Draft a top school MBA application in a week

Hi everyone, welcome to the MBA show, a GMAT Club podcast where we talk about all the things related to MBA. My name is Nikhil and I am the Director of MBA forums here at GMAT Club. In today's episode we have Maria, founder of Applicant Lab, he just how to draft a competitive MBA application. In this session she will cover which actions to prioritize with the time you have left, how to speedrun your way through the application including essays, recommendations and the resume. Should you address your last minute application in the optional essay? Over to you Maria. Well, hello there, how are you doing? I just want to start by saying that while I launch into this, I think maybe you can start taking some deep breaths, slow inhales, hold it and then slow exhales. Wait, why is she starting this way? That's weird because let's be honest. If you just clicked on the link for a video that's called Write Your MBA Applications in only a week, then there's a very good chance that something has gone awry. Whether it was something that was beyond your control, maybe there was a health crisis or maybe you got laid off recently, you lost your job and you're suddenly frantically trying to put that MBA application together or maybe it was completely under your control but you just really, really wanted to watch that Netflix show. I get it. But so either way, you are probably pretty stressed out right now. So while I get my presentation going, just go ahead and start taking those deep breaths. So I am ready to, there we go. All right, so the nice folks at GMAT Club have asked me to talk today about how you can write an application in only one week and I just want to make it very clear that the good news is, we've got some good news, the good news is that writing your MBA application in one week cannot in fact cause a slow and painful death. However, I do have to warn you that it can cause a swift and painful rejection. This is not, do not take this presentation as like Maria's, I really think that it's a great idea to wait for a week. This is more like a triage session where we are going to talk about like, okay, this is not a great situation to be in but given that this is the situation that you are in, what can we do to try to mitigate things. My first bit of advice if you've only got a week to write your application is to maybe consider just waiting and applying in a future round. So and I know sometimes I say this to people and they're like, oh, but you know, I can't wait for the future round Maria, the next round there's, with every round that goes by there are fewer and fewer and fewer spots left. That's true, but if you get to sort of the end of the week and you're looking at your materials and you're thinking, oh, this is rough, this is in bad shape. It's better maybe to wait for a later round where there are fewer spots but what you're submitting is stronger as opposed to making you kind of dead on arrival. At least you have a fighting chance if you submit something that's a little bit stronger. Now if you are in a situation where you have to start that MBA program as soon as possible, right? Let's say it's the final round, typically round three, round four and you for whatever reason have decided that you have to go, I have to start my studies in August or in January for in say out or different programs, then that's, I get it, but I just want to warn you that I think you do have to realistically be ready to maybe make some compromises in terms of which program you are targeting. So for example, yes, it's true. The final round has the fewest number of seats of all, especially if you are from an overrepresented group in the applicant pool by that I mean, normally engineers, management consultants, people and finance, etc. If you really are in a place of urgency, like don't necessarily say like, well, I'm really desperate to start and so I'm targeting Stanford and Wharton and Booth, just realize like if you really are either you really are in a state of urgency, in which case I would suggest that you maybe look at programs that have a 50% plus acceptance rate, for example, or one in which your GMAT score might be 50 plus points above their average or perhaps they have like one of those test waiver options, which more and more schools have been doing, which means you don't necessarily have to submit a test score at all or you don't have to submit it when you apply and they may ask you for one later on, that is something that might, that you might be able to take advantage of depending on the school. So if you've only got a week left and you're sort of just getting started, you know, maybe look for a school that is not perhaps as hard to get into and the reason I advocate this is that I want you to think about keep your eyes on the prize as to why it is that you are doing this application. Why are you even looking for an MBA anyway? If part of that is you want to change careers kind of as soon as possible, right? You've been an engineer now for four years, six years and you're just like you're done with it, you don't want to do it anymore, I get it. So if that's the case, you know, I say this a lot, the school does not make the person, the person makes the school. So it is possible for very smart, very driven people to go to a second rate, third rate, 20th rate school and get out of that MBA program and kick tons of butt on a more pragmatic level. If you are an international student trying to get into the US or trying to go to the, you know, EU or UK, a lot of programs, not just the very to-be top ones, can you do that? Can in fact give you those work authorization options? So in the US, if an MBA program is designated as sort of STEM designated, that then gives you an option for something called the OPT work authorization. Basically, it gives you up to three years to then work in the United States afterwards. So I get it that like, okay, you know, you, I, but Maria, you don't understand, it's always been my dream to go to Wharton. I understand that. Given the pragmatic situation you're in, you might have to perhaps look for a program that's easier to get into because I really do want to help you guarantee that you are maximizing your chances. I do also want to mention though, one final issue, if you are applying in the final round, there is a, there's really hard to get a seat at all, but if you do get a seat, getting scholarship money is even harder at that point. So if you're in a situation where you have to get that scholarship money or it's not going to happen, you cannot go again, all the more reason, look for programs where, for example, your GMAT score is way above that school's average because that's going to make you more appealing to them and more likely that you get accepted and that also you get a scholarship. Now just to avoid some last minute heart attacks before you sprint and take off on this week of stress, just make sure that you're qualified to actually apply a few things that have tripped people up in the past in my experience. Some MBA programs in the US do require that you have a test like the TOEFL or one of these tests that demonstrate your fluency in the English language. Different schools have different recommendations or requirements. So some will say, if you went to a university that was taught in English, we don't care. And some will say, we don't, even if you went to a university that was taught in English, then you have to take the TOEFL or you don't have to take the TOEFL. While some schools may not, well, they never really issue sort of a GMAT score level, in other words, a business school will almost never say, you know, if your GMAT score is below a 650, don't even bother, they might not say that. But some schools actually do issue these kind of cutoffs for the TOEFL. So just make sure, you know, if you're applying to Harvard Business School and they say we require or we strongly suggest that you have at least a 109 on the TOEFL and you have an 89 on the TOEFL, maybe don't even bother applying because sorry, but your application is probably not really going to be considered. So another thing that trips people up from other countries, in particular folks from Europe and some folks from India, I'm looking at you, some business schools will not take you if or they will not consider your application, if you have a three year bachelor's degree versus a four year bachelor's degree. And similarly, if you already have an MBA from your home country, some schools are like, yeah, we're fine with it, we're cool. But other schools will say, you know what, we really want to be the first and primary MBA experience someone has. So just check these things out. And also, if you are applying from a country where it is traditionally difficult to perhaps get a student visa from your country, you might just want to call the admissions office and ask. So let's say hypothetically you're applying in round three and you are from a country that has, you know, if you're from a country where like, oh, you just walked into the US and it's no big deal, then okay, but if you're from a country that it might be more challenging, honestly, just maybe call the admissions office and say, hey, I'm from country X. I'm thinking of applying in round three, like honestly, if I were to get in, would I get the student visa in time? Because if they think that you're not going to get the student visa in time and therefore letting you in as an exercise in futility for all parties involved, you either might not get in or you might get in and then want, want, unfortunately, you might not be able to actually enroll. So with those sort of checks out of the way, let's assume that you've checked all those things out and now you're like, okay, I actually, I can apply to the school. I found some schools that I think are a good fit. Okay, so the first step that I want you to look at is for your, your recommenders. Okay, so the bad news about recommenders is that you cannot get them to pull in on nighter. You might find yourself having to pull in on nighter this week and you can make yourself do that, but you can't make your recommender do that. So that's the bad news. That's what I want the first thing to do. If you have, are you, if you're really just getting started in this process and you've only got like a week, I want you to like even Paul, if you're watching this as a post recorded Saturday. after the fact pause this right now and reach out to your one or two recommenders and just say like, hey, I'm playing to business school. It's in a week like are you even up for recommending me? The good news though is that a lot of schools do have a grace period. That is to say if a deadline is on let's say you know March 1st and you know you yourself has to be in by that deadline. But if your recommender takes an extra day or two oftentimes that is it might be sort of over you might be sort of forgiven or treated with a bit of grace. Now assuming that you've got your recommenders ready to go the next question I have for you is like okay did you already tell them which stories you want them to use in the recommendation? Because if that's the case remember for the recommendation you normally need at least two stories for your recommenders to tell. One a story in which you were a successful leader and you accomplished something that other people had not been able to or you exceeded the expectations of your job or whatever that sort of triumphant story is and two most recommendations ask for a time but they had to give you negative feedback and how did you respond to that? And that is essentially a way of asking for a failure and how do you deal with setbacks failures and criticism? So if you've already figured out like okay I want this recommender to talk about this story or this other recommender to talk about this other story. Great then use this week like right now I want you to gently follow up with them and say hey how's it going? Friend you know the deadlines coming up and I could really use your help. Now if you have not even started contacting your recommenders and trying to gently guide them as to what they are going to say about you we need to take a step back and it's story time. So what I mean by that is the first thing you need to do if you don't even have your recommenders set up yet is you need to start thinking about what stories are you going to use in your application to prove to the admissions committee that you're the sort of person that they are in fact looking for. So here's the good news is that you can brainstorm a couple of different types of stories and you can sort of use them across even perhaps more than one school's application because a lot of the easier schools their applications usually have sort of you you might need let's say one to three leadership stories and just as a reminder if you haven't seen any of my presentations before by leadership stories I mean anything that shows you showing amazing emotional intelligence. If this is not about I was so smart and I came up with the numeric answer that made everyone else weep with joy at my quantitative prowess it is more about you being able to influence others motivate others etc so that's what I mean by a leadership story and even so much the better if you are applying to business school with a specific type of career goal if possible try to make that leadership story be something that ties into the future career goal even if indirectly because that way when I'm reading your application and you say well I want to go to business school because I want to work in brand management or whatever it is I can at least sort of picture like okay this makes sense right this this person at least has maybe they don't have the direct experience that they need to get that job after business school but they've got the ingredients the raw ingredients that we can use at our school to mold them into a brand manager or what have you if you haven't yet started your recommendation journey then you're gonna need like I mentioned a second ago at least one leadership story per recommendation needed now the good news is some schools only need one recommendation which is a nice which is very nice for for applicants and in fact I think USC when I think of like sort of the top sort of 20-ish schools USC does not require any recommendations so something to keep in mind now if you are a career switcher I also want you to be think about at least one piece of evidence that you can use in your application to show that you've done your career homework and by that I mean have you even looked to see if the career path that you are proposing is even a viable one right if you are 47 years old and you have never stepped foot in a you on a trading floor and you never even traded a stock in your life and you don't know what a derivative is then maybe if you're gonna say I want to go to business school because I suddenly have decided I want to become a asset manager you know realize that the onus is going to be on you it's going to be a very heavy onus on you to show like actually I spoke to seven different asset management firms and all of them said that they would hire me you then have to make that that argument to them and again if you have not yet thought about your recommenders you're gonna need at least one failure story for reach recommendation and not just a time that you failed but a time that then after that failure you picked yourself up and you either learn something from it you kept going you demonstrated tenacity or you then improved as a result so the good news is that if you think through if you just sort of take a step back and think through like okay I've got my sort of three leadership stories my one career homework story and a failure story then you can sort of puzzle piece those together and use them for different schools applications so maybe you're planning your original plan was to I'm just gonna plan this one school with the time I have left maybe you might be able to knock out a couple more applications if the essays are similar and at the top just to clarify when I said an easy application I meant the sorts of schools that tend to focus primarily on a statement of purpose type of essay right tell us about your career vision and why you need our school to get their right schools with say six essays like Stanford obviously the more essays or the more essay questions a school has the more of these you'll have to brainstorm applicant lab users if you have not already checked out the brainstorming module because if you're sort of like blanking you're like I don't know I don't have any brainstorming story or any leadership stories jump over to that brainstorming module and I will help you there okay so if you still have not yet gone to your recommenders so before you start your own essays what you're going to say about yourself since you need to get them going and started allocate one leadership story and one failure story to each one of them and then create a document for them don't just say well I'm applying to business school thanks but I actually want you to create either it's a document or it's an email where you say okay you're gonna be asked about how I compare to my peers how does my performance compare to my peers obviously you're gonna hopefully say something nice about me you're gonna say that I'm really really good compared to my peers and when you say that please use right remember the time that I jumped in and I led that project when no one else wanted to do that I want you to actually when you write your recommender actually explain to them which story you want them to use which aspects of your leadership in that situation you want them to highlight right you cannot write your own recommendation that is technically forbidden yes you might be able to get away with it but it is especially if you're in a hurry and you don't have time to then kind of massage the the writing and the language to make it sound like it's two or three different people writing here you know it's a lot easier to tell you know it's pretty obvious sometimes when people have written their own applications and then they also write the recommendation it's more obvious than you might think it is if you haven't been spending the past 20 years looking at you know many many many applications so what I recommend is try to guide them with friendly suggestions but don't try to write it for them unless if you know it is it is a risk now if you again if you're watching this and you are an applicant lab user if you go to the recommendations module I do have like a little template for that document that you can send to your recommenders just to save you a little bit of time in terms of guiding you on what you might want to ask them to say or not say okay we've got the recommenders there they're out of the way they are doing this work in parallel so now now that you know that they're kind of on their way now it's time for you to focus on your actions and what you're going to do to create this application so you're going to need kind of three big buckets of writing one is the resume the resume is more important than the essays the essays this is the thing that people people tend to obsess over the essays the essays the essays and the essays are certainly important but they're not as important as the resume and then the third thing that a lot of people don't necessarily stop to think about are the application forms themselves I do not want you to wait until the last minute to start to fill out the application form more on that in a second okay so the resume why of all the things I think you should start with if you if you only have for like every marginal hour of time you've got between now and submission your biggest ROI like your return on investment in other words the biggest bang for buck is going to come from working on that resume and why is this well first of all the resume is the first document that is really really read like you know if I when I go through applications I might you know I might sort of skim the first part but the thing where I and I think a lot of admissions readers have said that they do this for obvious reasons is the first thing you really focus in on is that resume and when you think about it makes sense because the resume is really kind of like your your sheet of your greatest hits right Maria's greatest hits here they are all on one page ta-da and so in terms of demonstrating to them that you really are this you know above average leader go get her who makes things happen and gets things done The resume is going to be the thing that shows them that yes, this person has the level of accomplishments, the level of achievement that we look for in people in our class. The resume is also really important because it provides the context against which the actions described in the essays happen. I'm not going to read an essay first before I read a resume, or at least before I have some sense of where does this person work. What do they do? Kind of a general set because if I just jump right into an essay and the essay is like, well, here's the time I was a leader. Here's a time that I was a champion for diversity and inclusion. Here's a time that I did X and Y. If I don't at least have a basic idea of like, what do they even do? It's going to be really confusing, right? The resume is really important for providing that context. Also I have seen personally that a really strong resume can forgive a slightly weaker essay. But the vice versa doesn't happen. If you submit the stellar essay, but your resume is kind of boring or your resume kind of makes you look like you're sort of a low level, someone who really isn't interested with a lot of responsibility or someone you haven't had a promotion in five years. If your resume sort of paints a negative picture, the really, really good essay is it's possible that it will rescue you, but it's unlikely to rescue you. So as a side note, resume advice is out there. I have done a resume webinar with GMAT Club that you can find. If you're an applicant lab user in the resume module, I have the checklist. If you're like, oh, I know she's got that resume module, but there's like 40 zillion steps in it. If you're really, really, really in a hurry, you can kind of skip the steps. Go to the checklist, at least for you to check your own resume and see if it's hitting the right notes. And if there's something on that checklist that you're like, oh, actually, my resume doesn't do this. Oh no, don't worry. Then just go back to that section of the resume module, but at least that's a way to save some time. Not ideal. We are not in an ideal situation, but at least a way to try to get some guidance, even if you are very, very short on time. All right. Then I kind of want you to jump over to the application forms. And I want you to be working on the application forms here and there throughout this week, or however much time you've got, primarily because there is a lot of stuff to fill out before you actually jump into the application form, or if you just jump in in a very cursory way. You might look at it and think, yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever. It's like I asked for my name and my address and my date of birth and my, you know, the language is like, okay, fine, whatever. The thing is most MBA application forms have a lot of little tiny boxes in them. Sometimes those text boxes aren't even visible at first. Sometimes those text boxes, you fill in something in the application form and then whoop, it suddenly opens a bunch of extra text boxes that weren't even on the screen until you filled in this one piece over here. So this sorts of stuff you might have to fill out. Job description, responsibilities, what's your greatest accomplishment or your greatest accomplishments at work? What challenges have you had to overcome at work? Obviously, every school has slightly different things, but this is the kind of thing you might encounter. If you've been unemployed for three months or more, you have to explain what you did during that time. Some schools might say, use this little box here to describe for us your international experience, what have been your major experiences working with other cultures or living overseas? So here's the thing. Yes, in an absolute pinch, if you have a box on accomplishments or job responsibilities, can you just sort of copy and paste what you've written in the resume and plonk it right into the application form? You can, however, nothing screams, I waited until the last minute to fill this out, then somebody just copying and pasting, like word for word, what's in the resume. So I want you to try to at least rewrite your job description or what have you rewrite it so it's not just copied and pasted from something else, just because it makes it, obviously, if you submit this application and it's incredibly obvious that you only spent a week on it, that's not great. So I'm giving you some of this advice so that it to try to cover up for the reality of the situation. And then also no empty boxes. So again, let's say that it's deadline day and that you look at your watch and you're like, oh my gosh, the deadline is in three hours. Spend that time filling in the application forms. At least make sure that every single box is filled out with something because if a box is like left out or let's say, like, for example, you're like, what is she, what is she possibly mean by this? Something like describe your extracurricular activities, for example, some schools will have the opportunity for, if you sort of leave that blank, it doesn't look good, first of all, in general. And second of all, it looks like, oh, this person really hurried. Those extra three hours that you spend, let's say, I don't think it should take all three hours to do the application form, but I'm saying the time that you spend between now and hitting submit, filling in the application form and making sure that it is completely filled out is better than the marginal benefit you're going to get from revision number 27 of the essays. So yeah, try not to leave out any empty boxes. Try to do the application forms. Get started on them. You might even want to get started on them today. Another thing that I often advise is, you know, if you are sort of neck deep in resume and essay and resume and essay, sometimes filling in the application form can feel like a little bit of like a break, a little bit of a palate cleanser in between those heavier pieces of writing that you have to do. So I know it's not much of a break. It's not if I didn't say it was a fun break, but it could be sort of a mental break if you need to take a few minutes to try something different or to focus on something different. So the essay or essay is of the three elements that I've got on the screen right now. I believe that the essay is the most sort of forgivable of the three. Now to be clear, please don't, you know, Maria said that it's okay to submit a terrible essay. That's weird. No, I'm not saying that you should do a bad job on the essays, but I'm saying that of the elements where it's sort of the 80/20 rule is the most likely to apply, I do believe it as the essay. So let's say, let's say, let's say between one to three events that happen in your life, they're going to sort of more zero in and zoom in on specific moments or specific activities or projects that you worked on versus the resume, which covers pretty much you from college until today, right? So the amount of examples, the number of examples that are going to go into your resume is much, much greater versus the essays which more zoom in on one or two things. Number two, the essay is of all the things that are most likely to be skimmed. I mean, everything is probably going to be skimmed on some level, but the essays are the most likely to be skimmed, just because it's walls of text and admissions readers are humans like me and you. I know shocking, but it's true. They are humans and you would probably skim if you had to read 20 essays a day. You might start to skim them. I believe that they do as well. And then finally, think about the goal of the written application is to get invited to that interview stage, right? You just need to clear the main thing, right? You have to clear it to get invited to that interview. At the interview, they will ask you for more examples. They will, you will probably get in an interview, tell me about your greatest achievement, tell me about a time you failed, tell me about a time that you championed for someone who was being mistreated, whatever that question is. So you're going to get other opportunities to tell those spotlight stories in the interview if you get to the interview. So I'm not saying to do a bad job of the essays, please don't, oh my god, oh Maria said that. No, I'm just saying of the three things. And also because like I said a second ago, I in my experience when I find people that are like, I'm on version number 27 of my, I'm on edit number 32. The marginal returns of each edit that you do on your essays gets less and less and less and less. It's really at a certain point, if it's a semi colon versus a dash versus a colon versus an ellipsis, like it's fine. It's the substance that matters a lot more in the essay as opposed to the style. Now if you have jumped into applicant lab before, you might have seen that I have a ton of essay advice, right? I've sort of the step by step way to build it ingredient by ingredient brick by brick. But given that you probably don't have time to go through all of that advice right now, here's kind of like my highest return on investment advice or where I think you should best allocate what little time you have left to at least get the big, again, the biggest bang for your buck. Okay. Number one, do not put any jargon in your essays. If you work in oil and gas or manufacturing or software coding, please don't start talking about the, whatever, you know, the PSI of the refractory, I don't even, I'm literally making words up that I don't even know if those are real words. Don't start talking about the technical aspects of your job. Remember, admissions readers are often themselves not business people and they are frequently with sort of an HR human resources type of bent. They are not often people who themselves have worked in engineering. They themselves have not usually worked in in finance or what have you. So if you haven't already seen my resume webinar, just keep that in mind. Keep their backgrounds in mind, your audience in mind. They're not going to know the technical jargon of your work. And don't emphasize, I mentioned this before, I just want to hit this point again. When you're trying to think about, okay, what am I going to, you know, I've got 500 words, I've got 300 words, what am I going to talk about in this essay when I think about telling them this story that I want them to know about me? Don't spend a lot of time, if any time, proving to them that you're smart. Because the job that I am hiring you for as an admissions reader is I am hiring you to come into my school number one in the short term to be an amazing student and classmate that everyone's going to love in the short term. And number two, in the long term to graduate and go out and do amazing stuff and accomplish amazing things to make the school proud, right? And so those sorts of things, don't, neither one of those things necessarily is, you know, dependent upon your ability to sort data in your head or to memorize 10 digit numbers or whatever it is. So focus on your leadershipy actions and those EQ insights. The second bit of pragmatic advice that I've got, make sure that you're writing about your first person actions. I, what did I do? Not we. Because when you're describing your essay, well, so we went to the client and then we decided that the best thing to do was for us to redo this work for them. We are not applying to business school. You are the one applying to business school. So I need to be able to read that essay and get a sense of what was your role within that specific anecdote that you're telling me. So for example, as a bad example, I then built a machine learning optimizer in Python that segmented the data and then ran it through a Monte Carlo simulation that optimized the one. Oh my god, how boring is that? Even assuming that the admissions reader knows anything about Python or they've ever had to optimize anything in their lives. There's a very good chance they've never even had to do it. Very good chance they don't know what that means. But even if they do, it doesn't matter. Because in this situation, in this one in red, you're emphasizing skills that I don't care about really. I'm not hiring you to come to my business school and fix my database. That's not the job that you are being hired for. Insofar as you can think about applying to business school as applying for a job. The job you are applying for is future alumnus or alumna who's going to make the school proud. So a much better description, if you have to focus on, you know, choose what you're going to focus on in your essay, a much better example. You know, I realized that he didn't object to the idea itself. Instead, what he was really worried about was that he was going to lose his job. With his insight in hand, I reframed the proposal to emphasize how our solution would in fact make him look better in front of his boss instead of replacing him. He did with his new angle, he then agreed to the deal. So a couple of things about this example. Number one, notice how I, it's I, I, I, I, yes, I'm using the second, it's our solution. But I was the one who realized that the reason this client was not going for my idea was for our idea was because he thought, oh gosh, if I approved this new software tool, what if it replaces me? So I was the one who had that insight. That's how I'm focusing on an emotional insight, a psychological insight. And not I had, I realized that the data set was really ugly and had too many duplicates. And so I de-duped it. No, what I'm focusing on here are the people, is the people aspect of it. And then I reframed the proposal and that's what, that was sort of like the magic moment where the light bulb went off for him and the clouds parted and the rainbow appeared. And he said, yes, let's do this deal. I love it. Let's move forward. So those are the two big improvements from the sort of green positive one versus the red one above it. Another thing to keep in mind is because admissions officers read usually hundreds if not thousands of applications in any given year. That's the bad news, right? The bad news is they don't have a ton of time to spend digging and lovingly into every, you know, every square millimeter of your application. They're not going to pull out a magnifying glass and look, that's the bad news, right? The bad news is they're probably going to skim the first time through or they, you know, they're going to try to set it like a time or like, okay, I've got 10 minutes, I've got 20 minutes. That's the bad news. But the good news is you can use this to your advantage because if you think about the fact that the admissions officers are reading hundreds of thousands of essays in a year, they've seen a lot of stuff. And the challenges we face at work, no matter where we work, whether we work at a hospital or at an elementary school or on a floating oil rig in the middle of the ocean, challenges that people face at work are pretty much the same, you know, right? They're sort of like these buckets of challenges. There's the coworker who wasn't pulling their own weight challenge. There was the very old senior person who didn't want to change the way they did things challenge. There's the boss was not convinced that my risky idea was worth pursuing challenge. So the good news is realizing that they probably have seen maybe not the specific situation you're writing about, but they have seen something similar to it. You then do not have to spend a lot of time describing this whole background of like, you know, as a management consultant, I often have to work with people in the client site. You're off to get into that. They know what management consultants do. They know that as an engineer, I am often called upon to find solutions. No, I get it. I know that. Right? So the good news is you don't have to go into that stuff. You don't have to go into the IQ stuff. You don't have to go into the background stuff. And then instead of you spending an hour or two of time left as this, as the countdown clock is nearing that deadline, there are so many good online grammar checker tools out there. Like, don't spend three hours rereading your own stuff, trying to catch your own stuff. Even I, like, it's so hard to catch your own mistakes when you're writing. I can't catch my own mistakes when I'm writing. I probably have had mistakes in these slides that I did not catch. So it's very hard to do that. So try to run your writing for the essays through some sort of online, not just even a grammar checker, but there's one called Hemingway app that I believe has a free version. And if you're only running a few essays through it, I don't think you have to pay for it, I would think. Hemingway app is one, and there are millions out there to be clear. But Hemingway, for example, is one that not only checks the basics of the grammar and the spelling, but it might say something like, you know, one way to really make your writing more interesting is to vary the sentence length. So if you have one really, really long sentence, maybe followed up with three short sentences or vice versa. So some of these apps today have gotten so sophisticated that they will actually give you style advice and not just, you know, you misspelled this word. One word of caution though. I know some people have reached out to me and they're like, hey, chat GPT, it wrote my essay. You know, first of all, I don't know. Chat GPT might be able to write a good essay, but I think that it will not have the kind of humanizing details that will make an essay compelling. And let's say you get, let's say you go, oh, Maria, you know, my friend used chat GPT in round one and they said, and they like, they got interviewed, they got accepted. So they, so clearly you can get away with it. I don't know because I feel like if I, if the chat GPT writes your essay in a certain way, and then I interview you later because don't forget pretty much every school has an interview portion of it. In fact, more and more and more schools are moving towards the online pre-recorded interview such that they record a little snippet of you. And then at any moment in the application process, right, if they're in committee, right, at the very end of the selection process, we're like, okay, we've got 10 spots left and who's going to get them and then they go around the room and people argue and fight over like, no, take my candidate, no, take my candidate. They can just pull. Okay, well, let's just, let's just see what they answered for this one interview question that we have the pre-recorded interview for. They can pull that up. And so if all of a sudden we've got this essay that is written in a very distinct style, but your speaking voice does not match that style, it's going to be pretty clear that something you either paid someone else to write your essay or you using AI or something like that. So just don't be afraid of using your own voice. And by that, I mean how you would speak normally. Please don't make your essays too formal too stuffy. It's super boring and it's inauthentic. So don't be afraid to use your own voice. So I do want you to, yes, check your grammar. Yes, vary your sentence like yes, make your essay more interesting by putting quotes that someone said. So instead of he was resistant to the idea, you could instead put quote, I don't know, Maria, I'm not buying it. He said with a frown on his face, right, those sorts of details. Yes, so use online tools to help you throw in those good details, but don't use an online tool so much that it turns you into a robot. And just again, if you happen to be an applicant, I'm using someone who stumbled upon this, you can go to the section where I have the prewriting where I take every essay question and I break it down into smaller questions. If you're in a hurry, you don't have to watch. I know I got like, oh, you're like, oh, she's got all this stuff where she analyzes the essay questions. And she digs into like, what are they really asking? You don't have to do that part. If you're in a hurry, just skip to the prewriting, the many questions and start to fill those out as a place to get started. Not ideal, not recommended. I endorse this, but if you are. stuck. It is what it is. All right. So moving on to the sort of statement of purpose type of essays. And by that, I mean the essays that are like, you know, please explain your career goals. And why our school is the place for you to achieve those goals? That sort of thing, right? It's basically asking, why do you want to come to this school, given what you want to do in the future? Tell us what you want to do in the future and given what you want to do in the future, why do you want to come to this school and not the other four million schools that are out there? So if you're watching this, and if earlier in the presentation, when I started talking about that career vision homework, that is to say the evidence that you can provide, if you are, if you are applying to business school with a career switching argument, and you're like, I haven't done any of that, then please just play it safe, submit a safe, quote unquote, safe career vision, right? The less evidence you have that you can make that switch, the less big I want that switch to be. As I often like to quip, it's Harvard, not Hogwarts. Business school cannot magically suddenly turn you from an oil rig engineer into a private equity investor. It in one fell swoop. You have to work your way towards it. So if you apply to business school and you say, well, I want to make this completely unrealistic switch because I think that you guys are wizards and all you have to do is wave the magic wand and I will immediately get any job in the world that I want. You're going to seem unrealistic. And as I have talked about in other, in other videos here at GMAT Club, if you seem like you're going to have unrealistic expectations or make unrealistic demands of the program, ooh, that feels a little risky. So I'm not going to, I'm not going to pursue your candidacy any further. I just as a reminder, you're going right now is just to get accepted. Once you get accepted, then yes, go after whatever it is that floats your boat, pursue that real estate developer job, even though you've never even built anything in your, whatever it is, I don't care. My job is to help you maximize your chances of getting in and your focus right now should be getting in. And if applying with a complicated or weird career vision is going to get in the way of that, then just don't do it. Apply with a more safer career vision. And moving on then to why this school, you're going to look up obviously the classes that are relevant. But you also want you to look up the relevant career related club, right? So don't forget the business school is not just about the classes, but it can off, if it, especially if it's a full time in person program, it can often have these career like the real estate club or the healthcare club or the consulting club or the banking club or the whatever club. These clubs are often just as if not perhaps more important in your career journey than the classes themselves. So don't forget to mention the club. And I want you to go to that club's website and look to see what sorts of resources they mention, what sorts of events they mentioned. So then that way when you're writing your statement of purpose essay, you can say something like you know, the consulting clubs, three week intensive workshop on case interviewing is going to help me land that consulting job, right? That's that way you're not just saying, your school as a consulting club, that's cool. You're actually going a step further and linking what resources that club have that is then going to help you when you are sitting in front of that corporate interview or trying to get that job. Another thing is that many, many schools like to see evidence that you have reached out to a current student or have really gotten to know the school. This is because they are worried about yield. They don't want to go through the trouble and the hassle of accepting you only for you to then be like, "Meh, I don't know." Right? So one of the ways that you prove that you really love a school is you talk to students. Now if you've only got a week, chances are you are not going to be able to talk to a student, right? Maybe. But if you can, great. But if you can't, the next best thing in terms of things that you might be able to mention in your statement of purpose is look up something like the student voices blog or put the name of the school and then student profiles or I actually student blogs are usually your best source of information. And what's the idea here? The idea is it'll at least give you ideas for things to talk about in your essay. So you could say something like, let's say I'm looking up, like in this case, Darden, UVA, MBA student voices blog. So I get these results. I know it might be a little small on your screen to see, but it's like blog is not Darden, not Virginia, not EDU, global voices of Darden. Students' perspectives, right? So you click on, you, that at least gives you the URL that gives you a place to start. And then when you click on that, you can then search within the student blog. And let's say I'm interested in consulting, I can at least then pull up the blog post that talk about consulting. And then that is how I can skim very quickly. Oftentimes, for example, any student voices blogs, it'll be something like, you know, when asked about what she loved most about Darden, Maria said, you know, the case interview workshop that the consulting club ran was super valuable. So then that way, in your statement of purpose, you mentioned, I know that the consulting club has a case interview workshop I've heard or I've read or I've discovered that the case, there's a case interview workshop, right? So at least that way you're not just saying, your school is good. I like good school. Good school take me. Good school get me job, right? You're actually really personalizing it. So I'm not saying that you should lie and pretend that you've spoken to a student when you haven't. But you can put in those little details and personal touches that at least makes it clear that you've done the research. But this is a way to get some of it like to discover like, what's it called? What is that? What do they do? They call it a workshop. Do they call it a conference? Do they call it a boot camp? Whatever terminology that school uses or that club uses, you can learn this quickly without having to start from scratch. And if you have a specific career interest, you can actually use that as a keyword. So you can look up if you're using Google like you're whatever your keyword. Let's say it's sustainability or sustainable in colon, Dart and UVA MBA students blog. And then you get, in this case, when I did this, it narrowed it down and I saw something from Pernita Sadovarte. When asked why UVA and Dart and specifically, she had three reasons, hey, that's cool. So if you then click on this and then search on the page reasons, look at this. Now I've gotten directly from a student her three reasons for why she wanted to go to Dart and I'm not saying that you should repeat the three reasons. I'm certainly not saying that you should say, well, according to Pernita Sadov, like, no, again, I'm not saying that you should pretend that you spoke to the student, but at least now for each school, you at least know what do the students themselves say about the school so that that way you can mirror those reasons in your statement of purpose to make it clear or to at least make it seem like, oh, yeah, I've spent months researching the school. This is a very, very careful decision that I am making to apply to your school. And similarly, you might suddenly get, oh, look, there's a global MBA summit on climate, capital and business. So you can click on that and that might take you to a conference or something that is relevant for you to mention. And then finally, a question that I sometimes get from people who have waited, again, through either new falls of their own or complete fall to their own, people who don't have a lot of time, should I write in the optional essay, just what happened, right? Just sort of explaining to them, look guys, I honestly, like, I threw this together in a week. Should I do that? So I have a couple of thoughts here. First of all, if you were planning to apply earlier, so let's say you created your, you know, you created your application form, you went to the school's website, you entered in your email, you created that account, you started getting the emails from them, that is an indicator to them that you actually were planning to apply quite a ways back, right? Because they can see the date that you created your account. So you can't suddenly be like, I just got laid off last week and now I suddenly find myself finding to quickly find it. Like, well, wait a minute, then that's the case and why did you create your account last July. So if you were planning to apply, if it looked, if the data points to maybe this person was planning to apply earlier and then something got out of control and that's why they waited until now, if something that happened that was not your fault, maybe a health issue, maybe something, you know, you had to leave work for six months to take care of an ailing relative or you yourself had your own medical issue, whatever that is, then I do think you can explain it and just say, this is why I'm applying in round three. I know I was hoping to apply in round one or round two, but here's why my application is so late. I have also seen this work for people who have job requirements that are super intense, that were also not foreseeable. So for example, I have seen this work with people in the military who are suddenly called to be on some sort of mission, you know, in some sort of combat zone. If that's the case, yes, of course, just explain the situation, I got called away to Afghanistan or whatever it was, that is completely understandable. However, if something was just your own fault and you're like, yeah, I just ran out of time or if it was foreseeable, reasonably foreseeable, for example, a big project came up at work and I was too busy because of work, then maybe just don't try to draw attention. to the elephant in the room and hope that they don't notice that you put together this application in a week especially I have a severe allergy to the excuse well work got really busy for anything I also hate this excuse when people like well my GMAT score is really low because I was just really busy at work I don't know business school the one of the biggest things if not the biggest thing they use to determine whether or not they're gonna accept you is how successful you've been at work and so if you're saying well I had too much work and so I couldn't handle applying or I couldn't handle taking the GMAT or studying for the GMAT It's not a good look because you're basically saying like hey, you know that thing that you're that you're using to judge me and and to ascertain how competitive well I'm not that good at it time management whoo I can't don't ask me for that like that's not great so in that case it's actually better to just kind of like not address it not draw attention to it and just kind of sweep it under the rug and hope that they don't notice Now if applying to business school was in fact not planned one of the biggest reasons being for example unfortunately in this day and age the biggest reason being that you were laid off and You suddenly find yourself having you apply and you think well, maybe this is a sign that I should I should maybe get that MBA And so you start researching how to apply to MBA and you're like oh great. It's oh I got a week Then I think you can absolutely explain it you say I was laid off on this day The next I you know I was I was sad for a day You don't have to say that out loud, but it's understandable if you say okay the next day I started thinking about like this is this is a sign or this is my chance to go for that MBA Then I think you can just say here's a situation guys because no one to be sent to the layoff is hopefully not your fault They're they're not going to be as judgmental and then you can also say like look I get it I realize that this you know you might have to push me off to the next to the next round I realize that you know this this application may not be currently very competitive because it with the haste with which it was created But at least I'm introducing myself to you and as a side note like if you are You know kind of on the fence there might be there might be a variation here where you know you you Realize in your head that your chances might be pretty pretty low But at least you know the way you can rationalize it to yourself is by saying well at least now they're gonna know who I am and They're gonna be on the lookout for me When I reapply again six months from now four months from now whatever that that time is Okay, so that That is my advice click to exit. Okay. Oh here I am. Oh, I have reappeared So basically start with the recommenders because you can't control them Think about what stories you're gonna use highlight stories that show you with awesome people skills then Focus on the resume more than anything again GMAT club I have there's a webinar that I do for resume stuff or applicant abusers again jump into the resume module for those quick tips and Then fill out the application form and the essays Kind of going back and forth between those two Not ideal. I don't love it, but I also don't love a lot of things that happen in the world and Yet here we are in the world that is very not ideal So hopefully at least if you find yourself in this unideal situation Hopefully what the steps that I have just given you give you at least a plan as opposed to feeling like there's a tornado in my head of things to do and Hopefully I've at least tried to sort of quiet that tornado a little to give you step-by-step instructions on how I think you can best divide your time and attack different pieces of things to Hopefully at least try to get you over the finish line and hit submit All right, thank you Maria for your time. Thank you GMAT club for having me and for proposing That I talk about this unconventional topic. It was it was a fun challenge for me to think about wow What would I tell someone if they only had a week to apply? so best of luck for everyone and I actually I was in such a hurry to get through everything that I didn't even talk about myself So I'm Maria I went to HBS and my website is applicant lab.com. It is a self-guided tool So if you only have a week, it's actually kind of good for you because You can just you don't have to wait to like oh, I have to get on a call with an admissions consultant Like no, you can go through all of the stuff you yourself and pull that all nighter and at least try to maximize your chances with the time that you have left That's applicant lab.com Thank you everyone and best wishes for your application journey. Bye