The Undiscovered Essay

Spock and Kirk look at me in disappointment. They thought that I had found a fifth question on the Harvard application. Or at least an undiscovered country.

I have my application materials in so many places, it is unreal. I have copies of stuff on my home laptop, on my work laptop, on Google docs and even copies on a backup storage drive. I thought it would all be oh so easy to just use Google docs for everything. The only problem is...Google docs does not support some features on Word. So then it just becomes easier to have some things in Word format. They suddenly there are copies of the things everywhere.

Today I started writing a new essay for the Kellogg application. As I started to write it... I suddenly felt a deja-vu. This all seems so familiar! I did a search here and there... nothing. Then I had a look at my Google docs account. Ah ha! I have written this essay before! Has all this been going on so long that I've forgotten what I have and haven't done :-/ ...

I need some program to sync my documents in various places. Windows of ten years ago (i.e. Windows 98) used to come with a 'briefcase' feature to do this. I wonder what happened to that.

In other news, yes - I too noticed the Silence of the Applicants. But it seems like it was more to do with holidays than anything else. It's good to start seeing some of their posts again.

Let the Games begin!

MBA applicants from across the world gather for the annual competition for Business School entry to begin.

As HappyBunny notes, athletes of varying type gathered in Beijing on 08/08/08 for the start of one type of games. In the meanwhile, Wharton and Kellogg opened their applications over the weekend to let another set of games ramp up to full speed.

I feel like the application process has now really got into full swing. Applications are now open for all my target schools. At the moment I seem to be spending more time talking to my recommenders and discussing ideas than anything else. This is both a little frustrating, because I am not working much on my essays, but I also want them to get going on writing their part of the application. With five schools, I really feel they have a lot of work ahead of them.

In the meanwhile, the Dollar has strengthened over the last two weeks, slightly increasing the cost of any US MBA education to foreigners. Interesting times lie ahead!

GMAT's Sentence Correction source admits Errors

If you've done the GMAT, you might know that many of the sentences used in the Sentence Correction part of the exam are taken from the New York Times and are then modified by GMAC for the purposes of the exam. One such example of this can be found here.

Though this will not really be useful for anyone yet to take the exam, an article has now been published by the New York Times highlighting the common errors they themselves print in the newspaper. Here is the link to the article and the header...

The Error That Won’t Die

By Philip B. Corbett

Even in the rush to publish, writers and editors at The Times strive for polish and precision in our prose. Sometimes we succeed.

But sometimes, after the dust settles, we are dismayed to see painful grammatical errors or embarrassing faults in usage. A quick fix might be possible online; otherwise, the lapses become lessons for next time.

These comments are adapted from After Deadline, a weekly newsroom critique overseen by Philip B. Corbett, the deputy news editor who is also in charge of The Times’s style manual. The goal is not to chastise, but to point out recurring problems and suggest solutions.

Since most writers encounter similar troubles, we think these observations might interest general readers, too.

Harvard is capitalism’s cauldron?!

Yesterday morning one of my recommenders came by my desk at work and gave me a press cutting from the Financial Times. The story was a book review of Philip Delves Broughton's new book, Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School (or in the UK called What They Teach You at Harvard Business School: My Two Years Inside the Cauldron of Capitalism).


Below are extracts from the piece in the Financial Times, as well as another piece I found in a different paper, The Times. Enjoy!

Financial Times: A ‘poet’ in capitalism’s cauldron

...

All business schools pride themselves on recruiting “poets”, the non-traditional students who bring a different perspective to the classroom, usually populated by engineers, bankers or information technology specialists – or in the case of Harvard, according to Delves Broughton, by the “three Ms”: mormons, military and McKinsey.

...

Two themes stand out. The first is the extent to which students use their two years at HBS, frequently described by the school as transformational, to enact their aspirations and change their working lives. The answer in Delves Broughton’s cohort would seem to be very little, with most graduates succumbing to the inexorable pull of the lucrative banking and consultancy sectors, which they often went to HBS to escape.
The other is that of ethics. During his time at HBS, US business schools faced a dilemma after one applicant found a way to hack into the applications website and discover unofficially whether he had been accepted. He published the relevant web addresses online and many others followed suit, leaving an electronic trail. Harvard, like other top schools, rescinded any offers intended for these applicants. A straw poll in Delves Broughton’s class shows about three-quarters believe the Harvard administration‘s decision was “excessive and self-righteous”.

The Times: What They Teach You at Harvard Business School

...

The result of Delves Broughton’s time there is this funny and revealing insider’s view, revealing precisely because he is genuinely fascinated by the world of business, and his fascination is infectious. Yet feelings of unease emerge even before he arrives. He reads a student guide on What to Bring. “Don’t bring that guitar . . . Don’t bring any books from literature or history classes . . . Don’t bring your cynicism. Do bring all the diverse rest of you. We can’t wait to share the experience.” Immediately, his bolshie British bullshit- detector thrums into life: “Who were these people? And why did they talk like this? Why can’t I bring my cynicism? Or my books? Aren’t they a part of the ‘diverse rest of me’?” “Your calendar will be jam-packed with amazing, fun things to do,” warbles the guide.

Amazingly, despite this terrible threat, he persists. Instantly, he is swamped with work: company case studies, spreadsheet analysis, books called things such as Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado, intended to make him feel he’s doing something terribly daring and manly. He is surprised at the large presence of earnest Mormons and unimaginative former-military men in this cauldron of capitalism. But gradually this begins to make sense, for HBS is pervaded with an oppressive atmosphere of unquestioning obedience and creepy religiosity. There is the confessional My Reflected Best-Self exercise, to encourage students “to create a developmental agenda for leveraging their reflected best-self” and “work maximally from positions of strength”. Approved results sound like this: “I do not take on the negative energy of the insecure . . . I stay centred . . . I try to model the message of integrity, growth and transformation.” Delves Broughton is quietly incredulous that people actually talk about themselves like this, in public, straight-faced.

This is what it must be like to be a book author.

I woke up in this morning still a little bit drunk. My friends and I had been out last night in West Hampstead (just outside central London), after which we continued drinking at a friend's. I had been pretty much procrastinating all day yesterday trying to figure out what to write for my next essays. In my pocket I carried a sheet of paper that summarised the questions across the schools. I scribbled ideas on this throughout the night. One of my friends kept poking me, 'what matters to you most is Balance'. Personally, this does not ring true for me. Besides, haven't we been through this already?

I went about my Sunday routine today - in my case exercising for a bit then having brunch (because it's too late in the day to be having breakfast). Then I started working on writing. Sometimes an idea comes and I can write four or five hundred lines. At other times, I revisit my earlier writing and think 'urg!' - I need to do that again. Today neither would not be the case. Despite the scribbles on my piece of paper, nothing feels compelling. I'm not able to write anything that jumps off the page. I go for a walk to the town center in Harrow, where I live, and sit in Starbucks with my laptop. Some friends call. The first friend attempts to get me out to join him for dinner. The second I just natter to for half an hour... yes she is still going on about Balance. I keep telling her that I am not working on that essay!

I go home and have some dinner. I force myself to write a few things, in between chatting to some people on MSN and checking Facebook 324 times. Facebook and Instant Messenging: they are a curse. I also get some ironing done. I get back to the laptop. I've now written about two pages, but where is the feeling!

Is applying to multiple schools with one ApplyYourself account the norm?

I started creating my online accounts today for my MBA applications. They all seem to use ApplyYourself these days. I created the first account, then the second one... but when I got to the third, it said I already had an account and whether I wanted a reminder?! I opt for yes and hey presto - it turns out the logins I created before can be used for any school. So I only need one account?

Interestingly, Kellogg seem to have a new website (the old one looked more like this) and there is an initial suggestion that they don't / won't be using ApplyYourself, as evidenced by the login screen. and the EMBA application.

My essays are (almost) published online here...

Reading applicant blogs, I have noticed that a few people are swapping essays to get feedback. I imagine this can be a double edged sword. Fellow applicants, particularly those researching schools in depth, will be able to provide feedback perhaps as good as consultants / coaches. On the other hand, I can not help but feel that some of your approach to the essays might rub off on others' writings. While I am more inclined to the latter view, I do feel I am missing out in all this loving sharing! So I have decided to go for a half-baked approach...

Using Wordle (though I had to screen capture and crop the output), I have pulled out the common words from some of my essays. Larger words mean I have used those words more frequently. I have also word-replaced company names and the like, because I am paranoid that some adcom will come across this and go crazy :-/ . I think the picture does, however, give a view of the themes of my application, while garbaging everything so that you really couldn't recreate the original essays. For example, looking at this, you might think I was a Director! LOL.

My academic transcript is too good to be true.

They say that one of the places where things could go wrong in the application process is in obtaining academic transcripts from your undergraduate university. Well, in my case everything was going well enough. I asked for them about a month ago and they arrived a week later. However, I've only just looked at them now and realised the following horror:

That's right: there is a typo. According to these transcripts, in my first year I scored more than the maximum possible mark. In fact, this is just one of the disappoints of my transcript. My first and second year marks are given as raw marks, while my third and forth year as percentages, confusing the readability. No where does it state that the marks in some years are weighted more heavily than those in other years, making the final average across all the years seem odd. The options I took outside my own department are listed as Outside Options rather than noting specifically the courses I did, History and English Literature.

Oh, what frustration. I've written a rant to this effect to my undergraduate university. Lets see what turns up...

When will the Recommendation questions be released?

There is a lot of excitement about the early release of essay questions. However, I can't help but feel that the most time consuming part of all this will be the recommendation questions. When are they going to be rubber stamped by the schools and ready for consumption? I am certain that I'll manage to get my essays in, whatever it takes. However, getting my recommenders to do whatever it takes is not easy for anyone, I'm sure. Just today one of my recommenders said, "I hope I haven't signed up for a lot of work!"

I suspect that we'll have to wait for the applications to open proper to get the final version of the recommendation questions to distribute to our recommenders. Because August is the month of summer holidays, some of my recommenders will be off. I'm thinking that my recommenders will really only have the month of September to get their writing done and ready. Thus far I have told them that I reckon they will need to write about three pages and then slice and dice what they come up with to the specific questions that each school asks. Are there any better approaches than this?

For those of you seeking that recommender from your extracuricular space, I've found the picture here for you.

MBA Application Status (12th July)

I've been thinking about putting together a schedule for my MBA applications. However, since so many things can be done in parallel, the the final version has taken more the form of a grid (see below) and there are no timelines per se other than, Get Everything Done ASAP! Submitting five applications for R1 seems like a lot of work. I don't want to compromise on quality, so I may just see how far I can get with each one in R1.--

Section		Harvard	Wharton	MIT	Stanford	Kellogg
Essays	career goals	draft 1	pre-draft 1
	2	draft 1	pre-draft 1
	3	draft 1
	4	draft 1
	5	N/A
Resume	create
Recommenders	prepare material	started
Recommender 1	get support from	complete
	brief
	submission status
Recommender 2	get support from
	brief
	submission status
Recommender 3	get support from
	brief
	submission status
Application	fill in
Transcripts	prepare

What matters to you most and why?

While everyone else seems to be enthralled with the Scoretop controversy, I've been perplexing over something quite different. Stanford's hallmark What matters to you most and why? essay question is surely the most gut-wrenching question since the career goals question, which in itself took me several weeks to figure out for myself.The most useful advise I've been able to find on the internet seems to be this little segment from here:

    * What matters to you most and why? (Stanford's first question)
          o Apparently, the most common answer is 'balance in life'. Maybe you should try something different..
          o There are no right or wrong answers or approaches to this; it was my favorite essay question actually for this reason. You can write just about anything. However, I would suggest you look over the accomplishments that you want to talk about in your essays and you career goals. Then find a basic thread that can intertwine all of them. This will be something vague but poignant: 'helping other people' or 'taking on new challenges'. Then there's your essay structure: open with how you like to take on new challenges and use all of your essay material as proof of that. If you write something too specific such as: 'What's most important to me is bringing potable water to this village in eastern Africa' then a good part of your essays will probably be irrelvant to this thesis statement.

A second item which may help some is the following exercise from here:

As Stephen Covey says, clarify what is most important in your life. Decide what is most worthwhile to you. Knowing what is most valuable to you gives you direction in life. Rank each in order from 1-10 (1 being least important and 10 being most important).

* Career

* Health

* Home

* Family

* Spirituality

* Finances

* Leisure

* Learning

* Creativity

* Communication

This should give you a fair assessment of what your priorities are and where you want to be. Now what are you most grateful for? Make a list of 10 things and write them down. Finally don't forget how far you’ve come. Make a list of 10 of your proudest accomplishments for this year.

For me, simply thinking about other essay questions is giving me food for thought on this Stanford question. Particularly other essay questions from other schools. These ones in particular, all for 2008/9, might provide some areas of overlap:

Harvard:

1. What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such? (600-word limit)

3.2 Discuss how you have engaged with a community or organization. (400-word limit)

Kellogg:

2: Describe how your background, values, academics, activities and/or leadership skills will enhance the experience of other Kellogg students. (One to two pages double-spaced)

3: Describe your key leadership experiences and evaluate what leadership areas you hope to develop through your MBA experience. (One to two pages double-spaced)

Adding Kellogg To The Short List

Kellogg is an interesting school. When I visited the school in early April, it was probably the most haphazard of my visits: classes were cancelled without notice, tour guides did not turn up and even the weather was slightly grim. I don't know much about marketing, but for a school that is reputed to be the Marketing King, it sure was not thinking too much about customer touchpoints.

By comparison, Kellogg's downtown neighbours, Chicago GSB, was a slick operation. I attended their Chicago Live event. The event kicked off with some good speeches from the admissions team and, on the whole, the event was quite well run, even if some parts were dubious (like the loud and rowdy pub evening).

However, it is Kellogg that has been growing on me in the last few months. There are articles all over about the delight that is Kellogg, with the most recent being Business Week's Choosing Kellogg. Perhaps the school's touch points are not as important as the touch points with what everyone else says about the school?

So I have stretched my initial list of MBA schools to apply for from 4 to 5 to include Kellogg. Just adding this one extra school makes the application process suddenly seems like a lot of work, but I am only applying to schools that I would not mind matriculating to.

Here is my shortlist, in alphabetical order:

• Harvard Business School
• Kellogg School of Management
• MIT Sloan
• Stanford GSB
• Wharton

Reaching Career Goal Clarity

I've been working on my Career Goals essay. As I have hinted about previously, it has been slightly torturous. It has forced me to think really hard about the time-line of my life leading to the MBA and afterwards. After reading around and a lot of thinking, I've finally gained some clarity. As unlikely as it would have seemed to me even months ago, in broad terms I am thinking of a Private Equity type role immediately beyond the MBA. In the much longer term, I fear I'm going to spew out the usual 'starting a company' spiel that I'm sure many candidates will give - but it is what makes sense for me to say.

So what helped me? Perhaps one of the most useful articles that I have found is Jaguar Paw's Career Goals essay framework. Although it is structured in a similar way to how I was already thinking about approaching the essay, it has made me think more about my Short Term Goal following the MBA. I have also been inspired by the posts of many people blogging out there on all manner of MBA-related things. Some people say they go to MBA school to reflect on their life. I think there is plenty of reflection to be done in simply applying!

Now all I need to do is finish writing this essay in "400 words", "1000 words", "2 pages" and whatever other forms that the different schools require it in.

Career Planning As Risk Taking

I've been catching up on some of Marc Andreessen's posts; there is one in particular that stands out - career planning. It starts with:

The first rule of career planning: Do not plan your career.

There is irony in this for me. I'm looking at doing an MBA in year or so, and the one thing that almost all the business schools ask is for you to describe your career goal. In fact, the 'career goal essay' is considered one of the most important parts of any MBA application. He goes on to explain:

The world is an incredibly complex place and everything is changing all the time. You can't plan your career because you have no idea what's going to happen in the future. You have no idea what industries you'll enter, what companies you'll work for, what roles you'll have, where you'll live, or what you will ultimately contribute to the world. You'll change, industries will change, the world will change, and you can't possibly predict any of it.

…

Career planning = career limiting.

So what should you instead?

Instead of planning your career, focus on developing skills and pursuing opportunities.

The rest of the article focuses on taking risks, because you can only really make your mark on the world by taking risks. Speaking to friends, it always seems easy to just ‘get comfortable’ – to stop pushing your career. Andreessen pushes us to take risks if you want to succeed. People don’t get ahead by not taking risks. Andreessen goes into some depth about risks, but the sum is as follows:

The issue is that without taking risk, you can't exploit any opportunities. You can live a quiet and reasonably happy life, but you are unlikely to create something new, and you are unlikely to make your mark on the world.

So this makes me wonder about the MBA career goal essay. Can it ever really be possible to define what your career goal should be?