How Mental Association determines the Winning MBA Essay

When we start the MBA Application Essay review process, our first request is to create a life audit – an experience list of the ten most life-changing experiences. For the not so serious applicants, this exercise is an additional pain that they are not ready to endure. Applicants who are  in a hurry tries to pack in the professional experiences right from the time they got fired to less dramatic – reaching a milestone and exceeding expectations with deadlines, productivity, and revenue goals. The applicants who understand the meaning behind the exercise often create a list that reflects turning points in their life. We had explained why including turning points in essays is important but while creating the list; think about all the activities that are associated with your personal traits.

Personal Brand = Activities

It took repeated exposure, targeted messaging, and millions of dollars to achieve brand association for some of the world’s best brands. Volvo is associated with Safety, Wal-Mart means Economical, and Red Bull sparks images of adventurism. For your personal brand, the association happens with the extra-curricular activities that you mention in the essays.

Marathons and Half-Marathons: Goal-setting, Ambitious, Persistence
Charity (Children): Responsible, Empathy, Vision (Bigger Picture)
Charity (Senior Citizens): Responsible, Empathy
Event Organizer: Collaboration, Goal Setting
Playing Musical Instruments (Solo): Discipline, Goal Setting, Excellence
Playing Musical Instruments (Group): Discipline, Goal Setting, Excellence, Collaboration
Tutoring: Responsible, Vision (Bigger Picture)
Community fund-raising: Empathy, Vision (Bigger Picture), Collaboration
Animal Rescue: Empathy
Team Sports (Baseball, Football, Cricket, Soccer): Discipline, Excellence, Goal Setting, Collaboration
Individual Sports (Skiing, Swimming): Goal Setting, Discipline, Excellence
Military (and Affiliated Organization): Community, Goal-setting, Responsible, Vision (Bigger Picture), Collaboration, Excellence, Ambitious, Persistence
Art(Photography, Writing/Blogging, Theater, Dance, Painting): Community, Excellence, Persistence

Now you know why applicants with a military background have a better chance to gain admission. The number of positive attributes associated with them is much higher than any other extra-curricular activities. We have rarely seen applicants only focusing on one extra-curricular. They have been sporadically or systematically involved with at least a couple of activities. Applicants tend to highlight activities that are dear to them. If the involvement has been continuous with an intensity that only the applicant can express, the approach is right but by distancing yourself from the extra-curricular activities and looking at it as an association with positive attributes; you will find activities that will have the most impact on the reviewer.

Connecting Experiences

No matter how you describe yourself, we are all social animal, under the multi layers of sophistication. Your personal brand should reveal a bias for connecting people. If you had worked in a start-up that created an app for monitoring heart rate, the reviewer is sub-consciously determining the value of the product you mentioned. Even though you are no longer involved with the start-up, the value of your association with the brand is determined by how the reviewers connect with the brand themselves. This might seem a little far-fetched in a mere essay review process, but the essays that do not leave any mark are the ones where the experiences do not connect with the reviewer’s experiences. If the reviewer feels that her father/mother, uncle or a close relative will find value out of the app, her association with your personal brand will be positive.

We have read several essays where the applicant tries hard to explain a technical solution that they developed for a corporate giant, like the one where an IT consultant developed a solution that migrated records from an old content management system to a much better organized system. There were no connecting experiences. After reviewing, we rephrased the solution to include the real benefits: improve the claim-processing time by one day, allowing accident victims to get cash within 24-hours of the accident. Now the experience would connect with the reviewer who might have seen her friend, acquaintance or a relative struggle to claim cash on time during an accident. When an essay reviewer is unable to process the experience fluently, she falsely associates difficulty to ‘empathize’ as ‘not impressive applicant’. Think about the people that you just can’t get along. Coherence of values or communication is missing between your conversations, and this ‘lack of fluency’ is translated to ‘I don’t get along with that person’.

Me Too vs. I want to

When I was reviewing about the best places to travel in the world, I came across Back Pack Me, a travel journal of an Indo-Portuguese couple. The narrative was different from the structured: good, bad, and the ugly reviews seen in Trip Advisor. The experiences were personal, and the couple captured information at a level only someone who is passionate about traveling could do. The information was trustworthy and inspired me to Back Pack and travel. Back Pack Me is a perfect example of an “I want to” inspirational brand.

When MBA Applicants capture personal experiences about the Community service, the travel experiences, and the strategies used to mitigate conflict in a team environment, most of them follow a template created by the MBA Admission consultant. It is a ME Too template without any individuality. What applicants are doing is capturing the events without any reflection of their biases, their weakness, and practical tips on what they did. The explanations are too vague. There is nothing new to learn. Worst of all, the narrative does not inspire the reviewer to get involved with your charity or travel the world like how you did.

Unless you can inspire the reviewer, you are at the mercy of numbers (GMAT, GPA and Experience), and competition (Round 1 vs. Round 2 Application volume). Let us transform your essays to an inspirational narrative.