By Jeremy Dann

All of my clients ask me this question as they prepare to write the “Why MBA?” essay that most applications require.  Adding school-specific details is certainly a must…but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

First, and most importantly, you need to know enough about these schools to know if you even want to apply.  Don’t leave it to the Business Week rankings to decide for you.  A lot of people forget this: you are the customer!  They are tweaking their programs, printing cutting edge brochures and traveling from city to city to convince you—the prospective MBA—to consider their schools.  Each MBA application will cost you a couple of hundred bucks and dozens of hours, so make sure the programs have most of the big and the little things you want from a school.  Go to the info sessions and ask real questions (many candidates try to use these sessions as a forum for impressing an admissions officer, which I don’t believe to be a very fruitful strategy).  Call the admissions department and ask for the names of recent alums in your area.  Get in touch with one or more of those folks and take them out for a coffee.  Talk to your firm’s alums at several business schools.

So, on to what you need to include in your essays.  I can’t tell you how many first drafts I’ve read that cite the “unmatched student body, world class faculty and committed alumni network” as the reasons this particular applicant has chosen a certain MBA program.  This person has said nothing.  You need to get specific to demonstrate that you’ve taken time out to research the school and that you have some legitimate reasons why you think their program fits with your needs.  But don’t hold yourself to too high a standard here; you’re not going to blow the committee away with some statement that shows you are the figurative “soul mate” of their MBA program (“My God, when she mentioned our emphasis on entrepreneurship, I just knew she had to be a part of our Columbia Business School community,” said the director of admissions as he wiped a tear of joy away from his cheek.  “I knew it…I knew it!”).

You can effectively research schools in just a few minutes (of course, you’ll have to dive in deeper in preparation for interviews, but that’s a topic for another day).  Check out the following offerings/traits the school of the school to see in what ways they mesh with your professional goals, learning agenda, personality and preferences:
•    Program format: case vs. lecture, traditional vs. accelerated, opportunities for study abroad, opportunities for “hands on learning”
•    Academic offerings: specific classes in your areas of interest (don’t make a laundry list; find a couple and show how they might impact you)
•    Faculty: certain specific profs that you might want meet with, help with research, etc.
•    Initiatives: often schools will emphasize certain disciplines or issues for several years, hosting events, developing new classes, etc. These are dubbed names like “The Entrepreneurship Program,” “The Healthcare Initiative” or “The Technology Roundtable”.
•    Field studies: faculty support for independent research, business plan development, etc.
•    Cross registration opportunities: what other resources does this university have to offer?
•    Clubs

Four to six sentences of solid material on “Why our program?” should set you up nicely.  Remember, you usually will have tons of other material to cover about your career progress and other topics.  Good luck.

By Jeremy Dann
You’re going to need to figure out the answer to this question very, very soon. Some applications—like Harvard’s—have explicit questions about your defining leadership experiences. While some others don’t boast a “leadership” question per se, the best applications will serve up a heavy dose of this particular “L word” in other essays on personal achievements, passions, etc.
Applicants need to think through their past experiences to find the episodes that best illustrate their leadership skills. Sometimes, the best examples are not the first that come to mind. Many applicants automatically tag some of their greatest personal achievements as perfect examples of leadership. However, this is not always the best formula for a strong leadership essays.
Your “leadership” essay will often be different from an “accomplishment” or “achievement essay. Just because you achieved something outstanding does not always mean leadership skills were involved, especially if you did most or all of the work. The work of the leader activates or improves the work of others; find anecdotes in your work and extracurricular history that illustrate this kind of pattern.
What kind of experiences will make the best tales of leadership? Think about challenges where the following came into play:
• Identifying/defining a problem
• Articulating vision
• Resisting conventional approaches; challenging status quo
• Convincing others of importance of problem
• Marshalling resources to address problem
• Motivating others
• Making good use of others’ talents
• Being open to new information, input, etc.
• Building consensus with appropriate stakeholders
• Guiding strong mid-course corrections; overcoming mistakes
• Building on success
o Permanently upgrade organization’s capabilities; institutionalizing solution
o Illustrate methods for other individuals, organizations, etc.

And remember: leadership is not just about the titles. Some candidates build their leadership essays around the fact that they were selected for or elected to certain positions where they had a high level of authority and responsibility: editor-in-chief of a college paper, fraternity president, captain of the hockey team, director of product development, V.P. of marketing, etc. But what did you do with this position? An editor of a college daily could write about how she was constantly challenged to maintain high levels of editorial excellence, manage staff assignments and hit all deadlines. This is definitely an esteemed position with tons of responsibility, but Ms. Editor, if you describe your role like that, it sounds exactly the same as the role of the other 798 editors-in-chief of college papers. Define the leadership challenges you faced, not the management challenges. Did you have to deal with a certain writer who falsified interview notes? Was there a sticky campus scandal that forced you and your staff to walk an ethical tightrope? Did you have to fire student editors? Did you lead a transition from a weekly to a daily with all of the scheduling and human resources rigors that entails?
Collecting impressive titles does not make someone a great leader—helping a team overcome great challenges does.

As one group of nervous applicants transitions to being enrolled students, another group gets ready to apply. Why not learn from the successes, failures and decisions of the group before you? For the next several weeks we will be publishing interviews that we conducted with some of last year’s clients. We gave them a list of questions and asked that they be brutally honest and try to provide any insights that could help future applicants.

Biggest mistake you made or almost made in this process?
For the GMAT, I didn’t give myself enough time to prepare properly.

For the application, don’t try to have too many people help you review the essays - your story will be diluted and lose its meaning. Find the important experiences and get help ensuring that your points come across with impact.

Some keys to your success?
Talk with current/recent students from the schools you are targeting. In addition to having recently completed the application process successfully, they can provide great insight to positioning at your school. In my case, my interviewer recognized my resume format as matching the schools and asked me how I was so familiar with the culture.

What did you find most challenging?
I found the broad, open-ended format for some of the essay daunting. I remember one student telling me that he didn’t apply to Stanford because of the question, “What matters most to you and why?”

What was an exercise you went through that was helpful?
I created a list of qualities that I wanted to convey and experienced that demonstrated those qualities. When working with my coach, I organized the results into a grid to map essay questions to stories. Not only did this reduce work on the applications, it provided clarity on more challenging open-ended questions. For example, when approaching the Stanford question at the end of my applications, I noticed a recurring theme that kept coming across in my other essays - aha, the solution to what matters most!

How did you put together the following important aspects of your story?
- why MBA?
I wanted to keep an open mind when starting out, so I wrote as many reasons as I could in the beginning. After I was a bit more honest with myself, I removed several of the reasons and reworked ones that might come across as negative. I think that pusuing an MBA is a time to be optimistic and dream about possibilities - harness this energy and focus on your ability to enact change. After all, if you didn’t think an MBA would provide great opportunities, you would take on hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and opportunity costs.

- why this school?
I looked for the common ground with each school and spoke with students or alumns from that program. I believe that understanding the culture of the school with lead you to find the right fit, which will come across in the application.

- what are your career goals?
What was most helpful in your interview prep?
I read through several lists of interview questions and prepared talking points. My goal was to have thought through expected questions but not come across as “canned.” I prepped three or four mock sessions to get rid of the interview jitters, and made sure that two sessions were with second-year students familiar with the school’s culture.

How did you select your recommenders?
Some schools now require a direct supervisor. I’m fortunate to have a great boss and an unofficial mentor in senior management at my current company. Having worked together for about five years, they understood that going back to school would help me reach my goals.

How did you prep your recommenders?
I provided recommenders with my list of stories, essay outlines, a sample recommendation, and important qualities and themes early in the process. After they had a chance to review my information and I developed more structure in my essays, I arranged quick meetings to clarify my positioning and answer any questions.

What were you most nervous about in your profile?
I didn’t have a great GPA or a stellar GMAT.

How did you overcome this potential stumbling block?
I emphasized my work experience (9 years), professional accomplishments, and fit with the schools. I also tried to create a compelling story around my current path leading to getting the MBA.

How did you select your list of schools?
Because I am a little older, it was more important for me to go to a top-five school to justify a full-time program. I also attended a smaller undergraduate school (Rice), and was looking for schools with larger networks (Harvard and Wharton). Finally, given my interest in technology and entrepreneurship I applied to Stanford and MIT.

What was helpful when you hit writer’s block?
Early on, I found talking with certain people about my ideas left me energized and excited. When I couldn’t progress, I would arrange a meeting to gather feedback and get the juices flowing.

How did you stay motivated?
Once I truly decided that I wanted to go down this path, it was never a question. Having my wife encourage and remind me of my goals did help however.

What was the best GMAT resource?
I believe Kaplan has the best all-around program (book and CD). I primarily used it for brushing up on the different question types and simulating the computer testing experience. I also highly recommend using the test maker’s book with hundreds of real questions for each section if you want to run though the sections and determine which questions you have trouble answering.

END RESULT: ATTENDING WHARTON
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JP Holland

Yes, you’re applying to business school, but you don’t need to look like a business tool.

If you’ve doubled sales, you need to discuss that. If you’ve helped get a new technology to market, you need to write about that. If you’ve hired a hundred people, you’ve got a great story there.

However, I’ve seen too many candidates who attempt to make it look like they’ve done it all already. They believe by demonstrating their business acumen in every paragraph of their applications, the sear weight of the evidence of their commercial genius with overwhelm the admissions committee. Not the best approach.

One candidate I worked with received numerous rejections two years earlier in spite of solid work experience and stellar GMAT scores. He attributed his early failure to his “gunner” approach to his application. When we developed his human side more last year, his admissions fortunes rose considerably.

MBA programs emphasize that they choose their classes based on their potential for leadership going forward. Often, that will leadership will be in the arena of policy, public health, the arts, not-for-profits, etc. Admissions committees look for people who have followed their passions and left a unique mark in whatever areas they have pursued. The books that have most influenced the best MBA candidates are not necessarily just by Jim Collins, Warren Buffett and Geoffrey Moore. The current issues that impact them the most are not just tax code debates and the state of global outsourcing.

On the other end of the spectrum, some MBA candidates try to fashion themselves as Renaissance Men and Women who would put Leonardo da Vinci to shame. Sometimes, it’s hard to figure out how a person can get any Powerpoint slides done with all of the oil painting, tutoring, skiing, sky diving, Farsi speaking, flower arranging, foreign film watching, blogging, environment saving, meal delivering, judo-ing and overseas traveling he engages in every week.

The best ways to develop the “human side” of the application is to take just a couple of experiences, activities or themes and develop them in a much more detailed and nuanced way. Instead of an essay which deals with ten foreign travel experiences in a cursory way, develop one or two anecdotes in more depth. Talk about the way one trip or one discussion with someone from another country changed the way you viewed the world. Discuss one observation you have had about a certain topic across different cultures. Maybe you’ve witnessed differences in communication or distinct ways various cultures view entrepreneurship. Illustrating that you understand the significance of certain things you’ve experienced is much more important than regaling an admissions committee with all of the experiences.

One candidate I worked with put down “chess” as an interest on his app. He had read somewhere that many successful executives cited chess as their favorite game. He had played a few times and enjoyed it, so saw no problem listing it as one of his interests. I asked him, “What happens if your interviewer is a real chess devotee? Are you going to have anything to tell him about it he’ll find at all interesting?” There is no ideal list of interests that will make someone seem more appealing to b-school admissions committees. If your interest is reading pop fiction, maybe it has allowed you to bond with your friends in book club. This is in itself an insight about you that can lead to further discussions. If your interest is baseball trivia, maybe it gives you an interesting perspective on some of the race and drug issues that the sport has experienced. Don’t shy away from your true interests, illustrate how they have helped shape the incredibly dynamic and fascinating person that you are!