HBS Class of 2020 MBA Admissions Application

In this post, I will be analyzing the essay question and key components of the HBS Application for the Class of 2020.  In addition to discussing overall HBS application strategy and the required essay, I will discuss key parts of the application form, resume, and transcript. I also provide some advice for HBS reapplicants and  Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Kennedy School Joint Degree Applicants and the new MS/MBA.  For my posts on recommendations, please see my Key Posts section on recommendations. For my post on HBS interviews, please see here.

My comprehensive service clients have been admitted to HBS for the Classes of 2019, 2018,  2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, and 2005. My clients’ results and testimonials can be found here. In addition to providing comprehensive application consulting on HBS, I regularly help additional candidates with HBS interview preparation.  Since I started my own counseling service in 2007, I have worked with 43 successful applicants from Canada, Europe, India, the Middle East, Japan, South Korea, other parts of Asia, and the United States on HBS application. I think that this range of experience has helped me understand the many possible ways of making an effective application to HBS. l I can tell you is that HBS takes a truly diverse range of people. Some had high GPAs and great GMAT scores, others had GPAs and scores well below the 80% range for HBS, but what they all had in common were s trong personal professional backgrounds that came out in their essays.


THE ESSAY
As we review your application, what more would you like us to know as we consider your candidacy for the Harvard Business School MBA program?
There is no word limit for this question. We think you know what guidance we’re going to give here. Don’t overthink, overcraft and overwrite. Just answer the question in clear language that those of us who don’t know your world can understand.

Based on the above, you should be asking yourself: Given the question, what do HBS admissions need to know in order to offer me an interview and then admit me?  My answer would be to take a deep dive into HBS’ criteria for admission and consider how they can apply to you. You will need to take two deep dives. One into HBS and another into yourself.  HBS introduced this more open style of question for the Class of 2016. I had 6 clients admitted to that Class, 10 to the Class of 2017, 7 to the Class of 2018, and 9 to the Class of 2019,  so the advice here is based on helping a very diverse range of clients gain admission to HBS.

Regarding length, most of my clients admitted to HBS have written between 800 and 1500 words with 1000-1200 being most common.   A couple of years ago, I did interview practice with someone who was admitted with an essay of almost 2000 words (I thought that essay could have used a trim, but hey the applicant was admitted, so who cares what I think!).  The key point about length is that it should be as long as you need it to be in order to convey what you think HBS needs to know to invite you for an interview and ultimately admit you.

If you are trying to understand the diverse range of essays that gets someone admitted to HBS, I do recommend  The Unofficial Harvard Business School Essay Book.  In fact, one of my clients admitted to the Class of 2016 contributed his or her essay to the first edition to it, which made me really happy.  I can’t tell you which one. I do highly recommend reading this book because it will give you a really good idea about the range of possible answers and dispel any myths about needing to submit something that is professionally written. I would also recommend the old book that contained HBS admits essays. That collection is still a good read for understanding how to put together an MBA essay though the specific questions are no longe r being asked by HBS. Such books are really great guides for someone looking to see sample successful MBA essays.

Four Ways HBS Evaluates Applicants
My objective when working with each of my clients is to help them identify the best content in their essays, resume, interview and other application components to show fit for each school they apply to. My approach is to understand the audience that is being communicated to because the only objective of your application is to communicate effectively to your audience, the admissions committee. We can summarize what  HBS is looking for in terms of three stated values-Habit of Leadership, Analytical Aptitude and Appetite, and Engaged Community Citizenship– plus Diversity. These four core ways, which I discuss in detail below,  that HBS evaluates applicants need to be communicated in your application and one or more of them should be used in your essay. The following summarizes what HBS is looking for in terms of three stated values (Habit of Leadership, Analytical Aptitude and Appetite, and Engaged Community Citizenship) plus Diversity and t he possible places where you can demonstrate these in your initial application (Interview and post-interview not considered below):


These four core ways that HBS evaluates applicants need to be communicated in your application and one or more of them should be used in your essay.
In addition to those four elements, other possible common topics for inclusion here would be:
-Your wider post-MBA career vision that you could not explain in the 500 character answer on the Employment page. Some applicants will not touch on this topic at all in their essays. Others will discuss it at length.  One thing I thing I help clients figure out is to what extent they need to elaborate on their post-MBA objectives and longer term vision in this essay.  If you are strongly mission/values focused, most likely you will be discussing this in the essay.
-Why you want an MBA in general? Again, some will address this, others will not. Since there is no place in the application to indicate this otherwise, it would reasonable to explain your rationale for doing an MBA, whether you state this in general and/or terms of HBS in particular is your choice, but my bias is certainly for being HBS specific.
-Why HBS?  I don’t think one has to necessarily write in detail about why you want to go to HBS, but providing your overall rationale for why you want to go HBS now is certainly reasonable.  If your career vision is something you are writing about and there are particular aspects of HBS that really relate to it, feel free to mention them.
For a discussion of career vision, why an MBA? or how to explain why you want to attend a particular program, see my analysis of Stanford Essay B.

Now I will discuss those four ways in detail in order to elaborate how you might utilize them in your essay:

Habit of Leadership
The mission of HBS is to educate leaders.  All my clients admitted to HBS had a diversity of educational, extracurricular, and professional backgrounds, but were united by one thing: In one or more aspects of their lives, they demonstrated this habit of leadership. HBS takes a very broad view of what they are looking for:

Leadership may be expressed in many forms, from college extracurricular activities to academic or business achievements, from personal accomplishments to community commitments. We appreciate leadership on any scale, from organizing a classroom to directing a combat squad, from running an independent business to spearheading initiatives at work. In essence, we are looking for evidence of your potential.

HBS does not explicitly ask you to show your potential for leadership in your essay,  but it may very well be something you decide to write about, ask one or both of your recommenders to write about, and certainly show in your resume and application form.   Leadership is no easy thing. Nor is it always obvious. If you leadership is fully obvious from your resume and then perhaps your essay need not discuss it, but the worst possible thing is to conceive of leadership as simple formal responsibility or a title because this conveys nothing about the person in that position. While some applicants will have held formal leadership positions, many will not. Formal leadership positions are great to write about if they involve the applicant actually having a significant impact, making a difficult decision, being a visionary, showing creativity, or otherwise going beyond their formal responsibility, but the same is true for those showing leadership without having a formal title. If you are having difficulty really understanding leadership, one great place to read about leadership, and business in general, is Harvard Business School Working Knowledge.

Some clients I have worked with have never really considered themselves as leaders. I think it is critical that if you are applying to HBS that you have  an idea about what kind of leader you are.  While there are number of ways to describe leadership, I particularly like this formulation of leadership types that INSEAD Professor Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries has used in one of his Harvard Business Review blog posts (Disclosure I am a graduate of the INSEAD Executive Masters program that he established):

• The strategist: leadership as a game of chess. These people are good at dealing with developments in the organization's environment. They provide vision, strategic direction and outside-the-box thinking to create new organizational forms and generate future growth.
• The change-catalyst: leadership as a turnaround activity. These executives love messy situations. They are masters at re-engineering and creating new organizational ''blueprints.''
• The transactor: leadership as deal making. These executives are great dealmakers. Skilled at identifying and tackling new opportunities, they thrive on negotiations.
• The builder: leadership as an entrepreneurial activity. These executives dream of creating something and have the talent and determination to make their dream come true.
• The innovator: leadership as creative idea generation. These people are focused on the new. They possess a great capacity to solve extremely difficult problems.
• The processor: leadership as an exercise in efficiency. These executives like organizations to be smoothly running, well-oiled machines. They are very effective at setting up the structures and systems needed to support an organization's objectives.
• The coach: leadership as a form of people development. These executives know how to get the best out of people, thus creating high performance cultures.
• The communicator: leadership as stage management. These executives are great influencers, and have a considerable impact on their surroundings.

I have previously suggested that applicants who are having difficulty really understanding leadership find out what kind of leader they are by taking this quiz based on Lewin’s classic framework.  While leadership  is more complicated than Lewin’s framework, the quiz is a great way to get you started thinking about yourself, a key part of answering any leadership essay question effectively. However, I think the 8 archetypes above provide a much better guide for those who both have extensive leadership experience and those who think they lack it.  Think of these 8 archetypes as aspirational images of certain kinds of leader. You may fit into more than one category. You may find you don’t feel like you are really good at any of the above in comparison to the descriptions above, but that is OK because you are trying to identify your potential even if it seems based on relatively little “objective evidence.” If leadership is not obvious from your resume or likely to be a topic your recommenders will focus on, you should certainly consider how you show your leadership potential. I have never worked with anyone who could not demonstrate potential in at least one of the categories above.
Some types of leadership experiences that make for effective content in essays, recommendations, and interviews:
-A time you convinced someone or some group.
-A time you led others.
-A time you demonstrated courage.
-A time you made a difficult decision.
-A time you were innovative.
-A time you formulated and executed a strategy or tactics.
-A time you turned around a situation, overcame an obstacle.
-A time reformed something.
-A time you changed something.
-A time you effectively negotiated with someone.
-A time created something.
-A time you managed or organized something.
-A time you mentored or coached someone.

-A time you represented an organization in public.

-A time you managed up, down, or across an organization.

Some of these are simply derived from the archetypes above, but  all reflect what I have seen in my clients’ essays over the years.

Engaged Community Citizenship

While "Engaged Community Citizenship" might take the form of leadership, it is quite distinct:
So much of our MBA experience – including the case method, section life, and student-organized events – requires the active collaboration of the entire HBS community. That’s why we look for students who exhibit the highest ethical standards and respect for others, and can make positive contributions to the MBA Program. The right candidates must be eager to share their experiences, support their colleagues, and teach as well as learn from their peers.

HBS and other MBA programs are looking for students who will make a contribution. This really makes sense because of the collaborative nature of MBA education. While professors play an important role in the classroom, students learn from each other on a continuous basis both inside and outside of class. An MBA education is very much one based on relationship building. 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 alumni who value the relationships they initially formed at business school. Given that two of the major takeaways from an HBS education are the relationships that a student forms during the program and access to the alumni network, HBS is looking for candidates who will fully engage with others.  It is important to show engagem ent with others in your HBS essay, in your interview, in your post-interview essay, in your application, and/or in your resume.  You should also make it a point to get your recommenders to discuss how you add value to the team, to whatever "community" (A workplace is a community) they worked with you in.

Engagement in a community may take many different forms.  Over the years, I have found the following types of activities to be very effective for MBA applications:
-Volunteer or social activities at work, whether it is actually organizing them or participating in them.
-Volunteer or social activities at school, whether it is actually organizing them or participating in them.
-Volunteer or social activities outside of work or school, whether it is actually organizing them or participating in them.
-A volunteer activity related to your post-MBA goals
-A volunteer activity that allowed for the development of leadership and/or teamwork experience
-A volunteer activity that put you in contact with people who are quite different from you in terms of nationality, income level, and/or educational background
-An international volunteer or social activity
-Active involvement in an alumni organization
-Active participation in a sports team
-Active political involvement (Not just voting or knowledge of politics, but actual activities)
-Participation in an orchestra, band or other musical groups
-Participation in drama or dance or other types of group performance
-Organizing trips or other activities for a group of friends
-Serving as the leader, organizer, or active member of a team-based educational activity such as a seminar, project, or overseas trip
The above are just some possibilities.

Some people will no doubt worry that they lack extracurricular activities to demonstrate such community citizenship, but in my experience, there is always some way to demonstrate this. Part of my job is to help my clients identify such activities and communicate about them effectively. If you have demonstrated extensive community citizenship in your resume, you may very well not need to write about in the HBS essay, but you might still find that explaining your motivation for such activities is something you want to convey to HBS.  For those with limited objective resume content in this area, if there is an effective way to get some positive aspect of your community citizenship into the essay, do so.

Analytical Aptitude and Appetite
Harvard Business School is a demanding, fast-paced, and highly-verbal environment. We look for individuals who enjoy lively discussion and debate. Our case and field-based methods of learning depend upon the active participation of prepared students who can assess, analyze, and act upon complex information within often-ambiguous contexts. The MBA Admissions Board will review your prior academic performance, the results of the GMAT or GRE, and, if applicable, TOEFL iBT and/or IELTS, and the nature of your work experience. There is no particular previous course of study required to apply; you must, however, demonstrate the ability to master analytical and quantitative concepts.

HBS is a highly competitive and challenging academic environment. It is not for anyone.  "Analytical Aptitude And Appetite," what can more generally be thought of as academic potential, will be very easy for some candidates to demonstrate without ever writing an essay on the topic. You must demonstrate your analytical intelligence somewhere in your application. Yes, a solid GPA and GMAT are enough for that purpose, but if you think your academic record and GMAT are weak, I do suggest demonstrating your high analytical aptitude and appetite in your essay. Also, whether you address your analytical abilities in your essay, for most applicants, it would also be very useful to have one or more recommenders discussing this.

Some effective ways to demonstrate analytical intelligence include the following:
-Solving a complex problem at work, school, or elsewhere
-Discussing the successful completion of complex analytical tasks
-Breaking down a complex problem that you solved and communicating it a very brief and clear way
– Demonstrating great personal insight into one’s weaknesses, failures, and/or mistakes
-Showing the ability to learn from weaknesses, failures, and/or mistakes
-Showing the ability to learn and master something highly complex
-Demonstrating a high level of creativity
Those with truly outstanding academic background and test scores need to likely focus less attention on this area. If you think you have weaknesses in this area, consider how to use the essay and Additional Information section to mitigate them. The above list provides some effective ways to do that.

Diversity
A truly diverse student body — in background, nationality, interests and ambitions — is the foundation of the HBS experience. Indeed, these differences are critical to the HBS learning model, which thrives on the many perspectives and life experiences our students from all over the world bring to their classes. From academic assignments to casual conversations, the unique qualities of individual lives enrich the education of the entire community.

This overall intention to create a highly diverse class significantly impacts HBS admissions’ decisions. The critical thing is that you demonstrate why you are unique and how you will add to the diversity of the class.  In your essay, you need to show what makes you stand out. Especially if you think your academic, personal, professional, and/or extracurricular experiences are not inherently unique, it is very important that your essay demonstrates what makes you stand out.
Some ways of demonstrating diversity that my clients have used successfully include the following:
-Being the first person or kind of person to do something
-Being the youngest person to do do something
-Making an original contribution to something
-Having an unusual family, academic, personal, or professional background
-Unusual skills or talents
-Extensive international experience
-Receiving prestigious awards or scholarships

-Even post-MBA goals might be used for this purpose if your goals help to make you stand out.
Keep in mind that diversity is a matter of interpretation and presentation and it is each applicant’s responsibility to best demonstrate how they will add value to their classmates. One of my jobs as a consultant is to always help my clients identify ways that make them distinct even if they think they are not special. I operate on the assumption that everyone is unique.

WRITING
So far I have discussed on topic selection.  I think it is useful to think about what makes for a good essay and in particular, I think about stories. When it comes to telling stories, I think it is most important to think about your audience.  You are not writing these essays for yourself, you are writing them to convince your audience. How to convince them?

The following grid connects the parts of an essay (the first column) to three core aspects of writing an effective essay. The table should help you see the relationship between the components of a story and what I would consider to be three major questions to ask about any story.

Essay Outline	What was your role?	What does it mean?	Why will this essay sell them on you?
Situation: When? Where? Who? What? How?	Effective answers to when, where, who, what, and how should all relate directly to your role in the situation. You are the hero or heroine of your story.	Your reader should have a clear understanding of the situation. They are not reading a mystery story, a poem, or some other form of writing where withholding information will be valued.	The situation needs to be one that the reader will believe, consider to be important, and hopefully be impressed by.
Action Steps: What actions did you take?Action Step 1: Action Step 2: Action Step 3:	Stories break down into steps. For each step, make sure you are clear about what you did.	Each action step should be meaningful and demonstrate your potential. This is the core of the story and it is important the rationale for your actions be stated as clearly as possible. Effective essays involve both description and interpretation.	If you are actions are clear and their value is clear in terms of your leadership, analytical, engaged community citizenship, or unique background, you will be on a firm basis for selling your story to admissions.
Result	Results should be stated as clearly as possible. Your relationship to the results should be clear.	Explain the significance of results clearly.	Make your results meaningful so that they will be impressive.

The grid above is based on the following assumptions, which I consider to be basic for writing effective essays:

Your reader must understand you.   Provide a clear interpretation of what you have done. Write in simple language, even about complex things. Assume your reader has a basic business background, but don’t assume any expertise. Cause-effect relationships should not be merely implied where possible. Showing your actual action steps is critical. A full explanation might be impossible because of word count, but if you tell things in sequence, it usually provides that explanation.

Your reader must believe you.  If your reader is not convinced by your story, you are dead.  I am all in favor of telling the best version of a story that you can, provided it is also believable. Bad self-marketing is frequently based on lies that can be seen through. I have met many admissions officers and while not all of them were brilliant, all the good ones had finely tuned “bullshit detectors.” If your essays have a seemingly tenuous relationship with reality, you are likely to be setting yourself up for a ding.

Your reader must be engaged.  If a reader does not become interested in what they reading, there is a problem.  The problem may be that the essay is simply generic or it might be the way a story is being told is boring or it maybe a lack of passion in the writing.  Whatever the case, it needs fixing.  One of my roles as a consultant is to coach my clients on writing essays that will be engaging.


You must sell your reader on your high potential for admission. Great essays don't just need to be believable and interesting, they have to be convincing. You are trying to get admissions to take a specific action after they read your file: admit you or invite you for an interview. Thus, essays must convince them to take action, they have to see why you should be admitted.  I help my understand how to do this and give very specific advice on how to do so.
Your reader should be interpreting your essay the way you intend.  In writing, there is always room for misinterpretation.  If you have not effectively interpreted yourself, there is always the possibility that your reader will draw opposite conclusions from what you intended.  I help my clients make sure that they understand and correct for all such negative interpretations.


And finally…
My final point is that HBS is looking for people who want to be leaders, not mere managers. They are looking for people who will use their “one precious and wild life” to achieve great things, not those who will be satisfied at being mediocrities.  If you can’t show the potential for that now, when will you?

HBS REAPPLICANTS: Reapplication as a topic in the Essay

If you are a reapplying to HBS, I do recommend addressing that issue either in the essay or, if you only need a brief amount of  words, in the Additional Information section (see below). If you are reapplicant, please see here.  It is usually the case that one tries to show growth since the last application. Whatever form(s) this growth takes, you might need a brief amount of word count or significant word count.  Common topics:

1. Changes in career goals since the previous application. Feel free to alter your goals, just explain why.

2. Why you are a better candidate now. This could be everything from a career change to increased GMAT scores to improved English ability to taking courses to overcome an academic weakness to a valuable extracurricular activity.

3. Why you have a better understanding of how you will use an MBA education from HBS.  This could be based on learning more about the school and talking with current students and alumni and then show how the program will really help you.

If you only use the Additional Information section (See below) to discuss reapplication  I know 500 characters (not words!) is not much, so use the 500 characters here to highlight positive changes that you especially want HBS to take into consideration when evaluating you. On the other hand, I think it is perfectly fine to address reapplication in the main essay, which is a change from last year (Class of 2018) when the question made the topic of reapplication hard to fit into the essay.

For more about reapplication, please see the Reapplication section of my Key Posts page.

JOINT DEGREE APPLICANTS

Joint program applicants for the Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Dental Medicine, Harvard Law School, and Harvard Kennedy School must provide an additional essay: How do you expect the joint degree experience to benefit you on both a professional and a personal level? (400 words)

OR
Essay Question: The MS/MBA program is focused on design, innovation, and entrepreneurship within a technical/engineering context. Describe your past experiences in these areas and your reasons for pursuing a program with this focus.
(Recommended: 500 words)

While I am providing advice on this topic, I should say from the outset that my experience is limited to Harvard Kennedy School as I don’t handle Medical School, Dental School, or JD admissions.  Beginning this year,  HBS and the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) now offer a joint degree program so this will be the first year for this program.  I will begin first with the HKS question and then address the new SEAS version

HKS Joint Degree: How do you expect the joint degree experience to benefit you on both a professional and a personal level? (400 words)

My clients admitted to HKS have include both those admitted to the Joint HBS/HKS program and  Wharton/HKS Dual Degree program. I have also worked with applicants who were applying only to HKS and for MBA.  In 2016, I had the pleasure of attending a half-day workshop for my fellow consultants and myself that was hosted by HKS.  Frankly, HKS offers a level of advice and insight into their application process beyond that of any other graduate program that I am aware of. HKS’ Matt Clemons (Director, Admissions
Enrollment Services, Degree Programs) is a really open and genuinely nice guy who provides great advice to applicants, which can be found at http://hksadmissionblog.tumblr.com/ and is required reading for anyone applying to HKS.

The key challenge of writing this essay is to not duplicate what you write in the HBS essay.  You might refer to doing the Joint Degree in the main HBS essay, but really don’t do more than that. Use this essay to explain the synergy that will be gained from doing both degrees. The professional part seems obvious enough (What skills will you gain? What network will you gain? How will it help you with your career objectives?) but the personal part sometimes confounds my clients. I tell them to think about it terms of the perspectives they will gain and from the opportunity to be enriched by a much range of ideas but also by the fact that those who do the HKS Joint Degree are their own tribe and establish close relationships in a very different classroom atmosphere than is offered by HBS. I encourage my clients who apply for this degree to talk with alumni and current students from the program in order to gain these kind of personal insights.

It is important that you well align the content of your Joint Degree Essay, HBS essay, and HKS essays for your own sanity but do keep in mind that your admission to these programs is separate and each program has own its admissions.

At least for HKS, I don’t believe that applying for the Joint Degree has any significant impact on whether one is admitted to HBS, at least I have never seen anything indicating this.  Which is to say that I don’t think applying for the Joint Degree improves or decreases ones chance of admission.

SEAS Joint Degree: The MS/MBA program is focused on design, innovation, and entrepreneurship within a technical/engineering context. Describe your past experiences in these areas and your reasons for pursuing a program with this focus.

HBS is finally copying another (aka FIELD) part of MIT Sloan (in this case LGO) as well as Kellogg’s MMM, which are clearly the closest comparable  2 year programs to this new MS/MBA.   Of course, it has long been possible to do a joint MBA/MS  in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or Environment and Resources at Stanford GSB, but that takes 3 years.  Something that is different from the HKS process is that the entire process for the MS/MBA is handled through one R1 or R2 application to HBS. Candidates can be admitted to both programs or only to the MBA but not admitted to the MS alone. Keep in mind that your overall personal background should be in the main HBS MBA essay and not here. Make sure you effectively aligh the MBA essay, the SEAS essay, and the 500 character goals statement so that they support and don’t overly duplicate each other, though some overlap (see below) is inevitable. The SEAS essay consists of two parts:

1. Discuss past experiences with design innovation, and/or entrepreneurship within a technical engineering content. If you don’t have any past professional, academic, or other experience in any of these areas, the program is not for you.  Assume that you should be spending at least half if not more of the essay providing an analysis of those experiences. Your resume and application form should back-up what you write about in the essay. My suggestion would be to highlight 2-4 specific ways your past experience demonstrates your fit for the program.
2. Discuss reasons for pursing the program. The reasons would relate directly to your post-MBA objectives, so there should be some inherent overlap between this essay and what you write in the 500 character goals statement (see below regarding that). You should certainly justify why the program is right for you based on what you can read about on the program website.   I would also suggest reading a Q&A with the program’s co-chair. When explaining why you want to attend a program, do not just make a series of dumb lists of classes or tell the program about itself, but explains what you want form the program.   You need not mention the names of particular courses as long as it would be clear to your reader that your learning needs align well with curriculum .  If you have a particular interest in a more specialized course or studying with a particular professor, it might be 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 want to take Integrated Design  because I am interested in learning about integrated design.”This kind of circular reasoning is so common. Usually, it takes place within a paragraph consisting of many such sentences. They actually convey nothing about the applicant.  They are just abstract needs and will have limited impact on your reader.  The admissions reader wants to learn about you, not about their own program.

    An example of an explanation for why:  “While I have been exposed to some user design issues,  I presently lack the kind of comprehensive understanding of design issues that are critical to my future goals….”  A 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 Harvard to those goals.  By focusing on very specific learning needs and explaining those needs in relationship to one’s goals and/or past experience, the admissions reader will be learning about you.

RESUME
“Instructions: Please provide a current resume or CV.  Ideally, this would be about 1-2 pages in length.”   
The resume has always been an important part of any HBS application.  You can find a resume template I have linked to on my blog here.  That resume template can also simply serve as a checklist for what to include.  While many schools prefer a one-page resume, HBS really does not care.  Depending on a client’s background, I will recommend 1 or 2 pages.  I think it best to think of a resume as a record of accomplishment. If you have sufficient accomplishments, 2 pages is fine.  Some applicants try to a use an MBA student’s recruitment resume format as the basis for their own resume, but I generally don’t consider this a good idea as such resumes serve a very different purpose.  An MBA resume should really designed to focus on you overall, that is your academic, professional, and personal accomplishments and key facts. A recruiting resume is meant for a different kind of audience, recruiters, and typically focuses on a much more narrow range of information.

When I first start working comprehensively with any client, whether they are applying to HBS or not, I always start with the resume for a couple of reasons:
1.  It is a great way for any applicant to summarize the most important information about them and  their accomplishments. It sometimes helps applicants actually remind themselves of what they have done.
2.  For me, it is a way I learn about a client so that I can better understand their background.
One key thing to remember about what you include on your resume:  Anything that is there, just like any component of the application, may become the basis for a HBS interview question. Therefore if you don’t want to talk about it and don’t need to write about it, leave it off the resume.

EMPLOYMENT
 There is also an Employment Section of the application that provides space for you to discuss two positions in detail including providing  brief descriptions of your professional accomplishments and challenges.  To some extent this information will overlap with the resume. This is nothing to worry about. That said the challenge question (“Most Significant Challenge” 250 characters) in particular is very possibly something you would not be covering in your resume. Stanford has a similar detailed employment section in their application, which they seriously.  I assume  HBS does as well, so  just as with the resume, make sure your answers in the application are as effective as possible. Don’t treat it like some form you do at the last minute.


ACADEMIC TRANSCRIPTS
First, keep in mind that admissions officers read transcripts and are trained to know what they are reading. They don’t just look at GPA   (If your school calculates it).  If there is something really bad on your transcript (a fail, a withdrawal, etc) or odd, you really do want to explain it in the 500 character (not word) Additional Section. If is just a C and you have no specific excuse, don’t bother trying to explain it.  If your academic performance varied greatly from year to year (or semester to semester), was there a reason for it?  Is it one that you want to provide? I don’t recommend discussing how you became depressed after your boy/girlfriend broke up with you, but if, for example, you were taking a major leadership position in a student organization, running a start-up, working a lot to pay for school,  doing major research, experienced a major illness or misfortune,  or playing a varsity sport, you do have a topic worth discussing. Finally,� �If your transcript,  GMAT/GRE, or resume don’t indicate that you have solid quantitative skills, you should explain why you do if you can. The proper place to provide that explanation is in the additional section or the essay.

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES

“Instructions: List up to three extracurricular activities in order of importance to you (i.e., list the most important first).  Please tell us about the things you did (or do) while you were (or are) attending your college or university.  Include other activities, like community service, here as well.  Please limit this to three activities, but don’t worry if you don’t have a list of three.  We use this section mostly to get a sense of how you spent your time in college as well as the sort of leadership roles and activities that attract you. “

Given HBS’ instructions on this, I do highly recommend including your best extracurricular activities with perhaps 2 out of 3 being focused on college/university activities, unless you have some particularly impressive post college/university activities, where I might see including only 1 activity from college/university. If you have done nothing impressive extracurricular-wise after graduating and have 3 good activities from university, feel free to just use use this section for those activities. If you did nothing but study during college or university and really have no activities, hopefully you have three post-college things to include.  If you have any activities that are directly relevant to your professional goals or to your personal story and you really want to emphasize them, use this space accordingly. While I would surely emphasize the most impressive activities in terms of leadership or engagement, if you need to focus on personal interests that were not g roup focused (running for example) because you simply don’t anything better, put it here.  Activities that show you are well-rounded, civically engaged, artistic, athletic are all possibilities here.

Keep in mind that extracurricular activities can (and usually should)  also be fully accounted for on the resume and given the fact that you can submit a two-page resume, there is no reason that can’t account for an activity.  Also, if you are not using the space for anything else, the 500 character additional information section could be used for elaborating on anything you consider really important, but could not include in this section or in the resume.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION
“Instructions: Were you on the Dean’s List? Did your apple pie win a blue ribbon at the state fair? Tell us about it here. List any distinctions, honors, and awards (academic, military, extracurricular, professional, community) in order of importance to you (i.e., list the most important first). You may list up to three awards.”

For some applicants this section is really easy to fill out because they have won a number of awards, distinctions, or honors and just need to prioritize them. Other candidates will freak out about this section because they never won anything that they think fits.  While, it is sometimes really the case that I will have perfectly great applicant who has nothing to report in this section, most applicants are actually likely to have something.  HBS is not asking you a narrow question here, so think broadly.  It is possible that this section will overlap with the resume, employment, essay, or extracurricular section of the application.


INTENDED POST-MBA CAREER GOALS

Please enter your Intended Post-MBA goals below.

Industry

 Accounting/Auditing
Advertising/Marketing/Public Relations
Aerospace/Aviation/Defense
Agribusiness
Arts/Film/Music/Culture
Automotive/Transportation Equipment
Beverages/Food
Biotechnology
Broadcasting/Cable Television/Multimedia
Chemicals
Commercial Banking
Community/Economic Development
Construction
Consulting
Consumer Products
Diversified Financial Services/Insurance
E-Commerce
Education
Energy: Alternative Energy/Renewables/Cleantech
Energy: Oil/Gas
Government: non-U.S.
Government: U.S. (Federal/State/Local)
Health Providers/Services
High Technology Electronics/Equipment/Networking
Highly Diversified Manufacturing & Service
Hospitality: Lodging, Restaurants, Tourism, Theme Parks, Gaming
International Development/Relief
Internet Services
Investment Banking
Investment Management
Legal Services
Machinery and Heavy Equipment
Medical/Health Care Devices
Military
Mining/Extractive Minerals/Metals
New Media/Social Networking Media
Other Non-profit
Paper and Forest Products
Pharmaceuticals
Printing/Publishing
Private Equity
Real Estate
Retailing/Wholesaling
Software
Sports & Sports Management
Telecommunications
Trading/Import/Export
Transportation Services & Logistics
Utilities
Venture Capital 

Function

 Accounting/Control
Consulting
Engineering
Finance: Investment Management
Finance: Investor Relations
Finance: Lending
Finance: Mergers and Acquisitions
Finance: Research
Finance: Sales and Trading
Finance: Treasury/Analysis
Finance: Underwriting/Advising
Finance: Wealth Management
Fundraising/Development
General Management
Human Resources
Information Services management
Investment Advising
Legal Services
Logistics
Manufacturing/Operations
Marketing: Brand/Product Management
Marketing: Communications
Marketing: General
Marketing: Research
Marketing: Sales
Medical Services
Other
Product Development
Professional Advising-Religion
Project Management
Public Relations
Purchasing
Research and Development
Software Engineering
Strategic Planning
Teaching 

Briefly tell us more about your career aspirations:

500 characters remaining

You don’t have to perfect post-MBA plan, but you need to have a plan. You most likely will spend more time thinking about what you are going to write here than writing it. I think it is fine to include the longer term here if it helps to explain the rationale for your short-term objectives. Keep in mind that your wider vision is a perfectly acceptable topic to discuss in the essay (if you think it will really help your section mates understand who you are)  and not here. Also, since this question does not ask about HBS, you should  not necessarily include any why HBS content here. If you are having difficulty with your career goals, see my analysis of Stanford Essay B for a method for thinking about goals.  I frequently work with my clients on their goals.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
“Instructions: Please only add additional information here if you need to clarify any information provided in the other sections of your application. This is not meant to be used as an additional essay.Please limit your additional information to the space in this section. We’ll know you’ll be tempted, but please don’t send us any additional materials (e.g., additional recommendations, work portfolios). To be fair to all applicants, extra materials won’t be considered.” (500 characters, not words)

Use this space to explain anything that can be effectively explained in the space provided. This is a great place to explain your choice of recommenders, a problem in your past, or to add in information about something you really think HBS needs to know. It is completely fine to leave this space blank if you have nothing you need to add.  See above in this post for using the additional section if you are a reapplicant to HBS.

Best of luck to everyone applying to HBS.

-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.

Back on blog/update/From New Delhi to Helsinki

I have been off from blogging since March but my posts will be flying out from today.  From April to end of June I was traveling.  A bit about that. This does not have much to do with admissions advice but more to do with me.

For most of April, I was in India. This was my first time to visit.  Given that I work with many clients from India, visiting allowed me to better understand where my clients are coming from.  I started in New Delhi and had a chance to visit IIT Delhi, which is a rather big campus. Wondering around I saw ads for student organizations and was even pleased to see one I recognized.  By the way, it is very easy to get onto the IIT Delhi campus.  By comparison, I could only have my driver park in front of Sri Ram College of Commerce and just take a look as getting in seemed rather daunting. At least I can say I saw SRCC and part of the University of Delhi!  Much later on the trip I could at least get a sense of Bangalore and understood why the relative costs there have made it attractive to startups, but the traffic! I was charmed by Mumbai, in part because of its relative walkability and in part because of the architecture.  Wherever I went I was most impressed by the absolute k indness of Indians.  While I found the Golden Temple in Amritsar to be one of the most spiritual and beautiful religious sites I have been to, the greatest thing is the people themselves.

After India, my wife and I went to Greece. In addition to island hopping and Athens, we spent a couple of weeks in Greece’s second biggest city, Thessaloniki, which is a big university town with many exchange students. It seemed like the biggest number of foreigners there were actually exchange students rather than tourists. If you are looking for a great European town to hang out in and want low prices and high quality, I can highly recommend it. I was working while there in June and it was a great place to have a workaction! I have been asked about the economic situation in Greece and based on conversations I had with Greeks as well as what I observed I can state the following:

1. Nothing prevents Greek people from hanging out in cafes and going out to eat. Also, nothing prevents Greeks from being nice and genuinely kind.  Both India and Greece share one thing, countries were foreigners are likely to be treated warmly.

2. The central shopping areas seemed vibrant but it was clear that less central areas had more store vacancies. However I have seen a similar level of empty store front here in Japan as well as in the US.

3. The impact of the economy is felt mostly by the Greeks in terms of increased taxes and more limited job opportunities. Young and/or highly educated people are leaving for opportunities elsewhere but some come back because they love life in Greece.

4. The only negative impact I felt personally was a strike by ferry workers who were protesting austerity measures, which resulted in us being stuck on an island for a few extra days.  I know there was a garbage strike in Athens but that happened after we left.

5.  Since the economic crisis has been going for years, it has, I think, normalized. People can operate in crisis mode for only so long, after a while, they simply accept the new reality.

 

After six weeks in Greece, we moved onto Budapest for a week.  As I am 50% Jewish Hungarian, it was exciting to visit a town in Europe with a vibrant Jewish present.  One thing that struck me in Hungary was the level of English ability was incredibly high amongst the young people. Whatever they are doing in Hungarian schools, I wish it could be applied here in Japan.

 

Finally, my trip ended in Helsinki where my wife and I stayed with one of my INSEAD classmates.  It was “summer” in Helsinki, but it was a cold one! It was great opportunity to talk with my classmate about the impact of our education at INSEAD on our work and lives.

 

By the time I arrived back in Japan at end of last month, I had already been working with some clients for almost a month and more have been coming on board. It is now gotten busy  but I am not in travel mode but switching to blog writing mode.  So more of what you have come to expect from this blog will be coming soon.

-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.

MBA Application Planning For 2018 Entry

Now that Round two results for 2017 entry are coming in, I am increasingly focused on initial consultations for MBA applicants applying for 2018 entry.  They often ask what to do now before essay season, which really begins June, commences.  Here is what I tell them:
1.  If your GMAT (or GRE equivalent) is not already at or above the average score for those admitted and you can improve it, this should be your highest priority.   Scores are going up. I highly recommend this article from Poets&Quants and its accompanying charts for understanding the role of GMAT and what kind of numbers you should be targeting.  (Note: For those who are not native or near-native level speakers, TOEFL/IELTS is likely to be more of a priority than GMAT/GRE right now.)

2.  Learn about schools! If you can do so, go visit them while they are still in session.   Visiting a few programs is really good to do if you have the time.  Even if you don’t visit, make full use of online resources, information sessions, and networking. Contact alumni and current students now, not a few days before you apply. Showing fit in order to gain admission is about knowing the program and conversations with current students and alumni are immensely helpful.

3. Work on your resume. Even if you are not sure where to apply, this is something you can do now.  See here for a resume template.

4. Do some goal brainstorming as know is the time to develop your post-MBA goals for your application.  For a very systematic process for developing goals, see my discussion of goals in this post (amongst others) on Columbia Business School.  This method for developing goals can be used for any school or not school in particular.

5.  Enhancing your community engagement/extracurricular profile.  While I don’t, for the most part, recommend starting a new activity that you have no previous connections with, it is still early enough to enhance something you do. For example, by taking a leadership position or project management role in an organization or activity you have already been involved with. One criterion for admission to MBA programs relates to such activities, so if feasible, enhancing your role in such an activity can be useful.  While it looks kind of unimpressive to suddenly start something new that you have no previous connection to, now is a good time to enhance what you already do.
6.  Take on new responsibilities, roles, and/or projects at work.  It is always good to find new ways to enhance your professional experience through taking on something new.  Showing a record of doing so is important for MBA application and recent professional accomplishments are always welcome. There is still time to potentially make some before application deadlines, so look for such opportunities.

7. Enhance your academic profile.  If your GMAT is already done and is as high as you will get it and your academic profile is not so strong because of your GPA, there is still time to take HBX CORe, MBA Math, or even an online course.  Again, if y0u are done with GMAT, I think this is something to think about BUT IT IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR GMAT! I think HBS CORe, in particular, is one that applicants who need to showcase business related quant skills that are not indicated by their academics, should consider. Needless to say, this is especially good if you are applying to HBS because HBX CORe was developed for HBS admits who need to work on these skills prior to entering the program. 

8. Figure out who to use for your recommendations.  For more about that, see here and here.

9.  If you need to provide English language test scores (TOEFL, IELTS), get this out of the way as soon as possible. Some applicants leave this to the last minute and end up with bad scores for no good reason. Applicants with real limits on their English ability probably don’t need to be told the above but I have worked with some applicants from Europe, Latin America, and India (yes, for some schools like Berkeley, you will need to take TOEFL) who leave this to the last minute.  Take it seriously and do it early. No reason for surprises or a score that does not show the full range of your English ability.

10. Prioritize the above.  It is easy for me to make all these suggestions but I don’t expect anyone to do all of them in the next few months so focus on what you think is most important.

-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.

Interview Preparation: There is no one way to do it.

One thing I have learned over the last 15 plus years of coaching applicants on MBA, scholarship, and other admissions interviews is that there is no one way to prepare.  What works for one applicant, does not necessarily work for another. People not only have different learning styles, they have different psychologies. If you are preparing for interviews, you need to find the kind of preparation that works best for you. As a coach, my job is to adapt to the needs of my client but always be focused on the core task of enabling better interview performance. Whether you work with coach or prepare on your own, you need to find what will work best for you. 

 

INTERVIEW STRESS:  THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY

 

THE GOOD: For some people, stress is energizing force that gets them operating at their best. They can go with the flow and love the intensity of interaction in a good interview. They love debate and dialogue under pressure, so being asked hard questions, experiencing multiple follow-up questions, or even being challenged are totally fine with them.  Some applicants positively need to be pushed in this way in order to expand their interview skills. Mock interviews that are designed to be at least as hard if not harder than the real interview tend to work best with such people.

 

 

THE BAD: However, for others, stress can impair or paralyze their interview performance.  For someone who feels nervous, can’t think clearly,  gets stuck or even paralyzed, interviewing is a less than pleasant activity.  While language ability can impact performance, I worked with intermediate English level Japanese clients who had excellent communication and interview skills because they were comfortable with being interviewed and felt no undue stress and I have worked with Ivy League educated Americans who were severely impacted by it.  Stress-related psychological issues can short circuit underlying skills or knowledge and undermine performance.  If interviewing does this to you, you need to seek outside help.  Some people benefit from mindfulness or meditation training, others may need to seek professional psychological advice.  I would personally suggest taking a look at Mindfulne ss-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) because this method has extensive data to back up its efficacy and can have positive benefits for a lifetime.

 

 

THE UGLY is an admissions coach who makes a stressed out client even more stressed during practice; Giving such a person a stressful interview is an act of cruelty and off-task because it does not improve their performance. Instead, it further erodes confidence and may increase anxiety, nervous behavior, and even reduce the performance level.  Sometimes it is not obvious that a client will be stressed out because it is the first interview training session. While I try to identify potential problems in this regard by providing a  survey of interview experience (I discuss this in detail in this post I wrote for another blog) to my clients, some clients don’t complete this form and even if they do, it is not 100% guaranteed to catch problems. But once I identify that someone is experiencing extreme stress, I take a time out and change tactics.

 

 

MOCK INTERVIEWS ARE NOT FOR EVERYBODY!

For most people, mock interviews help them build up confidence for the real interview, while for others mocks are a source of anxiety that may not be indicative of how the person performs in an actual interview.  I have worked with clients who experience real stress when doing mocks but report no difficulties with the real interview. If you are the kind of person who has done well at real interviews but feels uncomfortable with mock interviews, don’t feel the need to practice this way, at least initially.   I have written elsewhere about working with an applicant who was admitted to HBS but who had extreme issues with mock interviewing. My solution in such situations is not to increase someone’s stress but to find alternative ways to prepare. If mock interviews increase your stress and undermine your performance, you need alternatives.  Beyond self-preparation, which is critical for any applicant, two things I suggest instead of or in addition to mock interviewing:

 

Open question by question preparation.  Simply by not creating the atmosphere of a mock but rather by treating a session as a place to test out and refine one answer at a time, I find that almost any client can improve on their content and enhance performance. By removing “the reality” of the interview and even the roles of interviewee and interviewer, this tends to reduce anxiety and allow for on-task performance enhancing training. If you are working with an admissions coach or consultant who can’t or seems unable to do this, find someone else. If you are asking a friend or family member to prep with you, ask them to do this way if you are finding mock interviewing unhelpful. Mastering your content and feeling comfortable with it is a core objective of interview training and you don’t need a mock to do that.

 

Focus on storytelling. In some situations, I will not even ask a question but instead simply listen to and provide feedback on possible stories that can be used to cover various types of questions.  Removing the asking of a question is itself another way to reduce stress.  For applicants who just want to test out stories, regardless of whether they benefit from mock interviewing or not,  focusing on just telling stories can be an effective way to review and refine them.  The process for this consists of listing to the story, providing feedback on the story, having the client tell the story again, and then refining it further in order to get the timing and focus right for addressing different kinds of questions.  This kind of prep is not only useful for those who have stress but for any client working on refining a story.  It is something I use especially for handling behavioral interview questions (For more about BIs, see my post on MIT interviews).

 

Realistic Mock Interviewing

Finally, as far as mock interviewing goes, I try to provide realistic mock interviews based on what I know about the questions that are typically asked by a particular school and, in some cases, what I know about a particular interviewer.  Excepting for some (and it is too many though not most) sadistic and/or unprofessional alumni interviewers who are badly trained (if at all) by the schools that they incompetently represent, most interviewers are friendly or neutral and not overly aggressive. There are exceptions to this. For example, ISB interviewers tend to be consistently aggressive and are clearly told to do that.  That said, most admission officer, alumni, and student interviewers are not so aggressive.  Even HBS admissions interviewers, who may ask many follow-up questions, can’t be said to be overly aggressive and they are typically friendly or neutral, not hostile.  Don’t equate being asked a hard question with an unfriendly interviewer. Some people make that mistake. Having your plans questioned (“Can you really do that?” “What if your plan fails?” “What is your Plan B if you are not admitted?”) is something you need to be prepared for but being asked about this is not inherently hostile as the interviewer may be trying to gauge your realism, the depth of planning, and/or your ability to think about alternatives.  When I am working with a client who finds mock interviewing challenging but wants to do it, I will gradually increase the difficulty to simulate what they are likely to experience.  This increase might happen in a single session or over multiple sessions. As long as doing so does not undermine performance, I will increase the difficulty. The point is to find the sweet spot for such clients so that they improve their performance.  Of course, if I know in advance that a particular interviewer will be difficult (it happens sometimes bec ause of information I and/or my client may have about the interviewer), I will help clients adjust accordingly. The objective is always to focus on practice that enhances performance and generate the one desired outcome: Admission.

 

 

 

 

-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 Interview Essay Question

IF YOU ARE INVITED FOR AN MBA INTERVIEW AT MIT SLOAN

Those invited to interview will be asked to answer the following question: The mission of the MIT Sloan School of Management is to develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world and to generate ideas that advance management practice. Please share with us something about your past that aligns with this mission. (250 words or fewer).  Details for submitting your essay will be included in the interview invitation.

MIT used this question last year in a longer format which may have involved multiple examples. In this case, those fortunate enough to be called for an interview will only need to write about a single topic.

We can break this into a number of possible topics that relate to MIT Sloan's mission, which I will break into three categories:

 

1. Describe a time when you were principled.  While this might simply mean discussing a time when you were ethical in terms of a decision or action you took, it could also relate to a situation when you convinced others (a boss, a colleague, a team, an organization, etc.) based on the position you held.  Being principled might mean ethical, but also relates to one’s professional ideas or even perceptions of the world. To be principled means to stand up for what you believe in.

 

2. Describe a time when you were innovative.  Think of situations were you were creative, original, or otherwise made a positive impact by doing something new. Maybe you were innovative in your approach to solving a problem, but this could be about many possible topics.  For example, describing a time when you improved something, invented something, established a new best practice, or formulated a new idea.

 

3. Describe a time when you showed leadership. Think of situations when you actively lead as a thought leader, team leader, supervisor, decider, and/or convincer.  Leadership takes many forms.  Leadership is no easy thing. Nor is it obvious. The worst possible thing is to conceive of leadership as simple formal responsibility or a title because this conveys nothing about the person in that position. While some applicants will have held formal leadership positions, many will not. Formal leadership positions are great to write about if they involve the applicant actually having a significant impact, making a difficult decision, being a visionary, showing creativity, or otherwise going beyond their formal responsibility, but the same is true for those showing leadership without having a formal title.  If you are having difficulty really understanding leadership, find out what kind of leader you are by taking this quiz based on Lewin's classic framework. I think leadership is more complicated than Lewin's framework, but this quiz is a great way to get you started thinking about yourself, a key part of answering any leadership essay question effectively.

 

Ideally it would be great to have a story that combines all three of the above aspects, but don't worry if it does not. For example, if you find your story focuses on being principled rather than innovative, I would not necessarily abandon that story. The point is to give MIT an understanding of you as a person sufficient for them to understand why you fit at MIT Sloan.

 

Finally, given that this essay is being asked as part of your interview, assume that whatever you write about you may need to elaborate on in detail in the interviews. I could be wrong about this, but until I  read something from MIT admissions indicating otherwise or subsequently get interview reports from my clients or elsewhere indicating otherwise, I assuming that this essay is a part of the interview process.  Therefore only write about a topic that you will be comfortable discussing in detail.

 

Best of luck with your application to the Class of 2019!  If you do get to write on the interview invite essay, be sure to read my post on interviewing at MIT Sloan.

 

-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.