Q&A with a Member of the Ross MBA Class of 2013

My former client, Ross2013, is a Japanese American. After working in Tokyo for a global software company in the video game industry for 6 years as an engineer, he joined the MBA program at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business in August 2011.

Adam: To what extent do you think the school’s mission statement has impacted what you learned at the school so far?

Ross2013: I think that the mantra of leading in thought in action is prevalent everywhere at Ross. The obvious place to highlight how this has impacted my learning experience is MAP. As you already know, MAP is the flagship program at Ross where first year MBA’s venture out all over the world to engage with real clients to solve real business problems. I am currently at the midpoint of my MAP, and the experiences where I am able to apply knowledge acquired from my core classes to an actual problem have been truly invaluable. I also believe that MAP reinforces the value our school places on strong teamwork. The adrenaline rushes you get from real projects are much greater than those you get from group work in classes. Sharing such an intense experience with my MAP team has helped foster life-long relationships.

Aside from the cliché answer about MAP, I also think that the professors do a good job of enforcing both thought and action in a classroom setting. For example, I was initially expecting my core statistics class (OMS 502) to be a traditional lecture style course where you simply solved assigned math problems. However, the professor did an excellent job of keeping the students engaged by encouraging us to lead in thought in action. For example, the professor would request different student volunteers to walk through a problem on the whiteboard and explain how they solved that problem on front of the class. By reinforcing the mantra of leading in thought and action in such situations, our student community is groomed to embrace the said mantra as a part of our culture both inside and outside of the classroom. An example of this is how thought leaders in my section took the initiative to organize pre-exam study sessions and did an excellent job of helping every member in the section understand key concepts to do well on the final exams.

Adam: You really do speak highly of MAP. Can you talk a little bit more about your project?


Ross 2013: Our team is working for a global player in the pet food industry, and we are tasked to help the client increase their speed to market for new products launches. At first I didn’t have much of an interest in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG), but I’ve been pleasantly surprised that the pet food industry differs from traditional CPG, mostly because of the consumers’ strong emotional attachment to their pets. In other words, a typical consumer might not care much about what kind of toothpaste to use but would tend to be very passionate about the food his or her pet eats. I’ve found it to be intriguing to work on this project of this passionate consumer base.

Aside from the industry, the project itself has also been a lot of fun. We visited the client’s corporate headquarters for the first week of the project, and this was also followed by visits to regional offices in Canada and the Czech Republic. We are currently in our third week of the project and are scheduled to deliver our midpoint presentation in a few days to share our learnings to date as well as to provide initial recommendations. The final presentation will be delivered on-site at the client’s corporate headquarters on the last week of the project. I wish I could go into more details, but unfortunately I’m bound by a Non-Disclosure Agreement. Nevertheless, the experience so far has exceeded expectations on all fronts.

Adam: What parts of the program have you liked the most? The least?

Ross2013: If I were to highlight my favorite aspect of the program, it would definitely have to be MAP. This obviously is a huge selling point for Ross, and we have a solid program in place built on decades of success. From the students’ perspectives, this leads to a plethora of interesting projects to work on for many interesting organizations. I would expect that such an organized program would be extremely difficult for other schools to replicate at scale. Seriously, MAP is really that awesome!!
You might find this hard to believe but I’ve genuinely been satisfied by all parts of the program. It really is difficult for me to call out an aspect of the program that I did not like. A common theme I hear from some of my classmates is that some core classes are not interesting. I suspect this may be the case for students who already have applicable work experience or previous exposure to the subject as a BBA or Economics Major. Since I had a relatively limited business background prior to Ross, I personally was able to learn something new from all of my core classes and found every single one of them to be interesting in their own way.

Adam: What has most surprised you about your first year?

Ross2013: I would say that the intensity of the recruiting process has been the most surprising part of my experience here. The recruiting process literally starts within a month of the first day of school, and the process continues to accelerate very quickly through the academic year. I think an overwhelming majority of my classmates would agree that recruiting is the most nerve-racking aspect of business school. Having said this, career services at Ross is superb and the on-campus recruiting process is extremely well organized.

Going back to your previous question about my least favorite part of our program, I am inclined to call out a very specific part of the recruiting process. At times I was somewhat frustrated with how career services managed the mismatch between supply and demand for private recruiting events. For example, when a popular employer offered slots for office hours to privately meet with students, the process was set up in a first come first serve basis where the registration window was open for less than a minute before all slots were filled up.

Adam: How would you describe the culture of the business school?

Ross2013: Collaborative! I am well aware that almost all business schools emphasize this because business really is about bringing great minds together to generate new innovative ideas. I urge your readers (and particularly the Japanese applicants) to take the time to visit not only Ross but other schools to get a better feel for the cultural differences of each school. My perception of Ross greatly changed in a positive way after I visited a year ago as an applicant, and that visit is what drove my choose Ross over my other options. At the end of the day, your satisfaction level in business school is going to be highly dependent on whether you like your classmates which is nothing but subjective.

Also, I truly think that the Ann Arbor locale contributes the interpersonal dynamics of our student body. Ann Arbor offers a nice college town atmosphere where students come from all over the world eager to network with their new classmates. There really isn’t an existing network where local Arborites mingle - this allows everyone to start off on a level playing field and foster new friendships outside of the classroom.

Adam: Do you actually have any time for clubs? If so, which ones are you active in?

Ross2013: I participate in professional clubs including the Consulting Club and the Technology Club. I am also involved in the Japan Business Association and Soccer Club. I would like to highlight that the Ross Soccer Club participates in the MBA tournaments hosted at UCLA and UT Austin, both of which I had the privilege to play in. Our team brought the championship trophy home from the UCLA tournament, so hopefully this indicates that we have a pretty darn good team despite the cold and snowy winters that may not be suited for soccer.

I want to thank Ross2013 for taking the time to answer my questions.

-Adam Markus

アダム　マーカス
I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form, which is publicly available on Google Docs here, and then send your completed form to adammarkus@gmail.com.  You can also send me your resume if it is convenient for you.  Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. See here for why. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.

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There is no waitlist strategy for Wharton

For my overall suggestions on being waitlisted, see "Waitlisted? Now What?"

Well, Wharton's MBA results have come out for R2. As is usual, I have had clients both admitted and waitlisted there after interview.  It is natural to want to do something about being waitlisted, but with Wharton, there really is nothing to do.  Effectively, there is no strategy because there is no significant way to impact the process. At least not through any normal methods.

I discuss this issue in my main blog post on being waitlisted:

"Also, keep in mind that some schools, simply do not accept any additional materials.  Wharton, for example, has the following policy:
"Candidates can expect to remain on the waitlist until the following round of decisions are released. There is no rank order to the waitlist. We are unable to offer feedback to candidates while they remain on the list. We are also unable to accept additional materials for inclusion in a waitlisted applicant's file. This policy is designed to create an admissions process that is fair and equitable for all candidates."
On their Admissions Blog, Wharton reiterates this policy.  See here for example.  If you are waitlisted at Wharton, the only thing to really do is just wait."

In my main post on waitlisting, I do provide some advice for how to handle the wait and how to understand it. So, even for those only waitlisted at Wharton, I would suggest taking a look at it.

Based on my experience being on the Wharton waitlist is not a hopeless situation.  Fortunately those who are admitted to Wharton are frequently admitted to other top business schools (I have never had a client choose Wharton over HBS or Stanford, though I am sure someone has.) and hence spaces open up every year for those on the Wharton waitlist.


-Adam Markus

I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form. Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.

Rule #1: Ask the admissions office!

I frequently get questions from my clients that I can't answer. These are usually not questions about essays, recommendation content, interview preparation, what should go in a resume, or  usually even how usually how to fill out an application form. The questions that I can't answer usually involve the specific administrative policies of schools.  Sometimes I can easily find the answer on a school's website, but sometimes the answer can only be obtained from contacting admissions. While some MBA, LL.M., and other graduate programs provide extensive advice on the website, others simply don't.

When it comes to issues of application requirements, deadlines,  whether the stated GMAT, GRE, and/or TOEFL minimums are strictly enforced, whether a school will take a late official test score report, deferral policies, etc.  I may have an answer or may not.  If I do have an answer to such administrative questions, it is always because I can back it up with an official source. I don't even trust my own past experience in many instances because policies change. This is not just to protect myself from being wrong, but because I know I will best serve my clients sometimes by saying, "I don't know the answer to this question, but admissions will be able to provide to you. Please contact them."

One of the most extreme policy changes that I know of occurred when Oxford Said MBA program changed its TOEFL and IELTS requirement policy for admission in 2010.  The prior English requirement was not stringent or necessarily stringently enforced.  Suddenly for admission for fall 2010 and subsequently, applicants had to have the same high TOEFL or IELTS score required for admission to HBS: 109. Keep in mind that the UK's most prestigious and difficult to enter MBA program, London Business School, regularly admits applicants with a 100 TOEFL. As a result, the number of Japanese admitted to Said dropped significantly.  Here in Japan, Oxford had been a popular 2nd choice school for top European MBA focused applicants and a first choice school for some applicants, suddenly became out of reach.  The amount of misinformation  at the time was significant with one of my own clients even refusing to believe that this policy would be enforced because colleagues from his company in past years had always been admitted and because some Japanese admissions counselor told him it would not be a problem, which it was.
His test score was nowhere near the required level and he went elsewhere. Given that university-wide policies change, that admissions directors change, and that the rules of any organization change, past precedent is not always a sufficient guarantee.

When it is possible to ask admissions, I say ask. Like when buying any expensive thing, you should be an informed customer. After all, a graduate degree is likely to be one of the most expensive things you will ever purchase.


Contacting admissions:  I think if your question is relatively simple and not very specific to you, one of the easiest things to do is call the admissions office.   Sometimes they can provide an immediate answer to your question.  It is also fine to just send an email.  With email, I suggest you keep the email short and to the point and state it in the form of questions. Simple, short, polite, and clear communications are best.  If you have a personal and/or complex issue, you should certainly still try to explain it as clearly and simply as possible.  If you feel like you received a response from someone who did not understand, try to follow-up. It is certainly the case that the first person to respond to an inquiry might be the least qualified person in the office, so you may have to work your way up the organizational pyramid.  It is also a perfectly reasonable thing to ask questions at information sessions, either during the Q&A or privately usually at the end of the event.

Frankly, some admissions offices are friendlier than others. Just as some admissions offices will be better managed than others. School ranking does not necessarily correlate well with the quality and kindness of the response you receive, so don't be surprised if the admissions office at a high ranking school has worse customer service than one a lower ranking program.


Some applicants will no doubt worry about their contact with admissions being tracked or having some sort of bearing on applications. Unless one does something rude, this is nothing to worry about. In fact, it can be helpful to have such interactions, especially with smaller and/or friendlier admissions offices.  Depending on the interactions, just as with campus visits and off-campus information sessions, your questions to admissions may even become a small topic discussion in an essay ("I was really impressed with how Ms. Johnson actively explained your program would...").  The more standard the question, the less likely the admissions office will even consider tracking it.  Some programs do even extensive tracking of all potential applicant interaction, while others don't.  Such tracking does not necessarily correlate well with admission results.

Finally, always keep in mind that admissions officers have two primary functions:
1. They are gatekeepers who select applicants for admission.
2. They are marketers and salespeople of their programs who need to try and make sure that they get the best possible applicants to fill up all the seats in their program.
Applicants have a tendency to focus only on the first function and put admissions officers up on some kind of pedestal as judges.  Knock them off them off the pedestal!  To better understand admissions officers, see here (Though this piece is focused on US admissions officers, it applies more widely). Assume that admissions offices are happy to answer all reasonable questions about their policies because this will help to facilitate the potential admission of qualified candidates to their program.

-Adam Markus

I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form. Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.

GRADUATE ADMISSIONS IS A LONELY ZERO SUM GAME

As part of a series of general posts on MBA admissions strategy, I present the following extreme position.  Those looking for a sweet and friendly view of the business school admissions process that emphasizes collaboration will surely be disappointed. Here, I will offer a view of the MBA admissions process that is cynical, aggressive, and, I think, realistic.

GRADUATE ADMISSIONS IS A LONELY ZERO SUM GAME
Blogs, online communities, MBA admissions sites, MBA Tours, your GMAT class, and even your fellow applicants may create the illusion that you are part of a community when you apply. This is a lie. Ultimately you are either admitted or rejected. Every other applicant to a program you are applying to is in competition with you because they all have the possibility to take your potential seat.  There are only winners or losers in this process. Just as with a lifeboat, you either live because you have a seat or you drown. There is no middle ground. At the end of the day, even a waitlist that does not convert into an admit is a loss.  One can't get half admitted. I think keeping this fundamental fact in mind is important, especially when it comes to such issues as time allocation, information gathering, and information sharing.

Beware of "The Noise"
"The Noise" takes many forms.  Sites like GMAT Club, which often contain good information, are also filled with crap: Rumor, the pathetic wailing of losers who submitted bad applications,  shallow articles in newspapers and magazines, unethical and unprofessional applicant profile analysis by admissions consultants having the most scant information about the applicant, and other garbage found online.  The problem with The Noise is that it can become a time suck. Instead of preparing essays, practicing interviews, and/or networking with alumni and students, some applicants get sucked into The Noise.  Another problem with The Noise is that can actually misinform applicants by providing misleading information.  My suggestion is to certainly look at sites like GMAT Club, but be aware of the limitations of such information.

Taking advice from other applicants?
There are many good reasons to take advice from alumni and current students.  They have gone through the admissions process and succeeded.  Whatever they did worked for them, though of course, whether it will work for you is not so obvious. Still, they are not your competitors and probably are acting in good faith in terms of providing you with their best advice.  On the other hand, taking advice from other applicants, whether in the form of taking seriously what some guy has written in an online forum, having your essays reviewed by another applicant, or basing your application related decisions on second-hand information, is potentially a very high risk. Aside from the fact that what might apply to one applicant might not apply to you, I think it would be a mistake to assume that such advice is without vested interest (whether conscious or not).  In other words, other applicants might not really have your best interests at the top of their own agenda.  Be as cooperative as you like with other applicants, but focus on your own interests because this is a process that rewards individuals, not groups.

Other applicants are competitors but not ones you can directly defeat
Unlike most zero sum games where you are directly competing against others, the admissions process is an indirect zero sum game.  You are competing against other applicants, but you can't directly defeat enough of them to guarantee that you are offered admission.  Therefore there is no reason to think about them very specifically.  You can't impact other applicants essays, GMAT scores, backgrounds, interview performance, so there is no point in dwelling on them.  All you can do is submit the best application you can and prepare for an interview as effectively as possible. Some applicants worry about their competition instead of focusing on themselves.  Some even make extremely foolish direct comparisons between themselves and other applicants from their country or industry: "I'm one of the few Japanese applicants who really understands American culture!"  or  "Unlike most financial professionals, I am highly ethical and cooperative." Since you can't really know who your competition is, such comments make the applicant look rude, ignorant, overly agressive, and/or egotistical.  Every year since 2001, I have stopped applicants from making such comments in their essays and during interview preparation.

Share information only if it can't be used against you
I love the admissions reports I can get from Clear Admit, Accepted, and GMAT Club, but I would never advise anyone to submit such a report until after they have been admitted or rejected because it is not in their interest to do so.  I am happy that there are so many kind and generous people who think there is no consequence to providing such information to their competitors, but at least very indirectly there is. And I am not just discussing online reports, but also providing information to your friends who are applying at the same time as you are. Just get into a waitlist situation and you will quickly see that helping one other applicant with her interview is impacting your chance for admission. She may have been your sorority sister and your study partner in economics classes, but now she is a barrier to your admission. I often get interview reports from my clients, but I don't use them until after my clients' admissions results are in. It would unethical to do otherwise. When I do a mock interview, the questions I ask are based on reports that my own clients sent me from prior admissions cycles and the lovely content that naive applicants put up on the internet.  If you are not already familiar with the concept of being a free rider, I suggest you become one until your admissions results are in.  Once you are admitted, feel free to put up all the anonymous interview reports you want and share your experience with applicants.  Winners have earned bragging rights.

-Adam Markus

I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form. Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.

The Application You Is Only One Version of You

Now that my attention is beginning to turn to clients at the beginning rather than the end of the admissions process, I have decided to begin a new series of posts covering some core foundational application strategies. I thought I would begin with a seemingly obvious, but often ignored strategic consideration:
YOU ARE NOT SUBMITTING MBA APPLICATIONS FOR ANY OTHER PURPOSE THAN TO GET ADMITTED!
I think applicants often forget this point when writing essays, resumes, or even selecting who they will use for a recommendation.  Some applicants become so carried away with an opportunity to tell their story that they forget to consider that not everything they could say about themselves is worth writing in an application and actually only those things that will get them admitted are worth writing.  One's greatest failure might have involved a love affair at age 15, but this would not make for an effective answer to an MBA program's essay topic related to failure.  Affairs of the heart are best left outside of the admissions process. Similarly getting drunk with clients in order to generate great sales results might be very true, but no sane person would write on their resume, "Engage in heavy social drinking 3-6 times a week in order to generate leads and results that contributed to over $20 million in sales for FY2011."  It might very well be the case such social drinking actually fulfills a core business function, but you simply can't it. Instead the resume will read "Engage in extensive daily discussions with clients and leads resulting in over $20 million in sales for FY2011." The drinking example reveals one very important thing: It is all about the interpretation.

And in fact, the importance of differentiating between the real you and the application you is one of interpretation. NO graduate school application can possibly capture the full real you. An application will only present a slice of you.  Some applications give you the chance to present more slices (More essays, longer resumes, more application form content), others less.  Some applications give you extreme freedom in choosing what to present (More open-ended essay questions), other less so. The point is that regardless of what questions you are asked to answer and/or what information you need are asked to provide, you need to control the interpretation.

Some will consider this an invitation to lie, but that is not what I am suggesting.  The story of one's life is not objective, it is subjective and its meaning is either something you provide to it or one what that your reader (essays) or listener (interviews) will naturally provide. Successful communication always involves controlling the interpretation.  The significance of what you do is something you need to explain, not something you can leave to chance. One set of facts can be presented in a number of ways, but my suggestion is that you look for a way that highlights aspects of yourself that align with the program you are applying to.

Getting the Right Slices: What are MBA Programs Looking for in Applicants?
At the strategic level, I identify four core aspects that MBA programs look for in applicants.  You need to understand this categories in general and also in relationship to the programs you are applying to.  You need to consider how you will demonstrate each of these categories in your applications and interviews.
1. Academic Potential is the applicant's perceived ability to perform well in the academic program. This is measured by GPA, GMAT, difficulty of courses indicated on the transcript, school reputation, demonstrated academic/intellectual accomplishments, analytically challenging work, possibly recommendations, and essay content related to academic/intellectual accomplishments/analytical work/problem solving. Beyond an application, it is surely measured by an applicant's performance in an interview. 
2. Leadership Potential is the applicant's perceived capacity to lead people, organizations, projects, and innovation both during and after the MBA program.  It can be a stand in for the perceived overall effectiveness of the applicant as a manager and businessperson. It is a highly contested category with much more flexibility to it than those who simply perceive leadership as telling others what to do within the context of an organization.  It is measured by your past leadership experiences (Professional, but also academic and extracurricular) as detailed in your resume, application form, essays, and recommendations and as discussed in an interview.  
3. Community Engagement is the applicant's perceived capacity to engage in activities of a voluntary, interpersonal, philanthropic, social, cultural, athletic, political, and/or altruistic nature. This community engagement category can be a way to measure the philanthropic potential, networking skills, uniqueness, perceived ethical/social sensitivity of the applicant.  If one were to be cynical, it could be said that this category favors do-gooders over those with a total focus on their professional careers, but it also measures those who have a  real capacity for working with others from those who prefer to spend their time alone. It is a category that makes some suspect that the admissions criteria for business schools is a bit soft headed, but given the rhetorical importance of companies needing to demonstrate their philanthropic, socially conscious, and or community spirit, it would be reasonable to expect that the future potential leaders of such companies have shown an understanding and capacity for community engagement. It is measured by engagement in activities as detailed in your resume, application form, essays, and recommendations and as discussed in an interview. For some applicants, community engagement is something they seem to have endless supplies of, while for other applicants, they will have very little to discuss. If you are six months or more away from an application due date, it is not too late to add something in this area, but sudden new activities don't impress all that much. Ideally, if you are one year or more from making application, now is a good time to engage in such activities if you have not done so. Remember that community activities can happen inside the office. Volunteering to organize an annual party, leading your department's green initiative, participating in a company sports team are all possible ways to show community engagement.  
4. Personality Qualities and Experiences is at times a stated category. For example, Stanford fits personality into the "Personal Qualities and Contributions" category (See here).  Whereas HBS, does not clearly mention it. (Their categories are "A Habit of Leadership, Capacity for Intellectual Growth, and Engaged Community Citizenship.")  Kellogg includes personality in its criteria through personal character, interpersonal skills, and motivation. Unlike the first three categories, which are covered pretty consistently, the personality category is communicated in many possible ways.  In the case of HBS, it does not come out as a category per se, but is certainly a core consideration:
"The true common characteristics of our students are demonstrated leadership potential and a capacity to thrive in a rigorous academic environment.
Indeed, to create the most stimulating environment possible for all students, we consciously select a diverse student body, one that not only reflects a variety of backgrounds, cultures, and nationalities, but also a wide range of personal interests and professional ambitions."
In order to get that diversity, something all top MBA programs want, each applicant's unique qualities and experiences comes into play.  This category can immensely difficult to pin down, but is it includes so many possible things.  Here is a list, by no means comprehensive, of what fits into this category: 
1. Demonstrated creativity in professional, extracurricular, or academic life. Artists, poets, writers, and inventors all fit into this category
2. Extensive international experience. This involves living, working, traveling and/or studying in more than one country.  It might involve spending a year traveling, being raised in three countries, study abroad, mastery of two or more languages, and working as an expat.
3. Mastery of artistic, athletic, scientific, academic disciplines resulting in outstanding personal accomplishments. Those with patents, professional musicians, captains of winning sports teams, Olympic medal holders, and public poets all fit into this category.
4. Unusual professional experiences that would give the applicant the possibility to make unique contributions in class. Concert violinists who also day trade, working a corporate job and running a start-up on the side, film directors, chefs, actors, and professional athletes all fit into this category.
5. Overcoming extreme personal, professional, academic, economic, political, social and/or physical obstacles.  If you have overcome poverty, personal misfortune,  sexism, homophobia, racism, physical disability, and other obstacles that reveal the strength of your character, they will likely be ways to distinguish yourself in the application process.
6. Being first at something. As long as it is not trivial if you are the founder of something, the youngest at something, the first to do something, it is likely to be a great topic for an essay or at least a bullet point on a resume.
7. Risk taking as demonstrated by professional career choices, personal acts of heroism, and/or participation in high risk sporting activities:  Air Force Rangers, extreme sports enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs all fit into this category.
8. Demonstrated passion and commitment to a cause, an intellectual pursuit, athletics, or hobbies.  If you can made a real commitment to something in terms of your time over multiple years, it is likely to be a good topic.
9. Unusual personal background that makes the applicant standout within a pool where white male American finance professionals, Indian IT guys, and management consultants are typically over-represented.
10. An interesting, engaging, and/or original perspective. Easier said than done.  One needs to distinguish between simply writing an effective set of essays and actually being a highly engaging personality.  Not everyone has the capacity to be such a personality and, in fact, it is not necessary to be a highly engaging  personality to gain admission into a top MBA program.  While applicants should certainly aspire to do this in their essays and interviews, some people are great writers, wonderful story tellers, and super communicators and others are not.  
Assume that you need to cover all four categories above in each application you submit, but the mix will be different depending on the application. The art of putting together a great application is knowing how you can distinguish yourself in relationship to each of these categories, how you can compensate for any weaknesses, and how you can create an effective total portrait of yourself based on these categories.  Don't worry if you are not strong in each of these categories as it is quite possible to be admitted to any top program without being perfect. The point is to provide your readers and interviewer with a clear set of selling points about yourself that fit within their own criteria for why an applicant should be admitted. 

You are more than your application and more than any interview, but it is on the basis of those two things that you will be admitted or rejected.  Great applicants with lousy applications get rejected all the time. I know because I help such applicants then submit great applications!  Applicants with significant problems in the four categories I mentioned above can gain admission to great programs by submitting great applications. I know this too because I help applicants with one or more significant problems in their objective background gain admission to programs where they are statistical outriders.

Some might think that I am suggesting that you present yourself falsely, but that is not at all the case. I recommend that applicants honestly discuss the best part of themselves, honestly addressing any objective problems that they can't avoid mentioning (That low grade in your transcript, the 11 months when you were not working, the reason you quit a job after 3 months, etc.), and not make any deceptive claims. You should  never provide deceptive information that will get your application rejected or your admission revoked.  On the other hand, don't volunteer information that is unnecessary to provide and unhelpful to you. Don't dwell on failures when you are not asked to.  Don't worry about trivial facts that can't be easily checked. Do interprete the past in way that is to your advantage and is believable.  Also, always consider that anything you submit in an application needs to be believable and that if asked about it in any interview you have to sound convincing.

-Adam Markus

I am a graduate admissions consultant who works with clients worldwide. If you would like to arrange an initial consultation, please complete my intake form. Please don't email me any essays, other admissions consultant's intake forms, your life story, or any long email asking for a written profile assessment. The only profiles I assess are those with people who I offer initial consultations to. Please note that initial consultations are not offered when I have reached full capacity or when I determine that I am not a good fit with an applicant.