By Jeremy Dann

Jack Kerouac kept a notebook before he went On the Road. Larry David’s notebook of wry observations and embryonic comedy routines was lost and then found by annoying fans on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Now, YOUR notebook should play a big part of your business school admissions process.

This spring and summer, commit to carrying around a notebook to scratch down your thoughts about your applications. Some of these might be random ideas that come to you while you’re working at your desk, sitting on a plane or braving the morning commute (if you drive, however, please keep two hands on the wheel at all times). But you should also plan to spend, say, half an hour of scheduled quality time per week with your notebook for the next several months. You may choose to use your notebook computer as your notebook in order to more easily reformat your thoughts into essay outlines.

Applications have not been distributed yet, but most of the themes are universal from year to year and should not come as a surprise to applicants. Take time to write down your preliminary ideas relating to:

1. Your main career accomplishments to date: not responsibilities or your job description, but your achievements
2. Examples of your leadership abilities
3. Your outside interests and passions and main achievements you’ve had in your “extracurricular” life
4. People and events that have influenced you
5. Your career goals after business schools…and your life goals
6. Areas in which you need improvement or personal development: these may be demonstrated skill or personality weaknesses you’ve committed to improve on. Also, these may be areas you have just not had a chance to develop yet.
7. How business school will benefit you: everyone benefits from “the diverse student body, world-renowned faculty and active alumni network”; you need to move well beyond this level of analysis. What specific things do you want to learn? What classes do you want to take? What would be your ideal summer internship?

Don’t settle for writing down your general thoughts. Be specific. As a matter of fact, be incredibly specific. I encourage my clients to employ what I call “microexamples” to bring their essays to life. That means finding those discrete moments that encapsulate major experiences in your life. That one negotiation session where your idea led to a breakthrough…the discomfort of the first time you had to fire someone…that phone call where you lost an important customer’s business…the “ah-hah” moment when you decided to invest in a certain entrepreneur’s company.

Some other things to scratch on your pad:
1. Your thoughts on what schools are right for you. What departments need to be great? What geography do you prefer? Are programs such as cross-registration important for you? Check out what one applicant did to create the ultimate school selection algorithm.
2. Who will your best recommenders be—and what do you want them to say? We’ll talk more about this in coming weeks.
3. Comments from your friends and family, and colleagues if appropriate. Your b-school application process can be a great time to buff up your ego. Sit down with your buddies and ask them: “What are the best things about me?” Sometimes outside perspectives will reveal things about your character and talents that you weren’t fully aware of. Actually, in addition to buffing up your ego, you should probably also ask these people about their feelings on your required areas of personal and professional development.

Your notes will be an incredibly valuable resource, whether you’re tackling the admissions process by yourself or working with an applications advisor.

Now that many of the admissions decisions have been finalized, many denied applicants are left wondering whether they should reapply. Forrest Gump begins to ponder what to do next in his posting, That Thing Called Hope.

The business school application process is incredibly introspective. While all of the work that you put in to the process may increase your desire to attend, some of the thinking that you did about your career and life plans may actually have led you to agree with the admissions committee – business school is not the place for you.

If you have been denied this year, this is a time to take a break, perhaps briefly wallow in self pity, and then think about whether you really want or need business school. In many cases, if your goals are unchanged, the simple answer to this question is “yes”.

Have I Hurt My Chances?
Many applicants worry that they have a lower chance of acceptance with a reapplication. This is generally not the case. Many schools actually encourage reapplication. For example, Wharton states that reapplicants comprise about 10% of their applicant pool in a given year, and that about 10% of admitted applicants are reapplicants. This indicates that reapplicants have as good a chance as anyone else in the pool. They have also stated that they generally look favorably upon reapplications.

Some schools, such as Stanford and Harvard state that they do not look at the previous year’s application, and require you to submit an entirely new app. This would imply that a new application provides a completely clean slate.

Frequently, over the course of gathering feedback, you can establish a relationship with members of the admissions committee. This is also a way to show your commitment to the school and enhance your chances the second time around. While you do not want to be too agressive, and need to make sure that your interactions are not frivolous, in some cases you can maintain a meaningful dialog that can actually help your chances.

The takeaway here is that if managed properly, reapplication is not a bad thing, and can even improve your chances. Once you have decided that you want to forge ahead, the first step to successful reapplication is gathering as much honest feedback as you can.

Feedback
Many schools will conduct feedback sessions to provide insights for denied applicants. Wharton states that they conduct approximately 1,500 feedback sessions each year. Kellogg and Columbia are two other schools that are willing to provide feedback. Be warned that the feedback is not always entirely helpful. Occasionally you will receive a very actionable piece of feedback, such as “you need more work experience” or “you should raise your GMAT score at least 30 points”. More often, the feedback is quite general and it can be hard to really pin down specific takeaways. You should also know that it is highly unlikely that you will hear, “you really do not have a chance here”. Even if that is, in fact, the case.

When to Reapply
When you actually reapply will depend on the outcome of outside feedback and your personal introspection. While some candidates may be in a hurry to go to school and move on with things, there are many reasons why you may want to wait a year before taking the plunge again.
1) If you find that you have a number of important issues to address in your candidacy, you may need more than the six months you still have to tackle everything.
2) You may be plain burnt out. Applying once is a very exhausting process on many levels. Being denied only adds to that. You may just not have it in you to try again so soon.
3) Finally, and perhaps most importantly – demonstrating progress is key to reapplication success. If you apply with the exact same story, same acitivities, same position…if you show that you really have not done much besides apply to business school in the past year, the likelihood of success is low. However, if you can demonstrate that you have begun to make progress towards your goals even without your MBA, that you have been promoted, taken a board seat, refined your goals…all of this will take you a long way. You may need more time to take action and demonstrate that progress. This would be a good reason to wait an additional year or more before reapplying.

These are things to think about now, before applications are posted. Go through the introspection, gather feedback and make some decisions about what you will do this year. Stacy Blackman Consulting can also provide feedback on last year’s apps to help you figure out what went wrong, and provide actionable advice for how to move forward. Just contact us at info@stacyblackman.com.

By Jeremy Dann

For people applying to major business schools, October, November and December will inevitably be months filled with typing, spell-checking, typing, editing, typing, proofreading…and then some more typing. Choosing which bullet format looks best on the resume. Finding synonyms for all of the words one overuses. Spending two hours cutting the final 50 words from a 500 word essay. Incredibly fun stuff.

But, May, June, July and August can be very fruitful months for both your personal development and for improving your business school application—or, more precisely, for improving your business school candidacy.

Many b-school aspirants see the spring and summer solely as a time to take a GMAT prep course. They often wait until they are neck deep in the process of writing their essays and compiling all of their other application materials to identify the elements of their candidacy they wish to improve. Or, I should say, the elements they wish they had improved when they had the time. But, with a little advanced planning and a commitment of just a few hours a week, applicants can do a great deal to bolster their overall candidacy before that final rush of the fall and winter.

Community Service
Business schools pride themselves in training future leaders, not just educating a bunch of people who know how to calculate an IRR and overuse the word “leverage.” They look for individuals who are concerned about doing great work and improving the world around them. Some young business people feel that even though they have not prioritized “extracurricular” activities early in their careers, they will definitely emphasize these sorts of activities once they are more established. However, more often than not, the patterns we establish toward community activities early in our careers remain fairly steady. If you feel that your commitment over the last several years to outside causes does not reflect the balance you want to establish in your life…well, put your money where your mouth is and get involved.
If you haven’t been participating in outside activities, look up a few opportunities on the internet and get involved next weekend. It’s really as simple as that, to be honest. Candidates who get involved now will have a six or even nine-month track record by the time apps are due. True, young professionals work long hours and often have demanding travel schedules, which sometimes rules out activities such as Big Brothers/Sisters or tutoring. But the next person I meet who cannot take out two hours on a weekend to help clean up a park or paint a school or talk with seniors at a nursing home will be the first.
If you have been involved with outside activities over the last couple of years, consider stepping your activities up a notch. One of my clients had helped out for a few hours a month for two years at a local Ronald McDonald House. In the fall, he ratcheted up his involvement by organizing some fundraising/recruiting events for young professionals.
To some, ramping up involvement in community activities may seem like “gaming the system.” I personally don’t feel this way at all. The community benefits by getting extra labor, at the very least, and maybe even the talents and creativity of a gifted individual. You benefit by deepening your involvement in causes that are meaningful to you. If the side effect of this is that your candidacy for b-school is in some way enhanced, all the better.

Reading
Getting in the habit of reading again—and I don’t mean Arbitrage Today or This Week in CRM Software Implementation Consulting—will pay huge dividends for your candidacy and your application process.
You are about to engage in quite possibly the most demanding writing process of your adult life. And you’ve probably forgotten half of the vocabulary words you learned for your SATs. Reading outside of work will immerse your brain in the English language again, expanding your active/accessible vocabulary, reacquainting you with interesting sentence structures and illustrating great organizational techniques for your essays. Your apps and your GMAT scores will both benefit.
But beyond that, you’ll probably become a more interesting person, frankly. You’ll show that you take time to get to know more about topics that are important to you. You’ll have more to talk about with interviewers. You may even gain some material for essays.
We’ll look at some interesting summer reading and ways you can approach assembling a smart reading list next week.

Travel
You’ve worked hard the last several years. You’re going to spend a ton of hours cooped up studying for that pesky GMAT. And in the fall you’re going to spend 50-100 hours in front of your computer writing and editing essays.
You deserve a vacation.
But instead of just making a quick jaunt to Vegas for golf and gambling or a “shop ’til you drop” trek to Manhattan, consider planning a vacation with a dual agenda of fun and personal enrichment. Injecting a bit of a learning agenda into your trip can expand your personal horizons, help more fully define your career objectives and provide you more material for essays and interviews.
One candidate I’ve worked with was considering taking a vacation to Florida; instead, he traveled to a different tropical locale where he could both enjoy some quality beach time and participate in an environmental restoration program.
If you’re a interested in a career in technology after business school, but don’t have much experience in the area, consider traveling to the Bay Area, attending some tech events and setting up some networking time with entrepreneurs. You’ll still be able to kite surf on the Bay and enjoy a day in Napa. If you’re interested in international business but haven’t really gained much exposure to foreign cultures since your Eurail pass expired in 2002, plan a holiday to an interesting overseas locale. While there, see if you can pick out a few things in the local economy that seem different in your home economy: the products people buy, the brands they love, the kinds of technology they favor, the level of service you experience, etc…

Use the time wisely…and have fun
If you get a little bit of a jump start on prepping for your GMAT and application-writing process, you’ll find your fall and winter a much more projective and enjoyable time. Get started now by doing a few little things that will improve your candidacy. We’ll be talking more about this over the next several weeks, so please let us know any questions you might have about what you can do this spring and summer to enhance your candidacy. Good luck.

…and to read one current MBA student’s advice on ways to prepare for the GMAT and for the first semester at business school, check out: The Divine Miss N

Greetings. I’m Jeremy Dann, and over the next several months, I’ll be contributing to Stacy Blackman’s blog on the business school admissions process.

How did I get here? I graduated from Harvard Business School in 1998 and from Harvard College in 1992. My early professional experiences include working for McKinsey & Co. and the corporate sponsorship group of the Atlanta Olympic Games. After business school, I worked for a consumer internet start-up and then as an innovation strategy consultant. As a part of my innovation work, I authored several articles for prominent business publications and launched an innovation periodical. Departing a bit from the “traditional” business path, I recently wrote and published a novel.

I was first drawn to the b-school application advisory field because of my interest in writing. In particular, in a world where working on Powerpoint presentations and authoring countless quick e-mails erode our writing abilities by the day, I became interested in ways that adults can maintain and improve their written communication skills. The business school application process is an ideal time for an “intervention” of sorts: young professionals need to re-boot the literary parts of their brains not only so they can author strong MBA applications, but so they can thrive in the academic environments they will be joining next year.

I look forward to collaborating with Stacy to bring you some helpful information and insights about the business school application process. Please let us know if there are any topics you would like to see us address.