This post analyzes the essay questions for Fall 2008 Admission to RSM Erasmus University's International Full-Time MBA Program. In doing so, I will make reference to the Information Session and Masterclass that I attended in Tokyo on November 13, 2007. Depending on what chart you look at RSM ranks 18th (Wall Street Journal Recruiter's Poll), 30th (Financial Times), and 46th (Economist Intelligence Unit), and receives an honorable mention, but is unranked in Businessweek (but they only rank the top ten internationally). You might ask why I am blogging about RSM's essays, when I have yet to cover higher ranked European Programs like INSEAD, IMD, SDA Bocconi, and London Business School. Actually, I have partially covered LBS already and will finish analyzing their questions, after I stop feeling like they are watching me :) , but there are a few reasons why I wanted to cover RSM.
First, I wanted to cover a mid-ranked program that has a very solid ROI. Consider this, the typical RSM graduate forgoes a mean of $39,031 and afterwards the mean base salary for most recent graduates is $114,480 (data taken from Businessweek). To me that signifies a serious improvement in one's career opportunities. Whatever one thinks of the Wall Street Journal's Recruiter's Poll, the very fact that RSM ranks 18th internationally (everywhere but US programs) is a good indicator of the market value of the degree.
Second, London Business School, INSEAD, HEC, Cambridge, RSM, Oxford, and SDA Bocconi are the European MBA Programs I have the most experience with (actually basically in that order). I have helped clients get into other programs in Europe, but those are the schools I know best. Therefore I think RSM is a good place to start.
Third, I attended the RSM Information Session last week, so I want to get my thoughts down before I forget them.
Let's take a look at RSM's essay questions. I took them from the online application:
Please respond fully but concisely to this question, ensuring it does NOT exceed 500 words. The essays form an integral role in the application and selection procedure. Before you begin preparing your essays, you are requested to conduct a thorough self-assessment. The essays are meant to present a unique picture of you. The Admissions Committee is interested to learn about you, what your values are and the distinctive qualities that make you an interesting candidate for our MBA Program.
REQUIRED ESSAY 1 How do you see your career developing and how will earning the RSM Erasmus University MBA help you achieve your goals?
REQUIRED ESSAY 2 At RSM we value total diversity. How does that apply to you?
REQUIRED ESSAY 3 Describe the most difficult decision you have made and its personal effect on you.
OPTIONAL ESSAY 4 Please feel free to supply any additional information that you believe would be helpful to the Admissions Committee in making the final decision on your application.
Based on the Information Session and Master Class I attended, I think it is particularly important to pay attention to the directions "to conduct a thorough self-assessment" because RSM is school where there is a great deal of attention paid to self-development. In fact, the Masterclass by Dr. Bill Collins (you can watch a video of him on the RSM website), focused on issues very much related to personal career development. His interactive presentation, "Finding a Fit: Psychological Contracts and Organization Fit," was actually about some ways of thinking about managing ones career. The presentation was actually an excerpt from RSM's First Term Core Course, "Organizational Behavior."
Another core part of the RSM curriculum that is focused on personal development is the Personal Leadership Development (PLD):
Our one-year Personal Leadership Development programme , which runs concurrent to the other courses in the programme, is designed to develop in you the skills necessary for effective leadership in international business.
At times confronting and demanding, this course demands you to engage in the intense process of personal behavioural change. Through workshops, group work, discussions and case studies, you will examine and reflect on both your ability to manage people, and your ability to manage yourself.
Given RSM's focus on self-development, it is clearly very important that your essays reveal your own openness to such an approach. If you are less interested in such an approach to management education, RSM is probably not a good choice for you.
REQUIRED ESSAY 1 How do you see your career developing and how will earning the RSM Erasmus University MBA help you achieve your goals?
This a standard goals essay. Obviously to discuss the development of your career, you need to discuss it up to this point, but given the length limits, you should emphasize why an MBA from RSM will contribute to your goals. Given that this does need to be a highly evaluative response, I suggest using my goals analysis table to clarify what your goals are and how an MBA from RSM will help you achieve them.
The emphasis of this essay is clearly on the future, so while you will certainly need to reference your past experience in order to explain how you see your career, you should focus your essay on your goals and how RSM will help you achieve them.
Finally, in her presentation, Dianne Bevelander, the Executive Director of MBA Programmes, specifically made the point that the mission of RSM is to educate business leaders who support sustainability, not people who simply want to make money. Actually I am not sure why she found this necessary to say or what it was supposed to be in contrast to because no ever I have worked with wrote in their application that their goal was to become rich. Anyway, given the strong way she phrased it, all applicants would do well to consider the relationship of their goals to sustainable enterprise. See RSM's "about us" statement.
REQUIRED ESSAY 2 At RSM we value total diversity. How does that apply to you?
It can't be emphasized enough that RSM does really value total diversity. Just look at the class profile. At the Tokyo event, Diane Bevelander also discussed that this diversity also extended to the faculty.
Clearly, you need to be a part of this diversity. In other words, you need to contribute to it. Which is to say, this is a contribution question. Please read my analysis of such questions, here.
I suggest focusing on some specific ways that you will contribute to RSM. In particular, think about what personal qualities and experiences that you have that are likely to be helpful to other students.
Finally, I think it is very important to understand the critical role diversity plays in the expected outcome of an RSM MBA education:
Students emerge from the programme with the personal skills to connect, inspire, motivate and leverage powerful networks across diversity – a defining quality of successful business leadership.
Therefore you want to think about how your personal skills will contribute to this educational outcome both for yourself and your fellow students.
REQUIRED ESSAY 3 Describe the most difficult decision you have made and its personal effect on you. According to the RSM ERASMUS UNIVERSITY INTERNATIONAL FULL-TIME MBA Brochure:
We recognize that there are three elements to successful management- first, the capacity to think critically, conceptually, and creatively: second, the ability to make informed decisions and third, the capacity to interact successfully with other people.
If you think about about the second element, it applies directly to this question. The structure of an essay like this is not actually very different from that of an ethical dilemma or failure or possibly a leadership essay:
1. Explain what the decision was and why it was the most difficult for you to make.
2. Explain what you did. Remember to analyze, not just describe what you did.
3. Explain its impact on you. Keep in mind the word "personal." Specifically, think how this decision effected your viewpoint and/or your life. What did you learn? How have you applied what you learned since that time?
OPTIONAL ESSAY 4 Please feel free to supply any additional information that you believe would be helpful to the Admissions Committee in making the final decision on your application.
This is not really optional from my perspective. Unlike school's that use the optional essay for only reporting on something that needs to be explained, this is a space for also talking about something positive. In fact, even if you have to talk about something negative, say GPA, you should most certainly use part of this space to discuss an aspect of who you are that you were unable to cover elsewhere.
A note of caution: Assuming you are applying to other programs, make certain that whatever you put here does not look like the obvious answer to a question posed by another school.
I always treat optional questions of this type as balance essays, that is to say, you should use the answer here to balance out what you covered elsewhere by emphasizing another aspect of who you are. This question is thus similar to HBS 3f. and Wharton 4.2.
Finally, as is generally the case, you should try to have a good balance of personal, academic, and professional content in your essays so that RSM admissions can understand who you are and ideally see why you fit at RSM.
Question? Comments? Email me at adammarkus@gmail.com
-Adam Markus
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