A new .com site, new Key Posts page, and new way to see my blog

After a year of planning and work, my adammarkus.com site has been completely redesigned.  A number of people, both on and off the net, had long pointed out the ugliness of my old .com site and also of the Blogger version of my blog. I have now attempted to provide something a bit more state of the art in both respects.

In addition to a great new design produced by Martin Celis, the .com site now includes my blog. Writing on WordPress is much better than Blogger.  Also since Blogger is blocked in China, I wanted something my clients in China could actually easily see.  The new version of the blog contains an enhanced set of search functions and hopefully a better overall look and feel.  I will continue maintaing the Blogger blog, but I think you will find using the .com version a better reading experience.  Changing my .com  site also made it easier to change the Blogger version, which has been greatly simplified.

One new feature is a Key Posts Page. I hope this will make accessing my important posts easier.

Finally, like with all websites this new probably has something wrong with it that I have not found. If you discover any issues, please let me know.

Happy reading!

Cheers,
Adam

-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.

More details about Wharton MBA Interviews for 2013 entry

For my most recent post on Wharton interviews, please see Preparing for Wharton Interviews for the Class of 2015.

I should consolidate my prior Wharton interview post, what is below, and the actual group interview questions, but will do so after Round 1.  This information is being sent to first round applicants and is now up on GMAT Club as well:

"As many of you know, the Admissions office has partnered with the Wharton Innovation group to launch a new evaluation method, the team-based discussion, for the 2012-2013 application cycle. In anticipation of the interview portion of the process, we have prepared the following to provide further insight into this new format. Please Note: you must be invited to interview in order to take part in the next phase of the process.

STRUCTURE

If you are invited to interview, you will participate in a team-based discussion with 5-6 other applicants during your scheduled session. The team-based discussion will allow you the opportunity to interact with your fellow applicants through discourse, which will highlight how you approach and analyze specific situations.

Our hope is that this will give applicants a glimpse into Wharton's group learning dynamic - which is central to our program. We believe that this type of assessment also serves as a tool to take prospective students 'off the page' and allows us to see firsthand the ways in which they can contribute to our community of diverse learners and leaders.

PROCESS

Interviews will be conducted both on campus and in select international locations. On campus interviews are conducted by Admissions Fellows, a select group of trained second-year students, while off-campus are facilitated by Admissions staff members. The off-campus interviews will be held in Dubai, London, Mexico City, Mumbai, New Delhi, San Francisco,  Sao Paulo, Seoul, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo.
                       
You will be able to schedule your interview through your Wharton account once you are invited to do so via email. All applicants will have the option of interviewing on Wharton's campus or in one of our select major cities around the world. While there are two options and no one way is preferred over another, we do encourage invited candidates to interview on campus to get a sense of our community and culture. While on campus, candidates will have the opportunity to take part in our campus visit program by attending a class, having lunch with students and experiencing the MBA community in action. We will not be able to accomodate all requests for a specific location, so we encourage all invited candidates to register for a slot as soon as possible.

Once you have successfully registered for your interview, you will then receive a series of follow-up emails, detailing logistics and next steps regarding the session.

FORMAT

Your discussion will have a prompt and a purpose and you will work towards a tangible outcome with your group. The team-based discussion is additive and does not replace the opportunity for an individual exchange. There will be time allotted for a short one-on-one conversation regarding your candidacy with a member of the Admissions staff or Admission Fellow during the interview. This will also provide an opportunity to ask any questions that you may have.

Below are examples of the type of prompts that may be used during a session (Please note that we will provide you further information on the prompt for your team based discussion after you are invited to interview and sign up):

· What one talent or strength should a leader rely on most in daily life?

· If you could teach one thing about innovation to a group of new employees, what would it be?

GENERAL TIPS

· Come prepared to share your individual thoughts.

· You should plan to spend no more that one hour in preparation.

· Do not expect the interviewer to give you feedback - literally or figuratively. Be careful to avoid any interpretation of verbal or non-verbal communication, as both may mislead you.

· Interviews are not a popularity contest. The interviewer is there to assess your fit for the Wharton MBA program.

The key is to relax, be genuine, and enjoy the opportunity for us to get to know you and you to get to know each other!"

-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.

Kellogg MBA Essays for the Class of 2015

In the post, I analyze Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business 2013 Application Essay Questions for the MBA and MMM programs. I have taken the questions from Kellogg's website.

I had four clients admitted to Kellogg's MBA Class of 2014.  On my admissions consulting service website there are also testimonials as well as results from clients admitted to Kellogg in prior years.

Kellogg's 2013 Essay Questions for the Class of 2015 are specifically designed to help admissions determine whether you demonstrate the appropriate "scholastic ability, personal character, motivation, leadership ability, interpersonal skills, career performance and management potential." In addition to this post, I suggest reviewing my post on Chicago Booth versus Kellogg.

Kellogg Culture Matters
If you go to Kellogg, chances are extremely high that you will live in Evanston. Social life in Evanston is not limited to campus. The place simply is filled with people who are great communicators, friendly, outgoing, and able to thrive in a socially intense environment. If you are not that kind of person, don't apply there. If you are, it will be heaven. At Kellogg, they call it the "Kellogg Culture": Student culture at Kellogg is rich and multi-faceted, but a single principle ties it all together: teamwork. Our students collaborate in the classroom (and outside it) to meet professors’ exacting standards. They organize conferences, chair student groups and invite distinguished leaders to speak on campus. They travel to nations around the world to complete coursework of their own design.At Kellogg, you’ll form lasting social, intellectual and professional bonds with your classmates. It should come as no surprise that Kellogg's essay questions reflect its focus on community.

Peer Application Review at Kellogg
One of the chief functions of an MBA admissions committee is to select people who will be good classmates. The director and the rest of the committee have done their job properly if they have selected students who can work well together, learn from each other, and if these students become alum who value the relationships they initially formed at business school. Students members of the committee bring a peer's perspective to the process. They are also are likely to be the first to read your file: "Files are typically reviewed first by a student member of the admissions committee, then forwarded for additional review by staff members, including the Director of Admissions."


1. Discuss moments or influences in your personal life that have defined who you are today. (500 word limit)
Let us assume that you were not born yesterday.  Let us further posit that somewhere between now and your birth, you had life experiences that have had significant impacts on making you the person you are today. If not a specific situation, what people have influenced you? Keep in mind that you are engaged in an after the fact rationalization of linkages between some specific moments in the past or the impact of some person(s) in the past and who you are now.  In other words, you are telling a story about yourself, which may, in fact, be almost completely arbitrary.  Writer's block will develop if you begin worrying too much about all of the life experiences and people that have made you who you are.

If I were counseling a client on this topic,  I would start by asking, "What do you really want Kellogg to know about you?"  After that has been established, the key issue is finding a way to connect that to this question.  Knowing where you end up, that is to say reverse engineering the topic, is likely to yield an effective answer in a fairly efficient manner. Let’s say you identify three themes about yourself that you want to discuss:
Theme 1: Innovative
Theme 2: Funny
Theme 3: Social
Since you will focus on leadership in the next essay, don’t focus on that theme here.

Now that you have identified your themes, figure out how to connect them to moments or people who influenced you. Think of them as stories:
Theme 1: Innovative Story: Building my first robot as a kid.
Theme 2: Funny  Story: Crazy Uncle Sal who told me jokes.
Theme 3: Bilingual Story: Mom made me learn Spanish.
These stories should come from your personal life and not your professional life.

Next, each theme must have significance beyond the story itself, that is to say, it must relate to something really important to know about you.
Theme 1: Innovative Story: Building my first robot as a kid. Significance: Becoming an entrepreneur really started with this experience.
Theme 2: Funny Story: Crazy Uncle Sal who told me jokes. Significance: Doing stand-up comedy is what I am most passionate about outside of work.
Theme 3: Bilingual Story: Mom made me learn Spanish. Significance: I have become a highly international person.  
Defining who you are today means understanding what really motivates and what is really important to know about you as a person. It may very well have professional implications.  For example, building robots was surely in the above hypothetical applicant’s personal life, but it is something that helped define his/her professional passion.

The structure for each moment/person might look as follows:
1.  Discussion of the moment (situation/life experience) or person who influenced you.
2.  An explanation of how this impacted you. What was its significance?  It is here where you could discuss a recent accomplishment or some other important tangible demonstration of the manner in which the event or life experience continues to impact you.  It is also quite possible that this event or life experience relates to your goals or non-work interests.


I think in 500 words, most applicants write on 2-4 such topics.  You should write on at least 2 topics, since the question is specifically asking for moments or people.

2. What have been your most significant leadership experiences? What challenges did you face, and what impact did you have? This is your opportunity to explain how you Think Bravely (personally and/or professionally). (500 word limit)
Think Bravely: The movie!





Now that you have enjoyed that lovely bit of total fluff. Let’s see what Dean Sally Blount has to say:


"Thinking Bravely = Willingness to Think Outside the Box"

I suggest focusing on two to three key experiences where you go beyond a simply defined leadership role and add specific value.  You might question a plan, build something new, intervene in a situation where you didn’t have to, take charge, or otherwise do what others didn’t do. Show you have courage, an innovative spirit, a capacity for leading others beyond the previous limits of the organization, or otherwise going beyond the status quo.

most significant : Since the leadership experience you write about should be he the one that you consider most significant, you should clearly explain that.  Applicants frequently assume the significance of a story without interpreting it sufficiently.  Make sure you have clearly explained why the particular leadership experiences you write about are significant  to you.  

For my general suggestions on writing leadership focused essays, please see my analysis of  Stanford Essay 3.  And yes, it is highly likely that you will using this same topic for Stanford 3, Wharton 3, and HBS 1(It is possible that it could be HBS 2). Depending on what you write about, you may have room to discuss 2-4 leadership experiences here. You may connect them together or you may not.  The important thing is that you provide Kellogg with a set of stories that convey your potential to be a leader both at Kellogg and in your future career.

3. Imagine yourself at your Kellogg graduation. What career will you be preparing to enter, and how have the MBA and Kellogg helped you get there? (Please answer in terms of your program choice: One-Year, Two-Year, MMM, JD-MBA) (500 word limit)
“Recovering from my massive hangover after drinking way too much at our last party of the year, I could barely stop from vomiting when I rose to the podium to speak to the Class of 2015. Fortunately one of my classmates had given me some mints, which was both a perfect example of Kellogg’s collaborative spirit and the solution to my poisonous breath.”
I figured no one would write that, so I did. Anyway, the point of doing so, is to explain this question by way of example, which requires you to imagine being yourself in 2015. And not just any self, but one that has been transformed by your Kellogg experience and is reflecting back on that experience. Reflect on that imagined experience, but don’t do any of the following:
1.  Just take a standard goals essay for Chicago Booth, Wharton, Stanford, or Columbia and just add a couple of sentences about being at your graduation and only alter the verb tense.
2. Focus so much on a lavish description of your graduation ceremony that you don’t focus on the core part of the question.

Here is what you should do:

The admissions committee needs to see "Big Kellogg Love" here, so make them understand your particular form of it. They need to know why Kellogg helped you develop the capabilities you will require for your intended career. Reflect enough on what they have to offer you so that your essay content related to Kellogg does not sound like a bad version of their website or brochure content. The better informed you are about the school and the more you think about how it will help you grow professionally and personally, the more likely you are to make Kellogg love you back. In addition to the MBA website, see Kellogg Insight. Japanese applicants to Kellogg, should most certainly make full use of http://www.kelloggalumni.jp/kellogg_life/. In order to determine what aspects of Kellogg really relate to your professional objectives. You need not mention the names of numerous courses as long as it would be clear to your reader that your learning needs align well with Kellogg's offerings. For example, it is really a waste of word count to mention the names many marketing courses if the main point you are simply trying to make is that you want to enhance your marketing skills. Every admissions member at Kellogg is well aware of the program’s major offerings.  If you have a particular interest in a more specialized course or studying with a particular professor, it is worth mentioning it as long as it is an explanation of why you want to study the subject and not based on circular reasoning.
An example of circular (tautological) reasoning:  "I took Advanced Corporate Finance to develop advanced corporate finance skills."
This kind of bad circular reasoning is so common in early drafts I see from my clients and in the failed essays of reapplicants that I am asked to review. Usually it takes place within a paragraph consisting of many such sentences. These sentences actually convey nothing about the applicant. The admissions reader wants to learn about you, not about their own program. If you don't explain what you need and why, you are not actually answering the question, you are just writing something dull, surface level, and without positive impact.
An example of an actual explanation:  "While I had been exposed to finance through my work at MegaBank, at Kellogg I obtained the comprehensive understanding of corporate finance that I will need to succeed as a future leader of cross-border M&A."
By focusing on very specific learning needs and explaining those needs in relationship to one's goals and/or past experience, admissions will be learning about you and really be able to understand what you need from Kellogg. Mentioning a course name is not important if the learning need is already something obviously obtainable at Kellogg. A more complete explanation would include additional details about the kind of issues that the applicant is interested in learning about and/or specific ways the applicant intended to apply what he or she would learn at Kellogg.

Provide a specific answer to the career part of this question. You should be able to be very specific about what you are going to be doing after your Kellogg MBA because it would be very strange for someone at their graduation from Kellogg to not know what they were going to do.  Clearly Kellogg is emphasizing the immediate post-MBA position here. Fine to discuss your wider long-term vision, but make sure you are really clear about what you want to do in the short-term.  If you are having difficulty formulating your goals, please see my Stanford Essay 2 analysis.

Discuss what you contributed to and/or gained from Kellogg in ways that are not necessarily directly connected to your career plans. The question does not specifically ask that you do that, but I would highly recommend explaining how the Kellogg experience was personally transformative. Also, it would be reasonable to include something about what you contributed during your time at Kellogg. In regards to contributions, mentioning specific clubs, classes, or activities would be a very natural thing to do.

4. What one interesting or fun fact would you want your future Kellogg classmates to know about you? (25 words or less)
FUN FACT ABOUT ME: "My most popular YouTube video involves me eating wanko soba." ( I would provide the hyperlink if I were actually using this)

I actually like this question quite a bit because it is a great way for applicants to highlight something really unique about themselves. The point is that it should be something that would not be obvious about you. The focus may be on something very specific that you did or something about your character. Whatever it is, it should not simply be surprising, but also relevant in some way.  It might be something that will add value to you as student at Kellogg and/or to your future career. If it is highly personal, it should reveal a quality or aspect to you that is not merely interesting, but also something really worth knowing.  A good answer here might involve an unusual hobby or experience, but the possibilities are endless.

In the case of my video above, it is (1) an unusual and highly international eating experience, (2) I mention that it is most popular YouTube video, so there must be others, and (3) It is a bit unusual and funny. You therefore learn something entertaining about me. Clearly I would be taking a risk with this, but like with my example in Essay 3, I try to avoid providing one that someone would actually use.

Re-Applicants Only: Since your previous application, what steps have you taken to strengthen your candidacy? (400 word limit)
Reapplicants should read my previous post on reapplication. Use this space to specifically explain what has improved about you since you last applied. You can certainly mention improved test scores, but I would not use very much of your word count for that. Typical topics include: development of a new skill, promotions that demonstrate your potential for future success, involvement in an extracurricular activity, learning significantly more about Kellogg, and why your goals discussed in Essay 1 now are better than the ones you presented last time.

Additional Information (Optional)

If needed, use this section to briefly describe any extenuating circumstances (e.g. unexplained gaps in work experience, choice of recommenders, inconsistent or questionable academic performance, etc.) (No word limit)

As with other school's optional questions, do not put an obvious essay for another school here. If you read the above, it should be clear enough that this is the place to explain anything negative or potentially negative in your background. If you have no explanation for something negative, don't bother writing about it. For example if your GPA is 2.9 and you have no good explanation for why it is 2.9, don't bother writing something that looks like a lame excuse. This is more likely to hurt than help you. In the same vein, don't waste the committee's time telling them that your GMAT is a much better indicator than your GPA (the opposite is also true). They have heard it before and they will look at both scores and can draw their own conclusions without you stating the obvious. That said, if you have a good explanation for a bad GPA, you should most certainly write about it.

In addition to GMAT/GRE, TOEFL, and GPA problems, other possible topics include issues related to recommendations, serious gaps in your resume, concerns related to a near total lack of extracurricular activities, and  major issues in your personal/professional life that you really think the admissions office needs to know about.You can certainly write on something positive here if you think its omission will be negative for you, but before you do, ask yourself these questions:

1. If they did not ask it, do they really need to know it?

2. Will the topic I want to discuss significantly improve my overall essay set?

3. Is the topic one that would not be covered from looking at other parts of my application?

4. Is the essay likely to be read as being a specific answer for Kellogg and not an obvious essay for another school?

If you can answer "Yes!" to all four questions, it might be a good topic to write about.

MMM Applicants Only How have you redefined yourself, your business environment and your community through the pursuit of design and innovation? (400 word limit). For MMM applicants only: This is an optional essay that will be evaluated for the Rasmussen scholarship.

This question is specific to MMM applicants and is a further opportunity to show why you really fit the MMM program. Clearly, there is a real possibility that the content here might overlap with Essays 1 or 2, but try to keep it really focused on the idea of design and innovation as the drivers for one or more topics that relate to yourself, your business, or your community.

For my post on Kellogg interviews, see here.

-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.

MIT Sloan MBA Essays for Fall 2013 Admission

In this post I will discuss the Class of 2015 MBA application admissions essays for MIT Sloan. I have taken the essay topics from the online application for 2013 admission.  You can read testimonials from some of my clients admitted to MIT Sloan for the Classes of 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 here.  

Before analyzing MIT Sloan School of Management MBA Essays for Fall 2013, I think it is important to take a look at MIT Sloan's core values:
Mind and Hand

The moment you step onto the MIT Sloan campus, you feel the palpable sense of energy and opportunity that is fueled by MIT's credo of mens et manus — mind and hand. At MIT, we believe that you must understand foundational topics at a deep level (mens) and be able to execute the practical application of these concepts (manus).

The concept of mens et manus percolates through the MIT culture and inspires a shared ethic. It says: let's look at the problem, invent the solution, and do something about it. Mens et Manus is the core idea that powers everything we do at MIT Sloan. Generations of students, faculty, and alumni have built their careers on it.

MIT is well know for transforming theory into practice and this is certainly true of its business school. In my experience those who can effectively demonstrate how and why they share this "core idea" are most likely to be accepted. (For those who can read Japanese, I suggest looking at http://ningsquared.hotcom-cafe.com/wordpress/,  http://web.mit.edu/sloanjapan/101/index.html and Kaz's MIT MBA留学日記 blog. My English language interview with Kaz is here).   I also suggest looking at an interview I conducted with members of the Class of 2011 and Class of 2013.  For those interested in the LGO Program, I suggest taking a look at this blog by a member of the Class of 2012.

If you are able to, I suggest visiting campus or attending a Sloan-on-the-Road event. Click here for the full list of admissions events.

Sloan's application process is, in fact, very much focused on determining whether you share and can contribute, based on your own unique background, to their "core idea." This does not mean that there is only one way to write great essays for MIT Sloan. Nor does it mean that they are only looking for one type of student. That said, I think you can say that there are some right ways and wrong ways to approach their questions. All questions are taken from the website.

Cover Letter
Please prepare a cover letter (up to 500 words) seeking a place in the MIT Sloan MBA program. Your letter should describe your accomplishments, address any extenuating circumstances that may apply to your application, and conform to standard business correspondence. Your letter should be addressed to Mr. Rod Garcia, Senior Director of Admissions.

Keep in mind that great cover letters result in job interviews. The purpose of a cover letter is accompany a resume.  In MIT's case the cover letter does not only accompany the resume (The resume is limited to 1 page and 50 lines), but the whole MBA application.   Still, assume the point of this cover is to get you an interview!  How will your cover letter standout? If you don't know how to do a US-style cover letter, you need to learn. Here are two good sites for that purpose:

http://www.vault.com/wps/portal/usa/vcm/detail/Career-Advice/Sample-Cover-Letter/Sample-Cover-Letters:-Different-Types-of-Cover-Letters?id=4974

http://www.rpi.edu/web/writingcenter/cover_letter.html

If you have attended Sloan-on-the-Road event or visited the campus, you probably heard from admissions that MIT does not ask for the sort of standard goals essays that almost all other schools ask for. Honestly this one of the things I love about this school. Admissions knows applicants are going to figure out what they want to do after they start an MBA program, so they think the question is absurd.

Having seen what happens to my clients once they graduate, I can say that MIT is often right about this: Many never do what they write in their essays. This is in no way intended as a criticism of my past clients. I tell this to all my clients so that they can relax and just simply concentrate on making sure that their goals are solid without having to think that these absolutely must be their real goals. Just as long they are comfortable with their goals as one possible future and can be convincing both on paper and in an interview, that is enough.

Still, goals questions are useful if you are trying to determine someone's vision and their ability to actually put together a plan (think business plan). Of course, a goals essay is simply the standard sort of essay that all kinds of graduate programs require. For other schools, think of them as a formal requirement that simply has to be met.

MIT specifically requires that you write a 500-word essay in the form of a cover letter that will convince them why you belong at MIT Sloan. I think it is critical that you really are well-informed about Sloan, so in addition to making full use of standard admissions information, please take a look at MIT Sloan Management Review and listen to the MIT Sloan Management School of Management Podcast (available on iTunes).

The essay should be focused on highlighting your accomplishments, but clearly you can't cover them in the space provided.  My suggestion is that you tell a story about yourself and why you fit at MIT Sloan that incorporates some of your key accomplishments. If you can touch on about 3-4 accomplishment while actually making an argument for why you belong at MIT Sloan, you will have done a good job.

Focus on your accomplishments, but also reveal how your passions, values, and interests show why you belong at Sloan. If you can answer the following questions in a convincing manner you will be on the right track:

1. Why do you fit at Sloan? In other words how do your accomplishments show why you fit at MIT Sloan?
2. What do you want to learn at Sloan? Why? The more specific, the better.

3. What motivates you and how does this relate to what you can learn at and contribute to Sloan? Your contributions also relate to your accomplishments.

4. Can you briefly state what your values are? That is to say, what are your core beliefs that are likely to provide Rod Garcia and his colleagues with a better understanding about what kind of person you are?

You will notice that I have specifically not included post-MBA career goals in the above questions.  That is because your cover letter should not focus on such goals.  It should focus on why you want to go to Sloan.  Your goals should, if stated at all, be only part of an answer for why you want to go to Sloan. They should not be the central or primary topic. As I discussed above, MIT really is not primarily interested in your goals.  They are judging you based on what you have done as indicator of what you are likely to be capable of in the future. They are also judging you on your ability to effectively explain why you you belong at MIT Sloan.

Since MIT also wants you to address any extenuating circumstances in this cover letter, you should exercise very good judgment about doing so. Don't waste space merely to report that your GMAT is not as high as you wish it were. Use this space for example to explain any serious issues that require explanation and cannot be handled elsewhere in the application form. This essay is an opportunity to explain the strengths and/or weaknesses of your academic background. You don't need a high GPA to get into MIT, but they are looking for applicants who have demonstrated intellectual curiosity, so utilize this space to help convince them of that. If you have to explain a weakness feel free to do so. It is better to provide an explanation for why you had a bad GPA in your second year of university than to make Rod Garcia and his team try to guess why. 

These topics are not easy to get into 500 words, so you really need to think very carefully about the most important things you want Rod and his colleagues to know about you.

ESSAYS 
We are interested in learning more about how you work, think, and act. For each essay, please provide a brief overview of the situation followed by a detailed description of your response. Please limit the experiences you discuss to those which have occurred in the past three years.

This distinctive style of question that MIT asks is based on an interview method that I will discuss below. Before reading the rest of this post, I strongly suggest downloading a copy of MIT's excellent guide to behavioral interviews, The MIT Sloan Interview Guide, because reading it first will maximize the value of my comments below. In addition to the MIT SLOAN Guide, I suggest also taking a look at the  guide to the Star Technique that MIT Career Services provides. The behavioral essay questions that MIT (and now Stanford) ask have their origins in behavioral interviewing. “Bill Byham, CEO and founder of Development Dimensions International, originated the behavioral interviewing method in 1970.”

In fact, the STAR technique outlined in MIT’s career services guide was developed by Byham as THE WAY to answer behavioral questions:

Byham calls an example of past behavior a STAR, because a complete example consists of a situation or task, the specific action you took and the result of your action. The result you describe doesn't have to be positive; it could be that you learned a valuable lesson from doing something the wrong way.
In his book "Landing the Job You Want: How to Have the Best Job Interview of Your Life" (Three Rivers Press, 1997), Byham tells candidates how to identify the skills for a job; explore their own "behavioral dimensions" (the behaviors they use every day to get things done); and recognize and present a STAR with positive impact in an interview.

The STAR technique is really the core method you need to use for answering behavioral questions in MIT essays. It is simply this:

• Situation: define the situation or “set the stage.”

• Task: identify the task/project performed.

• Action: describe the action you took.

• Result: summarize the outcome

Just keep in mind that you need to be introspective as well, so write what you thought as well as what you did. Don’t just present “the facts” but actively interpret your actions. There is really nothing overly complicated about this as long as you understand that you need to tell a DETAILED story. Pure abstractions disconnected from a concrete set of action steps are highly likely to result in a weak answer. Similarly, grand actions not told in any depth are also likely to be weak. Identify specific actions that contributed to the result so as to establish a clear link between cause and effect.

As when answering any kind of question, another important consideration is to think very critically about what your story selection, understanding of the task, actions taken, and results say about you. Keep in mind that the whole point of asking behavioral questions is to determine how someone acts and thinks as a basis for selecting or rejecting that person. It is obviously critical to be aware of your own message.

MIT Sloan specifically requires that these experiences come from the last three years. This time constraint is important to remember. Also keep in mind:

1. You need to show the capacity for analyzing and acting in different ways, so, while both essays should utilize STAR, don’t tell them in the same way. Make sure you are presenting different sides to who you are by telling your stories differently.

2. If at all possible discuss different situations in these essays, not two different stories from the same situation because you are trying present as wide a spectrum of events and qualities about yourself as you can.

3. You should ask yourself “What does this essay reveal about me?” If you can’t answer that clearly, you need to clarify your message. When asking this question, think about both what you intend the reader to think and what you might also be revealing. Control for the possibility of sending out unintended signals. One of the best ways of handling this issue is to have a very careful and intelligent reader review these essays. If you are working with an admissions consultant, they should be able to do this. Getting multiple perspectives on what you wrote will help you better understand your likely impact on an admissions' reader.

Essay 1: Please describe a time when you had to convince a person or a group of your idea. (500 words or fewer, limited to one page)

I consider this question very close to the heart of MIT as the subject matter really is about a very practical aspect of ideas: Convincing others to take your ideas seriously.  The idea might be large or small, those who are convinced might be an individual or a group.  It might be a team, it might be a client, it might be your friends, it might be senior management of your organization. What you want to do is explain what the idea was and then how you convinced the individual or group to accept it.
Provide a simple, clear, and concise explanation of the idea. Keep in mind that discussing the idea in too much detail is likely to interfere with focusing on the key point: Your ability to convince others about an idea.  Focus on the methods you use:  Did you convince others based solely on logic?  Did you appeal to them emotionally?
KEY QUESTION TO ASK YOURSELF: Why was it hard to convince them?  If it was not hard to convince them, this essay will likely be very ineffective because it will be a poor test of your ability to convince other people.

Essay 2: Please describe a time when you overcame a personal setback. (500 words or fewer, limited to one page)

SETBACK: An unanticipated or sudden check in progress; a change from better to worse.

MIT IS NOT LOOKING FOR A FAILURE:  They are specifically asking you for a setback you overcame, not one you just learned from. This is important to keep in mind as this should be a situation where you actually succeeded.
This is a new essay topic for MIT, but certainly not a new one in general.
MIT is specifically asking for a personal setback here, which means whatever the setting, it should focus on yourself.  Most applicants will focus on non-work situations and in general I would recommend that, unless the setback merely happens in a work setting, but is really personal. The nice thing about setbacks is that everyone has them. That said, if your setback is terribly minor, it is unlikely to really to reveal anything significant. So focus on a big setback where you really learned something.


Pick a setback that you can be proud of because of what was involved in overcoming it. When you select the topic, think not only about the topic's significance, but also it's impact on overall balance within your essay set. Taking responsibility for a mistake, learning to communicate more effectively with others, gaining greater insight into how to influence others, and many other topics can be used effectively to highlight your leadership potential. Overcoming a psychological, economic, and/or interpersonal problem can also be a rich source of topics. This essay can be great place for really showcasing your problem solving skills.

Supplemental InformationThe Admissions Committee invites you to share anything else you would like us or your future classmates to know about you. This may be in written or multimedia format. Please do not use Flash Media Player, and include a URL where it can be accessed online. Written essays should be 300 words or fewer.

This question is new for this year. Actually it is a variation of a question that NYU Stern has been asking forever. It is the one that seems to have stopped many applicants from applying to Stern. Maybe MIT Sloan is trying to do that? Probably not since you can just write an essay and don't have to use the multimedia option.

In past years, I have had clients who have done slide presentations for NYU, but given that Chicago Booth now requires one, if you are applying to MIT and Chicago and/or Stern and state that on your MIT application, don't do a PowerPoint for MIT because the MIT admissions people will assume you are trying to cut corners. 

In general, anytime a school has a non-standard question, you should really keep in mind that they are looking for answers that demonstrate an applicant's willingness to put time into it. However I think MIT has not fully committed to the non-standard approach here because you can simply write an essay. I think they are testing out this question to see if they like it. 

One very common initial error with this essay is to focus on being creative at the exclusion of thinking about the purpose: to introduce yourself to your classmates. Keep in mind that your objective is to create a positive image of yourself that would make an excellent first impression on your classmates. It may be creative, but make sure that it also leaves admissions with a clear understanding of what positive impression of yourself you are communicating. It is your job to provide a sufficiently clear message regardless of the way you creatively present yourself.

Some Questions to get you brainstorming:

1. What do you want MIT Admissions to know about you that would positively impact your chances for admission?

2. What major positive aspects of your life have not been effectively INTERPRETED to the admissions committee in other parts of the application?

3. If you were meeting people that would you be working closely with for two years and that you might want as a part of your lifetime professional network, what would you tell them about yourself to create a strong first impression?

4. Why do people like you?

5. If there was one story about yourself that you think would really help admissions understand you and want to admit you, what is it?

6. Do you have a personal interest (painting and poetry for example) that would work effectively?

Bottom Line: Make Rod Garcia and his colleagues want to meet you!

My analysis of MIT interviews can be found here.  

-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.

Location Matters: Chicago Booth Versus Northwestern Kellogg

Some thoughts on Kellogg's and Booth’s locations: A highly biased commentary on why location matters.
A former resident of Chicago and frequent visitor, I thought it would be worth doing a bit of comparison between these two business schools. You can find my analysis of Chicago Booth's MBA admissions essays for the Class of 2015 here. My analysis of Kellogg's essays is here.

Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business has the good fortune to be located in one of the prettiest parts of Chicago. Unlike its neighbor to the south, the University of Chicago, Northwestern is located in the pleasant and safe suburban town of Evanston. If ever there was proof that location impacts an institution, the placement of both of these schools certainly is that. I first became aware of this contrast when my parents moved from LA to Chicago in 1986. Since that time, I lived in downtown Chicago for over a year, in Hyde Park for about six months, and have otherwise frequently visited Chicago.

The University of Chicago is an academic powerhouse located in a not so nice neighborhood with little to do in the way of fun except for buying books (Hyde Park has great bookstores!). Students at the University of Chicago either live around the campus protected by a large private police force or decide to move North. Many  Booth students live in downtown Chicago. I lived in Hyde Park and I can say that while I did go out at night, there was not much to do, especially once the bookstores closed. Chicago has many fine restaurants, but Hyde Park does not have them. Also, unlike the rest of a city well know for sports, the University of Chicago is not. As to bars, it has one good bar (there were two, but the other one, Cyril's House of Tiki, closed). The University of Chicago is an intellectually serious place and ideal for those who are looking for such an atmosphere. Personally, I like the atmosphere there and always enjoy visiting. One can find some social life at Booth. On my visits to Booth, I found it to be a friendly environment. Like the rest of the University of Chicago, Booth is a great place to study.

Northwestern University is located in an affluent community with a large number of bars, a wide variety of restaurants, nice shopping (but not for books!), and, just for the record, a great dog beach. Evanston is quite a pleasant place, but I never felt like it had the kind of serious academic atmosphere that one could find in Hyde Park, Berkeley, or Cambridge MA. It is too suburban for that. Northwestern, unlike its neighbor to the South, has a huge sports program (For more about that, see NUASports.cstv.com). With more to do, one can imagine it is harder to stay in the library at Northwestern than it is at the University of Chicago.

If you go to Kellogg, chances are extremely high that you will live in Evanston. Social life in Evanston is not limited to campus. The place simply is filled with people who are great communicators, friendly, outgoing, and able to thrive in a socially intense environment. If you are not that kind of person, don't apply there. If you are, it will be heaven.  You will find yourself in a tight community and likely be engaged in it all or most of the time.  You will get to Evanston really well.  

If you go to Booth, chances are extremely high that you will commute to campus from downtown or farther North (One of my former clients had school age kids so he actually lived North of Evanston!). You will find have a great deal of control over who socialize with and where you do it. Unlike the Kellogg folks, chances are really good that you will end up knowing a lot about Michigan Ave., Rush Street, and the Gold Coast in general.  You will probably try to organize your schedule so that you can minimize the number of days you have to commute to Hyde Park.  Your sense of community will be as minimal or as rich as you elect to make it, but you will have to work at it one way or another.

So why does anyone apply to both of them?
I suspect for a long while except for people who lived in Chicago and just wanted to stay there, many people did not apply to both of them. Then three things happened at University of Chicago's B-School to change this:
1. Charles M. Harper Center opened in 2004. Suddenly Chicago’s B-school had one of the best MBA campuses on the planet. Previously it had been one of the worst.
2. The curriculum and admissions procedures started to change. Booth would go from being a pure quant classroom style place to a much more typical top MBA program where a variety of teaching methods could be used (new classrooms enabled that).  Instead of just letting in future quants admissions would try to get a diverse range of students.  
3. Chicago GSB becomes Chicago Booth and gets a ton of money that further fuels its transformation.
As a result of these changes, Booth suddenly started to attract the kind of people who apply to Kellogg.  Kellogg, for the record, did not really change much. Clearly they are trying to change now. We shall see how that goes.  

While there are still people who don’t like Booth, but love Kellogg or the opposite, I am finding an increasing number of clients who apply to both schools.

-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.