model if you're not just in one bucket. for me when I applied for example I was competing as other entrepreneurs other black guys and other sort of Harvard Ivy League graduates right and. those are kind of the general buckets I was doing as I was trying to be sort of a leader or dominant in each of those three and. really think about that a little bit in terms how you differentiate yourself realize again when you plotted these schools everybody's good literally everyone is good at the top 20 schools 70% of people apply or admissible they'd only you know only sort of 10 to 25 per second and. brasstacks numbers if you have 20 applicants applying 6 and will be garbage bad GMAT bad GPA poor work experience at least 14 that are very qualified if I took those 14 and I showed them to a professor on campus I said these are the people that are gonna be you know in your class you know those professors would have no problem with that of those qualified 14 2 to 5 or again again right which is 10 to 25%. realize that you know they're two sides that the first is that grades are sort of not good enough everybody's got that and the second side is that means that you need to basically really be developing the other pieces of your of your application okay other sides of your of your story in your narrative also realizing to tie the relevance to specific. when you were thinking about going to schools we talked a lot of people every day and to be honest with you all of you kind of want to go to the same schools the same 5 to 5 to 10 schools but I can always tell when someone is really passionate about a school based on their articulation of why and that's something that you want to do also because admissions officers are second about that it's not enough to say I want to go to Harvard because you know how I think it's the most important school in the world or my sibling right there or I read about Meg Whitman going to the Harvard Business School no you need to be a little bit clearer today it's because it's going to help meet the cases or here are specific courses and professors I want to study under here are specific clubs and organizations that are relevant to my career either previous or in the future that I want to be a part of and lead then here's how it fits my long-term goal every school wants to hear for this it would be a great opportunity for you to showcase your knowledge of the school which to be honest with you a lot of people don't do they don't think it's important. they just you know they they write about sort of the school very generically and think it's obvious why they want to go to the school and it is in a sense of a brand and making more money but it's not obvious why I necessarily want to go to Kellogg over over booth right or they want to go to Wharton over Clemmy etc that's always clear and. it's really important that you differentiate yourself across these these indices okay in terms of big picture sell the dream. a painting clear picture let them know how you know them being the mission to let them know you know how you're different how it's relevant to your peers and advantageous to your peers and how business school is gonna help you achieve your long-term goal do not just focus on the first step after business school the first job of the first placement this is about your career okay make sure you're painting a viable bridge to the future I think those who than other webinars I've done I've heard me talk about you know Kyle we had that wanted to start a hedge fund in Hong Kong immediately when he graduated okay he you know he didn't speak he wasn't Asian he didn't speak in a just major in English didn't work in an investment bank or finance he basically was a social venture guy who's I'm. he was like sort of a a non-profit guy and you know I think he sort of got tired of being you know having a lot of money and it sounded sexy. I'm gonna start this company and me'll when I graduate that's not realistic right that's not a realistic bridge if he said look I'm gonna join a McKinsey working in financial services I'm then gonna sort of try to get into a financial services company by the way while I'm in school I'm gonna learn Mandarin etc and I'm gonna sort of work McKinsey try to transition to an office in you know in mainland China and then basically try to transition you know trying to link up with other people learn the ropes learn the industry and then launched my own hedge fund you know seven to ten years after I graduate that's a realistic path. make sure you've got a realistic path dream big but make sure the path is real okay also I will tell you this may sound obvious but there are. many people that come to us and they've already started writing they say I want you to review our application I say we'll send me send me your outline and they you know say we don't know I don't have an outline and you know we didn't have this in a slide before I think I can't believe how many people are writing applications without outlines right you have to have an outline it's really important list for your first school you want to make sure that you are tying in your character your characteristics the character trades as well as the stories experiences accomplishments across the four to five platforms I mentioned write again your letters of recommendation sort of the non-si data portion of your application your resume your essays in your interviews if you are not pulling all that together if you are not. making sure the pieces are integrated and and in complementary you were not going to have a balanced application and you also don't have an effective application all right places where you have options for your essays choose ones that work with your brand if you don't do the brand upfront then you're not gonna know you know which essays to choose when you're given the option choose two of the following five essay topics okay make sure that you are answering the whole question. write out the details of each ask the question and I mean this in the context of some essays will gonna be a three part essay and basically they'll give you six in two words I can't tell many times I see people that kind of spend the first the first part of a specific kind of essay you know spending 300 words then they spend 250 words on sort of the second section they get to the third and think ah I only have fifty words okay I'm just gonna like 50 words answer the third section just because a section is a third section doesn't mean it's unimportant that's not as important as the first two. make sure you're answering all the essay questions in full again if you do an essay question if you do an outline matter for your first school you probably don't have to do it for all of yours but you really do need to consider doing it for the first one unless you are an exceptional writer maybe you've applied before or you're getting a huge amount of help I really even if you're getting helps in the company like ours I still would give an outline frankly okay it's also really important for you to you know to leverage your research okay do the research. there and I sound like sort of a parent actually I'm a new parent but I still like a parent and say you know there's. much information online and my day didn't have it's true like I'm 104 there wasn't as much information online back in the fall with a1 when I was you know I was looking at applying now there's. much information where people get placed you know the breakdown of the class coming in average GMAT scores GPAs etc um you need to know that stuff alright. it's all on the website you can sort of visit the school very easy to do especially in the fall it provided you can get there right those of you that are I just focus on two days ago they said literally two days in New York City and the person said I have not visited you know it's gonna be a problem if I don't visit the schools and applying to in her schools were Columbia NYU Yale Wharton Harvard and tuck okay the first three Columbia and why the first two Columbia and why you're in New York City Yale is 90 minutes north Wharton is basically about 100 105 minutes south and she's not applying around to. naturally you can imagine my response was get on a train subway or Amtrak and visit these schools if you're in close proximity there's really no excuse not to visit it'll highlight your passion is something you can mention in your application and some schools will ask you directly have you been to our school okay. visit the school if you're not in those areas most schools travel at this level around the world go to a local session will also meet alumni in your area you'll meet people that potentially can help you and advocate for you if you get wait-listed it's a really important to do speak to alumni all of you for the most part probably went to college okay I'm University you all have alumni that have been to these schools I would encourage you to go to your alumni go to your Alumni Association if your undergraduate University and say I want to talk to you five to ten people that have gone to and why you were warned or Harvard and they probably will help you do that okay and have those discussions it's really important to do to sort of give you a non-glossy sort of brochure vision of your school and understanding of your school and that maturity that mature perspective will carry through within your application itself and really be able to speak to what I school is a good fit okay because some schools are not if it's if you're basically Tali saying you're not really you really want to do analytics you're really analytical and you're really sort of number driven Kellogg may not be the place for you right I mean you know Booth may be right. just be clear about why it's a good fit if you're saying I want to really want to do energy I love energy I want to get into oil and gas and you're looking at going to just not to pick on them listen you're looking to go to Dartmouth that may not be a good fit all right and may be better for you to sort of go to a school that's clinical not considered as good right but that's they are like UT awesome just an amazing school that may be a better fit for you based on the fact that you want to do oil right it being in Texas. just keep that in mind be able to articulate that both to yourself and to the admissions committee members okay let's talk now a little about the essay types. you have the story I say okay. this is a common essay this used to be sort of more popular you see in different formats but why do you want to go to our school why do you want to get an MBA why do you want to get it now right tell us about your short and long term goals you know how is your back when relevant pursuing MBA there are lots of variations but they're kind of all the same sort of craft a narrative about yourself right tell us about yourself tell us well how Business School fits in your and your goals very common um now you know business schools have sort of evolved and they've gotten a little bit less direct in terms of the I asked this kind of question but this kind of these kinds of themes come up pretty much in every single essay every single application for business school okay. what you want to do our tips are obvious answer the questions right answer the question asked if the school asks for short and long term goal on goals rather answer that question first if you have space left over then you know talk about sort of why you want to go to that school but don't write about why I want to go to that school and not answer your long term goals the portion the thing that was really asked for okay this is also a good place for you to provide context right what was the catalyst for you on the business was a catalyst for you pursuing a certain kind of field now you obviously are gonna have to be judicious in your word allocation because you're not gonna have a lot of real estate to write but I can't tell you how often a really finely crafted sentence let's call it 17 to 25 words that provides some context for a goal can like totally frame the essay and make and that's. that was pretty good magical. make sure you're doing that if you if you have capacity to do. right do not cut and paste right. I answered a couple questions today I'm beat the GMAT where somebody asked about sort of doing booths sort of powerpoints and they want to sort of make this MIT optional it's okay I would modify tweak do not just cut and paste write and try to think about each school you can use the same sort of themes you can use the same sort of stories use the same kind of leadership characteristics but I'd be very wary about taking an essay here that's slightly off-topic that's 400 words and trying to like fit another essay that's maybe 25% different but it's 200 words don't just think you're just gonna take that essay and sort of wrap it into the into the take the form and wrap it into the latter that prod will not go well for my experience and again be is specific about the school when possible every school want you know these schools are very proud they also know that you're applying to other schools and. you want to be very clear about why their schools gonna fit and and and dirty little secret unless probably not. much of a secret now schools do manage their yields they are concern about the reals ie they want to you know they want whoever they accept generally to come right and as partially other evaluated and ranked it's kind of like bragging right. a school doesn't want to accept you if they even if you're qualified if they know you're not going to come and if you don't put in details about a specific school they may think that you know actually don't really care that much about this you don't you're not really that knowledge about the school ergo you have your your eyes on some other school. just keep that in mind you just sort of write your applications another essay type is describe yourself right. how a classmate described you pretending you're running for a club and you've got to give your speech as to why I should be the leader of the club what club would it be and what would your speech say if I visited you two years after you graduated and interviewed a good friend on campus how would they say that you made an impact they're all kind of the same fanatic stuff right this is a classic differentiation question they're not going to say how are you a different candidate than someone else and this is how they do it all right this is not a take me through your resume type of question a lot of candidates right yes and describe yourself and they literally look at the resume they put up Microsoft Word split their screen look at the resume and sort of take everything in a resume you know from from sort of the furthest in the past to the present just write that don't do that right you have to make some choices about what's the most relevant all right you've got to think about in terms your admitted advantages think about your brand and make sure you're Holly the leadership characteristics that you'd already decided as part of your base your platform right think about highlighting certain key roles a lot of you have five to eight bullet points for each job you've had you may have had three jobs right you can't highlight everything. take maybe two of those jobs or if you do all three take the things that you've done that really encapsulate on your total experience in that job and it's usually going to be something like a key role or a key sort of impact or legacy left alright if you are somebody that you know is kind of reticent shy you have to get out of that you've got to break out of that you have to sort of beat your chest you have to basically promote yourself you don't do that nobody will do that okay this leaky wheel does get the oil in a lot of cases if you're someone that is loquacious and doesn't talk and listening if you're wondering who the loudmouth arrogant jerk is in the room and you can't figure it out it could be you right if you are that person I'm sort of saying that tongue in cheek you know don't be. arrogant right. dial it back a little bit be a little bit subtle um you don't have to you know you don't have to hit someone over the head if you basically you know did a deal that garnered you know thirty million dollars for your company you don't have to write about that for you know two hundred words you can sort of subtly state that or directly stated for that matter very short succinctly and fifty to seventy-five words and keep it moving and that's kind of what you want you want to sort of have an idea of kind of what you look like in sort of your your your overall personality to determine you know sort of which can't be fallen okay there are also behavioral questions right this is very typical to this often happens in interviews but you do see them in essay types as well. tell me at a time when right tell me at a time when you fail tell me about a time you had to overcome opposition to an idea tell me about a time when you basically had to manage you know you have to manage peers I had you know higher titles and more position more seniority company that's it used to be more common but these questions are still out there right there are many different kinds of iterations the types like if you get a general feel this is typically the part where you're given an option I choose to or one of the next three op3 essay questions this is typically behavioral because sometimes you don't have you know if they just gave you one type you may not have an experience like that. often they give you a couple different types. you know something you're back and we'll click with one of the asset questions right this is kind of like your your case interviews of those who've you've worked at worked at you know consulting companies we're as much as they're just in the answer the interest has driven the thought process and sort of the overall experience. and how you react and respond in to a particular situation our tips are don't be afraid to give real examples you know this is also sort of related when people say what's my biggest weakness my biggest weakness is I'm too ambitious right that's not a big real weakness right. make sure you're sort of your authentic your real it's okay to have a flaw it's okay to have a failure as long as sir observe lessons that have been learned and ideally if his similar situation is arisen later in the future or you know after that incident of that failure and you're able to sort of apply the lessons from that fear to that incident that's even better right. give me a lessons real example sing about lessons learned be very clear about how this impacted your life this is sort of passing hate to say it's a Cleveland Airport test right this is your moment to sort of show that you were an interesting dynamic person you're thoughtful reflective and you're not just sort of Joe capitalist who's looking to go to business school to make a lot of money and and drive a Bentley nothing wrong with that at all right but business schools are looking for at this point in time they position themselves to be looking for people who are also leaders who are community participators who are people that are making an impact with different groups and this is a chance for you to sort of just seem a little bit more reflective okay this is really important it's really necessary for you to choose your essays wisely and just because I just obviously there's echoing chambers on beat the GMAT and Business Week whatever these different places where you see an essay question you think everyone's answering these two essays I have to answer them you don't they're not and you don't okay. make sure you're really authentic and it ties in with your brand your a narrative that you're trying to advance within your application and again this gets down to what your story and also to soar next enter your competing against you have leadership essays right. um you know this is this is where you sort of need to think about sort of the impact you've had the legacy of left you know getting into school it's not just about sort of having different roles it's not really making an impact they're looking for people young people who have made an impact they could say that's a winning horse I believe this person is going to be have we given the tools and experiences and and sort of you know the network in theatre can be able to take everything that they've done in the past and sort of blow it up on a bigger stage we're gonna give them an amp we're gonna be able to amplify what they've done. they're looking for examples of leadership they're looking for exam of impact and legacy um think about what you've done beyond the call of duty okay. if you've if you've had a role and you've mastered that role let's and then let's say a a fellow analyst was fired let's say your boss you know was going through divorce and he or she got distracted you had to sort of take on the role think about sort of these kinds of examples when you're writing the leadership essay okay everyone all of you should have a concept an idea of of how you lead now some of you have had more experience during that than others but all of us neither LED or bin let and those of us who've worked for tough bosses know they're oftentimes we think you know I could have done that that's. differently or I would have done that differently I could have done better well now is your chance. you should have a conception of how you lead either based on real experience leading or having been led right this is also a great opportunity for you to get corroboration with your recommenders of your leadership. if you're basically saying I let this amazing project I brought in 30 million dollars of new revenue or I saved X number of hundred thousands of dollars in costs I saved this is a great time to have a recommender say that it sounds a lot more credible than when it's just you saying it right if you work in teams those you work for big companies you're doing deals you're doing approaches you know etc you're integrating I was a consultants you know I know what that's like you need to focus on what you did necessary what your team did now I'm gonna read about in the journal I want to know what you did specifically. make sure when you're writing your application you're very clear about your own specific contributions to a particular task okay and don't make the mistake that we see if candidates who write and definitely about this amazing deal and you know and they spend 10% writing about what they've done to make that deal possible okay then you've got sort of strengths weaknesses accomplishments deployments generally kind of similar themes right give real examples right really make sure that you are tied in to your brand because you're gonna have. many and you've got to make sure that you can go back to your outline go back to your your your your branding documents and really think about okay what is it that I really have to include in my application if you have weaknesses if you have losses of disappointments please again highlight lessons learned in actions taken it's not enough to recognize we have a weakness if you recognize you have a weakness and you don't do anything about it that's a problem right that's more of a problem than actually not even recognizing a weakness and everything should be consistent as mentioned last two. the optional si okay this is an S if it does it's optional optional means you don't have to do it. do not do it if you don't need it if you are thinking about what are the things that could be included typically its gaps in an application it could be a gap like look the schools asking for you to give a boss recommendation but you can't do it because if you're Boston you're going to be we're gonna business school you'd be fired or you'd lose your bonus. if you have a senior associate do it this is where the option alyssa to explain why that's the case which incidentally is not a big deal on if there were errors in your brand which weren't addressed this is where you could address it I'd be wary about doing that unless the optional essay specifically tells you like tell us something that we didn't touch on but if they say what's your biggest weakness and you're writing hey I got a 7:30 on my gmail I was testing the 760 nobody wants to hear that don't do that okay this is a place where you should talk about gaps in your work experience I think anything over anything over four months I personally I'll probably write about or if you have to even two to three month gaps in the working experience let's say if five years fan I probably right about that a little bit okay I talked about nitrogen recommendations if you have holes again what you're doing to address them. I didn't do well in my GMAT but you know I'm taking some course I've got a bad GPA but I you know I decided to take courses in accounting stats economics finance in order to sort of boost my boost my I my my qualifications from the analytical perspective. this is where you kind of want to do that stuff if you were given four into words or fire in two words space and you write you like that say I only use 200 words stop you don't need to fill up the remaining 300 words just because you feel like your essay is not not fleshed out enough don't use the word capacity as the barometer for whether or not your application is finished or your essays finished in this instance we applicants take a look at your old applications if you apply dip eclis two plus years ago they're not going to use them necessarily but you also don't know if someone's gonna take a look at them and you don't want to sort of have to say especially applied last year I talked to a guy a couple weeks ago and he said I probably laughter I wanted to clean tag what do you think I should say this year and I said well you know he was thinking about something different like you say not something like banking and I said I that could work but you've got it tight and you can't just be somebody different this year because last year's person didn't get in in terms of your goals your goals can be refined you obviously can have a better better GMAT I mean you took some courses but do not present yourself as a totally different person because they're gonna confuse admissions man you know which one personally which one's authentic both either one or neither right highlight differences in previous applications. if you know if you got feedback and kind of felt like hey my my my leadership was not strong my last application or my social my commitment to sort of work in the community or contributing was not strong kinda like that it's really important to do. but I'd say ultimately if you're looking at this year's application you applied last or even here before and you realize and you don't have a lot in you to say then you probably should think about whether or not it makes sense to apply now maybe you should apply next year I know that's a hard thing to think about but it's true okay. we're gonna get to questions and minute Eric will keep my Eric will punch me in the face if I don't say some of the things we have a bunch of obviously packages I think those even our website have seen we've also added new things new streamlined packages from listening to our audience you said you've wanted sort of more of light touch stuff. we have more light touch stuff streamline is just essays you know just sort of throughout San si editing keeping it moving we have a final review package at a thousand bucks which is no phone support and we've got targeted services if you want client branding if you want outline if you want any that kind of stuff you can get it. based on our website now with our company if you have 250 plus Bucks descent which I think even if it's not our company I think you should be having you should have that you should be willing to sort of spend that kind of money if you're applying to top-tier school it's an investment in yourself and again it even if it's not with us we've got stuff on our site though that will hopefully appeal to you okay still be out early still do doing analysis if you apply last year did not get anyone and what happened and you're applying this year come our way we'll talk to you about it we'll look at your old stuff we have a pre application package for those of you that are not applying until next year on we certainly can help you sort of get your ducks in order polish up your assets make sure you're well positioned to really launch yourself next year okay we have other things coming on and pre-application webinar case studies next week we're doing our infamous candidate success stories probably the couple new new candidates follow us on facebook twitter or a blog we don't do nearly enough on that because we're way too busy but we're gonna try to get better and we work with clintus review those of you not taking a GMAT and you want to take your GMAT and you're looking for help we like prints from you there other companies out there if you do work with princess room you threw us a get a 15% discount and lastly if you've not had a free consultation and you want one and that doesn't mean with you know we only get one per company. if you talk to Eric unfortunately I will not do another consultation with you but if you'd like a consultation and you cannot talk to either of us go to sketch that me and sign up schedule me a slash admit advantage or go to the contact us portion of our website and you can shoot me personally email cake and Kim at admit advantage calm and as mentioned we do a 10% discount for our beat the Jeana people you guys there are people um and you can just type in 1908 1908 it check out and you'll get a 10 percent discount on everything we offer okay with that lets up for questions if there are questions let's open up just typing your questions and and B will help summarize them and then we'll go from there you okay. we have a question from Ned what do you do if you're not a hundred percent sure what your dream is the main point of getting an MBA from me is to open doors to other careers and get back to the u.s. I'm an expat is it even worth applying if you have no 100% specific dream or does that basically mean you have no chance with the average GMAT GMAT scores um that's a good question. look there is some gamesmanship in terms of getting into school um I think that when I think of career now you may not know exactly what you want to do but think about it along these axes okay. think about in terms of role role / function industry title and maybe location right Ned and you should have an idea of some of that stuff right. you know you may know that for example you want to sort of do marketing you may know that your industry generally is let's call it real estate maybe you want to real estate market maybe you wanted to finance fancy services marketing like ie you want to market credit cards for like American Express maybe you want to do that in the States or maybe you want to do it in in Singapore you want to do that in the UK like you should have some general feeling for what you want to do right it sounds like you do but opening career career doors it's not specifically for one of the reasons it's not specific enough is because companies are on campus as soon as you get there literally different campus sometimes within a couple of weeks two to three weeks and. if you don't have an idea of that you're gonna be behind the book behind the ball. you've got to have an ID again think about it in terms of of industry role / function title and location and you probably have at least two of those figure it out in order to write a compelling application I'm just writing to Rack my brain if I've seen someone write a compelling application who hasn't had at least two of those and I don't necessarily think I don't think I have. you should have a general idea of that and if you don't have an idea start talking to people and again this is for the purposes of applying its business goal you obviously if you get in you'll have some time before you matriculate to really fleshed out and you can change your mind but you have to have a specific direction heading in especially as you get older okay question from anakata does your advice also apply to react in essays or do you have any specific advice for reallocates I'm not sure exactly what advice you're suggesting but yes my application generally does my advice does apply to all applicants for the first time or second or third time from Vanessa how long does it take to complete an average application with admitted manage oh that's a good question I would say generally you should leave look we've done three essay three app three applications with people in four weeks I never want to do that again but we certainly want half deal sure um I would say you know if you're moving at a reasonable clip and you're not sort of super pressed I would say you probably can do your first school and about three to four weeks and each additional schooling about two and a half to three weeks from je Rousseau how specific must you be in mentioning specific assets of the school program professors clubs specific classes people you've met what if you can't miss in the school and call me miss an info session I think the more specificity the better I would say I would I would probably place emphasis on classes / courses professors and clubs those things can all be derived online people you've met you may not meet anybody that's okay if you can't get to info session if that's if that's it that's it but I definitely would at least have those first three okay from a new any specific considerations we should take for early action deadlines versus regular deadlines I would just say be clear that you want to go to the school right because a lot of these some of these ones like for Columbia you apply early you have to put them a six thousand dollar deposit within two weeks we didn't yeah I think it's two weeks historically it's been like that anyway. be clear about that I think that there's kind of an understanding that you obviously want to go to that school who's replying early but I still would not take my foot off the gas and. really clearly articulating what it is about a specific school that's attracting you to that school. beyond that no I think I think that's fine from fear for low GPAs do you recommend taking additional courses to increase my GPA before applying absolutely yes if you have time to do it. it's not gonna improve your GPA right but it's going to build what's called an alternative transcript and you'll be able to sort of articulate a narrative of you know I was distracted in college or something came up in college that's why my grades weren't as strong but look I took courses in accounting finance stats economics or some subset of those and I got A's in those course as well as working and I have a 700 plus g-men. clearly when I'm focused I can do the work College was a couple of years ago I unfortunately wasn't as focused as I needed to be but I do have the intellectual horsepower to do the work that is the purpose of the courses that's what you're trying to achieve ergo if you are not getting aids in those courses if you're not gonna be committed to getting an A in those courses in a range then you shouldn't really take it don't waste your time and money and usually when I say committed to the effort usually those courses are really about effort like if you sort of show up do the work talk to the professor's tell them what you're about or her what you're about you can kind of automatically be in the B range if you do your homework and then you just sort of need to be B+ range and then you just need a couple things to the break and you can get an A we've seen many students this were sort of C students at college take something on a course that can put hard schools and get A's a minuses. I assume that most of you can do that and you should realize that's what you need to do all right from Quran or Karen in terms of repeating resume items in the goals essay and appeared goals essay with were constraints 500 how much of the essay should want allocate towards hile any individual traits compared to school fit ask because some of the individual it's look like a resume we Pete um. I mean this is kind of a specific Karen I email or specific questions I would agree with you that on if there if you find yourself writing if you if you're looking at a saying you find yourself just regurgitating what's on your resume and we're leaving out other things which are not on your resume I would definitely flip that script and sort of try to focus more. on the stuff that's not in my resume let the stuff in the resume stand for itself however I I don't think for your goals essay your goals are forward-looking it resonates the past. there really shouldn't be that much from your resume on your goals as they should just be the catalyst it should just be maybe something you did which has some kind of care of or a specific skill set you know specific set of experiences but your goals essay and handling because its face because it's based on the future look forward looking it should not be sort of a carbon copy of what you've done on your resume which is already accomplished inherently those two things should be somewhat different right but you probably are gonna have some of the things in the past that are covered on your resume in your goals I think you're just not a huge huge amount of it okay from Reuben any advice on using personal hobbies or activities for my application um I think that your if your hobby is not marked by an accomplishment then I probably would just relegate that to the non-si data portion of my application however if your hobby is turned into some kind of passion that you have an accomplishment behind then I would consider that we consider putting it in my in my essay basically you have to be very you have to be a gatekeeper to what you put in your essay I've seen people that are very accomplished and I just feel like they weren't discriminating enough in terms of what they put in their ass I just feel like they put garbage stuff that was really not that important in the rest hey you like you want to be your essays are the most importantly the most important piece of your application some people say your recommendations but I think your essays especially because they're sort of your words and you don't want to write about a hobby sort of playing intramural soccer in like an accomplishment essay right now I gave this example a couple weeks ago we had a guy that wanted to work for FIFA which is a International Football Association and he set up a soccer league in the Pacific Northwest and then raised a whole bunch of money he had like 20 plus teens contributing it was amazing we read about in the papers whatever that was a hobby that he could elevate to being in his essays because there was accomplish behind it was really close to what he wanted to do professionally otherwise for most hobbies rock climbing whatever you know bike riding running iPod would not make that the topic of an essay all right okay from shift deep any specific advice for hardcore techies for example I don't have a lot of business experience or decision-making experience that's what I'm looking at a business before that's great because that's what Business School is looking for also right. again to keep this is kind of what I'm saying the context of you're not competing against someone that works in business you're competing against other tech people what I would say is that you want to have a clear idea as to why you want to go to business school from the perspective of what you want to do and also the perspective of of what the reason is for going and also we see a lot of tech people let's say looking about this technical skills understand technology I you know I've been involved in some business meetings and I didn't get a chance to sort of I didn't really understand the strategy I wanted I want to be on the strategy side because I want to make more than as soon as I feel like when I was making the best decisions but I don't have the requisite background in accounting and marketing and Finance and and sort of managing people to do that that's one NBA sense where people that say look I've got a very strong technological background I want to sort company I want to be the next Anil Ambani or you know or some kind of Jeff Bezos I want to be an entrepreneur and run my own company I know that I've got to marry my technical expertise with my with sort of my burgeoning interest in business for which nothing right no nothing but you get the point. it's totally fine for you to say that I wouldn't worry about that at all that's why you're looking at a business school that's right and Business School Admission Sui members to know that anyone questions ok from Tara some advice for a family business applicants small business background fiends I should focus on like leadership initiative interpersonal skills etc um I don't know if that's a question but I look I don't think that I think if you're coming from a family business on I think the most important thing is you firstly need to stay are you going to business school to leave the family business are you gonna miss school to run the family business if you're gonna miss school to run the family business eventually then what you should be sort of talking about is in my opinion develop certain certain traits and certain skills that address gaps in the family business or how you want to take the fame to the next level and you need to know X Y & Z I think it's it gives you a great impetus to go to business school it gives you a great reason there's a certain kind of authenticity about sort of saying uh I think the only business does X amount of dollars in revenue my parents didn't have the experience to go and have experience to do blank blank blank go international you know it's in Portugal and therefore I want to go to business school at a school like Warren which is I wanted to learn operations marking the etc etc. I can bring that back to the bits I think I would I would definitely couch your training and your need to go to business school as part of the family business I also think that in terms of the recommendations in terms of recommendations need to be careful about who writes some you obviously can't Ness I have a parent. I look towards the supplier I like towards maybe I like an accountant and you know someone that works with your business who is necessarily in your business who has theoretical little less concern about sort of being fired being reprimanded for saying the wrong thing in your recommendation. it's something you definitely need to think about think about your title as well right if you're sort of in a family business and you sort of do everything you've got a loose title don't have a loose title for the purpose of your application get something nailed down that's credible it's authentic with what you're doing and go from there all right from Joe s I know you probably get this a lot but what about older applicants 31 years old the burden will be why now I feel like if it is still in my career any advice on how to approach um I think that fit a ceiling is okay but that is that sort of belies it doesn't really support the theory I'm sort of a - doing really well my career for Billy Hanson my career's T not going well I need a reset no top 15 top 20 business schools gonna find that really sexy. what I would say is an older applicant is why now could be look I've been doing really well in my career and I've hit a place where you know in order for me to get to the next level in my career it's really important that I get an MBA or if it employment career where I've acquired a certain amount of skill set and Moxie it now in sort of context I want to launch my own business you know in this field and I need a business sort of sort of teaching more things about running a company as well as building a network and building sort of certain experiences or exposure I also think that you could you should be writing favourably you should be trying to go on offense Joe. you should not be concern about being old you should be you're not old frankly you should be you should be making a younger applicants field concerned about how they compare to you. I would be say I would be highlighting the fact that it's a great thing I've got eight eight nine years experience you know I'm gonna bring this experience to bear and a B and C ways I'm gonna basically open my contacts up I'm gonna help train I industry I'm gonna be their conduit for that I'm gonna I'm gonna basically be better than a 27 year old version of Joe that's how you need to be thinking aggressively all right okay this is the last question from Deepak in the differentiate yourself essay if you describe all of your best abilities in the context of you your professional activities your risk sounding too narrow okay. if you're looking at differentiate yourself and you're only saying it's perfectly are you too narrow or is it better to talk about multiple spheres to present yourself as a more rounded person that's a good question I think it varies Canada Canada that's right the fence I think that if I had to sort of air cues from one side I would choose the professional side I think there's way too many people that sort of don't speak about their professional accomplishments and think they can just get into school just based on having a CO hobby. I with I was err on that side but you should have some perfection of some personal and academic differentiating characteristics as well it's not enough just to have professional I you should have some abilities outside of that right you should have some things in your background sizing because a lot of you are applying from similar industries and you know if your best friend may be able to tell how you're different then someone else in that same industry but in admissions meaning remember to us look at our application for half now that could be hard. it's often two personal things the personal characteristics personal stories personal catalysts that are really going to help set you apart from other people. you have to have both but you need to make sure that you're demonstrating professionally that you're a hitter and you're doing exceptionally well okay. with that let's um end the webinar I really preach to all of you being on hopefully was helpful I know we went through things pretty quickly if you need help you want to chat about you know potentially how we can help you reach out if you want a free consultation reach out it's all on the website and you give me an email personally cake aunt Kim at admit advantage calm I try to get back to you as soon as I can Thanks

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Crafting the Perfect MBA Essay - Webinar

hi everybody my name is Kofi cancam I am one of the cofounders of Amit advantage and we've been a very long partner L'Occitane partner with the beat the GMAT team Eric and B and today I'm really happy to go through crafting the perfect essay and I know a lot of you are preparing for round one at this point which is obviously in early October for most of the top you know top 15 top 20 schools and. some of you for something this is actually exceptionally pertinent on for others it is something that you're going to be leveraging probably over the next couple of months as you gear up to submit in round two in gen right. you will find that we're gonna go through sort of the different types of essays different ideas that you want to sort of conceive when you're thinking about putting together a specific type of essay there will be a play a time and place to ask questions all of you are mute right now. if you can just hold your questions until the end of the presentation unless it's exceptionally pressing if you can order questions we'll try to get to all the questions at the end any questions we cannot get to you could simply email us and we will we will respond in kind okay. with that let's get started I want to thank I be an Eric and beat the GMAT for offering an incredible platform and service for people and thank you again for inviting us to participate and obviously there was you know me know that I'm a Cleveland sports team fan big time in the Browns just won a game yesterday. I'm in a really good mood because our record now is one in two or off to the races I must speak a little bit about the company first not a huge amount I think a lot of you know me from beat the GMAT and obviously you can look at our website but I do want to give a little bit of background just. you feel comfortable that I know what the heck I'm talking about on admit advantage basically helps candidates get into business school very simply and if it doesn't have anything to do with your GMAT anything else we do right. anything related to essay editing mock interview school selection helping you figure out who your recommenders be helping you find money etc consider that's our focus we work with people from the beginning people saying look I think I won't go to school I don't exactly know what I want to do but I want to go all the way to the end when people are accepted and they're notified that hey they should apply for the scholarship or they're accepted to multiple schools and need help determining which is the best option for them our process is exceptionally structured we're also reformed 'el scientist we really believe in a structured process especially in an era where 70% of the people applying or qualified get only you know eight to 25% get in for the top 20 schools it's really important to be thorough about the analysis of your background and your chances and your stories in order to harness your best application we've been very fortunate to have a really strong interest from alumni of these schools who also have been admissions officers and or second-year interviewers and. we've been able to hire a lot of diversity not just sort of racially but also more importantly in my opinion anyway in terms of careers. we have people that have been in fields like investment banking venture capital impact investing we have marketers from big companies and also small companies if that people have been involved in government either as lobbyists and or as speech writers in fact we had a speechwriter for justified in for a long time technology people consulting entrepreneurship real estate etc there are three main core tenants underlying our company one everyone that works in our company has to have been in through this process themselves. they need to have been an alum or actually a current student of a top-tier school they also need to be on the other side of the table in terms of being a second year interview or an alumni interviewer or someone that has been a professional within admissions what we're known to be very client focused that's kind of one of our hallmarks we believe in it we think it makes a company more exciting and also enables us to gather great stories and anecdotes from you to help you fashion your applications and then performance if if people are not getting into school then we're not happy and all this is from you and we've been very fortunate to work with incredible candidate around the world who are current students or are alumni of all of these schools and actually even more this is not this is not the full list but it's a representative list okay I am Kofi Kant Kim I am one of the founders really briefly Erika are fairly similar both work at extent from different cities I worked at net defend which is sort of a processor Skype I sold a software company I'm really sort of in the education of Technology I was fortunate to go to Harvard College our pursue degree in neurobiology I have a master's in IDI from Harvard and I went to Wharton was a joseph Wharton fellow ran the largest inland conference and also T aid our first year core marketing course you can see sort of our consultant back on spirits drawing you see some of the people on the on the right hand side eric is a very similar back when I went to brown graduate with honors from from Wharton and you know has built a company with me for the last couple of years. in terms of the diversity of consultants that we're all from sort of similar top firms top companies we have about 30 plus people that work with us you can see a lot of their profiles on our site they're all ones of Harvard and Wharton and Stanford and Columbia and Berkeley and Chicago and Kellogg and nyeo and Dartmouth and all kinds of schools like that and again we place people and top 20 schools in the States some of the top european school said and judge lbs and INSEAD some an age and a couple now increasingly in Latin America okay in terms of sa strategies one thing I want you to understand it's really critical is that you need to have a plan before you start writing ok you should not be jumping into your essays off the bat just immediately started starting right it's almost like some of these on their CV that watch like Meet the Press or some of these other sort of Sunday talk shows when you see that people go on there they have talking points before they get there they know what they want to include almost regardless of the question it's really important that you do the same thing the first thing that we recommend you think about is your personal brain and what are the stories experiences and accomplishments as well as the leadership characteristics around which you're gonna build your application okay and. imagine that someone's interviewing a sibling your best friend a parent a partner except I said what are the stories what are the things about John then they need to know about how to understanding as a person they're going to be a mixture of personal professional and academic sort of wins and experiences and it will be related leadership characteristics it's like being analytical being innovative being persuasive being a great communicator being able to make decisions limited information you know being able to leave without authority things of that nature that basically naturally draw from those specific stories experiences and accomplishments. no matter which direction you go if you're starting with the stories experiences accomplishment it's this thing okay here's a set of 10 what sorts of leadership characteristics today define about me if you go in that direction or you go on the other direction saying I want to write an application where you know I'm saying I won't really want to go into asset management. I really need to demonstrate that I am analytical or I really want to run a company I need to demonstrate that I am sort of innovative or you know I'm going to join a company and try to fight my way to the top I need to show that I am sort of persuasive you can start on that side think of those characteristics either that are relevant for your career or that are that are ones of leaders that you really respect business leaders political leaders on you know military leaders sports leaders etc it doesn't matter you can think of those stories and think those experiences are those um characteristics and then go to the stories or you can start with the stories and go to the characteristics but your brand will be a mixture of both the stories experiences and accomplishments as well as a critical leadership components and. what we've done here is just outline a couple right. if you're saying that you want to have a story that you have a strong analytical focus if that is a leadership characteristics that you want as part of your brand then you need to basically provide examples this is a show-and-tell experiment from business it's not telling someone that your analytical having nothing to back it up you have to show and tell across the different pieces of your application which are your assays your letters of recommendation the non-si data portion of your application your resume and then your interview if you get it. you definitely a four and you certainly if you get an interview that will be the fifth piece okay and you really need to make sure that you are highlighting sorry you're highlighting basically specific things about your background and and and and leveraging stories to explain it okay. don't just say your innovative basically really demonstrate that you know for this example you basically you helped reduce emissions by X percentage and you helped increase efficiency by X percentage within your manufacturing company in a way that had not been done before that's real innovation persuasive you can sort of see the example okay the the the take-home is really make sure that you were thinking about yourself holistically think about yourself from a professional community and personal aspect and realize that for the schools which you're applying it's not just enough to be qualified you also have to you know demonstrate that you're gonna be basically someone that other people can learn from and then you're interested in in that and that you've got a really sort of well-defined persona about you outside of just being dominant in your work force in your workplace also secondly realize that you really need to differentiate yourself okay. it's a fine line the one because you want to differentiate yourself we also want to be authentic and true to yourself. the way that you do that or the ways that you try to sort of employ this this desire to differentiate yourself include really speaking about your passion what is a catalyst for pushing you to go to business what is a catalyst for your career and again your career is not your first job after school it's not saying I want to go to sort of Columbia in order to go work in McKinsey that could be the case but is your desire to work at McKinsey does that exist in the long term like you know most of you are let's say in mid-20s okay. you're gonna a graduate Business School let's say at 28. let's say you work in a company for seven years when you're 35 36 when you start to pivot towards your long-term goal what is that that is really your passion right. the first three to seven years typically consider sort of this short term it's almost like going to business school again and in terms of getting a brand getting a network getting sort of experiences but the question is what is the passion beyond that. if you can focus on your long-term passion which hopefully matches your career then it'll be a great way for you to differentiate yourself especially if you're coming from a company or industry like let's say Goldman or consulting you know where a lot of people end up applying the business school coming from those sort of domains if you highlight your passion you'll find that you're able to. you'll be able to sort of separate yourself from other analysts you know the analysts here left in to you bright at your job that's applying with you okay realize that and you know you don't have to differentiate kids everyone. we always get people to call us every day and doing these consultations and say okay how to make myself different then then this other person. last week I spoke to someone who basically was a banker and he was asked me how am I going to differentiate myself against the bankers as well as you know all these other you know this sort of the person coming from Teach for America that wants to go to business school and he asked me he didn't ask me exactly in those terms but that was the gist of his question I said look you're not competing against the social the social sort of venture person the person coming from Teach for America that wants to sort of go to business school into microfinance you're competing against other bankers right and. realize that you're you're you're you don't have to sort of differential your self. much you don't recognize who you are you want to sort of stay in your silo and realize every year these schools are gonna accept a certain percentage. a number of X type of candidates and you want to sort of be amongst the best and also realize that many of you will be competing in different buckets right. you're not just in a model if you're not just in one bucket. for me when I applied for example I was competing as other entrepreneurs other black guys and other sort of Harvard Ivy League graduates right and. those are kind of the general buckets I was doing as I was trying to be sort of a leader or dominant in each of those three and. really think about that a little bit in terms how you differentiate yourself realize again when you plotted these schools everybody's good literally everyone is good at the top 20 schools 70% of people apply or admissible they'd only you know only sort of 10 to 25 per second and. brasstacks numbers if you have 20 applicants applying 6 and will be garbage bad GMAT bad GPA poor work experience at least 14 that are very qualified if I took those 14 and I showed them to a professor on campus I said these are the people that are gonna be you know in your class you know those professors would have no problem with that of those qualified 14 2 to 5 or again again right which is 10 to 25%. realize that you know they're two sides that the first is that grades are sort of not good enough everybody's got that and the second side is that means that you need to basically really be developing the other pieces of your of your application okay other sides of your of your story in your narrative also realizing to tie the relevance to specific. when you were thinking about going to schools we talked a lot of people every day and to be honest with you all of you kind of want to go to the same schools the same 5 to 5 to 10 schools but I can always tell when someone is really passionate about a school based on their articulation of why and that's something that you want to do also because admissions officers are second about that it's not enough to say I want to go to Harvard because you know how I think it's the most important school in the world or my sibling right there or I read about Meg Whitman going to the Harvard Business School no you need to be a little bit clearer today it's because it's going to help meet the cases or here are specific courses and professors I want to study under here are specific clubs and organizations that are relevant to my career either previous or in the future that I want to be a part of and lead then here's how it fits my long-term goal every school wants to hear for this it would be a great opportunity for you to showcase your knowledge of the school which to be honest with you a lot of people don't do they don't think it's important. they just you know they they write about sort of the school very generically and think it's obvious why they want to go to the school and it is in a sense of a brand and making more money but it's not obvious why I necessarily want to go to Kellogg over over booth right or they want to go to Wharton over Clemmy etc that's always clear and. it's really important that you differentiate yourself across these these indices okay in terms of big picture sell the dream. a painting clear picture let them know how you know them being the mission to let them know you know how you're different how it's relevant to your peers and advantageous to your peers and how business school is gonna help you achieve your long-term goal do not just focus on the first step after business school the first job of the first placement this is about your career okay make sure you're painting a viable bridge to the future I think those who than other webinars I've done I've heard me talk about you know Kyle we had that wanted to start a hedge fund in Hong Kong immediately when he graduated okay he you know he didn't speak he wasn't Asian he didn't speak in a just major in English didn't work in an investment bank or finance he basically was a social venture guy who's I'm. he was like sort of a a non-profit guy and you know I think he sort of got tired of being you know having a lot of money and it sounded sexy. I'm gonna start this company and me'll when I graduate that's not realistic right that's not a realistic bridge if he said look I'm gonna join a McKinsey working in financial services I'm then gonna sort of try to get into a financial services company by the way while I'm in school I'm gonna learn Mandarin etc and I'm gonna sort of work McKinsey try to transition to an office in you know in mainland China and then basically try to transition you know trying to link up with other people learn the ropes learn the industry and then launched my own hedge fund you know seven to ten years after I graduate that's a realistic path. make sure you've got a realistic path dream big but make sure the path is real okay also I will tell you this may sound obvious but there are. many people that come to us and they've already started writing they say I want you to review our application I say we'll send me send me your outline and they you know say we don't know I don't have an outline and you know we didn't have this in a slide before I think I can't believe how many people are writing applications without outlines right you have to have an outline it's really important list for your first school you want to make sure that you are tying in your character your characteristics the character trades as well as the stories experiences accomplishments across the four to five platforms I mentioned write again your letters of recommendation sort of the non-si data portion of your application your resume your essays in your interviews if you are not pulling all that together if you are not. making sure the pieces are integrated and and in complementary you were not going to have a balanced application and you also don't have an effective application all right places where you have options for your essays choose ones that work with your brand if you don't do the brand upfront then you're not gonna know you know which essays to choose when you're given the option choose two of the following five essay topics okay make sure that you are answering the whole question. write out the details of each ask the question and I mean this in the context of some essays will gonna be a three part essay and basically they'll give you six in two words I can't tell many times I see people that kind of spend the first the first part of a specific kind of essay you know spending 300 words then they spend 250 words on sort of the second section they get to the third and think ah I only have fifty words okay I'm just gonna like 50 words answer the third section just because a section is a third section doesn't mean it's unimportant that's not as important as the first two. make sure you're answering all the essay questions in full again if you do an essay question if you do an outline matter for your first school you probably don't have to do it for all of yours but you really do need to consider doing it for the first one unless you are an exceptional writer maybe you've applied before or you're getting a huge amount of help I really even if you're getting helps in the company like ours I still would give an outline frankly okay it's also really important for you to you know to leverage your research okay do the research. there and I sound like sort of a parent actually I'm a new parent but I still like a parent and say you know there's. much information online and my day didn't have it's true like I'm 104 there wasn't as much information online back in the fall with a1 when I was you know I was looking at applying now there's. much information where people get placed you know the breakdown of the class coming in average GMAT scores GPAs etc um you need to know that stuff alright. it's all on the website you can sort of visit the school very easy to do especially in the fall it provided you can get there right those of you that are I just focus on two days ago they said literally two days in New York City and the person said I have not visited you know it's gonna be a problem if I don't visit the schools and applying to in her schools were Columbia NYU Yale Wharton Harvard and tuck okay the first three Columbia and why the first two Columbia and why you're in New York City Yale is 90 minutes north Wharton is basically about 100 105 minutes south and she's not applying around to. naturally you can imagine my response was get on a train subway or Amtrak and visit these schools if you're in close proximity there's really no excuse not to visit it'll highlight your passion is something you can mention in your application and some schools will ask you directly have you been to our school okay. visit the school if you're not in those areas most schools travel at this level around the world go to a local session will also meet alumni in your area you'll meet people that potentially can help you and advocate for you if you get wait-listed it's a really important to do speak to alumni all of you for the most part probably went to college okay I'm University you all have alumni that have been to these schools I would encourage you to go to your alumni go to your Alumni Association if your undergraduate University and say I want to talk to you five to ten people that have gone to and why you were warned or Harvard and they probably will help you do that okay and have those discussions it's really important to do to sort of give you a non-glossy sort of brochure vision of your school and understanding of your school and that maturity that mature perspective will carry through within your application itself and really be able to speak to what I school is a good fit okay because some schools are not if it's if you're basically Tali saying you're not really you really want to do analytics you're really analytical and you're really sort of number driven Kellogg may not be the place for you right I mean you know Booth may be right. just be clear about why it's a good fit if you're saying I want to really want to do energy I love energy I want to get into oil and gas and you're looking at going to just not to pick on them listen you're looking to go to Dartmouth that may not be a good fit all right and may be better for you to sort of go to a school that's clinical not considered as good right but that's they are like UT awesome just an amazing school that may be a better fit for you based on the fact that you want to do oil right it being in Texas. just keep that in mind be able to articulate that both to yourself and to the admissions committee members okay let's talk now a little about the essay types. you have the story I say okay. this is a common essay this used to be sort of more popular you see in different formats but why do you want to go to our school why do you want to get an MBA why do you want to get it now right tell us about your short and long term goals you know how is your back when relevant pursuing MBA there are lots of variations but they're kind of all the same sort of craft a narrative about yourself right tell us about yourself tell us well how Business School fits in your and your goals very common um now you know business schools have sort of evolved and they've gotten a little bit less direct in terms of the I asked this kind of question but this kind of these kinds of themes come up pretty much in every single essay every single application for business school okay. what you want to do our tips are obvious answer the questions right answer the question asked if the school asks for short and long term goal on goals rather answer that question first if you have space left over then you know talk about sort of why you want to go to that school but don't write about why I want to go to that school and not answer your long term goals the portion the thing that was really asked for okay this is also a good place for you to provide context right what was the catalyst for you on the business was a catalyst for you pursuing a certain kind of field now you obviously are gonna have to be judicious in your word allocation because you're not gonna have a lot of real estate to write but I can't tell you how often a really finely crafted sentence let's call it 17 to 25 words that provides some context for a goal can like totally frame the essay and make and that's. that was pretty good magical. make sure you're doing that if you if you have capacity to do. right do not cut and paste right. I answered a couple questions today I'm beat the GMAT where somebody asked about sort of doing booths sort of powerpoints and they want to sort of make this MIT optional it's okay I would modify tweak do not just cut and paste write and try to think about each school you can use the same sort of themes you can use the same sort of stories use the same kind of leadership characteristics but I'd be very wary about taking an essay here that's slightly off-topic that's 400 words and trying to like fit another essay that's maybe 25% different but it's 200 words don't just think you're just gonna take that essay and sort of wrap it into the into the take the form and wrap it into the latter that prod will not go well for my experience and again be is specific about the school when possible every school want you know these schools are very proud they also know that you're applying to other schools and. you want to be very clear about why their schools gonna fit and and and dirty little secret unless probably not. much of a secret now schools do manage their yields they are concern about the reals ie they want to you know they want whoever they accept generally to come right and as partially other evaluated and ranked it's kind of like bragging right. a school doesn't want to accept you if they even if you're qualified if they know you're not going to come and if you don't put in details about a specific school they may think that you know actually don't really care that much about this you don't you're not really that knowledge about the school ergo you have your your eyes on some other school. just keep that in mind you just sort of write your applications another essay type is describe yourself right. how a classmate described you pretending you're running for a club and you've got to give your speech as to why I should be the leader of the club what club would it be and what would your speech say if I visited you two years after you graduated and interviewed a good friend on campus how would they say that you made an impact they're all kind of the same fanatic stuff right this is a classic differentiation question they're not going to say how are you a different candidate than someone else and this is how they do it all right this is not a take me through your resume type of question a lot of candidates right yes and describe yourself and they literally look at the resume they put up Microsoft Word split their screen look at the resume and sort of take everything in a resume you know from from sort of the furthest in the past to the present just write that don't do that right you have to make some choices about what's the most relevant all right you've got to think about in terms your admitted advantages think about your brand and make sure you're Holly the leadership characteristics that you'd already decided as part of your base your platform right think about highlighting certain key roles a lot of you have five to eight bullet points for each job you've had you may have had three jobs right you can't highlight everything. take maybe two of those jobs or if you do all three take the things that you've done that really encapsulate on your total experience in that job and it's usually going to be something like a key role or a key sort of impact or legacy left alright if you are somebody that you know is kind of reticent shy you have to get out of that you've got to break out of that you have to sort of beat your chest you have to basically promote yourself you don't do that nobody will do that okay this leaky wheel does get the oil in a lot of cases if you're someone that is loquacious and doesn't talk and listening if you're wondering who the loudmouth arrogant jerk is in the room and you can't figure it out it could be you right if you are that person I'm sort of saying that tongue in cheek you know don't be. arrogant right. dial it back a little bit be a little bit subtle um you don't have to you know you don't have to hit someone over the head if you basically you know did a deal that garnered you know thirty million dollars for your company you don't have to write about that for you know two hundred words you can sort of subtly state that or directly stated for that matter very short succinctly and fifty to seventy-five words and keep it moving and that's kind of what you want you want to sort of have an idea of kind of what you look like in sort of your your your overall personality to determine you know sort of which can't be fallen okay there are also behavioral questions right this is very typical to this often happens in interviews but you do see them in essay types as well. tell me at a time when right tell me at a time when you fail tell me about a time you had to overcome opposition to an idea tell me about a time when you basically had to manage you know you have to manage peers I had you know higher titles and more position more seniority company that's it used to be more common but these questions are still out there right there are many different kinds of iterations the types like if you get a general feel this is typically the part where you're given an option I choose to or one of the next three op3 essay questions this is typically behavioral because sometimes you don't have you know if they just gave you one type you may not have an experience like that. often they give you a couple different types. you know something you're back and we'll click with one of the asset questions right this is kind of like your your case interviews of those who've you've worked at worked at you know consulting companies we're as much as they're just in the answer the interest has driven the thought process and sort of the overall experience. and how you react and respond in to a particular situation our tips are don't be afraid to give real examples you know this is also sort of related when people say what's my biggest weakness my biggest weakness is I'm too ambitious right that's not a big real weakness right. make sure you're sort of your authentic your real it's okay to have a flaw it's okay to have a failure as long as sir observe lessons that have been learned and ideally if his similar situation is arisen later in the future or you know after that incident of that failure and you're able to sort of apply the lessons from that fear to that incident that's even better right. give me a lessons real example sing about lessons learned be very clear about how this impacted your life this is sort of passing hate to say it's a Cleveland Airport test right this is your moment to sort of show that you were an interesting dynamic person you're thoughtful reflective and you're not just sort of Joe capitalist who's looking to go to business school to make a lot of money and and drive a Bentley nothing wrong with that at all right but business schools are looking for at this point in time they position themselves to be looking for people who are also leaders who are community participators who are people that are making an impact with different groups and this is a chance for you to sort of just seem a little bit more reflective okay this is really important it's really necessary for you to choose your essays wisely and just because I just obviously there's echoing chambers on beat the GMAT and Business Week whatever these different places where you see an essay question you think everyone's answering these two essays I have to answer them you don't they're not and you don't okay. make sure you're really authentic and it ties in with your brand your a narrative that you're trying to advance within your application and again this gets down to what your story and also to soar next enter your competing against you have leadership essays right. um you know this is this is where you sort of need to think about sort of the impact you've had the legacy of left you know getting into school it's not just about sort of having different roles it's not really making an impact they're looking for people young people who have made an impact they could say that's a winning horse I believe this person is going to be have we given the tools and experiences and and sort of you know the network in theatre can be able to take everything that they've done in the past and sort of blow it up on a bigger stage we're gonna give them an amp we're gonna be able to amplify what they've done. they're looking for examples of leadership they're looking for exam of impact and legacy um think about what you've done beyond the call of duty okay. if you've if you've had a role and you've mastered that role let's and then let's say a a fellow analyst was fired let's say your boss you know was going through divorce and he or she got distracted you had to sort of take on the role think about sort of these kinds of examples when you're writing the leadership essay okay everyone all of you should have a concept an idea of of how you lead now some of you have had more experience during that than others but all of us neither LED or bin let and those of us who've worked for tough bosses know they're oftentimes we think you know I could have done that that's. differently or I would have done that differently I could have done better well now is your chance. you should have a conception of how you lead either based on real experience leading or having been led right this is also a great opportunity for you to get corroboration with your recommenders of your leadership. if you're basically saying I let this amazing project I brought in 30 million dollars of new revenue or I saved X number of hundred thousands of dollars in costs I saved this is a great time to have a recommender say that it sounds a lot more credible than when it's just you saying it right if you work in teams those you work for big companies you're doing deals you're doing approaches you know etc you're integrating I was a consultants you know I know what that's like you need to focus on what you did necessary what your team did now I'm gonna read about in the journal I want to know what you did specifically. make sure when you're writing your application you're very clear about your own specific contributions to a particular task okay and don't make the mistake that we see if candidates who write and definitely about this amazing deal and you know and they spend 10% writing about what they've done to make that deal possible okay then you've got sort of strengths weaknesses accomplishments deployments generally kind of similar themes right give real examples right really make sure that you are tied in to your brand because you're gonna have. many and you've got to make sure that you can go back to your outline go back to your your your your branding documents and really think about okay what is it that I really have to include in my application if you have weaknesses if you have losses of disappointments please again highlight lessons learned in actions taken it's not enough to recognize we have a weakness if you recognize you have a weakness and you don't do anything about it that's a problem right that's more of a problem than actually not even recognizing a weakness and everything should be consistent as mentioned last two. the optional si okay this is an S if it does it's optional optional means you don't have to do it. do not do it if you don't need it if you are thinking about what are the things that could be included typically its gaps in an application it could be a gap like look the schools asking for you to give a boss recommendation but you can't do it because if you're Boston you're going to be we're gonna business school you'd be fired or you'd lose your bonus. if you have a senior associate do it this is where the option alyssa to explain why that's the case which incidentally is not a big deal on if there were errors in your brand which weren't addressed this is where you could address it I'd be wary about doing that unless the optional essay specifically tells you like tell us something that we didn't touch on but if they say what's your biggest weakness and you're writing hey I got a 7:30 on my gmail I was testing the 760 nobody wants to hear that don't do that okay this is a place where you should talk about gaps in your work experience I think anything over anything over four months I personally I'll probably write about or if you have to even two to three month gaps in the working experience let's say if five years fan I probably right about that a little bit okay I talked about nitrogen recommendations if you have holes again what you're doing to address them. I didn't do well in my GMAT but you know I'm taking some course I've got a bad GPA but I you know I decided to take courses in accounting stats economics finance in order to sort of boost my boost my I my my qualifications from the analytical perspective. this is where you kind of want to do that stuff if you were given four into words or fire in two words space and you write you like that say I only use 200 words stop you don't need to fill up the remaining 300 words just because you feel like your essay is not not fleshed out enough don't use the word capacity as the barometer for whether or not your application is finished or your essays finished in this instance we applicants take a look at your old applications if you apply dip eclis two plus years ago they're not going to use them necessarily but you also don't know if someone's gonna take a look at them and you don't want to sort of have to say especially applied last year I talked to a guy a couple weeks ago and he said I probably laughter I wanted to clean tag what do you think I should say this year and I said well you know he was thinking about something different like you say not something like banking and I said I that could work but you've got it tight and you can't just be somebody different this year because last year's person didn't get in in terms of your goals your goals can be refined you obviously can have a better better GMAT I mean you took some courses but do not present yourself as a totally different person because they're gonna confuse admissions man you know which one personally which one's authentic both either one or neither right highlight differences in previous applications. if you know if you got feedback and kind of felt like hey my my my leadership was not strong my last application or my social my commitment to sort of work in the community or contributing was not strong kinda like that it's really important to do. but I'd say ultimately if you're looking at this year's application you applied last or even here before and you realize and you don't have a lot in you to say then you probably should think about whether or not it makes sense to apply now maybe you should apply next year I know that's a hard thing to think about but it's true okay. we're gonna get to questions and minute Eric will keep my Eric will punch me in the face if I don't say some of the things we have a bunch of obviously packages I think those even our website have seen we've also added new things new streamlined packages from listening to our audience you said you've wanted sort of more of light touch stuff. we have more light touch stuff streamline is just essays you know just sort of throughout San si editing keeping it moving we have a final review package at a thousand bucks which is no phone support and we've got targeted services if you want client branding if you want outline if you want any that kind of stuff you can get it. based on our website now with our company if you have 250 plus Bucks descent which I think even if it's not our company I think you should be having you should have that you should be willing to sort of spend that kind of money if you're applying to top-tier school it's an investment in yourself and again it even if it's not with us we've got stuff on our site though that will hopefully appeal to you okay still be out early still do doing analysis if you apply last year did not get anyone and what happened and you're applying this year come our way we'll talk to you about it we'll look at your old stuff we have a pre application package for those of you that are not applying until next year on we certainly can help you sort of get your ducks in order polish up your assets make sure you're well positioned to really launch yourself next year okay we have other things coming on and pre-application webinar case studies next week we're doing our infamous candidate success stories probably the couple new new candidates follow us on facebook twitter or a blog we don't do nearly enough on that because we're way too busy but we're gonna try to get better and we work with clintus review those of you not taking a GMAT and you want to take your GMAT and you're looking for help we like prints from you there other companies out there if you do work with princess room you threw us a get a 15% discount and lastly if you've not had a free consultation and you want one and that doesn't mean with you know we only get one per company. if you talk to Eric unfortunately I will not do another consultation with you but if you'd like a consultation and you cannot talk to either of us go to sketch that me and sign up schedule me a slash admit advantage or go to the contact us portion of our website and you can shoot me personally email cake and Kim at admit advantage calm and as mentioned we do a 10% discount for our beat the Jeana people you guys there are people um and you can just type in 1908 1908 it check out and you'll get a 10 percent discount on everything we offer okay with that lets up for questions if there are questions let's open up just typing your questions and and B will help summarize them and then we'll go from there you okay. we have a question from Ned what do you do if you're not a hundred percent sure what your dream is the main point of getting an MBA from me is to open doors to other careers and get back to the u.s. I'm an expat is it even worth applying if you have no 100% specific dream or does that basically mean you have no chance with the average GMAT GMAT scores um that's a good question. look there is some gamesmanship in terms of getting into school um I think that when I think of career now you may not know exactly what you want to do but think about it along these axes okay. think about in terms of role role / function industry title and maybe location right Ned and you should have an idea of some of that stuff right. you know you may know that for example you want to sort of do marketing you may know that your industry generally is let's call it real estate maybe you want to real estate market maybe you wanted to finance fancy services marketing like ie you want to market credit cards for like American Express maybe you want to do that in the States or maybe you want to do it in in Singapore you want to do that in the UK like you should have some general feeling for what you want to do right it sounds like you do but opening career career doors it's not specifically for one of the reasons it's not specific enough is because companies are on campus as soon as you get there literally different campus sometimes within a couple of weeks two to three weeks and. if you don't have an idea of that you're gonna be behind the book behind the ball. you've got to have an ID again think about it in terms of of industry role / function title and location and you probably have at least two of those figure it out in order to write a compelling application I'm just writing to Rack my brain if I've seen someone write a compelling application who hasn't had at least two of those and I don't necessarily think I don't think I have. you should have a general idea of that and if you don't have an idea start talking to people and again this is for the purposes of applying its business goal you obviously if you get in you'll have some time before you matriculate to really fleshed out and you can change your mind but you have to have a specific direction heading in especially as you get older okay question from anakata does your advice also apply to react in essays or do you have any specific advice for reallocates I'm not sure exactly what advice you're suggesting but yes my application generally does my advice does apply to all applicants for the first time or second or third time from Vanessa how long does it take to complete an average application with admitted manage oh that's a good question I would say generally you should leave look we've done three essay three app three applications with people in four weeks I never want to do that again but we certainly want half deal sure um I would say you know if you're moving at a reasonable clip and you're not sort of super pressed I would say you probably can do your first school and about three to four weeks and each additional schooling about two and a half to three weeks from je Rousseau how specific must you be in mentioning specific assets of the school program professors clubs specific classes people you've met what if you can't miss in the school and call me miss an info session I think the more specificity the better I would say I would I would probably place emphasis on classes / courses professors and clubs those things can all be derived online people you've met you may not meet anybody that's okay if you can't get to info session if that's if that's it that's it but I definitely would at least have those first three okay from a new any specific considerations we should take for early action deadlines versus regular deadlines I would just say be clear that you want to go to the school right because a lot of these some of these ones like for Columbia you apply early you have to put them a six thousand dollar deposit within two weeks we didn't yeah I think it's two weeks historically it's been like that anyway. be clear about that I think that there's kind of an understanding that you obviously want to go to that school who's replying early but I still would not take my foot off the gas and. really clearly articulating what it is about a specific school that's attracting you to that school. beyond that no I think I think that's fine from fear for low GPAs do you recommend taking additional courses to increase my GPA before applying absolutely yes if you have time to do it. it's not gonna improve your GPA right but it's going to build what's called an alternative transcript and you'll be able to sort of articulate a narrative of you know I was distracted in college or something came up in college that's why my grades weren't as strong but look I took courses in accounting finance stats economics or some subset of those and I got A's in those course as well as working and I have a 700 plus g-men. clearly when I'm focused I can do the work College was a couple of years ago I unfortunately wasn't as focused as I needed to be but I do have the intellectual horsepower to do the work that is the purpose of the courses that's what you're trying to achieve ergo if you are not getting aids in those courses if you're not gonna be committed to getting an A in those courses in a range then you shouldn't really take it don't waste your time and money and usually when I say committed to the effort usually those courses are really about effort like if you sort of show up do the work talk to the professor's tell them what you're about or her what you're about you can kind of automatically be in the B range if you do your homework and then you just sort of need to be B+ range and then you just need a couple things to the break and you can get an A we've seen many students this were sort of C students at college take something on a course that can put hard schools and get A's a minuses. I assume that most of you can do that and you should realize that's what you need to do all right from Quran or Karen in terms of repeating resume items in the goals essay and appeared goals essay with were constraints 500 how much of the essay should want allocate towards hile any individual traits compared to school fit ask because some of the individual it's look like a resume we Pete um. I mean this is kind of a specific Karen I email or specific questions I would agree with you that on if there if you find yourself writing if you if you're looking at a saying you find yourself just regurgitating what's on your resume and we're leaving out other things which are not on your resume I would definitely flip that script and sort of try to focus more. on the stuff that's not in my resume let the stuff in the resume stand for itself however I I don't think for your goals essay your goals are forward-looking it resonates the past. there really shouldn't be that much from your resume on your goals as they should just be the catalyst it should just be maybe something you did which has some kind of care of or a specific skill set you know specific set of experiences but your goals essay and handling because its face because it's based on the future look forward looking it should not be sort of a carbon copy of what you've done on your resume which is already accomplished inherently those two things should be somewhat different right but you probably are gonna have some of the things in the past that are covered on your resume in your goals I think you're just not a huge huge amount of it okay from Reuben any advice on using personal hobbies or activities for my application um I think that your if your hobby is not marked by an accomplishment then I probably would just relegate that to the non-si data portion of my application however if your hobby is turned into some kind of passion that you have an accomplishment behind then I would consider that we consider putting it in my in my essay basically you have to be very you have to be a gatekeeper to what you put in your essay I've seen people that are very accomplished and I just feel like they weren't discriminating enough in terms of what they put in their ass I just feel like they put garbage stuff that was really not that important in the rest hey you like you want to be your essays are the most importantly the most important piece of your application some people say your recommendations but I think your essays especially because they're sort of your words and you don't want to write about a hobby sort of playing intramural soccer in like an accomplishment essay right now I gave this example a couple weeks ago we had a guy that wanted to work for FIFA which is a International Football Association and he set up a soccer league in the Pacific Northwest and then raised a whole bunch of money he had like 20 plus teens contributing it was amazing we read about in the papers whatever that was a hobby that he could elevate to being in his essays because there was accomplish behind it was really close to what he wanted to do professionally otherwise for most hobbies rock climbing whatever you know bike riding running iPod would not make that the topic of an essay all right okay from shift deep any specific advice for hardcore techies for example I don't have a lot of business experience or decision-making experience that's what I'm looking at a business before that's great because that's what Business School is looking for also right. again to keep this is kind of what I'm saying the context of you're not competing against someone that works in business you're competing against other tech people what I would say is that you want to have a clear idea as to why you want to go to business school from the perspective of what you want to do and also the perspective of of what the reason is for going and also we see a lot of tech people let's say looking about this technical skills understand technology I you know I've been involved in some business meetings and I didn't get a chance to sort of I didn't really understand the strategy I wanted I want to be on the strategy side because I want to make more than as soon as I feel like when I was making the best decisions but I don't have the requisite background in accounting and marketing and Finance and and sort of managing people to do that that's one NBA sense where people that say look I've got a very strong technological background I want to sort company I want to be the next Anil Ambani or you know or some kind of Jeff Bezos I want to be an entrepreneur and run my own company I know that I've got to marry my technical expertise with my with sort of my burgeoning interest in business for which nothing right no nothing but you get the point. it's totally fine for you to say that I wouldn't worry about that at all that's why you're looking at a business school that's right and Business School Admission Sui members to know that anyone questions ok from Tara some advice for a family business applicants small business background fiends I should focus on like leadership initiative interpersonal skills etc um I don't know if that's a question but I look I don't think that I think if you're coming from a family business on I think the most important thing is you firstly need to stay are you going to business school to leave the family business are you gonna miss school to run the family business if you're gonna miss school to run the family business eventually then what you should be sort of talking about is in my opinion develop certain certain traits and certain skills that address gaps in the family business or how you want to take the fame to the next level and you need to know X Y & Z I think it's it gives you a great impetus to go to business school it gives you a great reason there's a certain kind of authenticity about sort of saying uh I think the only business does X amount of dollars in revenue my parents didn't have the experience to go and have experience to do blank blank blank go international you know it's in Portugal and therefore I want to go to business school at a school like Warren which is I wanted to learn operations marking the etc etc. I can bring that back to the bits I think I would I would definitely couch your training and your need to go to business school as part of the family business I also think that in terms of the recommendations in terms of recommendations need to be careful about who writes some you obviously can't Ness I have a parent. I look towards the supplier I like towards maybe I like an accountant and you know someone that works with your business who is necessarily in your business who has theoretical little less concern about sort of being fired being reprimanded for saying the wrong thing in your recommendation. it's something you definitely need to think about think about your title as well right if you're sort of in a family business and you sort of do everything you've got a loose title don't have a loose title for the purpose of your application get something nailed down that's credible it's authentic with what you're doing and go from there all right from Joe s I know you probably get this a lot but what about older applicants 31 years old the burden will be why now I feel like if it is still in my career any advice on how to approach um I think that fit a ceiling is okay but that is that sort of belies it doesn't really support the theory I'm sort of a - doing really well my career for Billy Hanson my career's T not going well I need a reset no top 15 top 20 business schools gonna find that really sexy. what I would say is an older applicant is why now could be look I've been doing really well in my career and I've hit a place where you know in order for me to get to the next level in my career it's really important that I get an MBA or if it employment career where I've acquired a certain amount of skill set and Moxie it now in sort of context I want to launch my own business you know in this field and I need a business sort of sort of teaching more things about running a company as well as building a network and building sort of certain experiences or exposure I also think that you could you should be writing favourably you should be trying to go on offense Joe. you should not be concern about being old you should be you're not old frankly you should be you should be making a younger applicants field concerned about how they compare to you. I would be say I would be highlighting the fact that it's a great thing I've got eight eight nine years experience you know I'm gonna bring this experience to bear and a B and C ways I'm gonna basically open my contacts up I'm gonna help train I industry I'm gonna be their conduit for that I'm gonna I'm gonna basically be better than a 27 year old version of Joe that's how you need to be thinking aggressively all right okay this is the last question from Deepak in the differentiate yourself essay if you describe all of your best abilities in the context of you your professional activities your risk sounding too narrow okay. if you're looking at differentiate yourself and you're only saying it's perfectly are you too narrow or is it better to talk about multiple spheres to present yourself as a more rounded person that's a good question I think it varies Canada Canada that's right the fence I think that if I had to sort of air cues from one side I would choose the professional side I think there's way too many people that sort of don't speak about their professional accomplishments and think they can just get into school just based on having a CO hobby. I with I was err on that side but you should have some perfection of some personal and academic differentiating characteristics as well it's not enough just to have professional I you should have some abilities outside of that right you should have some things in your background sizing because a lot of you are applying from similar industries and you know if your best friend may be able to tell how you're different then someone else in that same industry but in admissions meaning remember to us look at our application for half now that could be hard. it's often two personal things the personal characteristics personal stories personal catalysts that are really going to help set you apart from other people. you have to have both but you need to make sure that you're demonstrating professionally that you're a hitter and you're doing exceptionally well okay. with that let's um end the webinar I really preach to all of you being on hopefully was helpful I know we went through things pretty quickly if you need help you want to chat about you know potentially how we can help you reach out if you want a free consultation reach out it's all on the website and you give me an email personally cake aunt Kim at admit advantage calm I try to get back to you as soon as I can Thanks

Crafting the Perfect MBA Essay - Webinar

hi everybody my name is Kofi cancam I am one of the cofounders of Amit advantage and we've been a very long partner L'Occitane partner with the beat the GMAT team Eric and B and today I'm really happy to go through crafting the perfect essay and I know a lot of you are preparing for round one at this point which is obviously in early October for most of the top you know top 15 top 20 schools and. some of you for something this is actually exceptionally pertinent on for others it is something that you're going to be leveraging probably over the next couple of months as you gear up to submit in round two in gen right. you will find that we're gonna go through sort of the different types of essays different ideas that you want to sort of conceive when you're thinking about putting together a specific type of essay there will be a play a time and place to ask questions all of you are mute right now. if you can just hold your questions until the end of the presentation unless it's exceptionally pressing if you can order questions we'll try to get to all the questions at the end any questions we cannot get to you could simply email us and we will we will respond in kind okay. with that let's get started I want to thank I be an Eric and beat the GMAT for offering an incredible platform and service for people and thank you again for inviting us to participate and obviously there was you know me know that I'm a Cleveland sports team fan big time in the Browns just won a game yesterday. I'm in a really good mood because our record now is one in two or off to the races I must speak a little bit about the company first not a huge amount I think a lot of you know me from beat the GMAT and obviously you can look at our website but I do want to give a little bit of background just. you feel comfortable that I know what the heck I'm talking about on admit advantage basically helps candidates get into business school very simply and if it doesn't have anything to do with your GMAT anything else we do right. anything related to essay editing mock interview school selection helping you figure out who your recommenders be helping you find money etc consider that's our focus we work with people from the beginning people saying look I think I won't go to school I don't exactly know what I want to do but I want to go all the way to the end when people are accepted and they're notified that hey they should apply for the scholarship or they're accepted to multiple schools and need help determining which is the best option for them our process is exceptionally structured we're also reformed 'el scientist we really believe in a structured process especially in an era where 70% of the people applying or qualified get only you know eight to 25% get in for the top 20 schools it's really important to be thorough about the analysis of your background and your chances and your stories in order to harness your best application we've been very fortunate to have a really strong interest from alumni of these schools who also have been admissions officers and or second-year interviewers and. we've been able to hire a lot of diversity not just sort of racially but also more importantly in my opinion anyway in terms of careers. we have people that have been in fields like investment banking venture capital impact investing we have marketers from big companies and also small companies if that people have been involved in government either as lobbyists and or as speech writers in fact we had a speechwriter for justified in for a long time technology people consulting entrepreneurship real estate etc there are three main core tenants underlying our company one everyone that works in our company has to have been in through this process themselves. they need to have been an alum or actually a current student of a top-tier school they also need to be on the other side of the table in terms of being a second year interview or an alumni interviewer or someone that has been a professional within admissions what we're known to be very client focused that's kind of one of our hallmarks we believe in it we think it makes a company more exciting and also enables us to gather great stories and anecdotes from you to help you fashion your applications and then performance if if people are not getting into school then we're not happy and all this is from you and we've been very fortunate to work with incredible candidate around the world who are current students or are alumni of all of these schools and actually even more this is not this is not the full list but it's a representative list okay I am Kofi Kant Kim I am one of the founders really briefly Erika are fairly similar both work at extent from different cities I worked at net defend which is sort of a processor Skype I sold a software company I'm really sort of in the education of Technology I was fortunate to go to Harvard College our pursue degree in neurobiology I have a master's in IDI from Harvard and I went to Wharton was a joseph Wharton fellow ran the largest inland conference and also T aid our first year core marketing course you can see sort of our consultant back on spirits drawing you see some of the people on the on the right hand side eric is a very similar back when I went to brown graduate with honors from from Wharton and you know has built a company with me for the last couple of years. in terms of the diversity of consultants that we're all from sort of similar top firms top companies we have about 30 plus people that work with us you can see a lot of their profiles on our site they're all ones of Harvard and Wharton and Stanford and Columbia and Berkeley and Chicago and Kellogg and nyeo and Dartmouth and all kinds of schools like that and again we place people and top 20 schools in the States some of the top european school said and judge lbs and INSEAD some an age and a couple now increasingly in Latin America okay in terms of sa strategies one thing I want you to understand it's really critical is that you need to have a plan before you start writing ok you should not be jumping into your essays off the bat just immediately started starting right it's almost like some of these on their CV that watch like Meet the Press or some of these other sort of Sunday talk shows when you see that people go on there they have talking points before they get there they know what they want to include almost regardless of the question it's really important that you do the same thing the first thing that we recommend you think about is your personal brain and what are the stories experiences and accomplishments as well as the leadership characteristics around which you're gonna build your application okay and. imagine that someone's interviewing a sibling your best friend a parent a partner except I said what are the stories what are the things about John then they need to know about how to understanding as a person they're going to be a mixture of personal professional and academic sort of wins and experiences and it will be related leadership characteristics it's like being analytical being innovative being persuasive being a great communicator being able to make decisions limited information you know being able to leave without authority things of that nature that basically naturally draw from those specific stories experiences and accomplishments. no matter which direction you go if you're starting with the stories experiences accomplishment it's this thing okay here's a set of 10 what sorts of leadership characteristics today define about me if you go in that direction or you go on the other direction saying I want to write an application where you know I'm saying I won't really want to go into asset management. I really need to demonstrate that I am analytical or I really want to run a company I need to demonstrate that I am sort of innovative or you know I'm going to join a company and try to fight my way to the top I need to show that I am sort of persuasive you can start on that side think of those characteristics either that are relevant for your career or that are that are ones of leaders that you really respect business leaders political leaders on you know military leaders sports leaders etc it doesn't matter you can think of those stories and think those experiences are those um characteristics and then go to the stories or you can start with the stories and go to the characteristics but your brand will be a mixture of both the stories experiences and accomplishments as well as a critical leadership components and. what we've done here is just outline a couple right. if you're saying that you want to have a story that you have a strong analytical focus if that is a leadership characteristics that you want as part of your brand then you need to basically provide examples this is a show-and-tell experiment from business it's not telling someone that your analytical having nothing to back it up you have to show and tell across the different pieces of your application which are your assays your letters of recommendation the non-si data portion of your application your resume and then your interview if you get it. you definitely a four and you certainly if you get an interview that will be the fifth piece okay and you really need to make sure that you are highlighting sorry you're highlighting basically specific things about your background and and and and leveraging stories to explain it okay. don't just say your innovative basically really demonstrate that you know for this example you basically you helped reduce emissions by X percentage and you helped increase efficiency by X percentage within your manufacturing company in a way that had not been done before that's real innovation persuasive you can sort of see the example okay the the the take-home is really make sure that you were thinking about yourself holistically think about yourself from a professional community and personal aspect and realize that for the schools which you're applying it's not just enough to be qualified you also have to you know demonstrate that you're gonna be basically someone that other people can learn from and then you're interested in in that and that you've got a really sort of well-defined persona about you outside of just being dominant in your work force in your workplace also secondly realize that you really need to differentiate yourself okay. it's a fine line the one because you want to differentiate yourself we also want to be authentic and true to yourself. the way that you do that or the ways that you try to sort of employ this this desire to differentiate yourself include really speaking about your passion what is a catalyst for pushing you to go to business what is a catalyst for your career and again your career is not your first job after school it's not saying I want to go to sort of Columbia in order to go work in McKinsey that could be the case but is your desire to work at McKinsey does that exist in the long term like you know most of you are let's say in mid-20s okay. you're gonna a graduate Business School let's say at 28. let's say you work in a company for seven years when you're 35 36 when you start to pivot towards your long-term goal what is that that is really your passion right. the first three to seven years typically consider sort of this short term it's almost like going to business school again and in terms of getting a brand getting a network getting sort of experiences but the question is what is the passion beyond that. if you can focus on your long-term passion which hopefully matches your career then it'll be a great way for you to differentiate yourself especially if you're coming from a company or industry like let's say Goldman or consulting you know where a lot of people end up applying the business school coming from those sort of domains if you highlight your passion you'll find that you're able to. you'll be able to sort of separate yourself from other analysts you know the analysts here left in to you bright at your job that's applying with you okay realize that and you know you don't have to differentiate kids everyone. we always get people to call us every day and doing these consultations and say okay how to make myself different then then this other person. last week I spoke to someone who basically was a banker and he was asked me how am I going to differentiate myself against the bankers as well as you know all these other you know this sort of the person coming from Teach for America that wants to go to business school and he asked me he didn't ask me exactly in those terms but that was the gist of his question I said look you're not competing against the social the social sort of venture person the person coming from Teach for America that wants to sort of go to business school into microfinance you're competing against other bankers right and. realize that you're you're you're you don't have to sort of differential your self. much you don't recognize who you are you want to sort of stay in your silo and realize every year these schools are gonna accept a certain percentage. a number of X type of candidates and you want to sort of be amongst the best and also realize that many of you will be competing in different buckets right. you're not just in a model if you're not just in one bucket. for me when I applied for example I was competing as other entrepreneurs other black guys and other sort of Harvard Ivy League graduates right and. those are kind of the general buckets I was doing as I was trying to be sort of a leader or dominant in each of those three and. really think about that a little bit in terms how you differentiate yourself realize again when you plotted these schools everybody's good literally everyone is good at the top 20 schools 70% of people apply or admissible they'd only you know only sort of 10 to 25 per second and. brasstacks numbers if you have 20 applicants applying 6 and will be garbage bad GMAT bad GPA poor work experience at least 14 that are very qualified if I took those 14 and I showed them to a professor on campus I said these are the people that are gonna be you know in your class you know those professors would have no problem with that of those qualified 14 2 to 5 or again again right which is 10 to 25%. realize that you know they're two sides that the first is that grades are sort of not good enough everybody's got that and the second side is that means that you need to basically really be developing the other pieces of your of your application okay other sides of your of your story in your narrative also realizing to tie the relevance to specific. when you were thinking about going to schools we talked a lot of people every day and to be honest with you all of you kind of want to go to the same schools the same 5 to 5 to 10 schools but I can always tell when someone is really passionate about a school based on their articulation of why and that's something that you want to do also because admissions officers are second about that it's not enough to say I want to go to Harvard because you know how I think it's the most important school in the world or my sibling right there or I read about Meg Whitman going to the Harvard Business School no you need to be a little bit clearer today it's because it's going to help meet the cases or here are specific courses and professors I want to study under here are specific clubs and organizations that are relevant to my career either previous or in the future that I want to be a part of and lead then here's how it fits my long-term goal every school wants to hear for this it would be a great opportunity for you to showcase your knowledge of the school which to be honest with you a lot of people don't do they don't think it's important. they just you know they they write about sort of the school very generically and think it's obvious why they want to go to the school and it is in a sense of a brand and making more money but it's not obvious why I necessarily want to go to Kellogg over over booth right or they want to go to Wharton over Clemmy etc that's always clear and. it's really important that you differentiate yourself across these these indices okay in terms of big picture sell the dream. a painting clear picture let them know how you know them being the mission to let them know you know how you're different how it's relevant to your peers and advantageous to your peers and how business school is gonna help you achieve your long-term goal do not just focus on the first step after business school the first job of the first placement this is about your career okay make sure you're painting a viable bridge to the future I think those who than other webinars I've done I've heard me talk about you know Kyle we had that wanted to start a hedge fund in Hong Kong immediately when he graduated okay he you know he didn't speak he wasn't Asian he didn't speak in a just major in English didn't work in an investment bank or finance he basically was a social venture guy who's I'm. he was like sort of a a non-profit guy and you know I think he sort of got tired of being you know having a lot of money and it sounded sexy. I'm gonna start this company and me'll when I graduate that's not realistic right that's not a realistic bridge if he said look I'm gonna join a McKinsey working in financial services I'm then gonna sort of try to get into a financial services company by the way while I'm in school I'm gonna learn Mandarin etc and I'm gonna sort of work McKinsey try to transition to an office in you know in mainland China and then basically try to transition you know trying to link up with other people learn the ropes learn the industry and then launched my own hedge fund you know seven to ten years after I graduate that's a realistic path. make sure you've got a realistic path dream big but make sure the path is real okay also I will tell you this may sound obvious but there are. many people that come to us and they've already started writing they say I want you to review our application I say we'll send me send me your outline and they you know say we don't know I don't have an outline and you know we didn't have this in a slide before I think I can't believe how many people are writing applications without outlines right you have to have an outline it's really important list for your first school you want to make sure that you are tying in your character your characteristics the character trades as well as the stories experiences accomplishments across the four to five platforms I mentioned write again your letters of recommendation sort of the non-si data portion of your application your resume your essays in your interviews if you are not pulling all that together if you are not. making sure the pieces are integrated and and in complementary you were not going to have a balanced application and you also don't have an effective application all right places where you have options for your essays choose ones that work with your brand if you don't do the brand upfront then you're not gonna know you know which essays to choose when you're given the option choose two of the following five essay topics okay make sure that you are answering the whole question. write out the details of each ask the question and I mean this in the context of some essays will gonna be a three part essay and basically they'll give you six in two words I can't tell many times I see people that kind of spend the first the first part of a specific kind of essay you know spending 300 words then they spend 250 words on sort of the second section they get to the third and think ah I only have fifty words okay I'm just gonna like 50 words answer the third section just because a section is a third section doesn't mean it's unimportant that's not as important as the first two. make sure you're answering all the essay questions in full again if you do an essay question if you do an outline matter for your first school you probably don't have to do it for all of yours but you really do need to consider doing it for the first one unless you are an exceptional writer maybe you've applied before or you're getting a huge amount of help I really even if you're getting helps in the company like ours I still would give an outline frankly okay it's also really important for you to you know to leverage your research okay do the research. there and I sound like sort of a parent actually I'm a new parent but I still like a parent and say you know there's. much information online and my day didn't have it's true like I'm 104 there wasn't as much information online back in the fall with a1 when I was you know I was looking at applying now there's. much information where people get placed you know the breakdown of the class coming in average GMAT scores GPAs etc um you need to know that stuff alright. it's all on the website you can sort of visit the school very easy to do especially in the fall it provided you can get there right those of you that are I just focus on two days ago they said literally two days in New York City and the person said I have not visited you know it's gonna be a problem if I don't visit the schools and applying to in her schools were Columbia NYU Yale Wharton Harvard and tuck okay the first three Columbia and why the first two Columbia and why you're in New York City Yale is 90 minutes north Wharton is basically about 100 105 minutes south and she's not applying around to. naturally you can imagine my response was get on a train subway or Amtrak and visit these schools if you're in close proximity there's really no excuse not to visit it'll highlight your passion is something you can mention in your application and some schools will ask you directly have you been to our school okay. visit the school if you're not in those areas most schools travel at this level around the world go to a local session will also meet alumni in your area you'll meet people that potentially can help you and advocate for you if you get wait-listed it's a really important to do speak to alumni all of you for the most part probably went to college okay I'm University you all have alumni that have been to these schools I would encourage you to go to your alumni go to your Alumni Association if your undergraduate University and say I want to talk to you five to ten people that have gone to and why you were warned or Harvard and they probably will help you do that okay and have those discussions it's really important to do to sort of give you a non-glossy sort of brochure vision of your school and understanding of your school and that maturity that mature perspective will carry through within your application itself and really be able to speak to what I school is a good fit okay because some schools are not if it's if you're basically Tali saying you're not really you really want to do analytics you're really analytical and you're really sort of number driven Kellogg may not be the place for you right I mean you know Booth may be right. just be clear about why it's a good fit if you're saying I want to really want to do energy I love energy I want to get into oil and gas and you're looking at going to just not to pick on them listen you're looking to go to Dartmouth that may not be a good fit all right and may be better for you to sort of go to a school that's clinical not considered as good right but that's they are like UT awesome just an amazing school that may be a better fit for you based on the fact that you want to do oil right it being in Texas. just keep that in mind be able to articulate that both to yourself and to the admissions committee members okay let's talk now a little about the essay types. you have the story I say okay. this is a common essay this used to be sort of more popular you see in different formats but why do you want to go to our school why do you want to get an MBA why do you want to get it now right tell us about your short and long term goals you know how is your back when relevant pursuing MBA there are lots of variations but they're kind of all the same sort of craft a narrative about yourself right tell us about yourself tell us well how Business School fits in your and your goals very common um now you know business schools have sort of evolved and they've gotten a little bit less direct in terms of the I asked this kind of question but this kind of these kinds of themes come up pretty much in every single essay every single application for business school okay. what you want to do our tips are obvious answer the questions right answer the question asked if the school asks for short and long term goal on goals rather answer that question first if you have space left over then you know talk about sort of why you want to go to that school but don't write about why I want to go to that school and not answer your long term goals the portion the thing that was really asked for okay this is also a good place for you to provide context right what was the catalyst for you on the business was a catalyst for you pursuing a certain kind of field now you obviously are gonna have to be judicious in your word allocation because you're not gonna have a lot of real estate to write but I can't tell you how often a really finely crafted sentence let's call it 17 to 25 words that provides some context for a goal can like totally frame the essay and make and that's. that was pretty good magical. make sure you're doing that if you if you have capacity to do. right do not cut and paste right. I answered a couple questions today I'm beat the GMAT where somebody asked about sort of doing booths sort of powerpoints and they want to sort of make this MIT optional it's okay I would modify tweak do not just cut and paste write and try to think about each school you can use the same sort of themes you can use the same sort of stories use the same kind of leadership characteristics but I'd be very wary about taking an essay here that's slightly off-topic that's 400 words and trying to like fit another essay that's maybe 25% different but it's 200 words don't just think you're just gonna take that essay and sort of wrap it into the into the take the form and wrap it into the latter that prod will not go well for my experience and again be is specific about the school when possible every school want you know these schools are very proud they also know that you're applying to other schools and. you want to be very clear about why their schools gonna fit and and and dirty little secret unless probably not. much of a secret now schools do manage their yields they are concern about the reals ie they want to you know they want whoever they accept generally to come right and as partially other evaluated and ranked it's kind of like bragging right. a school doesn't want to accept you if they even if you're qualified if they know you're not going to come and if you don't put in details about a specific school they may think that you know actually don't really care that much about this you don't you're not really that knowledge about the school ergo you have your your eyes on some other school. just keep that in mind you just sort of write your applications another essay type is describe yourself right. how a classmate described you pretending you're running for a club and you've got to give your speech as to why I should be the leader of the club what club would it be and what would your speech say if I visited you two years after you graduated and interviewed a good friend on campus how would they say that you made an impact they're all kind of the same fanatic stuff right this is a classic differentiation question they're not going to say how are you a different candidate than someone else and this is how they do it all right this is not a take me through your resume type of question a lot of candidates right yes and describe yourself and they literally look at the resume they put up Microsoft Word split their screen look at the resume and sort of take everything in a resume you know from from sort of the furthest in the past to the present just write that don't do that right you have to make some choices about what's the most relevant all right you've got to think about in terms your admitted advantages think about your brand and make sure you're Holly the leadership characteristics that you'd already decided as part of your base your platform right think about highlighting certain key roles a lot of you have five to eight bullet points for each job you've had you may have had three jobs right you can't highlight everything. take maybe two of those jobs or if you do all three take the things that you've done that really encapsulate on your total experience in that job and it's usually going to be something like a key role or a key sort of impact or legacy left alright if you are somebody that you know is kind of reticent shy you have to get out of that you've got to break out of that you have to sort of beat your chest you have to basically promote yourself you don't do that nobody will do that okay this leaky wheel does get the oil in a lot of cases if you're someone that is loquacious and doesn't talk and listening if you're wondering who the loudmouth arrogant jerk is in the room and you can't figure it out it could be you right if you are that person I'm sort of saying that tongue in cheek you know don't be. arrogant right. dial it back a little bit be a little bit subtle um you don't have to you know you don't have to hit someone over the head if you basically you know did a deal that garnered you know thirty million dollars for your company you don't have to write about that for you know two hundred words you can sort of subtly state that or directly stated for that matter very short succinctly and fifty to seventy-five words and keep it moving and that's kind of what you want you want to sort of have an idea of kind of what you look like in sort of your your your overall personality to determine you know sort of which can't be fallen okay there are also behavioral questions right this is very typical to this often happens in interviews but you do see them in essay types as well. tell me at a time when right tell me at a time when you fail tell me about a time you had to overcome opposition to an idea tell me about a time when you basically had to manage you know you have to manage peers I had you know higher titles and more position more seniority company that's it used to be more common but these questions are still out there right there are many different kinds of iterations the types like if you get a general feel this is typically the part where you're given an option I choose to or one of the next three op3 essay questions this is typically behavioral because sometimes you don't have you know if they just gave you one type you may not have an experience like that. often they give you a couple different types. you know something you're back and we'll click with one of the asset questions right this is kind of like your your case interviews of those who've you've worked at worked at you know consulting companies we're as much as they're just in the answer the interest has driven the thought process and sort of the overall experience. and how you react and respond in to a particular situation our tips are don't be afraid to give real examples you know this is also sort of related when people say what's my biggest weakness my biggest weakness is I'm too ambitious right that's not a big real weakness right. make sure you're sort of your authentic your real it's okay to have a flaw it's okay to have a failure as long as sir observe lessons that have been learned and ideally if his similar situation is arisen later in the future or you know after that incident of that failure and you're able to sort of apply the lessons from that fear to that incident that's even better right. give me a lessons real example sing about lessons learned be very clear about how this impacted your life this is sort of passing hate to say it's a Cleveland Airport test right this is your moment to sort of show that you were an interesting dynamic person you're thoughtful reflective and you're not just sort of Joe capitalist who's looking to go to business school to make a lot of money and and drive a Bentley nothing wrong with that at all right but business schools are looking for at this point in time they position themselves to be looking for people who are also leaders who are community participators who are people that are making an impact with different groups and this is a chance for you to sort of just seem a little bit more reflective okay this is really important it's really necessary for you to choose your essays wisely and just because I just obviously there's echoing chambers on beat the GMAT and Business Week whatever these different places where you see an essay question you think everyone's answering these two essays I have to answer them you don't they're not and you don't okay. make sure you're really authentic and it ties in with your brand your a narrative that you're trying to advance within your application and again this gets down to what your story and also to soar next enter your competing against you have leadership essays right. um you know this is this is where you sort of need to think about sort of the impact you've had the legacy of left you know getting into school it's not just about sort of having different roles it's not really making an impact they're looking for people young people who have made an impact they could say that's a winning horse I believe this person is going to be have we given the tools and experiences and and sort of you know the network in theatre can be able to take everything that they've done in the past and sort of blow it up on a bigger stage we're gonna give them an amp we're gonna be able to amplify what they've done. they're looking for examples of leadership they're looking for exam of impact and legacy um think about what you've done beyond the call of duty okay. if you've if you've had a role and you've mastered that role let's and then let's say a a fellow analyst was fired let's say your boss you know was going through divorce and he or she got distracted you had to sort of take on the role think about sort of these kinds of examples when you're writing the leadership essay okay everyone all of you should have a concept an idea of of how you lead now some of you have had more experience during that than others but all of us neither LED or bin let and those of us who've worked for tough bosses know they're oftentimes we think you know I could have done that that's. differently or I would have done that differently I could have done better well now is your chance. you should have a conception of how you lead either based on real experience leading or having been led right this is also a great opportunity for you to get corroboration with your recommenders of your leadership. if you're basically saying I let this amazing project I brought in 30 million dollars of new revenue or I saved X number of hundred thousands of dollars in costs I saved this is a great time to have a recommender say that it sounds a lot more credible than when it's just you saying it right if you work in teams those you work for big companies you're doing deals you're doing approaches you know etc you're integrating I was a consultants you know I know what that's like you need to focus on what you did necessary what your team did now I'm gonna read about in the journal I want to know what you did specifically. make sure when you're writing your application you're very clear about your own specific contributions to a particular task okay and don't make the mistake that we see if candidates who write and definitely about this amazing deal and you know and they spend 10% writing about what they've done to make that deal possible okay then you've got sort of strengths weaknesses accomplishments deployments generally kind of similar themes right give real examples right really make sure that you are tied in to your brand because you're gonna have. many and you've got to make sure that you can go back to your outline go back to your your your your branding documents and really think about okay what is it that I really have to include in my application if you have weaknesses if you have losses of disappointments please again highlight lessons learned in actions taken it's not enough to recognize we have a weakness if you recognize you have a weakness and you don't do anything about it that's a problem right that's more of a problem than actually not even recognizing a weakness and everything should be consistent as mentioned last two. the optional si okay this is an S if it does it's optional optional means you don't have to do it. do not do it if you don't need it if you are thinking about what are the things that could be included typically its gaps in an application it could be a gap like look the schools asking for you to give a boss recommendation but you can't do it because if you're Boston you're going to be we're gonna business school you'd be fired or you'd lose your bonus. if you have a senior associate do it this is where the option alyssa to explain why that's the case which incidentally is not a big deal on if there were errors in your brand which weren't addressed this is where you could address it I'd be wary about doing that unless the optional essay specifically tells you like tell us something that we didn't touch on but if they say what's your biggest weakness and you're writing hey I got a 7:30 on my gmail I was testing the 760 nobody wants to hear that don't do that okay this is a place where you should talk about gaps in your work experience I think anything over anything over four months I personally I'll probably write about or if you have to even two to three month gaps in the working experience let's say if five years fan I probably right about that a little bit okay I talked about nitrogen recommendations if you have holes again what you're doing to address them. I didn't do well in my GMAT but you know I'm taking some course I've got a bad GPA but I you know I decided to take courses in accounting stats economics finance in order to sort of boost my boost my I my my qualifications from the analytical perspective. this is where you kind of want to do that stuff if you were given four into words or fire in two words space and you write you like that say I only use 200 words stop you don't need to fill up the remaining 300 words just because you feel like your essay is not not fleshed out enough don't use the word capacity as the barometer for whether or not your application is finished or your essays finished in this instance we applicants take a look at your old applications if you apply dip eclis two plus years ago they're not going to use them necessarily but you also don't know if someone's gonna take a look at them and you don't want to sort of have to say especially applied last year I talked to a guy a couple weeks ago and he said I probably laughter I wanted to clean tag what do you think I should say this year and I said well you know he was thinking about something different like you say not something like banking and I said I that could work but you've got it tight and you can't just be somebody different this year because last year's person didn't get in in terms of your goals your goals can be refined you obviously can have a better better GMAT I mean you took some courses but do not present yourself as a totally different person because they're gonna confuse admissions man you know which one personally which one's authentic both either one or neither right highlight differences in previous applications. if you know if you got feedback and kind of felt like hey my my my leadership was not strong my last application or my social my commitment to sort of work in the community or contributing was not strong kinda like that it's really important to do. but I'd say ultimately if you're looking at this year's application you applied last or even here before and you realize and you don't have a lot in you to say then you probably should think about whether or not it makes sense to apply now maybe you should apply next year I know that's a hard thing to think about but it's true okay. we're gonna get to questions and minute Eric will keep my Eric will punch me in the face if I don't say some of the things we have a bunch of obviously packages I think those even our website have seen we've also added new things new streamlined packages from listening to our audience you said you've wanted sort of more of light touch stuff. we have more light touch stuff streamline is just essays you know just sort of throughout San si editing keeping it moving we have a final review package at a thousand bucks which is no phone support and we've got targeted services if you want client branding if you want outline if you want any that kind of stuff you can get it. based on our website now with our company if you have 250 plus Bucks descent which I think even if it's not our company I think you should be having you should have that you should be willing to sort of spend that kind of money if you're applying to top-tier school it's an investment in yourself and again it even if it's not with us we've got stuff on our site though that will hopefully appeal to you okay still be out early still do doing analysis if you apply last year did not get anyone and what happened and you're applying this year come our way we'll talk to you about it we'll look at your old stuff we have a pre application package for those of you that are not applying until next year on we certainly can help you sort of get your ducks in order polish up your assets make sure you're well positioned to really launch yourself next year okay we have other things coming on and pre-application webinar case studies next week we're doing our infamous candidate success stories probably the couple new new candidates follow us on facebook twitter or a blog we don't do nearly enough on that because we're way too busy but we're gonna try to get better and we work with clintus review those of you not taking a GMAT and you want to take your GMAT and you're looking for help we like prints from you there other companies out there if you do work with princess room you threw us a get a 15% discount and lastly if you've not had a free consultation and you want one and that doesn't mean with you know we only get one per company. if you talk to Eric unfortunately I will not do another consultation with you but if you'd like a consultation and you cannot talk to either of us go to sketch that me and sign up schedule me a slash admit advantage or go to the contact us portion of our website and you can shoot me personally email cake and Kim at admit advantage calm and as mentioned we do a 10% discount for our beat the Jeana people you guys there are people um and you can just type in 1908 1908 it check out and you'll get a 10 percent discount on everything we offer okay with that lets up for questions if there are questions let's open up just typing your questions and and B will help summarize them and then we'll go from there you okay. we have a question from Ned what do you do if you're not a hundred percent sure what your dream is the main point of getting an MBA from me is to open doors to other careers and get back to the u.s. I'm an expat is it even worth applying if you have no 100% specific dream or does that basically mean you have no chance with the average GMAT GMAT scores um that's a good question. look there is some gamesmanship in terms of getting into school um I think that when I think of career now you may not know exactly what you want to do but think about it along these axes okay. think about in terms of role role / function industry title and maybe location right Ned and you should have an idea of some of that stuff right. you know you may know that for example you want to sort of do marketing you may know that your industry generally is let's call it real estate maybe you want to real estate market maybe you wanted to finance fancy services marketing like ie you want to market credit cards for like American Express maybe you want to do that in the States or maybe you want to do it in in Singapore you want to do that in the UK like you should have some general feeling for what you want to do right it sounds like you do but opening career career doors it's not specifically for one of the reasons it's not specific enough is because companies are on campus as soon as you get there literally different campus sometimes within a couple of weeks two to three weeks and. if you don't have an idea of that you're gonna be behind the book behind the ball. you've got to have an ID again think about it in terms of of industry role / function title and location and you probably have at least two of those figure it out in order to write a compelling application I'm just writing to Rack my brain if I've seen someone write a compelling application who hasn't had at least two of those and I don't necessarily think I don't think I have. you should have a general idea of that and if you don't have an idea start talking to people and again this is for the purposes of applying its business goal you obviously if you get in you'll have some time before you matriculate to really fleshed out and you can change your mind but you have to have a specific direction heading in especially as you get older okay question from anakata does your advice also apply to react in essays or do you have any specific advice for reallocates I'm not sure exactly what advice you're suggesting but yes my application generally does my advice does apply to all applicants for the first time or second or third time from Vanessa how long does it take to complete an average application with admitted manage oh that's a good question I would say generally you should leave look we've done three essay three app three applications with people in four weeks I never want to do that again but we certainly want half deal sure um I would say you know if you're moving at a reasonable clip and you're not sort of super pressed I would say you probably can do your first school and about three to four weeks and each additional schooling about two and a half to three weeks from je Rousseau how specific must you be in mentioning specific assets of the school program professors clubs specific classes people you've met what if you can't miss in the school and call me miss an info session I think the more specificity the better I would say I would I would probably place emphasis on classes / courses professors and clubs those things can all be derived online people you've met you may not meet anybody that's okay if you can't get to info session if that's if that's it that's it but I definitely would at least have those first three okay from a new any specific considerations we should take for early action deadlines versus regular deadlines I would just say be clear that you want to go to the school right because a lot of these some of these ones like for Columbia you apply early you have to put them a six thousand dollar deposit within two weeks we didn't yeah I think it's two weeks historically it's been like that anyway. be clear about that I think that there's kind of an understanding that you obviously want to go to that school who's replying early but I still would not take my foot off the gas and. really clearly articulating what it is about a specific school that's attracting you to that school. beyond that no I think I think that's fine from fear for low GPAs do you recommend taking additional courses to increase my GPA before applying absolutely yes if you have time to do it. it's not gonna improve your GPA right but it's going to build what's called an alternative transcript and you'll be able to sort of articulate a narrative of you know I was distracted in college or something came up in college that's why my grades weren't as strong but look I took courses in accounting finance stats economics or some subset of those and I got A's in those course as well as working and I have a 700 plus g-men. clearly when I'm focused I can do the work College was a couple of years ago I unfortunately wasn't as focused as I needed to be but I do have the intellectual horsepower to do the work that is the purpose of the courses that's what you're trying to achieve ergo if you are not getting aids in those courses if you're not gonna be committed to getting an A in those courses in a range then you shouldn't really take it don't waste your time and money and usually when I say committed to the effort usually those courses are really about effort like if you sort of show up do the work talk to the professor's tell them what you're about or her what you're about you can kind of automatically be in the B range if you do your homework and then you just sort of need to be B+ range and then you just need a couple things to the break and you can get an A we've seen many students this were sort of C students at college take something on a course that can put hard schools and get A's a minuses. I assume that most of you can do that and you should realize that's what you need to do all right from Quran or Karen in terms of repeating resume items in the goals essay and appeared goals essay with were constraints 500 how much of the essay should want allocate towards hile any individual traits compared to school fit ask because some of the individual it's look like a resume we Pete um. I mean this is kind of a specific Karen I email or specific questions I would agree with you that on if there if you find yourself writing if you if you're looking at a saying you find yourself just regurgitating what's on your resume and we're leaving out other things which are not on your resume I would definitely flip that script and sort of try to focus more. on the stuff that's not in my resume let the stuff in the resume stand for itself however I I don't think for your goals essay your goals are forward-looking it resonates the past. there really shouldn't be that much from your resume on your goals as they should just be the catalyst it should just be maybe something you did which has some kind of care of or a specific skill set you know specific set of experiences but your goals essay and handling because its face because it's based on the future look forward looking it should not be sort of a carbon copy of what you've done on your resume which is already accomplished inherently those two things should be somewhat different right but you probably are gonna have some of the things in the past that are covered on your resume in your goals I think you're just not a huge huge amount of it okay from Reuben any advice on using personal hobbies or activities for my application um I think that your if your hobby is not marked by an accomplishment then I probably would just relegate that to the non-si data portion of my application however if your hobby is turned into some kind of passion that you have an accomplishment behind then I would consider that we consider putting it in my in my essay basically you have to be very you have to be a gatekeeper to what you put in your essay I've seen people that are very accomplished and I just feel like they weren't discriminating enough in terms of what they put in their ass I just feel like they put garbage stuff that was really not that important in the rest hey you like you want to be your essays are the most importantly the most important piece of your application some people say your recommendations but I think your essays especially because they're sort of your words and you don't want to write about a hobby sort of playing intramural soccer in like an accomplishment essay right now I gave this example a couple weeks ago we had a guy that wanted to work for FIFA which is a International Football Association and he set up a soccer league in the Pacific Northwest and then raised a whole bunch of money he had like 20 plus teens contributing it was amazing we read about in the papers whatever that was a hobby that he could elevate to being in his essays because there was accomplish behind it was really close to what he wanted to do professionally otherwise for most hobbies rock climbing whatever you know bike riding running iPod would not make that the topic of an essay all right okay from shift deep any specific advice for hardcore techies for example I don't have a lot of business experience or decision-making experience that's what I'm looking at a business before that's great because that's what Business School is looking for also right. again to keep this is kind of what I'm saying the context of you're not competing against someone that works in business you're competing against other tech people what I would say is that you want to have a clear idea as to why you want to go to business school from the perspective of what you want to do and also the perspective of of what the reason is for going and also we see a lot of tech people let's say looking about this technical skills understand technology I you know I've been involved in some business meetings and I didn't get a chance to sort of I didn't really understand the strategy I wanted I want to be on the strategy side because I want to make more than as soon as I feel like when I was making the best decisions but I don't have the requisite background in accounting and marketing and Finance and and sort of managing people to do that that's one NBA sense where people that say look I've got a very strong technological background I want to sort company I want to be the next Anil Ambani or you know or some kind of Jeff Bezos I want to be an entrepreneur and run my own company I know that I've got to marry my technical expertise with my with sort of my burgeoning interest in business for which nothing right no nothing but you get the point. it's totally fine for you to say that I wouldn't worry about that at all that's why you're looking at a business school that's right and Business School Admission Sui members to know that anyone questions ok from Tara some advice for a family business applicants small business background fiends I should focus on like leadership initiative interpersonal skills etc um I don't know if that's a question but I look I don't think that I think if you're coming from a family business on I think the most important thing is you firstly need to stay are you going to business school to leave the family business are you gonna miss school to run the family business if you're gonna miss school to run the family business eventually then what you should be sort of talking about is in my opinion develop certain certain traits and certain skills that address gaps in the family business or how you want to take the fame to the next level and you need to know X Y & Z I think it's it gives you a great impetus to go to business school it gives you a great reason there's a certain kind of authenticity about sort of saying uh I think the only business does X amount of dollars in revenue my parents didn't have the experience to go and have experience to do blank blank blank go international you know it's in Portugal and therefore I want to go to business school at a school like Warren which is I wanted to learn operations marking the etc etc. I can bring that back to the bits I think I would I would definitely couch your training and your need to go to business school as part of the family business I also think that in terms of the recommendations in terms of recommendations need to be careful about who writes some you obviously can't Ness I have a parent. I look towards the supplier I like towards maybe I like an accountant and you know someone that works with your business who is necessarily in your business who has theoretical little less concern about sort of being fired being reprimanded for saying the wrong thing in your recommendation. it's something you definitely need to think about think about your title as well right if you're sort of in a family business and you sort of do everything you've got a loose title don't have a loose title for the purpose of your application get something nailed down that's credible it's authentic with what you're doing and go from there all right from Joe s I know you probably get this a lot but what about older applicants 31 years old the burden will be why now I feel like if it is still in my career any advice on how to approach um I think that fit a ceiling is okay but that is that sort of belies it doesn't really support the theory I'm sort of a - doing really well my career for Billy Hanson my career's T not going well I need a reset no top 15 top 20 business schools gonna find that really sexy. what I would say is an older applicant is why now could be look I've been doing really well in my career and I've hit a place where you know in order for me to get to the next level in my career it's really important that I get an MBA or if it employment career where I've acquired a certain amount of skill set and Moxie it now in sort of context I want to launch my own business you know in this field and I need a business sort of sort of teaching more things about running a company as well as building a network and building sort of certain experiences or exposure I also think that you could you should be writing favourably you should be trying to go on offense Joe. you should not be concern about being old you should be you're not old frankly you should be you should be making a younger applicants field concerned about how they compare to you. I would be say I would be highlighting the fact that it's a great thing I've got eight eight nine years experience you know I'm gonna bring this experience to bear and a B and C ways I'm gonna basically open my contacts up I'm gonna help train I industry I'm gonna be their conduit for that I'm gonna I'm gonna basically be better than a 27 year old version of Joe that's how you need to be thinking aggressively all right okay this is the last question from Deepak in the differentiate yourself essay if you describe all of your best abilities in the context of you your professional activities your risk sounding too narrow okay. if you're looking at differentiate yourself and you're only saying it's perfectly are you too narrow or is it better to talk about multiple spheres to present yourself as a more rounded person that's a good question I think it varies Canada Canada that's right the fence I think that if I had to sort of air cues from one side I would choose the professional side I think there's way too many people that sort of don't speak about their professional accomplishments and think they can just get into school just based on having a CO hobby. I with I was err on that side but you should have some perfection of some personal and academic differentiating characteristics as well it's not enough just to have professional I you should have some abilities outside of that right you should have some things in your background sizing because a lot of you are applying from similar industries and you know if your best friend may be able to tell how you're different then someone else in that same industry but in admissions meaning remember to us look at our application for half now that could be hard. it's often two personal things the personal characteristics personal stories personal catalysts that are really going to help set you apart from other people. you have to have both but you need to make sure that you're demonstrating professionally that you're a hitter and you're doing exceptionally well okay. with that let's um end the webinar I really preach to all of you being on hopefully was helpful I know we went through things pretty quickly if you need help you want to chat about you know potentially how we can help you reach out if you want a free consultation reach out it's all on the website and you give me an email personally cake aunt Kim at admit advantage calm I try to get back to you as soon as I can Thanks

Crafting the Perfect MBA Essay - Webinar

hi everybody my name is Kofi cancam I am one of the cofounders of Amit advantage and we've been a very long partner L'Occitane partner with the beat the GMAT team Eric and B and today I'm really happy to go through crafting the perfect essay and I know a lot of you are preparing for round one at this point which is obviously in early October for most of the top you know top 15 top 20 schools and. some of you for something this is actually exceptionally pertinent on for others it is something that you're going to be leveraging probably over the next couple of months as you gear up to submit in round two in gen right. you will find that we're gonna go through sort of the different types of essays different ideas that you want to sort of conceive when you're thinking about putting together a specific type of essay there will be a play a time and place to ask questions all of you are mute right now. if you can just hold your questions until the end of the presentation unless it's exceptionally pressing if you can order questions we'll try to get to all the questions at the end any questions we cannot get to you could simply email us and we will we will respond in kind okay. with that let's get started I want to thank I be an Eric and beat the GMAT for offering an incredible platform and service for people and thank you again for inviting us to participate and obviously there was you know me know that I'm a Cleveland sports team fan big time in the Browns just won a game yesterday. I'm in a really good mood because our record now is one in two or off to the races I must speak a little bit about the company first not a huge amount I think a lot of you know me from beat the GMAT and obviously you can look at our website but I do want to give a little bit of background just. you feel comfortable that I know what the heck I'm talking about on admit advantage basically helps candidates get into business school very simply and if it doesn't have anything to do with your GMAT anything else we do right. anything related to essay editing mock interview school selection helping you figure out who your recommenders be helping you find money etc consider that's our focus we work with people from the beginning people saying look I think I won't go to school I don't exactly know what I want to do but I want to go all the way to the end when people are accepted and they're notified that hey they should apply for the scholarship or they're accepted to multiple schools and need help determining which is the best option for them our process is exceptionally structured we're also reformed 'el scientist we really believe in a structured process especially in an era where 70% of the people applying or qualified get only you know eight to 25% get in for the top 20 schools it's really important to be thorough about the analysis of your background and your chances and your stories in order to harness your best application we've been very fortunate to have a really strong interest from alumni of these schools who also have been admissions officers and or second-year interviewers and. we've been able to hire a lot of diversity not just sort of racially but also more importantly in my opinion anyway in terms of careers. we have people that have been in fields like investment banking venture capital impact investing we have marketers from big companies and also small companies if that people have been involved in government either as lobbyists and or as speech writers in fact we had a speechwriter for justified in for a long time technology people consulting entrepreneurship real estate etc there are three main core tenants underlying our company one everyone that works in our company has to have been in through this process themselves. they need to have been an alum or actually a current student of a top-tier school they also need to be on the other side of the table in terms of being a second year interview or an alumni interviewer or someone that has been a professional within admissions what we're known to be very client focused that's kind of one of our hallmarks we believe in it we think it makes a company more exciting and also enables us to gather great stories and anecdotes from you to help you fashion your applications and then performance if if people are not getting into school then we're not happy and all this is from you and we've been very fortunate to work with incredible candidate around the world who are current students or are alumni of all of these schools and actually even more this is not this is not the full list but it's a representative list okay I am Kofi Kant Kim I am one of the founders really briefly Erika are fairly similar both work at extent from different cities I worked at net defend which is sort of a processor Skype I sold a software company I'm really sort of in the education of Technology I was fortunate to go to Harvard College our pursue degree in neurobiology I have a master's in IDI from Harvard and I went to Wharton was a joseph Wharton fellow ran the largest inland conference and also T aid our first year core marketing course you can see sort of our consultant back on spirits drawing you see some of the people on the on the right hand side eric is a very similar back when I went to brown graduate with honors from from Wharton and you know has built a company with me for the last couple of years. in terms of the diversity of consultants that we're all from sort of similar top firms top companies we have about 30 plus people that work with us you can see a lot of their profiles on our site they're all ones of Harvard and Wharton and Stanford and Columbia and Berkeley and Chicago and Kellogg and nyeo and Dartmouth and all kinds of schools like that and again we place people and top 20 schools in the States some of the top european school said and judge lbs and INSEAD some an age and a couple now increasingly in Latin America okay in terms of sa strategies one thing I want you to understand it's really critical is that you need to have a plan before you start writing ok you should not be jumping into your essays off the bat just immediately started starting right it's almost like some of these on their CV that watch like Meet the Press or some of these other sort of Sunday talk shows when you see that people go on there they have talking points before they get there they know what they want to include almost regardless of the question it's really important that you do the same thing the first thing that we recommend you think about is your personal brain and what are the stories experiences and accomplishments as well as the leadership characteristics around which you're gonna build your application okay and. imagine that someone's interviewing a sibling your best friend a parent a partner except I said what are the stories what are the things about John then they need to know about how to understanding as a person they're going to be a mixture of personal professional and academic sort of wins and experiences and it will be related leadership characteristics it's like being analytical being innovative being persuasive being a great communicator being able to make decisions limited information you know being able to leave without authority things of that nature that basically naturally draw from those specific stories experiences and accomplishments. no matter which direction you go if you're starting with the stories experiences accomplishment it's this thing okay here's a set of 10 what sorts of leadership characteristics today define about me if you go in that direction or you go on the other direction saying I want to write an application where you know I'm saying I won't really want to go into asset management. I really need to demonstrate that I am analytical or I really want to run a company I need to demonstrate that I am sort of innovative or you know I'm going to join a company and try to fight my way to the top I need to show that I am sort of persuasive you can start on that side think of those characteristics either that are relevant for your career or that are that are ones of leaders that you really respect business leaders political leaders on you know military leaders sports leaders etc it doesn't matter you can think of those stories and think those experiences are those um characteristics and then go to the stories or you can start with the stories and go to the characteristics but your brand will be a mixture of both the stories experiences and accomplishments as well as a critical leadership components and. what we've done here is just outline a couple right. if you're saying that you want to have a story that you have a strong analytical focus if that is a leadership characteristics that you want as part of your brand then you need to basically provide examples this is a show-and-tell experiment from business it's not telling someone that your analytical having nothing to back it up you have to show and tell across the different pieces of your application which are your assays your letters of recommendation the non-si data portion of your application your resume and then your interview if you get it. you definitely a four and you certainly if you get an interview that will be the fifth piece okay and you really need to make sure that you are highlighting sorry you're highlighting basically specific things about your background and and and and leveraging stories to explain it okay. don't just say your innovative basically really demonstrate that you know for this example you basically you helped reduce emissions by X percentage and you helped increase efficiency by X percentage within your manufacturing company in a way that had not been done before that's real innovation persuasive you can sort of see the example okay the the the take-home is really make sure that you were thinking about yourself holistically think about yourself from a professional community and personal aspect and realize that for the schools which you're applying it's not just enough to be qualified you also have to you know demonstrate that you're gonna be basically someone that other people can learn from and then you're interested in in that and that you've got a really sort of well-defined persona about you outside of just being dominant in your work force in your workplace also secondly realize that you really need to differentiate yourself okay. it's a fine line the one because you want to differentiate yourself we also want to be authentic and true to yourself. the way that you do that or the ways that you try to sort of employ this this desire to differentiate yourself include really speaking about your passion what is a catalyst for pushing you to go to business what is a catalyst for your career and again your career is not your first job after school it's not saying I want to go to sort of Columbia in order to go work in McKinsey that could be the case but is your desire to work at McKinsey does that exist in the long term like you know most of you are let's say in mid-20s okay. you're gonna a graduate Business School let's say at 28. let's say you work in a company for seven years when you're 35 36 when you start to pivot towards your long-term goal what is that that is really your passion right. the first three to seven years typically consider sort of this short term it's almost like going to business school again and in terms of getting a brand getting a network getting sort of experiences but the question is what is the passion beyond that. if you can focus on your long-term passion which hopefully matches your career then it'll be a great way for you to differentiate yourself especially if you're coming from a company or industry like let's say Goldman or consulting you know where a lot of people end up applying the business school coming from those sort of domains if you highlight your passion you'll find that you're able to. you'll be able to sort of separate yourself from other analysts you know the analysts here left in to you bright at your job that's applying with you okay realize that and you know you don't have to differentiate kids everyone. we always get people to call us every day and doing these consultations and say okay how to make myself different then then this other person. last week I spoke to someone who basically was a banker and he was asked me how am I going to differentiate myself against the bankers as well as you know all these other you know this sort of the person coming from Teach for America that wants to go to business school and he asked me he didn't ask me exactly in those terms but that was the gist of his question I said look you're not competing against the social the social sort of venture person the person coming from Teach for America that wants to sort of go to business school into microfinance you're competing against other bankers right and. realize that you're you're you're you don't have to sort of differential your self. much you don't recognize who you are you want to sort of stay in your silo and realize every year these schools are gonna accept a certain percentage. a number of X type of candidates and you want to sort of be amongst the best and also realize that many of you will be competing in different buckets right. you're not just in a model if you're not just in one bucket. for me when I applied for example I was competing as other entrepreneurs other black guys and other sort of Harvard Ivy League graduates right and. those are kind of the general buckets I was doing as I was trying to be sort of a leader or dominant in each of those three and. really think about that a little bit in terms how you differentiate yourself realize again when you plotted these schools everybody's good literally everyone is good at the top 20 schools 70% of people apply or admissible they'd only you know only sort of 10 to 25 per second and. brasstacks numbers if you have 20 applicants applying 6 and will be garbage bad GMAT bad GPA poor work experience at least 14 that are very qualified if I took those 14 and I showed them to a professor on campus I said these are the people that are gonna be you know in your class you know those professors would have no problem with that of those qualified 14 2 to 5 or again again right which is 10 to 25%. realize that you know they're two sides that the first is that grades are sort of not good enough everybody's got that and the second side is that means that you need to basically really be developing the other pieces of your of your application okay other sides of your of your story in your narrative also realizing to tie the relevance to specific. when you were thinking about going to schools we talked a lot of people every day and to be honest with you all of you kind of want to go to the same schools the same 5 to 5 to 10 schools but I can always tell when someone is really passionate about a school based on their articulation of why and that's something that you want to do also because admissions officers are second about that it's not enough to say I want to go to Harvard because you know how I think it's the most important school in the world or my sibling right there or I read about Meg Whitman going to the Harvard Business School no you need to be a little bit clearer today it's because it's going to help meet the cases or here are specific courses and professors I want to study under here are specific clubs and organizations that are relevant to my career either previous or in the future that I want to be a part of and lead then here's how it fits my long-term goal every school wants to hear for this it would be a great opportunity for you to showcase your knowledge of the school which to be honest with you a lot of people don't do they don't think it's important. they just you know they they write about sort of the school very generically and think it's obvious why they want to go to the school and it is in a sense of a brand and making more money but it's not obvious why I necessarily want to go to Kellogg over over booth right or they want to go to Wharton over Clemmy etc that's always clear and. it's really important that you differentiate yourself across these these indices okay in terms of big picture sell the dream. a painting clear picture let them know how you know them being the mission to let them know you know how you're different how it's relevant to your peers and advantageous to your peers and how business school is gonna help you achieve your long-term goal do not just focus on the first step after business school the first job of the first placement this is about your career okay make sure you're painting a viable bridge to the future I think those who than other webinars I've done I've heard me talk about you know Kyle we had that wanted to start a hedge fund in Hong Kong immediately when he graduated okay he you know he didn't speak he wasn't Asian he didn't speak in a just major in English didn't work in an investment bank or finance he basically was a social venture guy who's I'm. he was like sort of a a non-profit guy and you know I think he sort of got tired of being you know having a lot of money and it sounded sexy. I'm gonna start this company and me'll when I graduate that's not realistic right that's not a realistic bridge if he said look I'm gonna join a McKinsey working in financial services I'm then gonna sort of try to get into a financial services company by the way while I'm in school I'm gonna learn Mandarin etc and I'm gonna sort of work McKinsey try to transition to an office in you know in mainland China and then basically try to transition you know trying to link up with other people learn the ropes learn the industry and then launched my own hedge fund you know seven to ten years after I graduate that's a realistic path. make sure you've got a realistic path dream big but make sure the path is real okay also I will tell you this may sound obvious but there are. many people that come to us and they've already started writing they say I want you to review our application I say we'll send me send me your outline and they you know say we don't know I don't have an outline and you know we didn't have this in a slide before I think I can't believe how many people are writing applications without outlines right you have to have an outline it's really important list for your first school you want to make sure that you are tying in your character your characteristics the character trades as well as the stories experiences accomplishments across the four to five platforms I mentioned write again your letters of recommendation sort of the non-si data portion of your application your resume your essays in your interviews if you are not pulling all that together if you are not. making sure the pieces are integrated and and in complementary you were not going to have a balanced application and you also don't have an effective application all right places where you have options for your essays choose ones that work with your brand if you don't do the brand upfront then you're not gonna know you know which essays to choose when you're given the option choose two of the following five essay topics okay make sure that you are answering the whole question. write out the details of each ask the question and I mean this in the context of some essays will gonna be a three part essay and basically they'll give you six in two words I can't tell many times I see people that kind of spend the first the first part of a specific kind of essay you know spending 300 words then they spend 250 words on sort of the second section they get to the third and think ah I only have fifty words okay I'm just gonna like 50 words answer the third section just because a section is a third section doesn't mean it's unimportant that's not as important as the first two. make sure you're answering all the essay questions in full again if you do an essay question if you do an outline matter for your first school you probably don't have to do it for all of yours but you really do need to consider doing it for the first one unless you are an exceptional writer maybe you've applied before or you're getting a huge amount of help I really even if you're getting helps in the company like ours I still would give an outline frankly okay it's also really important for you to you know to leverage your research okay do the research. there and I sound like sort of a parent actually I'm a new parent but I still like a parent and say you know there's. much information online and my day didn't have it's true like I'm 104 there wasn't as much information online back in the fall with a1 when I was you know I was looking at applying now there's. much information where people get placed you know the breakdown of the class coming in average GMAT scores GPAs etc um you need to know that stuff alright. it's all on the website you can sort of visit the school very easy to do especially in the fall it provided you can get there right those of you that are I just focus on two days ago they said literally two days in New York City and the person said I have not visited you know it's gonna be a problem if I don't visit the schools and applying to in her schools were Columbia NYU Yale Wharton Harvard and tuck okay the first three Columbia and why the first two Columbia and why you're in New York City Yale is 90 minutes north Wharton is basically about 100 105 minutes south and she's not applying around to. naturally you can imagine my response was get on a train subway or Amtrak and visit these schools if you're in close proximity there's really no excuse not to visit it'll highlight your passion is something you can mention in your application and some schools will ask you directly have you been to our school okay. visit the school if you're not in those areas most schools travel at this level around the world go to a local session will also meet alumni in your area you'll meet people that potentially can help you and advocate for you if you get wait-listed it's a really important to do speak to alumni all of you for the most part probably went to college okay I'm University you all have alumni that have been to these schools I would encourage you to go to your alumni go to your Alumni Association if your undergraduate University and say I want to talk to you five to ten people that have gone to and why you were warned or Harvard and they probably will help you do that okay and have those discussions it's really important to do to sort of give you a non-glossy sort of brochure vision of your school and understanding of your school and that maturity that mature perspective will carry through within your application itself and really be able to speak to what I school is a good fit okay because some schools are not if it's if you're basically Tali saying you're not really you really want to do analytics you're really analytical and you're really sort of number driven Kellogg may not be the place for you right I mean you know Booth may be right. just be clear about why it's a good fit if you're saying I want to really want to do energy I love energy I want to get into oil and gas and you're looking at going to just not to pick on them listen you're looking to go to Dartmouth that may not be a good fit all right and may be better for you to sort of go to a school that's clinical not considered as good right but that's they are like UT awesome just an amazing school that may be a better fit for you based on the fact that you want to do oil right it being in Texas. just keep that in mind be able to articulate that both to yourself and to the admissions committee members okay let's talk now a little about the essay types. you have the story I say okay. this is a common essay this used to be sort of more popular you see in different formats but why do you want to go to our school why do you want to get an MBA why do you want to get it now right tell us about your short and long term goals you know how is your back when relevant pursuing MBA there are lots of variations but they're kind of all the same sort of craft a narrative about yourself right tell us about yourself tell us well how Business School fits in your and your goals very common um now you know business schools have sort of evolved and they've gotten a little bit less direct in terms of the I asked this kind of question but this kind of these kinds of themes come up pretty much in every single essay every single application for business school okay. what you want to do our tips are obvious answer the questions right answer the question asked if the school asks for short and long term goal on goals rather answer that question first if you have space left over then you know talk about sort of why you want to go to that school but don't write about why I want to go to that school and not answer your long term goals the portion the thing that was really asked for okay this is also a good place for you to provide context right what was the catalyst for you on the business was a catalyst for you pursuing a certain kind of field now you obviously are gonna have to be judicious in your word allocation because you're not gonna have a lot of real estate to write but I can't tell you how often a really finely crafted sentence let's call it 17 to 25 words that provides some context for a goal can like totally frame the essay and make and that's. that was pretty good magical. make sure you're doing that if you if you have capacity to do. right do not cut and paste right. I answered a couple questions today I'm beat the GMAT where somebody asked about sort of doing booths sort of powerpoints and they want to sort of make this MIT optional it's okay I would modify tweak do not just cut and paste write and try to think about each school you can use the same sort of themes you can use the same sort of stories use the same kind of leadership characteristics but I'd be very wary about taking an essay here that's slightly off-topic that's 400 words and trying to like fit another essay that's maybe 25% different but it's 200 words don't just think you're just gonna take that essay and sort of wrap it into the into the take the form and wrap it into the latter that prod will not go well for my experience and again be is specific about the school when possible every school want you know these schools are very proud they also know that you're applying to other schools and. you want to be very clear about why their schools gonna fit and and and dirty little secret unless probably not. much of a secret now schools do manage their yields they are concern about the reals ie they want to you know they want whoever they accept generally to come right and as partially other evaluated and ranked it's kind of like bragging right. a school doesn't want to accept you if they even if you're qualified if they know you're not going to come and if you don't put in details about a specific school they may think that you know actually don't really care that much about this you don't you're not really that knowledge about the school ergo you have your your eyes on some other school. just keep that in mind you just sort of write your applications another essay type is describe yourself right. how a classmate described you pretending you're running for a club and you've got to give your speech as to why I should be the leader of the club what club would it be and what would your speech say if I visited you two years after you graduated and interviewed a good friend on campus how would they say that you made an impact they're all kind of the same fanatic stuff right this is a classic differentiation question they're not going to say how are you a different candidate than someone else and this is how they do it all right this is not a take me through your resume type of question a lot of candidates right yes and describe yourself and they literally look at the resume they put up Microsoft Word split their screen look at the resume and sort of take everything in a resume you know from from sort of the furthest in the past to the present just write that don't do that right you have to make some choices about what's the most relevant all right you've got to think about in terms your admitted advantages think about your brand and make sure you're Holly the leadership characteristics that you'd already decided as part of your base your platform right think about highlighting certain key roles a lot of you have five to eight bullet points for each job you've had you may have had three jobs right you can't highlight everything. take maybe two of those jobs or if you do all three take the things that you've done that really encapsulate on your total experience in that job and it's usually going to be something like a key role or a key sort of impact or legacy left alright if you are somebody that you know is kind of reticent shy you have to get out of that you've got to break out of that you have to sort of beat your chest you have to basically promote yourself you don't do that nobody will do that okay this leaky wheel does get the oil in a lot of cases if you're someone that is loquacious and doesn't talk and listening if you're wondering who the loudmouth arrogant jerk is in the room and you can't figure it out it could be you right if you are that person I'm sort of saying that tongue in cheek you know don't be. arrogant right. dial it back a little bit be a little bit subtle um you don't have to you know you don't have to hit someone over the head if you basically you know did a deal that garnered you know thirty million dollars for your company you don't have to write about that for you know two hundred words you can sort of subtly state that or directly stated for that matter very short succinctly and fifty to seventy-five words and keep it moving and that's kind of what you want you want to sort of have an idea of kind of what you look like in sort of your your your overall personality to determine you know sort of which can't be fallen okay there are also behavioral questions right this is very typical to this often happens in interviews but you do see them in essay types as well. tell me at a time when right tell me at a time when you fail tell me about a time you had to overcome opposition to an idea tell me about a time when you basically had to manage you know you have to manage peers I had you know higher titles and more position more seniority company that's it used to be more common but these questions are still out there right there are many different kinds of iterations the types like if you get a general feel this is typically the part where you're given an option I choose to or one of the next three op3 essay questions this is typically behavioral because sometimes you don't have you know if they just gave you one type you may not have an experience like that. often they give you a couple different types. you know something you're back and we'll click with one of the asset questions right this is kind of like your your case interviews of those who've you've worked at worked at you know consulting companies we're as much as they're just in the answer the interest has driven the thought process and sort of the overall experience. and how you react and respond in to a particular situation our tips are don't be afraid to give real examples you know this is also sort of related when people say what's my biggest weakness my biggest weakness is I'm too ambitious right that's not a big real weakness right. make sure you're sort of your authentic your real it's okay to have a flaw it's okay to have a failure as long as sir observe lessons that have been learned and ideally if his similar situation is arisen later in the future or you know after that incident of that failure and you're able to sort of apply the lessons from that fear to that incident that's even better right. give me a lessons real example sing about lessons learned be very clear about how this impacted your life this is sort of passing hate to say it's a Cleveland Airport test right this is your moment to sort of show that you were an interesting dynamic person you're thoughtful reflective and you're not just sort of Joe capitalist who's looking to go to business school to make a lot of money and and drive a Bentley nothing wrong with that at all right but business schools are looking for at this point in time they position themselves to be looking for people who are also leaders who are community participators who are people that are making an impact with different groups and this is a chance for you to sort of just seem a little bit more reflective okay this is really important it's really necessary for you to choose your essays wisely and just because I just obviously there's echoing chambers on beat the GMAT and Business Week whatever these different places where you see an essay question you think everyone's answering these two essays I have to answer them you don't they're not and you don't okay. make sure you're really authentic and it ties in with your brand your a narrative that you're trying to advance within your application and again this gets down to what your story and also to soar next enter your competing against you have leadership essays right. um you know this is this is where you sort of need to think about sort of the impact you've had the legacy of left you know getting into school it's not just about sort of having different roles it's not really making an impact they're looking for people young people who have made an impact they could say that's a winning horse I believe this person is going to be have we given the tools and experiences and and sort of you know the network in theatre can be able to take everything that they've done in the past and sort of blow it up on a bigger stage we're gonna give them an amp we're gonna be able to amplify what they've done. they're looking for examples of leadership they're looking for exam of impact and legacy um think about what you've done beyond the call of duty okay. if you've if you've had a role and you've mastered that role let's and then let's say a a fellow analyst was fired let's say your boss you know was going through divorce and he or she got distracted you had to sort of take on the role think about sort of these kinds of examples when you're writing the leadership essay okay everyone all of you should have a concept an idea of of how you lead now some of you have had more experience during that than others but all of us neither LED or bin let and those of us who've worked for tough bosses know they're oftentimes we think you know I could have done that that's. differently or I would have done that differently I could have done better well now is your chance. you should have a conception of how you lead either based on real experience leading or having been led right this is also a great opportunity for you to get corroboration with your recommenders of your leadership. if you're basically saying I let this amazing project I brought in 30 million dollars of new revenue or I saved X number of hundred thousands of dollars in costs I saved this is a great time to have a recommender say that it sounds a lot more credible than when it's just you saying it right if you work in teams those you work for big companies you're doing deals you're doing approaches you know etc you're integrating I was a consultants you know I know what that's like you need to focus on what you did necessary what your team did now I'm gonna read about in the journal I want to know what you did specifically. make sure when you're writing your application you're very clear about your own specific contributions to a particular task okay and don't make the mistake that we see if candidates who write and definitely about this amazing deal and you know and they spend 10% writing about what they've done to make that deal possible okay then you've got sort of strengths weaknesses accomplishments deployments generally kind of similar themes right give real examples right really make sure that you are tied in to your brand because you're gonna have. many and you've got to make sure that you can go back to your outline go back to your your your your branding documents and really think about okay what is it that I really have to include in my application if you have weaknesses if you have losses of disappointments please again highlight lessons learned in actions taken it's not enough to recognize we have a weakness if you recognize you have a weakness and you don't do anything about it that's a problem right that's more of a problem than actually not even recognizing a weakness and everything should be consistent as mentioned last two. the optional si okay this is an S if it does it's optional optional means you don't have to do it. do not do it if you don't need it if you are thinking about what are the things that could be included typically its gaps in an application it could be a gap like look the schools asking for you to give a boss recommendation but you can't do it because if you're Boston you're going to be we're gonna business school you'd be fired or you'd lose your bonus. if you have a senior associate do it this is where the option alyssa to explain why that's the case which incidentally is not a big deal on if there were errors in your brand which weren't addressed this is where you could address it I'd be wary about doing that unless the optional essay specifically tells you like tell us something that we didn't touch on but if they say what's your biggest weakness and you're writing hey I got a 7:30 on my gmail I was testing the 760 nobody wants to hear that don't do that okay this is a place where you should talk about gaps in your work experience I think anything over anything over four months I personally I'll probably write about or if you have to even two to three month gaps in the working experience let's say if five years fan I probably right about that a little bit okay I talked about nitrogen recommendations if you have holes again what you're doing to address them. I didn't do well in my GMAT but you know I'm taking some course I've got a bad GPA but I you know I decided to take courses in accounting stats economics finance in order to sort of boost my boost my I my my qualifications from the analytical perspective. this is where you kind of want to do that stuff if you were given four into words or fire in two words space and you write you like that say I only use 200 words stop you don't need to fill up the remaining 300 words just because you feel like your essay is not not fleshed out enough don't use the word capacity as the barometer for whether or not your application is finished or your essays finished in this instance we applicants take a look at your old applications if you apply dip eclis two plus years ago they're not going to use them necessarily but you also don't know if someone's gonna take a look at them and you don't want to sort of have to say especially applied last year I talked to a guy a couple weeks ago and he said I probably laughter I wanted to clean tag what do you think I should say this year and I said well you know he was thinking about something different like you say not something like banking and I said I that could work but you've got it tight and you can't just be somebody different this year because last year's person didn't get in in terms of your goals your goals can be refined you obviously can have a better better GMAT I mean you took some courses but do not present yourself as a totally different person because they're gonna confuse admissions man you know which one personally which one's authentic both either one or neither right highlight differences in previous applications. if you know if you got feedback and kind of felt like hey my my my leadership was not strong my last application or my social my commitment to sort of work in the community or contributing was not strong kinda like that it's really important to do. but I'd say ultimately if you're looking at this year's application you applied last or even here before and you realize and you don't have a lot in you to say then you probably should think about whether or not it makes sense to apply now maybe you should apply next year I know that's a hard thing to think about but it's true okay. we're gonna get to questions and minute Eric will keep my Eric will punch me in the face if I don't say some of the things we have a bunch of obviously packages I think those even our website have seen we've also added new things new streamlined packages from listening to our audience you said you've wanted sort of more of light touch stuff. we have more light touch stuff streamline is just essays you know just sort of throughout San si editing keeping it moving we have a final review package at a thousand bucks which is no phone support and we've got targeted services if you want client branding if you want outline if you want any that kind of stuff you can get it. based on our website now with our company if you have 250 plus Bucks descent which I think even if it's not our company I think you should be having you should have that you should be willing to sort of spend that kind of money if you're applying to top-tier school it's an investment in yourself and again it even if it's not with us we've got stuff on our site though that will hopefully appeal to you okay still be out early still do doing analysis if you apply last year did not get anyone and what happened and you're applying this year come our way we'll talk to you about it we'll look at your old stuff we have a pre application package for those of you that are not applying until next year on we certainly can help you sort of get your ducks in order polish up your assets make sure you're well positioned to really launch yourself next year okay we have other things coming on and pre-application webinar case studies next week we're doing our infamous candidate success stories probably the couple new new candidates follow us on facebook twitter or a blog we don't do nearly enough on that because we're way too busy but we're gonna try to get better and we work with clintus review those of you not taking a GMAT and you want to take your GMAT and you're looking for help we like prints from you there other companies out there if you do work with princess room you threw us a get a 15% discount and lastly if you've not had a free consultation and you want one and that doesn't mean with you know we only get one per company. if you talk to Eric unfortunately I will not do another consultation with you but if you'd like a consultation and you cannot talk to either of us go to sketch that me and sign up schedule me a slash admit advantage or go to the contact us portion of our website and you can shoot me personally email cake and Kim at admit advantage calm and as mentioned we do a 10% discount for our beat the Jeana people you guys there are people um and you can just type in 1908 1908 it check out and you'll get a 10 percent discount on everything we offer okay with that lets up for questions if there are questions let's open up just typing your questions and and B will help summarize them and then we'll go from there you okay. we have a question from Ned what do you do if you're not a hundred percent sure what your dream is the main point of getting an MBA from me is to open doors to other careers and get back to the u.s. I'm an expat is it even worth applying if you have no 100% specific dream or does that basically mean you have no chance with the average GMAT GMAT scores um that's a good question. look there is some gamesmanship in terms of getting into school um I think that when I think of career now you may not know exactly what you want to do but think about it along these axes okay. think about in terms of role role / function industry title and maybe location right Ned and you should have an idea of some of that stuff right. you know you may know that for example you want to sort of do marketing you may know that your industry generally is let's call it real estate maybe you want to real estate market maybe you wanted to finance fancy services marketing like ie you want to market credit cards for like American Express maybe you want to do that in the States or maybe you want to do it in in Singapore you want to do that in the UK like you should have some general feeling for what you want to do right it sounds like you do but opening career career doors it's not specifically for one of the reasons it's not specific enough is because companies are on campus as soon as you get there literally different campus sometimes within a couple of weeks two to three weeks and. if you don't have an idea of that you're gonna be behind the book behind the ball. you've got to have an ID again think about it in terms of of industry role / function title and location and you probably have at least two of those figure it out in order to write a compelling application I'm just writing to Rack my brain if I've seen someone write a compelling application who hasn't had at least two of those and I don't necessarily think I don't think I have. you should have a general idea of that and if you don't have an idea start talking to people and again this is for the purposes of applying its business goal you obviously if you get in you'll have some time before you matriculate to really fleshed out and you can change your mind but you have to have a specific direction heading in especially as you get older okay question from anakata does your advice also apply to react in essays or do you have any specific advice for reallocates I'm not sure exactly what advice you're suggesting but yes my application generally does my advice does apply to all applicants for the first time or second or third time from Vanessa how long does it take to complete an average application with admitted manage oh that's a good question I would say generally you should leave look we've done three essay three app three applications with people in four weeks I never want to do that again but we certainly want half deal sure um I would say you know if you're moving at a reasonable clip and you're not sort of super pressed I would say you probably can do your first school and about three to four weeks and each additional schooling about two and a half to three weeks from je Rousseau how specific must you be in mentioning specific assets of the school program professors clubs specific classes people you've met what if you can't miss in the school and call me miss an info session I think the more specificity the better I would say I would I would probably place emphasis on classes / courses professors and clubs those things can all be derived online people you've met you may not meet anybody that's okay if you can't get to info session if that's if that's it that's it but I definitely would at least have those first three okay from a new any specific considerations we should take for early action deadlines versus regular deadlines I would just say be clear that you want to go to the school right because a lot of these some of these ones like for Columbia you apply early you have to put them a six thousand dollar deposit within two weeks we didn't yeah I think it's two weeks historically it's been like that anyway. be clear about that I think that there's kind of an understanding that you obviously want to go to that school who's replying early but I still would not take my foot off the gas and. really clearly articulating what it is about a specific school that's attracting you to that school. beyond that no I think I think that's fine from fear for low GPAs do you recommend taking additional courses to increase my GPA before applying absolutely yes if you have time to do it. it's not gonna improve your GPA right but it's going to build what's called an alternative transcript and you'll be able to sort of articulate a narrative of you know I was distracted in college or something came up in college that's why my grades weren't as strong but look I took courses in accounting finance stats economics or some subset of those and I got A's in those course as well as working and I have a 700 plus g-men. clearly when I'm focused I can do the work College was a couple of years ago I unfortunately wasn't as focused as I needed to be but I do have the intellectual horsepower to do the work that is the purpose of the courses that's what you're trying to achieve ergo if you are not getting aids in those courses if you're not gonna be committed to getting an A in those courses in a range then you shouldn't really take it don't waste your time and money and usually when I say committed to the effort usually those courses are really about effort like if you sort of show up do the work talk to the professor's tell them what you're about or her what you're about you can kind of automatically be in the B range if you do your homework and then you just sort of need to be B+ range and then you just need a couple things to the break and you can get an A we've seen many students this were sort of C students at college take something on a course that can put hard schools and get A's a minuses. I assume that most of you can do that and you should realize that's what you need to do all right from Quran or Karen in terms of repeating resume items in the goals essay and appeared goals essay with were constraints 500 how much of the essay should want allocate towards hile any individual traits compared to school fit ask because some of the individual it's look like a resume we Pete um. I mean this is kind of a specific Karen I email or specific questions I would agree with you that on if there if you find yourself writing if you if you're looking at a saying you find yourself just regurgitating what's on your resume and we're leaving out other things which are not on your resume I would definitely flip that script and sort of try to focus more. on the stuff that's not in my resume let the stuff in the resume stand for itself however I I don't think for your goals essay your goals are forward-looking it resonates the past. there really shouldn't be that much from your resume on your goals as they should just be the catalyst it should just be maybe something you did which has some kind of care of or a specific skill set you know specific set of experiences but your goals essay and handling because its face because it's based on the future look forward looking it should not be sort of a carbon copy of what you've done on your resume which is already accomplished inherently those two things should be somewhat different right but you probably are gonna have some of the things in the past that are covered on your resume in your goals I think you're just not a huge huge amount of it okay from Reuben any advice on using personal hobbies or activities for my application um I think that your if your hobby is not marked by an accomplishment then I probably would just relegate that to the non-si data portion of my application however if your hobby is turned into some kind of passion that you have an accomplishment behind then I would consider that we consider putting it in my in my essay basically you have to be very you have to be a gatekeeper to what you put in your essay I've seen people that are very accomplished and I just feel like they weren't discriminating enough in terms of what they put in their ass I just feel like they put garbage stuff that was really not that important in the rest hey you like you want to be your essays are the most importantly the most important piece of your application some people say your recommendations but I think your essays especially because they're sort of your words and you don't want to write about a hobby sort of playing intramural soccer in like an accomplishment essay right now I gave this example a couple weeks ago we had a guy that wanted to work for FIFA which is a International Football Association and he set up a soccer league in the Pacific Northwest and then raised a whole bunch of money he had like 20 plus teens contributing it was amazing we read about in the papers whatever that was a hobby that he could elevate to being in his essays because there was accomplish behind it was really close to what he wanted to do professionally otherwise for most hobbies rock climbing whatever you know bike riding running iPod would not make that the topic of an essay all right okay from shift deep any specific advice for hardcore techies for example I don't have a lot of business experience or decision-making experience that's what I'm looking at a business before that's great because that's what Business School is looking for also right. again to keep this is kind of what I'm saying the context of you're not competing against someone that works in business you're competing against other tech people what I would say is that you want to have a clear idea as to why you want to go to business school from the perspective of what you want to do and also the perspective of of what the reason is for going and also we see a lot of tech people let's say looking about this technical skills understand technology I you know I've been involved in some business meetings and I didn't get a chance to sort of I didn't really understand the strategy I wanted I want to be on the strategy side because I want to make more than as soon as I feel like when I was making the best decisions but I don't have the requisite background in accounting and marketing and Finance and and sort of managing people to do that that's one NBA sense where people that say look I've got a very strong technological background I want to sort company I want to be the next Anil Ambani or you know or some kind of Jeff Bezos I want to be an entrepreneur and run my own company I know that I've got to marry my technical expertise with my with sort of my burgeoning interest in business for which nothing right no nothing but you get the point. it's totally fine for you to say that I wouldn't worry about that at all that's why you're looking at a business school that's right and Business School Admission Sui members to know that anyone questions ok from Tara some advice for a family business applicants small business background fiends I should focus on like leadership initiative interpersonal skills etc um I don't know if that's a question but I look I don't think that I think if you're coming from a family business on I think the most important thing is you firstly need to stay are you going to business school to leave the family business are you gonna miss school to run the family business if you're gonna miss school to run the family business eventually then what you should be sort of talking about is in my opinion develop certain certain traits and certain skills that address gaps in the family business or how you want to take the fame to the next level and you need to know X Y & Z I think it's it gives you a great impetus to go to business school it gives you a great reason there's a certain kind of authenticity about sort of saying uh I think the only business does X amount of dollars in revenue my parents didn't have the experience to go and have experience to do blank blank blank go international you know it's in Portugal and therefore I want to go to business school at a school like Warren which is I wanted to learn operations marking the etc etc. I can bring that back to the bits I think I would I would definitely couch your training and your need to go to business school as part of the family business I also think that in terms of the recommendations in terms of recommendations need to be careful about who writes some you obviously can't Ness I have a parent. I look towards the supplier I like towards maybe I like an accountant and you know someone that works with your business who is necessarily in your business who has theoretical little less concern about sort of being fired being reprimanded for saying the wrong thing in your recommendation. it's something you definitely need to think about think about your title as well right if you're sort of in a family business and you sort of do everything you've got a loose title don't have a loose title for the purpose of your application get something nailed down that's credible it's authentic with what you're doing and go from there all right from Joe s I know you probably get this a lot but what about older applicants 31 years old the burden will be why now I feel like if it is still in my career any advice on how to approach um I think that fit a ceiling is okay but that is that sort of belies it doesn't really support the theory I'm sort of a - doing really well my career for Billy Hanson my career's T not going well I need a reset no top 15 top 20 business schools gonna find that really sexy. what I would say is an older applicant is why now could be look I've been doing really well in my career and I've hit a place where you know in order for me to get to the next level in my career it's really important that I get an MBA or if it employment career where I've acquired a certain amount of skill set and Moxie it now in sort of context I want to launch my own business you know in this field and I need a business sort of sort of teaching more things about running a company as well as building a network and building sort of certain experiences or exposure I also think that you could you should be writing favourably you should be trying to go on offense Joe. you should not be concern about being old you should be you're not old frankly you should be you should be making a younger applicants field concerned about how they compare to you. I would be say I would be highlighting the fact that it's a great thing I've got eight eight nine years experience you know I'm gonna bring this experience to bear and a B and C ways I'm gonna basically open my contacts up I'm gonna help train I industry I'm gonna be their conduit for that I'm gonna I'm gonna basically be better than a 27 year old version of Joe that's how you need to be thinking aggressively all right okay this is the last question from Deepak in the differentiate yourself essay if you describe all of your best abilities in the context of you your professional activities your risk sounding too narrow okay. if you're looking at differentiate yourself and you're only saying it's perfectly are you too narrow or is it better to talk about multiple spheres to present yourself as a more rounded person that's a good question I think it varies Canada Canada that's right the fence I think that if I had to sort of air cues from one side I would choose the professional side I think there's way too many people that sort of don't speak about their professional accomplishments and think they can just get into school just based on having a CO hobby. I with I was err on that side but you should have some perfection of some personal and academic differentiating characteristics as well it's not enough just to have professional I you should have some abilities outside of that right you should have some things in your background sizing because a lot of you are applying from similar industries and you know if your best friend may be able to tell how you're different then someone else in that same industry but in admissions meaning remember to us look at our application for half now that could be hard. it's often two personal things the personal characteristics personal stories personal catalysts that are really going to help set you apart from other people. you have to have both but you need to make sure that you're demonstrating professionally that you're a hitter and you're doing exceptionally well okay. with that let's um end the webinar I really preach to all of you being on hopefully was helpful I know we went through things pretty quickly if you need help you want to chat about you know potentially how we can help you reach out if you want a free consultation reach out it's all on the website and you give me an email personally cake aunt Kim at admit advantage calm I try to get back to you as soon as I can Thanks

Crafting the Perfect MBA Essay - Webinar

hi everybody my name is Kofi cancam I am one of the cofounders of Amit advantage and we've been a very long partner L'Occitane partner with the beat the GMAT team Eric and B and today I'm really happy to go through crafting the perfect essay and I know a lot of you are preparing for round one at this point which is obviously in early October for most of the top you know top 15 top 20 schools and. some of you for something this is actually exceptionally pertinent on for others it is something that you're going to be leveraging probably over the next couple of months as you gear up to submit in round two in gen right. you will find that we're gonna go through sort of the different types of essays different ideas that you want to sort of conceive when you're thinking about putting together a specific type of essay there will be a play a time and place to ask questions all of you are mute right now. if you can just hold your questions until the end of the presentation unless it's exceptionally pressing if you can order questions we'll try to get to all the questions at the end any questions we cannot get to you could simply email us and we will we will respond in kind okay. with that let's get started I want to thank I be an Eric and beat the GMAT for offering an incredible platform and service for people and thank you again for inviting us to participate and obviously there was you know me know that I'm a Cleveland sports team fan big time in the Browns just won a game yesterday. I'm in a really good mood because our record now is one in two or off to the races I must speak a little bit about the company first not a huge amount I think a lot of you know me from beat the GMAT and obviously you can look at our website but I do want to give a little bit of background just. you feel comfortable that I know what the heck I'm talking about on admit advantage basically helps candidates get into business school very simply and if it doesn't have anything to do with your GMAT anything else we do right. anything related to essay editing mock interview school selection helping you figure out who your recommenders be helping you find money etc consider that's our focus we work with people from the beginning people saying look I think I won't go to school I don't exactly know what I want to do but I want to go all the way to the end when people are accepted and they're notified that hey they should apply for the scholarship or they're accepted to multiple schools and need help determining which is the best option for them our process is exceptionally structured we're also reformed 'el scientist we really believe in a structured process especially in an era where 70% of the people applying or qualified get only you know eight to 25% get in for the top 20 schools it's really important to be thorough about the analysis of your background and your chances and your stories in order to harness your best application we've been very fortunate to have a really strong interest from alumni of these schools who also have been admissions officers and or second-year interviewers and. we've been able to hire a lot of diversity not just sort of racially but also more importantly in my opinion anyway in terms of careers. we have people that have been in fields like investment banking venture capital impact investing we have marketers from big companies and also small companies if that people have been involved in government either as lobbyists and or as speech writers in fact we had a speechwriter for justified in for a long time technology people consulting entrepreneurship real estate etc there are three main core tenants underlying our company one everyone that works in our company has to have been in through this process themselves. they need to have been an alum or actually a current student of a top-tier school they also need to be on the other side of the table in terms of being a second year interview or an alumni interviewer or someone that has been a professional within admissions what we're known to be very client focused that's kind of one of our hallmarks we believe in it we think it makes a company more exciting and also enables us to gather great stories and anecdotes from you to help you fashion your applications and then performance if if people are not getting into school then we're not happy and all this is from you and we've been very fortunate to work with incredible candidate around the world who are current students or are alumni of all of these schools and actually even more this is not this is not the full list but it's a representative list okay I am Kofi Kant Kim I am one of the founders really briefly Erika are fairly similar both work at extent from different cities I worked at net defend which is sort of a processor Skype I sold a software company I'm really sort of in the education of Technology I was fortunate to go to Harvard College our pursue degree in neurobiology I have a master's in IDI from Harvard and I went to Wharton was a joseph Wharton fellow ran the largest inland conference and also T aid our first year core marketing course you can see sort of our consultant back on spirits drawing you see some of the people on the on the right hand side eric is a very similar back when I went to brown graduate with honors from from Wharton and you know has built a company with me for the last couple of years. in terms of the diversity of consultants that we're all from sort of similar top firms top companies we have about 30 plus people that work with us you can see a lot of their profiles on our site they're all ones of Harvard and Wharton and Stanford and Columbia and Berkeley and Chicago and Kellogg and nyeo and Dartmouth and all kinds of schools like that and again we place people and top 20 schools in the States some of the top european school said and judge lbs and INSEAD some an age and a couple now increasingly in Latin America okay in terms of sa strategies one thing I want you to understand it's really critical is that you need to have a plan before you start writing ok you should not be jumping into your essays off the bat just immediately started starting right it's almost like some of these on their CV that watch like Meet the Press or some of these other sort of Sunday talk shows when you see that people go on there they have talking points before they get there they know what they want to include almost regardless of the question it's really important that you do the same thing the first thing that we recommend you think about is your personal brain and what are the stories experiences and accomplishments as well as the leadership characteristics around which you're gonna build your application okay and. imagine that someone's interviewing a sibling your best friend a parent a partner except I said what are the stories what are the things about John then they need to know about how to understanding as a person they're going to be a mixture of personal professional and academic sort of wins and experiences and it will be related leadership characteristics it's like being analytical being innovative being persuasive being a great communicator being able to make decisions limited information you know being able to leave without authority things of that nature that basically naturally draw from those specific stories experiences and accomplishments. no matter which direction you go if you're starting with the stories experiences accomplishment it's this thing okay here's a set of 10 what sorts of leadership characteristics today define about me if you go in that direction or you go on the other direction saying I want to write an application where you know I'm saying I won't really want to go into asset management. I really need to demonstrate that I am analytical or I really want to run a company I need to demonstrate that I am sort of innovative or you know I'm going to join a company and try to fight my way to the top I need to show that I am sort of persuasive you can start on that side think of those characteristics either that are relevant for your career or that are that are ones of leaders that you really respect business leaders political leaders on you know military leaders sports leaders etc it doesn't matter you can think of those stories and think those experiences are those um characteristics and then go to the stories or you can start with the stories and go to the characteristics but your brand will be a mixture of both the stories experiences and accomplishments as well as a critical leadership components and. what we've done here is just outline a couple right. if you're saying that you want to have a story that you have a strong analytical focus if that is a leadership characteristics that you want as part of your brand then you need to basically provide examples this is a show-and-tell experiment from business it's not telling someone that your analytical having nothing to back it up you have to show and tell across the different pieces of your application which are your assays your letters of recommendation the non-si data portion of your application your resume and then your interview if you get it. you definitely a four and you certainly if you get an interview that will be the fifth piece okay and you really need to make sure that you are highlighting sorry you're highlighting basically specific things about your background and and and and leveraging stories to explain it okay. don't just say your innovative basically really demonstrate that you know for this example you basically you helped reduce emissions by X percentage and you helped increase efficiency by X percentage within your manufacturing company in a way that had not been done before that's real innovation persuasive you can sort of see the example okay the the the take-home is really make sure that you were thinking about yourself holistically think about yourself from a professional community and personal aspect and realize that for the schools which you're applying it's not just enough to be qualified you also have to you know demonstrate that you're gonna be basically someone that other people can learn from and then you're interested in in that and that you've got a really sort of well-defined persona about you outside of just being dominant in your work force in your workplace also secondly realize that you really need to differentiate yourself okay. it's a fine line the one because you want to differentiate yourself we also want to be authentic and true to yourself. the way that you do that or the ways that you try to sort of employ this this desire to differentiate yourself include really speaking about your passion what is a catalyst for pushing you to go to business what is a catalyst for your career and again your career is not your first job after school it's not saying I want to go to sort of Columbia in order to go work in McKinsey that could be the case but is your desire to work at McKinsey does that exist in the long term like you know most of you are let's say in mid-20s okay. you're gonna a graduate Business School let's say at 28. let's say you work in a company for seven years when you're 35 36 when you start to pivot towards your long-term goal what is that that is really your passion right. the first three to seven years typically consider sort of this short term it's almost like going to business school again and in terms of getting a brand getting a network getting sort of experiences but the question is what is the passion beyond that. if you can focus on your long-term passion which hopefully matches your career then it'll be a great way for you to differentiate yourself especially if you're coming from a company or industry like let's say Goldman or consulting you know where a lot of people end up applying the business school coming from those sort of domains if you highlight your passion you'll find that you're able to. you'll be able to sort of separate yourself from other analysts you know the analysts here left in to you bright at your job that's applying with you okay realize that and you know you don't have to differentiate kids everyone. we always get people to call us every day and doing these consultations and say okay how to make myself different then then this other person. last week I spoke to someone who basically was a banker and he was asked me how am I going to differentiate myself against the bankers as well as you know all these other you know this sort of the person coming from Teach for America that wants to go to business school and he asked me he didn't ask me exactly in those terms but that was the gist of his question I said look you're not competing against the social the social sort of venture person the person coming from Teach for America that wants to sort of go to business school into microfinance you're competing against other bankers right and. realize that you're you're you're you don't have to sort of differential your self. much you don't recognize who you are you want to sort of stay in your silo and realize every year these schools are gonna accept a certain percentage. a number of X type of candidates and you want to sort of be amongst the best and also realize that many of you will be competing in different buckets right. you're not just in a model if you're not just in one bucket. for me when I applied for example I was competing as other entrepreneurs other black guys and other sort of Harvard Ivy League graduates right and. those are kind of the general buckets I was doing as I was trying to be sort of a leader or dominant in each of those three and. really think about that a little bit in terms how you differentiate yourself realize again when you plotted these schools everybody's good literally everyone is good at the top 20 schools 70% of people apply or admissible they'd only you know only sort of 10 to 25 per second and. brasstacks numbers if you have 20 applicants applying 6 and will be garbage bad GMAT bad GPA poor work experience at least 14 that are very qualified if I took those 14 and I showed them to a professor on campus I said these are the people that are gonna be you know in your class you know those professors would have no problem with that of those qualified 14 2 to 5 or again again right which is 10 to 25%. realize that you know they're two sides that the first is that grades are sort of not good enough everybody's got that and the second side is that means that you need to basically really be developing the other pieces of your of your application okay other sides of your of your story in your narrative also realizing to tie the relevance to specific. when you were thinking about going to schools we talked a lot of people every day and to be honest with you all of you kind of want to go to the same schools the same 5 to 5 to 10 schools but I can always tell when someone is really passionate about a school based on their articulation of why and that's something that you want to do also because admissions officers are second about that it's not enough to say I want to go to Harvard because you know how I think it's the most important school in the world or my sibling right there or I read about Meg Whitman going to the Harvard Business School no you need to be a little bit clearer today it's because it's going to help meet the cases or here are specific courses and professors I want to study under here are specific clubs and organizations that are relevant to my career either previous or in the future that I want to be a part of and lead then here's how it fits my long-term goal every school wants to hear for this it would be a great opportunity for you to showcase your knowledge of the school which to be honest with you a lot of people don't do they don't think it's important. they just you know they they write about sort of the school very generically and think it's obvious why they want to go to the school and it is in a sense of a brand and making more money but it's not obvious why I necessarily want to go to Kellogg over over booth right or they want to go to Wharton over Clemmy etc that's always clear and. it's really important that you differentiate yourself across these these indices okay in terms of big picture sell the dream. a painting clear picture let them know how you know them being the mission to let them know you know how you're different how it's relevant to your peers and advantageous to your peers and how business school is gonna help you achieve your long-term goal do not just focus on the first step after business school the first job of the first placement this is about your career okay make sure you're painting a viable bridge to the future I think those who than other webinars I've done I've heard me talk about you know Kyle we had that wanted to start a hedge fund in Hong Kong immediately when he graduated okay he you know he didn't speak he wasn't Asian he didn't speak in a just major in English didn't work in an investment bank or finance he basically was a social venture guy who's I'm. he was like sort of a a non-profit guy and you know I think he sort of got tired of being you know having a lot of money and it sounded sexy. I'm gonna start this company and me'll when I graduate that's not realistic right that's not a realistic bridge if he said look I'm gonna join a McKinsey working in financial services I'm then gonna sort of try to get into a financial services company by the way while I'm in school I'm gonna learn Mandarin etc and I'm gonna sort of work McKinsey try to transition to an office in you know in mainland China and then basically try to transition you know trying to link up with other people learn the ropes learn the industry and then launched my own hedge fund you know seven to ten years after I graduate that's a realistic path. make sure you've got a realistic path dream big but make sure the path is real okay also I will tell you this may sound obvious but there are. many people that come to us and they've already started writing they say I want you to review our application I say we'll send me send me your outline and they you know say we don't know I don't have an outline and you know we didn't have this in a slide before I think I can't believe how many people are writing applications without outlines right you have to have an outline it's really important list for your first school you want to make sure that you are tying in your character your characteristics the character trades as well as the stories experiences accomplishments across the four to five platforms I mentioned write again your letters of recommendation sort of the non-si data portion of your application your resume your essays in your interviews if you are not pulling all that together if you are not. making sure the pieces are integrated and and in complementary you were not going to have a balanced application and you also don't have an effective application all right places where you have options for your essays choose ones that work with your brand if you don't do the brand upfront then you're not gonna know you know which essays to choose when you're given the option choose two of the following five essay topics okay make sure that you are answering the whole question. write out the details of each ask the question and I mean this in the context of some essays will gonna be a three part essay and basically they'll give you six in two words I can't tell many times I see people that kind of spend the first the first part of a specific kind of essay you know spending 300 words then they spend 250 words on sort of the second section they get to the third and think ah I only have fifty words okay I'm just gonna like 50 words answer the third section just because a section is a third section doesn't mean it's unimportant that's not as important as the first two. make sure you're answering all the essay questions in full again if you do an essay question if you do an outline matter for your first school you probably don't have to do it for all of yours but you really do need to consider doing it for the first one unless you are an exceptional writer maybe you've applied before or you're getting a huge amount of help I really even if you're getting helps in the company like ours I still would give an outline frankly okay it's also really important for you to you know to leverage your research okay do the research. there and I sound like sort of a parent actually I'm a new parent but I still like a parent and say you know there's. much information online and my day didn't have it's true like I'm 104 there wasn't as much information online back in the fall with a1 when I was you know I was looking at applying now there's. much information where people get placed you know the breakdown of the class coming in average GMAT scores GPAs etc um you need to know that stuff alright. it's all on the website you can sort of visit the school very easy to do especially in the fall it provided you can get there right those of you that are I just focus on two days ago they said literally two days in New York City and the person said I have not visited you know it's gonna be a problem if I don't visit the schools and applying to in her schools were Columbia NYU Yale Wharton Harvard and tuck okay the first three Columbia and why the first two Columbia and why you're in New York City Yale is 90 minutes north Wharton is basically about 100 105 minutes south and she's not applying around to. naturally you can imagine my response was get on a train subway or Amtrak and visit these schools if you're in close proximity there's really no excuse not to visit it'll highlight your passion is something you can mention in your application and some schools will ask you directly have you been to our school okay. visit the school if you're not in those areas most schools travel at this level around the world go to a local session will also meet alumni in your area you'll meet people that potentially can help you and advocate for you if you get wait-listed it's a really important to do speak to alumni all of you for the most part probably went to college okay I'm University you all have alumni that have been to these schools I would encourage you to go to your alumni go to your Alumni Association if your undergraduate University and say I want to talk to you five to ten people that have gone to and why you were warned or Harvard and they probably will help you do that okay and have those discussions it's really important to do to sort of give you a non-glossy sort of brochure vision of your school and understanding of your school and that maturity that mature perspective will carry through within your application itself and really be able to speak to what I school is a good fit okay because some schools are not if it's if you're basically Tali saying you're not really you really want to do analytics you're really analytical and you're really sort of number driven Kellogg may not be the place for you right I mean you know Booth may be right. just be clear about why it's a good fit if you're saying I want to really want to do energy I love energy I want to get into oil and gas and you're looking at going to just not to pick on them listen you're looking to go to Dartmouth that may not be a good fit all right and may be better for you to sort of go to a school that's clinical not considered as good right but that's they are like UT awesome just an amazing school that may be a better fit for you based on the fact that you want to do oil right it being in Texas. just keep that in mind be able to articulate that both to yourself and to the admissions committee members okay let's talk now a little about the essay types. you have the story I say okay. this is a common essay this used to be sort of more popular you see in different formats but why do you want to go to our school why do you want to get an MBA why do you want to get it now right tell us about your short and long term goals you know how is your back when relevant pursuing MBA there are lots of variations but they're kind of all the same sort of craft a narrative about yourself right tell us about yourself tell us well how Business School fits in your and your goals very common um now you know business schools have sort of evolved and they've gotten a little bit less direct in terms of the I asked this kind of question but this kind of these kinds of themes come up pretty much in every single essay every single application for business school okay. what you want to do our tips are obvious answer the questions right answer the question asked if the school asks for short and long term goal on goals rather answer that question first if you have space left over then you know talk about sort of why you want to go to that school but don't write about why I want to go to that school and not answer your long term goals the portion the thing that was really asked for okay this is also a good place for you to provide context right what was the catalyst for you on the business was a catalyst for you pursuing a certain kind of field now you obviously are gonna have to be judicious in your word allocation because you're not gonna have a lot of real estate to write but I can't tell you how often a really finely crafted sentence let's call it 17 to 25 words that provides some context for a goal can like totally frame the essay and make and that's. that was pretty good magical. make sure you're doing that if you if you have capacity to do. right do not cut and paste right. I answered a couple questions today I'm beat the GMAT where somebody asked about sort of doing booths sort of powerpoints and they want to sort of make this MIT optional it's okay I would modify tweak do not just cut and paste write and try to think about each school you can use the same sort of themes you can use the same sort of stories use the same kind of leadership characteristics but I'd be very wary about taking an essay here that's slightly off-topic that's 400 words and trying to like fit another essay that's maybe 25% different but it's 200 words don't just think you're just gonna take that essay and sort of wrap it into the into the take the form and wrap it into the latter that prod will not go well for my experience and again be is specific about the school when possible every school want you know these schools are very proud they also know that you're applying to other schools and. you want to be very clear about why their schools gonna fit and and and dirty little secret unless probably not. much of a secret now schools do manage their yields they are concern about the reals ie they want to you know they want whoever they accept generally to come right and as partially other evaluated and ranked it's kind of like bragging right. a school doesn't want to accept you if they even if you're qualified if they know you're not going to come and if you don't put in details about a specific school they may think that you know actually don't really care that much about this you don't you're not really that knowledge about the school ergo you have your your eyes on some other school. just keep that in mind you just sort of write your applications another essay type is describe yourself right. how a classmate described you pretending you're running for a club and you've got to give your speech as to why I should be the leader of the club what club would it be and what would your speech say if I visited you two years after you graduated and interviewed a good friend on campus how would they say that you made an impact they're all kind of the same fanatic stuff right this is a classic differentiation question they're not going to say how are you a different candidate than someone else and this is how they do it all right this is not a take me through your resume type of question a lot of candidates right yes and describe yourself and they literally look at the resume they put up Microsoft Word split their screen look at the resume and sort of take everything in a resume you know from from sort of the furthest in the past to the present just write that don't do that right you have to make some choices about what's the most relevant all right you've got to think about in terms your admitted advantages think about your brand and make sure you're Holly the leadership characteristics that you'd already decided as part of your base your platform right think about highlighting certain key roles a lot of you have five to eight bullet points for each job you've had you may have had three jobs right you can't highlight everything. take maybe two of those jobs or if you do all three take the things that you've done that really encapsulate on your total experience in that job and it's usually going to be something like a key role or a key sort of impact or legacy left alright if you are somebody that you know is kind of reticent shy you have to get out of that you've got to break out of that you have to sort of beat your chest you have to basically promote yourself you don't do that nobody will do that okay this leaky wheel does get the oil in a lot of cases if you're someone that is loquacious and doesn't talk and listening if you're wondering who the loudmouth arrogant jerk is in the room and you can't figure it out it could be you right if you are that person I'm sort of saying that tongue in cheek you know don't be. arrogant right. dial it back a little bit be a little bit subtle um you don't have to you know you don't have to hit someone over the head if you basically you know did a deal that garnered you know thirty million dollars for your company you don't have to write about that for you know two hundred words you can sort of subtly state that or directly stated for that matter very short succinctly and fifty to seventy-five words and keep it moving and that's kind of what you want you want to sort of have an idea of kind of what you look like in sort of your your your overall personality to determine you know sort of which can't be fallen okay there are also behavioral questions right this is very typical to this often happens in interviews but you do see them in essay types as well. tell me at a time when right tell me at a time when you fail tell me about a time you had to overcome opposition to an idea tell me about a time when you basically had to manage you know you have to manage peers I had you know higher titles and more position more seniority company that's it used to be more common but these questions are still out there right there are many different kinds of iterations the types like if you get a general feel this is typically the part where you're given an option I choose to or one of the next three op3 essay questions this is typically behavioral because sometimes you don't have you know if they just gave you one type you may not have an experience like that. often they give you a couple different types. you know something you're back and we'll click with one of the asset questions right this is kind of like your your case interviews of those who've you've worked at worked at you know consulting companies we're as much as they're just in the answer the interest has driven the thought process and sort of the overall experience. and how you react and respond in to a particular situation our tips are don't be afraid to give real examples you know this is also sort of related when people say what's my biggest weakness my biggest weakness is I'm too ambitious right that's not a big real weakness right. make sure you're sort of your authentic your real it's okay to have a flaw it's okay to have a failure as long as sir observe lessons that have been learned and ideally if his similar situation is arisen later in the future or you know after that incident of that failure and you're able to sort of apply the lessons from that fear to that incident that's even better right. give me a lessons real example sing about lessons learned be very clear about how this impacted your life this is sort of passing hate to say it's a Cleveland Airport test right this is your moment to sort of show that you were an interesting dynamic person you're thoughtful reflective and you're not just sort of Joe capitalist who's looking to go to business school to make a lot of money and and drive a Bentley nothing wrong with that at all right but business schools are looking for at this point in time they position themselves to be looking for people who are also leaders who are community participators who are people that are making an impact with different groups and this is a chance for you to sort of just seem a little bit more reflective okay this is really important it's really necessary for you to choose your essays wisely and just because I just obviously there's echoing chambers on beat the GMAT and Business Week whatever these different places where you see an essay question you think everyone's answering these two essays I have to answer them you don't they're not and you don't okay. make sure you're really authentic and it ties in with your brand your a narrative that you're trying to advance within your application and again this gets down to what your story and also to soar next enter your competing against you have leadership essays right. um you know this is this is where you sort of need to think about sort of the impact you've had the legacy of left you know getting into school it's not just about sort of having different roles it's not really making an impact they're looking for people young people who have made an impact they could say that's a winning horse I believe this person is going to be have we given the tools and experiences and and sort of you know the network in theatre can be able to take everything that they've done in the past and sort of blow it up on a bigger stage we're gonna give them an amp we're gonna be able to amplify what they've done. they're looking for examples of leadership they're looking for exam of impact and legacy um think about what you've done beyond the call of duty okay. if you've if you've had a role and you've mastered that role let's and then let's say a a fellow analyst was fired let's say your boss you know was going through divorce and he or she got distracted you had to sort of take on the role think about sort of these kinds of examples when you're writing the leadership essay okay everyone all of you should have a concept an idea of of how you lead now some of you have had more experience during that than others but all of us neither LED or bin let and those of us who've worked for tough bosses know they're oftentimes we think you know I could have done that that's. differently or I would have done that differently I could have done better well now is your chance. you should have a conception of how you lead either based on real experience leading or having been led right this is also a great opportunity for you to get corroboration with your recommenders of your leadership. if you're basically saying I let this amazing project I brought in 30 million dollars of new revenue or I saved X number of hundred thousands of dollars in costs I saved this is a great time to have a recommender say that it sounds a lot more credible than when it's just you saying it right if you work in teams those you work for big companies you're doing deals you're doing approaches you know etc you're integrating I was a consultants you know I know what that's like you need to focus on what you did necessary what your team did now I'm gonna read about in the journal I want to know what you did specifically. make sure when you're writing your application you're very clear about your own specific contributions to a particular task okay and don't make the mistake that we see if candidates who write and definitely about this amazing deal and you know and they spend 10% writing about what they've done to make that deal possible okay then you've got sort of strengths weaknesses accomplishments deployments generally kind of similar themes right give real examples right really make sure that you are tied in to your brand because you're gonna have. many and you've got to make sure that you can go back to your outline go back to your your your your branding documents and really think about okay what is it that I really have to include in my application if you have weaknesses if you have losses of disappointments please again highlight lessons learned in actions taken it's not enough to recognize we have a weakness if you recognize you have a weakness and you don't do anything about it that's a problem right that's more of a problem than actually not even recognizing a weakness and everything should be consistent as mentioned last two. the optional si okay this is an S if it does it's optional optional means you don't have to do it. do not do it if you don't need it if you are thinking about what are the things that could be included typically its gaps in an application it could be a gap like look the schools asking for you to give a boss recommendation but you can't do it because if you're Boston you're going to be we're gonna business school you'd be fired or you'd lose your bonus. if you have a senior associate do it this is where the option alyssa to explain why that's the case which incidentally is not a big deal on if there were errors in your brand which weren't addressed this is where you could address it I'd be wary about doing that unless the optional essay specifically tells you like tell us something that we didn't touch on but if they say what's your biggest weakness and you're writing hey I got a 7:30 on my gmail I was testing the 760 nobody wants to hear that don't do that okay this is a place where you should talk about gaps in your work experience I think anything over anything over four months I personally I'll probably write about or if you have to even two to three month gaps in the working experience let's say if five years fan I probably right about that a little bit okay I talked about nitrogen recommendations if you have holes again what you're doing to address them. I didn't do well in my GMAT but you know I'm taking some course I've got a bad GPA but I you know I decided to take courses in accounting stats economics finance in order to sort of boost my boost my I my my qualifications from the analytical perspective. this is where you kind of want to do that stuff if you were given four into words or fire in two words space and you write you like that say I only use 200 words stop you don't need to fill up the remaining 300 words just because you feel like your essay is not not fleshed out enough don't use the word capacity as the barometer for whether or not your application is finished or your essays finished in this instance we applicants take a look at your old applications if you apply dip eclis two plus years ago they're not going to use them necessarily but you also don't know if someone's gonna take a look at them and you don't want to sort of have to say especially applied last year I talked to a guy a couple weeks ago and he said I probably laughter I wanted to clean tag what do you think I should say this year and I said well you know he was thinking about something different like you say not something like banking and I said I that could work but you've got it tight and you can't just be somebody different this year because last year's person didn't get in in terms of your goals your goals can be refined you obviously can have a better better GMAT I mean you took some courses but do not present yourself as a totally different person because they're gonna confuse admissions man you know which one personally which one's authentic both either one or neither right highlight differences in previous applications. if you know if you got feedback and kind of felt like hey my my my leadership was not strong my last application or my social my commitment to sort of work in the community or contributing was not strong kinda like that it's really important to do. but I'd say ultimately if you're looking at this year's application you applied last or even here before and you realize and you don't have a lot in you to say then you probably should think about whether or not it makes sense to apply now maybe you should apply next year I know that's a hard thing to think about but it's true okay. we're gonna get to questions and minute Eric will keep my Eric will punch me in the face if I don't say some of the things we have a bunch of obviously packages I think those even our website have seen we've also added new things new streamlined packages from listening to our audience you said you've wanted sort of more of light touch stuff. we have more light touch stuff streamline is just essays you know just sort of throughout San si editing keeping it moving we have a final review package at a thousand bucks which is no phone support and we've got targeted services if you want client branding if you want outline if you want any that kind of stuff you can get it. based on our website now with our company if you have 250 plus Bucks descent which I think even if it's not our company I think you should be having you should have that you should be willing to sort of spend that kind of money if you're applying to top-tier school it's an investment in yourself and again it even if it's not with us we've got stuff on our site though that will hopefully appeal to you okay still be out early still do doing analysis if you apply last year did not get anyone and what happened and you're applying this year come our way we'll talk to you about it we'll look at your old stuff we have a pre application package for those of you that are not applying until next year on we certainly can help you sort of get your ducks in order polish up your assets make sure you're well positioned to really launch yourself next year okay we have other things coming on and pre-application webinar case studies next week we're doing our infamous candidate success stories probably the couple new new candidates follow us on facebook twitter or a blog we don't do nearly enough on that because we're way too busy but we're gonna try to get better and we work with clintus review those of you not taking a GMAT and you want to take your GMAT and you're looking for help we like prints from you there other companies out there if you do work with princess room you threw us a get a 15% discount and lastly if you've not had a free consultation and you want one and that doesn't mean with you know we only get one per company. if you talk to Eric unfortunately I will not do another consultation with you but if you'd like a consultation and you cannot talk to either of us go to sketch that me and sign up schedule me a slash admit advantage or go to the contact us portion of our website and you can shoot me personally email cake and Kim at admit advantage calm and as mentioned we do a 10% discount for our beat the Jeana people you guys there are people um and you can just type in 1908 1908 it check out and you'll get a 10 percent discount on everything we offer okay with that lets up for questions if there are questions let's open up just typing your questions and and B will help summarize them and then we'll go from there you okay. we have a question from Ned what do you do if you're not a hundred percent sure what your dream is the main point of getting an MBA from me is to open doors to other careers and get back to the u.s. I'm an expat is it even worth applying if you have no 100% specific dream or does that basically mean you have no chance with the average GMAT GMAT scores um that's a good question. look there is some gamesmanship in terms of getting into school um I think that when I think of career now you may not know exactly what you want to do but think about it along these axes okay. think about in terms of role role / function industry title and maybe location right Ned and you should have an idea of some of that stuff right. you know you may know that for example you want to sort of do marketing you may know that your industry generally is let's call it real estate maybe you want to real estate market maybe you wanted to finance fancy services marketing like ie you want to market credit cards for like American Express maybe you want to do that in the States or maybe you want to do it in in Singapore you want to do that in the UK like you should have some general feeling for what you want to do right it sounds like you do but opening career career doors it's not specifically for one of the reasons it's not specific enough is because companies are on campus as soon as you get there literally different campus sometimes within a couple of weeks two to three weeks and. if you don't have an idea of that you're gonna be behind the book behind the ball. you've got to have an ID again think about it in terms of of industry role / function title and location and you probably have at least two of those figure it out in order to write a compelling application I'm just writing to Rack my brain if I've seen someone write a compelling application who hasn't had at least two of those and I don't necessarily think I don't think I have. you should have a general idea of that and if you don't have an idea start talking to people and again this is for the purposes of applying its business goal you obviously if you get in you'll have some time before you matriculate to really fleshed out and you can change your mind but you have to have a specific direction heading in especially as you get older okay question from anakata does your advice also apply to react in essays or do you have any specific advice for reallocates I'm not sure exactly what advice you're suggesting but yes my application generally does my advice does apply to all applicants for the first time or second or third time from Vanessa how long does it take to complete an average application with admitted manage oh that's a good question I would say generally you should leave look we've done three essay three app three applications with people in four weeks I never want to do that again but we certainly want half deal sure um I would say you know if you're moving at a reasonable clip and you're not sort of super pressed I would say you probably can do your first school and about three to four weeks and each additional schooling about two and a half to three weeks from je Rousseau how specific must you be in mentioning specific assets of the school program professors clubs specific classes people you've met what if you can't miss in the school and call me miss an info session I think the more specificity the better I would say I would I would probably place emphasis on classes / courses professors and clubs those things can all be derived online people you've met you may not meet anybody that's okay if you can't get to info session if that's if that's it that's it but I definitely would at least have those first three okay from a new any specific considerations we should take for early action deadlines versus regular deadlines I would just say be clear that you want to go to the school right because a lot of these some of these ones like for Columbia you apply early you have to put them a six thousand dollar deposit within two weeks we didn't yeah I think it's two weeks historically it's been like that anyway. be clear about that I think that there's kind of an understanding that you obviously want to go to that school who's replying early but I still would not take my foot off the gas and. really clearly articulating what it is about a specific school that's attracting you to that school. beyond that no I think I think that's fine from fear for low GPAs do you recommend taking additional courses to increase my GPA before applying absolutely yes if you have time to do it. it's not gonna improve your GPA right but it's going to build what's called an alternative transcript and you'll be able to sort of articulate a narrative of you know I was distracted in college or something came up in college that's why my grades weren't as strong but look I took courses in accounting finance stats economics or some subset of those and I got A's in those course as well as working and I have a 700 plus g-men. clearly when I'm focused I can do the work College was a couple of years ago I unfortunately wasn't as focused as I needed to be but I do have the intellectual horsepower to do the work that is the purpose of the courses that's what you're trying to achieve ergo if you are not getting aids in those courses if you're not gonna be committed to getting an A in those courses in a range then you shouldn't really take it don't waste your time and money and usually when I say committed to the effort usually those courses are really about effort like if you sort of show up do the work talk to the professor's tell them what you're about or her what you're about you can kind of automatically be in the B range if you do your homework and then you just sort of need to be B+ range and then you just need a couple things to the break and you can get an A we've seen many students this were sort of C students at college take something on a course that can put hard schools and get A's a minuses. I assume that most of you can do that and you should realize that's what you need to do all right from Quran or Karen in terms of repeating resume items in the goals essay and appeared goals essay with were constraints 500 how much of the essay should want allocate towards hile any individual traits compared to school fit ask because some of the individual it's look like a resume we Pete um. I mean this is kind of a specific Karen I email or specific questions I would agree with you that on if there if you find yourself writing if you if you're looking at a saying you find yourself just regurgitating what's on your resume and we're leaving out other things which are not on your resume I would definitely flip that script and sort of try to focus more. on the stuff that's not in my resume let the stuff in the resume stand for itself however I I don't think for your goals essay your goals are forward-looking it resonates the past. there really shouldn't be that much from your resume on your goals as they should just be the catalyst it should just be maybe something you did which has some kind of care of or a specific skill set you know specific set of experiences but your goals essay and handling because its face because it's based on the future look forward looking it should not be sort of a carbon copy of what you've done on your resume which is already accomplished inherently those two things should be somewhat different right but you probably are gonna have some of the things in the past that are covered on your resume in your goals I think you're just not a huge huge amount of it okay from Reuben any advice on using personal hobbies or activities for my application um I think that your if your hobby is not marked by an accomplishment then I probably would just relegate that to the non-si data portion of my application however if your hobby is turned into some kind of passion that you have an accomplishment behind then I would consider that we consider putting it in my in my essay basically you have to be very you have to be a gatekeeper to what you put in your essay I've seen people that are very accomplished and I just feel like they weren't discriminating enough in terms of what they put in their ass I just feel like they put garbage stuff that was really not that important in the rest hey you like you want to be your essays are the most importantly the most important piece of your application some people say your recommendations but I think your essays especially because they're sort of your words and you don't want to write about a hobby sort of playing intramural soccer in like an accomplishment essay right now I gave this example a couple weeks ago we had a guy that wanted to work for FIFA which is a International Football Association and he set up a soccer league in the Pacific Northwest and then raised a whole bunch of money he had like 20 plus teens contributing it was amazing we read about in the papers whatever that was a hobby that he could elevate to being in his essays because there was accomplish behind it was really close to what he wanted to do professionally otherwise for most hobbies rock climbing whatever you know bike riding running iPod would not make that the topic of an essay all right okay from shift deep any specific advice for hardcore techies for example I don't have a lot of business experience or decision-making experience that's what I'm looking at a business before that's great because that's what Business School is looking for also right. again to keep this is kind of what I'm saying the context of you're not competing against someone that works in business you're competing against other tech people what I would say is that you want to have a clear idea as to why you want to go to business school from the perspective of what you want to do and also the perspective of of what the reason is for going and also we see a lot of tech people let's say looking about this technical skills understand technology I you know I've been involved in some business meetings and I didn't get a chance to sort of I didn't really understand the strategy I wanted I want to be on the strategy side because I want to make more than as soon as I feel like when I was making the best decisions but I don't have the requisite background in accounting and marketing and Finance and and sort of managing people to do that that's one NBA sense where people that say look I've got a very strong technological background I want to sort company I want to be the next Anil Ambani or you know or some kind of Jeff Bezos I want to be an entrepreneur and run my own company I know that I've got to marry my technical expertise with my with sort of my burgeoning interest in business for which nothing right no nothing but you get the point. it's totally fine for you to say that I wouldn't worry about that at all that's why you're looking at a business school that's right and Business School Admission Sui members to know that anyone questions ok from Tara some advice for a family business applicants small business background fiends I should focus on like leadership initiative interpersonal skills etc um I don't know if that's a question but I look I don't think that I think if you're coming from a family business on I think the most important thing is you firstly need to stay are you going to business school to leave the family business are you gonna miss school to run the family business if you're gonna miss school to run the family business eventually then what you should be sort of talking about is in my opinion develop certain certain traits and certain skills that address gaps in the family business or how you want to take the fame to the next level and you need to know X Y & Z I think it's it gives you a great impetus to go to business school it gives you a great reason there's a certain kind of authenticity about sort of saying uh I think the only business does X amount of dollars in revenue my parents didn't have the experience to go and have experience to do blank blank blank go international you know it's in Portugal and therefore I want to go to business school at a school like Warren which is I wanted to learn operations marking the etc etc. I can bring that back to the bits I think I would I would definitely couch your training and your need to go to business school as part of the family business I also think that in terms of the recommendations in terms of recommendations need to be careful about who writes some you obviously can't Ness I have a parent. I look towards the supplier I like towards maybe I like an accountant and you know someone that works with your business who is necessarily in your business who has theoretical little less concern about sort of being fired being reprimanded for saying the wrong thing in your recommendation. it's something you definitely need to think about think about your title as well right if you're sort of in a family business and you sort of do everything you've got a loose title don't have a loose title for the purpose of your application get something nailed down that's credible it's authentic with what you're doing and go from there all right from Joe s I know you probably get this a lot but what about older applicants 31 years old the burden will be why now I feel like if it is still in my career any advice on how to approach um I think that fit a ceiling is okay but that is that sort of belies it doesn't really support the theory I'm sort of a - doing really well my career for Billy Hanson my career's T not going well I need a reset no top 15 top 20 business schools gonna find that really sexy. what I would say is an older applicant is why now could be look I've been doing really well in my career and I've hit a place where you know in order for me to get to the next level in my career it's really important that I get an MBA or if it employment career where I've acquired a certain amount of skill set and Moxie it now in sort of context I want to launch my own business you know in this field and I need a business sort of sort of teaching more things about running a company as well as building a network and building sort of certain experiences or exposure I also think that you could you should be writing favourably you should be trying to go on offense Joe. you should not be concern about being old you should be you're not old frankly you should be you should be making a younger applicants field concerned about how they compare to you. I would be say I would be highlighting the fact that it's a great thing I've got eight eight nine years experience you know I'm gonna bring this experience to bear and a B and C ways I'm gonna basically open my contacts up I'm gonna help train I industry I'm gonna be their conduit for that I'm gonna I'm gonna basically be better than a 27 year old version of Joe that's how you need to be thinking aggressively all right okay this is the last question from Deepak in the differentiate yourself essay if you describe all of your best abilities in the context of you your professional activities your risk sounding too narrow okay. if you're looking at differentiate yourself and you're only saying it's perfectly are you too narrow or is it better to talk about multiple spheres to present yourself as a more rounded person that's a good question I think it varies Canada Canada that's right the fence I think that if I had to sort of air cues from one side I would choose the professional side I think there's way too many people that sort of don't speak about their professional accomplishments and think they can just get into school just based on having a CO hobby. I with I was err on that side but you should have some perfection of some personal and academic differentiating characteristics as well it's not enough just to have professional I you should have some abilities outside of that right you should have some things in your background sizing because a lot of you are applying from similar industries and you know if your best friend may be able to tell how you're different then someone else in that same industry but in admissions meaning remember to us look at our application for half now that could be hard. it's often two personal things the personal characteristics personal stories personal catalysts that are really going to help set you apart from other people. you have to have both but you need to make sure that you're demonstrating professionally that you're a hitter and you're doing exceptionally well okay. with that let's um end the webinar I really preach to all of you being on hopefully was helpful I know we went through things pretty quickly if you need help you want to chat about you know potentially how we can help you reach out if you want a free consultation reach out it's all on the website and you give me an email personally cake aunt Kim at admit advantage calm I try to get back to you as soon as I can Thanks

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Crafting the Perfect MBA Essay - Webinar

hi everybody my name is Kofi cancam I am one of the cofounders of Amit advantage and we've been a very long partner L'Occitane partner with the beat the GMAT team Eric and B and today I'm really happy to go through crafting the perfect essay and I know a lot of you are preparing for round one at this point which is obviously in early October for most of the top you know top 15 top 20 schools and. some of you for something this is actually exceptionally pertinent on for others it is something that you're going to be leveraging probably over the next couple of months as you gear up to submit in round two in gen right. you will find that we're gonna go through sort of the different types of essays different ideas that you want to sort of conceive when you're thinking about putting together a specific type of essay there will be a play a time and place to ask questions all of you are mute right now. if you can just hold your questions until the end of the presentation unless it's exceptionally pressing if you can order questions we'll try to get to all the questions at the end any questions we cannot get to you could simply email us and we will we will respond in kind okay. with that let's get started I want to thank I be an Eric and beat the GMAT for offering an incredible platform and service for people and thank you again for inviting us to participate and obviously there was you know me know that I'm a Cleveland sports team fan big time in the Browns just won a game yesterday. I'm in a really good mood because our record now is one in two or off to the races I must speak a little bit about the company first not a huge amount I think a lot of you know me from beat the GMAT and obviously you can look at our website but I do want to give a little bit of background just. you feel comfortable that I know what the heck I'm talking about on admit advantage basically helps candidates get into business school very simply and if it doesn't have anything to do with your GMAT anything else we do right. anything related to essay editing mock interview school selection helping you figure out who your recommenders be helping you find money etc consider that's our focus we work with people from the beginning people saying look I think I won't go to school I don't exactly know what I want to do but I want to go all the way to the end when people are accepted and they're notified that hey they should apply for the scholarship or they're accepted to multiple schools and need help determining which is the best option for them our process is exceptionally structured we're also reformed 'el scientist we really believe in a structured process especially in an era where 70% of the people applying or qualified get only you know eight to 25% get in for the top 20 schools it's really important to be thorough about the analysis of your background and your chances and your stories in order to harness your best application we've been very fortunate to have a really strong interest from alumni of these schools who also have been admissions officers and or second-year interviewers and. we've been able to hire a lot of diversity not just sort of racially but also more importantly in my opinion anyway in terms of careers. we have people that have been in fields like investment banking venture capital impact investing we have marketers from big companies and also small companies if that people have been involved in government either as lobbyists and or as speech writers in fact we had a speechwriter for justified in for a long time technology people consulting entrepreneurship real estate etc there are three main core tenants underlying our company one everyone that works in our company has to have been in through this process themselves. they need to have been an alum or actually a current student of a top-tier school they also need to be on the other side of the table in terms of being a second year interview or an alumni interviewer or someone that has been a professional within admissions what we're known to be very client focused that's kind of one of our hallmarks we believe in it we think it makes a company more exciting and also enables us to gather great stories and anecdotes from you to help you fashion your applications and then performance if if people are not getting into school then we're not happy and all this is from you and we've been very fortunate to work with incredible candidate around the world who are current students or are alumni of all of these schools and actually even more this is not this is not the full list but it's a representative list okay I am Kofi Kant Kim I am one of the founders really briefly Erika are fairly similar both work at extent from different cities I worked at net defend which is sort of a processor Skype I sold a software company I'm really sort of in the education of Technology I was fortunate to go to Harvard College our pursue degree in neurobiology I have a master's in IDI from Harvard and I went to Wharton was a joseph Wharton fellow ran the largest inland conference and also T aid our first year core marketing course you can see sort of our consultant back on spirits drawing you see some of the people on the on the right hand side eric is a very similar back when I went to brown graduate with honors from from Wharton and you know has built a company with me for the last couple of years. in terms of the diversity of consultants that we're all from sort of similar top firms top companies we have about 30 plus people that work with us you can see a lot of their profiles on our site they're all ones of Harvard and Wharton and Stanford and Columbia and Berkeley and Chicago and Kellogg and nyeo and Dartmouth and all kinds of schools like that and again we place people and top 20 schools in the States some of the top european school said and judge lbs and INSEAD some an age and a couple now increasingly in Latin America okay in terms of sa strategies one thing I want you to understand it's really critical is that you need to have a plan before you start writing ok you should not be jumping into your essays off the bat just immediately started starting right it's almost like some of these on their CV that watch like Meet the Press or some of these other sort of Sunday talk shows when you see that people go on there they have talking points before they get there they know what they want to include almost regardless of the question it's really important that you do the same thing the first thing that we recommend you think about is your personal brain and what are the stories experiences and accomplishments as well as the leadership characteristics around which you're gonna build your application okay and. imagine that someone's interviewing a sibling your best friend a parent a partner except I said what are the stories what are the things about John then they need to know about how to understanding as a person they're going to be a mixture of personal professional and academic sort of wins and experiences and it will be related leadership characteristics it's like being analytical being innovative being persuasive being a great communicator being able to make decisions limited information you know being able to leave without authority things of that nature that basically naturally draw from those specific stories experiences and accomplishments. no matter which direction you go if you're starting with the stories experiences accomplishment it's this thing okay here's a set of 10 what sorts of leadership characteristics today define about me if you go in that direction or you go on the other direction saying I want to write an application where you know I'm saying I won't really want to go into asset management. I really need to demonstrate that I am analytical or I really want to run a company I need to demonstrate that I am sort of innovative or you know I'm going to join a company and try to fight my way to the top I need to show that I am sort of persuasive you can start on that side think of those characteristics either that are relevant for your career or that are that are ones of leaders that you really respect business leaders political leaders on you know military leaders sports leaders etc it doesn't matter you can think of those stories and think those experiences are those um characteristics and then go to the stories or you can start with the stories and go to the characteristics but your brand will be a mixture of both the stories experiences and accomplishments as well as a critical leadership components and. what we've done here is just outline a couple right. if you're saying that you want to have a story that you have a strong analytical focus if that is a leadership characteristics that you want as part of your brand then you need to basically provide examples this is a show-and-tell experiment from business it's not telling someone that your analytical having nothing to back it up you have to show and tell across the different pieces of your application which are your assays your letters of recommendation the non-si data portion of your application your resume and then your interview if you get it. you definitely a four and you certainly if you get an interview that will be the fifth piece okay and you really need to make sure that you are highlighting sorry you're highlighting basically specific things about your background and and and and leveraging stories to explain it okay. don't just say your innovative basically really demonstrate that you know for this example you basically you helped reduce emissions by X percentage and you helped increase efficiency by X percentage within your manufacturing company in a way that had not been done before that's real innovation persuasive you can sort of see the example okay the the the take-home is really make sure that you were thinking about yourself holistically think about yourself from a professional community and personal aspect and realize that for the schools which you're applying it's not just enough to be qualified you also have to you know demonstrate that you're gonna be basically someone that other people can learn from and then you're interested in in that and that you've got a really sort of well-defined persona about you outside of just being dominant in your work force in your workplace also secondly realize that you really need to differentiate yourself okay. it's a fine line the one because you want to differentiate yourself we also want to be authentic and true to yourself. the way that you do that or the ways that you try to sort of employ this this desire to differentiate yourself include really speaking about your passion what is a catalyst for pushing you to go to business what is a catalyst for your career and again your career is not your first job after school it's not saying I want to go to sort of Columbia in order to go work in McKinsey that could be the case but is your desire to work at McKinsey does that exist in the long term like you know most of you are let's say in mid-20s okay. you're gonna a graduate Business School let's say at 28. let's say you work in a company for seven years when you're 35 36 when you start to pivot towards your long-term goal what is that that is really your passion right. the first three to seven years typically consider sort of this short term it's almost like going to business school again and in terms of getting a brand getting a network getting sort of experiences but the question is what is the passion beyond that. if you can focus on your long-term passion which hopefully matches your career then it'll be a great way for you to differentiate yourself especially if you're coming from a company or industry like let's say Goldman or consulting you know where a lot of people end up applying the business school coming from those sort of domains if you highlight your passion you'll find that you're able to. you'll be able to sort of separate yourself from other analysts you know the analysts here left in to you bright at your job that's applying with you okay realize that and you know you don't have to differentiate kids everyone. we always get people to call us every day and doing these consultations and say okay how to make myself different then then this other person. last week I spoke to someone who basically was a banker and he was asked me how am I going to differentiate myself against the bankers as well as you know all these other you know this sort of the person coming from Teach for America that wants to go to business school and he asked me he didn't ask me exactly in those terms but that was the gist of his question I said look you're not competing against the social the social sort of venture person the person coming from Teach for America that wants to sort of go to business school into microfinance you're competing against other bankers right and. realize that you're you're you're you don't have to sort of differential your self. much you don't recognize who you are you want to sort of stay in your silo and realize every year these schools are gonna accept a certain percentage. a number of X type of candidates and you want to sort of be amongst the best and also realize that many of you will be competing in different buckets right. you're not just in a model if you're not just in one bucket. for me when I applied for example I was competing as other entrepreneurs other black guys and other sort of Harvard Ivy League graduates right and. those are kind of the general buckets I was doing as I was trying to be sort of a leader or dominant in each of those three and. really think about that a little bit in terms how you differentiate yourself realize again when you plotted these schools everybody's good literally everyone is good at the top 20 schools 70% of people apply or admissible they'd only you know only sort of 10 to 25 per second and. brasstacks numbers if you have 20 applicants applying 6 and will be garbage bad GMAT bad GPA poor work experience at least 14 that are very qualified if I took those 14 and I showed them to a professor on campus I said these are the people that are gonna be you know in your class you know those professors would have no problem with that of those qualified 14 2 to 5 or again again right which is 10 to 25%. realize that you know they're two sides that the first is that grades are sort of not good enough everybody's got that and the second side is that means that you need to basically really be developing the other pieces of your of your application okay other sides of your of your story in your narrative also realizing to tie the relevance to specific. when you were thinking about going to schools we talked a lot of people every day and to be honest with you all of you kind of want to go to the same schools the same 5 to 5 to 10 schools but I can always tell when someone is really passionate about a school based on their articulation of why and that's something that you want to do also because admissions officers are second about that it's not enough to say I want to go to Harvard because you know how I think it's the most important school in the world or my sibling right there or I read about Meg Whitman going to the Harvard Business School no you need to be a little bit clearer today it's because it's going to help meet the cases or here are specific courses and professors I want to study under here are specific clubs and organizations that are relevant to my career either previous or in the future that I want to be a part of and lead then here's how it fits my long-term goal every school wants to hear for this it would be a great opportunity for you to showcase your knowledge of the school which to be honest with you a lot of people don't do they don't think it's important. they just you know they they write about sort of the school very generically and think it's obvious why they want to go to the school and it is in a sense of a brand and making more money but it's not obvious why I necessarily want to go to Kellogg over over booth right or they want to go to Wharton over Clemmy etc that's always clear and. it's really important that you differentiate yourself across these these indices okay in terms of big picture sell the dream. a painting clear picture let them know how you know them being the mission to let them know you know how you're different how it's relevant to your peers and advantageous to your peers and how business school is gonna help you achieve your long-term goal do not just focus on the first step after business school the first job of the first placement this is about your career okay make sure you're painting a viable bridge to the future I think those who than other webinars I've done I've heard me talk about you know Kyle we had that wanted to start a hedge fund in Hong Kong immediately when he graduated okay he you know he didn't speak he wasn't Asian he didn't speak in a just major in English didn't work in an investment bank or finance he basically was a social venture guy who's I'm. he was like sort of a a non-profit guy and you know I think he sort of got tired of being you know having a lot of money and it sounded sexy. I'm gonna start this company and me'll when I graduate that's not realistic right that's not a realistic bridge if he said look I'm gonna join a McKinsey working in financial services I'm then gonna sort of try to get into a financial services company by the way while I'm in school I'm gonna learn Mandarin etc and I'm gonna sort of work McKinsey try to transition to an office in you know in mainland China and then basically try to transition you know trying to link up with other people learn the ropes learn the industry and then launched my own hedge fund you know seven to ten years after I graduate that's a realistic path. make sure you've got a realistic path dream big but make sure the path is real okay also I will tell you this may sound obvious but there are. many people that come to us and they've already started writing they say I want you to review our application I say we'll send me send me your outline and they you know say we don't know I don't have an outline and you know we didn't have this in a slide before I think I can't believe how many people are writing applications without outlines right you have to have an outline it's really important list for your first school you want to make sure that you are tying in your character your characteristics the character trades as well as the stories experiences accomplishments across the four to five platforms I mentioned write again your letters of recommendation sort of the non-si data portion of your application your resume your essays in your interviews if you are not pulling all that together if you are not. making sure the pieces are integrated and and in complementary you were not going to have a balanced application and you also don't have an effective application all right places where you have options for your essays choose ones that work with your brand if you don't do the brand upfront then you're not gonna know you know which essays to choose when you're given the option choose two of the following five essay topics okay make sure that you are answering the whole question. write out the details of each ask the question and I mean this in the context of some essays will gonna be a three part essay and basically they'll give you six in two words I can't tell many times I see people that kind of spend the first the first part of a specific kind of essay you know spending 300 words then they spend 250 words on sort of the second section they get to the third and think ah I only have fifty words okay I'm just gonna like 50 words answer the third section just because a section is a third section doesn't mean it's unimportant that's not as important as the first two. make sure you're answering all the essay questions in full again if you do an essay question if you do an outline matter for your first school you probably don't have to do it for all of yours but you really do need to consider doing it for the first one unless you are an exceptional writer maybe you've applied before or you're getting a huge amount of help I really even if you're getting helps in the company like ours I still would give an outline frankly okay it's also really important for you to you know to leverage your research okay do the research. there and I sound like sort of a parent actually I'm a new parent but I still like a parent and say you know there's. much information online and my day didn't have it's true like I'm 104 there wasn't as much information online back in the fall with a1 when I was you know I was looking at applying now there's. much information where people get placed you know the breakdown of the class coming in average GMAT scores GPAs etc um you need to know that stuff alright. it's all on the website you can sort of visit the school very easy to do especially in the fall it provided you can get there right those of you that are I just focus on two days ago they said literally two days in New York City and the person said I have not visited you know it's gonna be a problem if I don't visit the schools and applying to in her schools were Columbia NYU Yale Wharton Harvard and tuck okay the first three Columbia and why the first two Columbia and why you're in New York City Yale is 90 minutes north Wharton is basically about 100 105 minutes south and she's not applying around to. naturally you can imagine my response was get on a train subway or Amtrak and visit these schools if you're in close proximity there's really no excuse not to visit it'll highlight your passion is something you can mention in your application and some schools will ask you directly have you been to our school okay. visit the school if you're not in those areas most schools travel at this level around the world go to a local session will also meet alumni in your area you'll meet people that potentially can help you and advocate for you if you get wait-listed it's a really important to do speak to alumni all of you for the most part probably went to college okay I'm University you all have alumni that have been to these schools I would encourage you to go to your alumni go to your Alumni Association if your undergraduate University and say I want to talk to you five to ten people that have gone to and why you were warned or Harvard and they probably will help you do that okay and have those discussions it's really important to do to sort of give you a non-glossy sort of brochure vision of your school and understanding of your school and that maturity that mature perspective will carry through within your application itself and really be able to speak to what I school is a good fit okay because some schools are not if it's if you're basically Tali saying you're not really you really want to do analytics you're really analytical and you're really sort of number driven Kellogg may not be the place for you right I mean you know Booth may be right. just be clear about why it's a good fit if you're saying I want to really want to do energy I love energy I want to get into oil and gas and you're looking at going to just not to pick on them listen you're looking to go to Dartmouth that may not be a good fit all right and may be better for you to sort of go to a school that's clinical not considered as good right but that's they are like UT awesome just an amazing school that may be a better fit for you based on the fact that you want to do oil right it being in Texas. just keep that in mind be able to articulate that both to yourself and to the admissions committee members okay let's talk now a little about the essay types. you have the story I say okay. this is a common essay this used to be sort of more popular you see in different formats but why do you want to go to our school why do you want to get an MBA why do you want to get it now right tell us about your short and long term goals you know how is your back when relevant pursuing MBA there are lots of variations but they're kind of all the same sort of craft a narrative about yourself right tell us about yourself tell us well how Business School fits in your and your goals very common um now you know business schools have sort of evolved and they've gotten a little bit less direct in terms of the I asked this kind of question but this kind of these kinds of themes come up pretty much in every single essay every single application for business school okay. what you want to do our tips are obvious answer the questions right answer the question asked if the school asks for short and long term goal on goals rather answer that question first if you have space left over then you know talk about sort of why you want to go to that school but don't write about why I want to go to that school and not answer your long term goals the portion the thing that was really asked for okay this is also a good place for you to provide context right what was the catalyst for you on the business was a catalyst for you pursuing a certain kind of field now you obviously are gonna have to be judicious in your word allocation because you're not gonna have a lot of real estate to write but I can't tell you how often a really finely crafted sentence let's call it 17 to 25 words that provides some context for a goal can like totally frame the essay and make and that's. that was pretty good magical. make sure you're doing that if you if you have capacity to do. right do not cut and paste right. I answered a couple questions today I'm beat the GMAT where somebody asked about sort of doing booths sort of powerpoints and they want to sort of make this MIT optional it's okay I would modify tweak do not just cut and paste write and try to think about each school you can use the same sort of themes you can use the same sort of stories use the same kind of leadership characteristics but I'd be very wary about taking an essay here that's slightly off-topic that's 400 words and trying to like fit another essay that's maybe 25% different but it's 200 words don't just think you're just gonna take that essay and sort of wrap it into the into the take the form and wrap it into the latter that prod will not go well for my experience and again be is specific about the school when possible every school want you know these schools are very proud they also know that you're applying to other schools and. you want to be very clear about why their schools gonna fit and and and dirty little secret unless probably not. much of a secret now schools do manage their yields they are concern about the reals ie they want to you know they want whoever they accept generally to come right and as partially other evaluated and ranked it's kind of like bragging right. a school doesn't want to accept you if they even if you're qualified if they know you're not going to come and if you don't put in details about a specific school they may think that you know actually don't really care that much about this you don't you're not really that knowledge about the school ergo you have your your eyes on some other school. just keep that in mind you just sort of write your applications another essay type is describe yourself right. how a classmate described you pretending you're running for a club and you've got to give your speech as to why I should be the leader of the club what club would it be and what would your speech say if I visited you two years after you graduated and interviewed a good friend on campus how would they say that you made an impact they're all kind of the same fanatic stuff right this is a classic differentiation question they're not going to say how are you a different candidate than someone else and this is how they do it all right this is not a take me through your resume type of question a lot of candidates right yes and describe yourself and they literally look at the resume they put up Microsoft Word split their screen look at the resume and sort of take everything in a resume you know from from sort of the furthest in the past to the present just write that don't do that right you have to make some choices about what's the most relevant all right you've got to think about in terms your admitted advantages think about your brand and make sure you're Holly the leadership characteristics that you'd already decided as part of your base your platform right think about highlighting certain key roles a lot of you have five to eight bullet points for each job you've had you may have had three jobs right you can't highlight everything. take maybe two of those jobs or if you do all three take the things that you've done that really encapsulate on your total experience in that job and it's usually going to be something like a key role or a key sort of impact or legacy left alright if you are somebody that you know is kind of reticent shy you have to get out of that you've got to break out of that you have to sort of beat your chest you have to basically promote yourself you don't do that nobody will do that okay this leaky wheel does get the oil in a lot of cases if you're someone that is loquacious and doesn't talk and listening if you're wondering who the loudmouth arrogant jerk is in the room and you can't figure it out it could be you right if you are that person I'm sort of saying that tongue in cheek you know don't be. arrogant right. dial it back a little bit be a little bit subtle um you don't have to you know you don't have to hit someone over the head if you basically you know did a deal that garnered you know thirty million dollars for your company you don't have to write about that for you know two hundred words you can sort of subtly state that or directly stated for that matter very short succinctly and fifty to seventy-five words and keep it moving and that's kind of what you want you want to sort of have an idea of kind of what you look like in sort of your your your overall personality to determine you know sort of which can't be fallen okay there are also behavioral questions right this is very typical to this often happens in interviews but you do see them in essay types as well. tell me at a time when right tell me at a time when you fail tell me about a time you had to overcome opposition to an idea tell me about a time when you basically had to manage you know you have to manage peers I had you know higher titles and more position more seniority company that's it used to be more common but these questions are still out there right there are many different kinds of iterations the types like if you get a general feel this is typically the part where you're given an option I choose to or one of the next three op3 essay questions this is typically behavioral because sometimes you don't have you know if they just gave you one type you may not have an experience like that. often they give you a couple different types. you know something you're back and we'll click with one of the asset questions right this is kind of like your your case interviews of those who've you've worked at worked at you know consulting companies we're as much as they're just in the answer the interest has driven the thought process and sort of the overall experience. and how you react and respond in to a particular situation our tips are don't be afraid to give real examples you know this is also sort of related when people say what's my biggest weakness my biggest weakness is I'm too ambitious right that's not a big real weakness right. make sure you're sort of your authentic your real it's okay to have a flaw it's okay to have a failure as long as sir observe lessons that have been learned and ideally if his similar situation is arisen later in the future or you know after that incident of that failure and you're able to sort of apply the lessons from that fear to that incident that's even better right. give me a lessons real example sing about lessons learned be very clear about how this impacted your life this is sort of passing hate to say it's a Cleveland Airport test right this is your moment to sort of show that you were an interesting dynamic person you're thoughtful reflective and you're not just sort of Joe capitalist who's looking to go to business school to make a lot of money and and drive a Bentley nothing wrong with that at all right but business schools are looking for at this point in time they position themselves to be looking for people who are also leaders who are community participators who are people that are making an impact with different groups and this is a chance for you to sort of just seem a little bit more reflective okay this is really important it's really necessary for you to choose your essays wisely and just because I just obviously there's echoing chambers on beat the GMAT and Business Week whatever these different places where you see an essay question you think everyone's answering these two essays I have to answer them you don't they're not and you don't okay. make sure you're really authentic and it ties in with your brand your a narrative that you're trying to advance within your application and again this gets down to what your story and also to soar next enter your competing against you have leadership essays right. um you know this is this is where you sort of need to think about sort of the impact you've had the legacy of left you know getting into school it's not just about sort of having different roles it's not really making an impact they're looking for people young people who have made an impact they could say that's a winning horse I believe this person is going to be have we given the tools and experiences and and sort of you know the network in theatre can be able to take everything that they've done in the past and sort of blow it up on a bigger stage we're gonna give them an amp we're gonna be able to amplify what they've done. they're looking for examples of leadership they're looking for exam of impact and legacy um think about what you've done beyond the call of duty okay. if you've if you've had a role and you've mastered that role let's and then let's say a a fellow analyst was fired let's say your boss you know was going through divorce and he or she got distracted you had to sort of take on the role think about sort of these kinds of examples when you're writing the leadership essay okay everyone all of you should have a concept an idea of of how you lead now some of you have had more experience during that than others but all of us neither LED or bin let and those of us who've worked for tough bosses know they're oftentimes we think you know I could have done that that's. differently or I would have done that differently I could have done better well now is your chance. you should have a conception of how you lead either based on real experience leading or having been led right this is also a great opportunity for you to get corroboration with your recommenders of your leadership. if you're basically saying I let this amazing project I brought in 30 million dollars of new revenue or I saved X number of hundred thousands of dollars in costs I saved this is a great time to have a recommender say that it sounds a lot more credible than when it's just you saying it right if you work in teams those you work for big companies you're doing deals you're doing approaches you know etc you're integrating I was a consultants you know I know what that's like you need to focus on what you did necessary what your team did now I'm gonna read about in the journal I want to know what you did specifically. make sure when you're writing your application you're very clear about your own specific contributions to a particular task okay and don't make the mistake that we see if candidates who write and definitely about this amazing deal and you know and they spend 10% writing about what they've done to make that deal possible okay then you've got sort of strengths weaknesses accomplishments deployments generally kind of similar themes right give real examples right really make sure that you are tied in to your brand because you're gonna have. many and you've got to make sure that you can go back to your outline go back to your your your your branding documents and really think about okay what is it that I really have to include in my application if you have weaknesses if you have losses of disappointments please again highlight lessons learned in actions taken it's not enough to recognize we have a weakness if you recognize you have a weakness and you don't do anything about it that's a problem right that's more of a problem than actually not even recognizing a weakness and everything should be consistent as mentioned last two. the optional si okay this is an S if it does it's optional optional means you don't have to do it. do not do it if you don't need it if you are thinking about what are the things that could be included typically its gaps in an application it could be a gap like look the schools asking for you to give a boss recommendation but you can't do it because if you're Boston you're going to be we're gonna business school you'd be fired or you'd lose your bonus. if you have a senior associate do it this is where the option alyssa to explain why that's the case which incidentally is not a big deal on if there were errors in your brand which weren't addressed this is where you could address it I'd be wary about doing that unless the optional essay specifically tells you like tell us something that we didn't touch on but if they say what's your biggest weakness and you're writing hey I got a 7:30 on my gmail I was testing the 760 nobody wants to hear that don't do that okay this is a place where you should talk about gaps in your work experience I think anything over anything over four months I personally I'll probably write about or if you have to even two to three month gaps in the working experience let's say if five years fan I probably right about that a little bit okay I talked about nitrogen recommendations if you have holes again what you're doing to address them. I didn't do well in my GMAT but you know I'm taking some course I've got a bad GPA but I you know I decided to take courses in accounting stats economics finance in order to sort of boost my boost my I my my qualifications from the analytical perspective. this is where you kind of want to do that stuff if you were given four into words or fire in two words space and you write you like that say I only use 200 words stop you don't need to fill up the remaining 300 words just because you feel like your essay is not not fleshed out enough don't use the word capacity as the barometer for whether or not your application is finished or your essays finished in this instance we applicants take a look at your old applications if you apply dip eclis two plus years ago they're not going to use them necessarily but you also don't know if someone's gonna take a look at them and you don't want to sort of have to say especially applied last year I talked to a guy a couple weeks ago and he said I probably laughter I wanted to clean tag what do you think I should say this year and I said well you know he was thinking about something different like you say not something like banking and I said I that could work but you've got it tight and you can't just be somebody different this year because last year's person didn't get in in terms of your goals your goals can be refined you obviously can have a better better GMAT I mean you took some courses but do not present yourself as a totally different person because they're gonna confuse admissions man you know which one personally which one's authentic both either one or neither right highlight differences in previous applications. if you know if you got feedback and kind of felt like hey my my my leadership was not strong my last application or my social my commitment to sort of work in the community or contributing was not strong kinda like that it's really important to do. but I'd say ultimately if you're looking at this year's application you applied last or even here before and you realize and you don't have a lot in you to say then you probably should think about whether or not it makes sense to apply now maybe you should apply next year I know that's a hard thing to think about but it's true okay. we're gonna get to questions and minute Eric will keep my Eric will punch me in the face if I don't say some of the things we have a bunch of obviously packages I think those even our website have seen we've also added new things new streamlined packages from listening to our audience you said you've wanted sort of more of light touch stuff. we have more light touch stuff streamline is just essays you know just sort of throughout San si editing keeping it moving we have a final review package at a thousand bucks which is no phone support and we've got targeted services if you want client branding if you want outline if you want any that kind of stuff you can get it. based on our website now with our company if you have 250 plus Bucks descent which I think even if it's not our company I think you should be having you should have that you should be willing to sort of spend that kind of money if you're applying to top-tier school it's an investment in yourself and again it even if it's not with us we've got stuff on our site though that will hopefully appeal to you okay still be out early still do doing analysis if you apply last year did not get anyone and what happened and you're applying this year come our way we'll talk to you about it we'll look at your old stuff we have a pre application package for those of you that are not applying until next year on we certainly can help you sort of get your ducks in order polish up your assets make sure you're well positioned to really launch yourself next year okay we have other things coming on and pre-application webinar case studies next week we're doing our infamous candidate success stories probably the couple new new candidates follow us on facebook twitter or a blog we don't do nearly enough on that because we're way too busy but we're gonna try to get better and we work with clintus review those of you not taking a GMAT and you want to take your GMAT and you're looking for help we like prints from you there other companies out there if you do work with princess room you threw us a get a 15% discount and lastly if you've not had a free consultation and you want one and that doesn't mean with you know we only get one per company. if you talk to Eric unfortunately I will not do another consultation with you but if you'd like a consultation and you cannot talk to either of us go to sketch that me and sign up schedule me a slash admit advantage or go to the contact us portion of our website and you can shoot me personally email cake and Kim at admit advantage calm and as mentioned we do a 10% discount for our beat the Jeana people you guys there are people um and you can just type in 1908 1908 it check out and you'll get a 10 percent discount on everything we offer okay with that lets up for questions if there are questions let's open up just typing your questions and and B will help summarize them and then we'll go from there you okay. we have a question from Ned what do you do if you're not a hundred percent sure what your dream is the main point of getting an MBA from me is to open doors to other careers and get back to the u.s. I'm an expat is it even worth applying if you have no 100% specific dream or does that basically mean you have no chance with the average GMAT GMAT scores um that's a good question. look there is some gamesmanship in terms of getting into school um I think that when I think of career now you may not know exactly what you want to do but think about it along these axes okay. think about in terms of role role / function industry title and maybe location right Ned and you should have an idea of some of that stuff right. you know you may know that for example you want to sort of do marketing you may know that your industry generally is let's call it real estate maybe you want to real estate market maybe you wanted to finance fancy services marketing like ie you want to market credit cards for like American Express maybe you want to do that in the States or maybe you want to do it in in Singapore you want to do that in the UK like you should have some general feeling for what you want to do right it sounds like you do but opening career career doors it's not specifically for one of the reasons it's not specific enough is because companies are on campus as soon as you get there literally different campus sometimes within a couple of weeks two to three weeks and. if you don't have an idea of that you're gonna be behind the book behind the ball. you've got to have an ID again think about it in terms of of industry role / function title and location and you probably have at least two of those figure it out in order to write a compelling application I'm just writing to Rack my brain if I've seen someone write a compelling application who hasn't had at least two of those and I don't necessarily think I don't think I have. you should have a general idea of that and if you don't have an idea start talking to people and again this is for the purposes of applying its business goal you obviously if you get in you'll have some time before you matriculate to really fleshed out and you can change your mind but you have to have a specific direction heading in especially as you get older okay question from anakata does your advice also apply to react in essays or do you have any specific advice for reallocates I'm not sure exactly what advice you're suggesting but yes my application generally does my advice does apply to all applicants for the first time or second or third time from Vanessa how long does it take to complete an average application with admitted manage oh that's a good question I would say generally you should leave look we've done three essay three app three applications with people in four weeks I never want to do that again but we certainly want half deal sure um I would say you know if you're moving at a reasonable clip and you're not sort of super pressed I would say you probably can do your first school and about three to four weeks and each additional schooling about two and a half to three weeks from je Rousseau how specific must you be in mentioning specific assets of the school program professors clubs specific classes people you've met what if you can't miss in the school and call me miss an info session I think the more specificity the better I would say I would I would probably place emphasis on classes / courses professors and clubs those things can all be derived online people you've met you may not meet anybody that's okay if you can't get to info session if that's if that's it that's it but I definitely would at least have those first three okay from a new any specific considerations we should take for early action deadlines versus regular deadlines I would just say be clear that you want to go to the school right because a lot of these some of these ones like for Columbia you apply early you have to put them a six thousand dollar deposit within two weeks we didn't yeah I think it's two weeks historically it's been like that anyway. be clear about that I think that there's kind of an understanding that you obviously want to go to that school who's replying early but I still would not take my foot off the gas and. really clearly articulating what it is about a specific school that's attracting you to that school. beyond that no I think I think that's fine from fear for low GPAs do you recommend taking additional courses to increase my GPA before applying absolutely yes if you have time to do it. it's not gonna improve your GPA right but it's going to build what's called an alternative transcript and you'll be able to sort of articulate a narrative of you know I was distracted in college or something came up in college that's why my grades weren't as strong but look I took courses in accounting finance stats economics or some subset of those and I got A's in those course as well as working and I have a 700 plus g-men. clearly when I'm focused I can do the work College was a couple of years ago I unfortunately wasn't as focused as I needed to be but I do have the intellectual horsepower to do the work that is the purpose of the courses that's what you're trying to achieve ergo if you are not getting aids in those courses if you're not gonna be committed to getting an A in those courses in a range then you shouldn't really take it don't waste your time and money and usually when I say committed to the effort usually those courses are really about effort like if you sort of show up do the work talk to the professor's tell them what you're about or her what you're about you can kind of automatically be in the B range if you do your homework and then you just sort of need to be B+ range and then you just need a couple things to the break and you can get an A we've seen many students this were sort of C students at college take something on a course that can put hard schools and get A's a minuses. I assume that most of you can do that and you should realize that's what you need to do all right from Quran or Karen in terms of repeating resume items in the goals essay and appeared goals essay with were constraints 500 how much of the essay should want allocate towards hile any individual traits compared to school fit ask because some of the individual it's look like a resume we Pete um. I mean this is kind of a specific Karen I email or specific questions I would agree with you that on if there if you find yourself writing if you if you're looking at a saying you find yourself just regurgitating what's on your resume and we're leaving out other things which are not on your resume I would definitely flip that script and sort of try to focus more. on the stuff that's not in my resume let the stuff in the resume stand for itself however I I don't think for your goals essay your goals are forward-looking it resonates the past. there really shouldn't be that much from your resume on your goals as they should just be the catalyst it should just be maybe something you did which has some kind of care of or a specific skill set you know specific set of experiences but your goals essay and handling because its face because it's based on the future look forward looking it should not be sort of a carbon copy of what you've done on your resume which is already accomplished inherently those two things should be somewhat different right but you probably are gonna have some of the things in the past that are covered on your resume in your goals I think you're just not a huge huge amount of it okay from Reuben any advice on using personal hobbies or activities for my application um I think that your if your hobby is not marked by an accomplishment then I probably would just relegate that to the non-si data portion of my application however if your hobby is turned into some kind of passion that you have an accomplishment behind then I would consider that we consider putting it in my in my essay basically you have to be very you have to be a gatekeeper to what you put in your essay I've seen people that are very accomplished and I just feel like they weren't discriminating enough in terms of what they put in their ass I just feel like they put garbage stuff that was really not that important in the rest hey you like you want to be your essays are the most importantly the most important piece of your application some people say your recommendations but I think your essays especially because they're sort of your words and you don't want to write about a hobby sort of playing intramural soccer in like an accomplishment essay right now I gave this example a couple weeks ago we had a guy that wanted to work for FIFA which is a International Football Association and he set up a soccer league in the Pacific Northwest and then raised a whole bunch of money he had like 20 plus teens contributing it was amazing we read about in the papers whatever that was a hobby that he could elevate to being in his essays because there was accomplish behind it was really close to what he wanted to do professionally otherwise for most hobbies rock climbing whatever you know bike riding running iPod would not make that the topic of an essay all right okay from shift deep any specific advice for hardcore techies for example I don't have a lot of business experience or decision-making experience that's what I'm looking at a business before that's great because that's what Business School is looking for also right. again to keep this is kind of what I'm saying the context of you're not competing against someone that works in business you're competing against other tech people what I would say is that you want to have a clear idea as to why you want to go to business school from the perspective of what you want to do and also the perspective of of what the reason is for going and also we see a lot of tech people let's say looking about this technical skills understand technology I you know I've been involved in some business meetings and I didn't get a chance to sort of I didn't really understand the strategy I wanted I want to be on the strategy side because I want to make more than as soon as I feel like when I was making the best decisions but I don't have the requisite background in accounting and marketing and Finance and and sort of managing people to do that that's one NBA sense where people that say look I've got a very strong technological background I want to sort company I want to be the next Anil Ambani or you know or some kind of Jeff Bezos I want to be an entrepreneur and run my own company I know that I've got to marry my technical expertise with my with sort of my burgeoning interest in business for which nothing right no nothing but you get the point. it's totally fine for you to say that I wouldn't worry about that at all that's why you're looking at a business school that's right and Business School Admission Sui members to know that anyone questions ok from Tara some advice for a family business applicants small business background fiends I should focus on like leadership initiative interpersonal skills etc um I don't know if that's a question but I look I don't think that I think if you're coming from a family business on I think the most important thing is you firstly need to stay are you going to business school to leave the family business are you gonna miss school to run the family business if you're gonna miss school to run the family business eventually then what you should be sort of talking about is in my opinion develop certain certain traits and certain skills that address gaps in the family business or how you want to take the fame to the next level and you need to know X Y & Z I think it's it gives you a great impetus to go to business school it gives you a great reason there's a certain kind of authenticity about sort of saying uh I think the only business does X amount of dollars in revenue my parents didn't have the experience to go and have experience to do blank blank blank go international you know it's in Portugal and therefore I want to go to business school at a school like Warren which is I wanted to learn operations marking the etc etc. I can bring that back to the bits I think I would I would definitely couch your training and your need to go to business school as part of the family business I also think that in terms of the recommendations in terms of recommendations need to be careful about who writes some you obviously can't Ness I have a parent. I look towards the supplier I like towards maybe I like an accountant and you know someone that works with your business who is necessarily in your business who has theoretical little less concern about sort of being fired being reprimanded for saying the wrong thing in your recommendation. it's something you definitely need to think about think about your title as well right if you're sort of in a family business and you sort of do everything you've got a loose title don't have a loose title for the purpose of your application get something nailed down that's credible it's authentic with what you're doing and go from there all right from Joe s I know you probably get this a lot but what about older applicants 31 years old the burden will be why now I feel like if it is still in my career any advice on how to approach um I think that fit a ceiling is okay but that is that sort of belies it doesn't really support the theory I'm sort of a - doing really well my career for Billy Hanson my career's T not going well I need a reset no top 15 top 20 business schools gonna find that really sexy. what I would say is an older applicant is why now could be look I've been doing really well in my career and I've hit a place where you know in order for me to get to the next level in my career it's really important that I get an MBA or if it employment career where I've acquired a certain amount of skill set and Moxie it now in sort of context I want to launch my own business you know in this field and I need a business sort of sort of teaching more things about running a company as well as building a network and building sort of certain experiences or exposure I also think that you could you should be writing favourably you should be trying to go on offense Joe. you should not be concern about being old you should be you're not old frankly you should be you should be making a younger applicants field concerned about how they compare to you. I would be say I would be highlighting the fact that it's a great thing I've got eight eight nine years experience you know I'm gonna bring this experience to bear and a B and C ways I'm gonna basically open my contacts up I'm gonna help train I industry I'm gonna be their conduit for that I'm gonna I'm gonna basically be better than a 27 year old version of Joe that's how you need to be thinking aggressively all right okay this is the last question from Deepak in the differentiate yourself essay if you describe all of your best abilities in the context of you your professional activities your risk sounding too narrow okay. if you're looking at differentiate yourself and you're only saying it's perfectly are you too narrow or is it better to talk about multiple spheres to present yourself as a more rounded person that's a good question I think it varies Canada Canada that's right the fence I think that if I had to sort of air cues from one side I would choose the professional side I think there's way too many people that sort of don't speak about their professional accomplishments and think they can just get into school just based on having a CO hobby. I with I was err on that side but you should have some perfection of some personal and academic differentiating characteristics as well it's not enough just to have professional I you should have some abilities outside of that right you should have some things in your background sizing because a lot of you are applying from similar industries and you know if your best friend may be able to tell how you're different then someone else in that same industry but in admissions meaning remember to us look at our application for half now that could be hard. it's often two personal things the personal characteristics personal stories personal catalysts that are really going to help set you apart from other people. you have to have both but you need to make sure that you're demonstrating professionally that you're a hitter and you're doing exceptionally well okay. with that let's um end the webinar I really preach to all of you being on hopefully was helpful I know we went through things pretty quickly if you need help you want to chat about you know potentially how we can help you reach out if you want a free consultation reach out it's all on the website and you give me an email personally cake aunt Kim at admit advantage calm I try to get back to you as soon as I can Thanks