MBA Application Essay Tip 1 - Honesty

I can assure you that writing a B-school Application, especially the essays are a big pain. It is more time consuming than preparing for your GMAT exam (if you have a 12-hour workday). Writing essays require reflection on your life objectively and presenting your case with honesty. Did I say honesty?
Honesty

When you prepare your B-School application there are lot of questions that are personal and are uncomfortable like “What is the biggest mistake that you have made and what have you learned from it ". Let us be honest here - who in the right mind would write, "I made a managerial blunder that cost my company 1 million dollars".

End of the day our objective is to get through the admission process. So let us focus on the less costly mistakes or present the same mistake, in such a way that you have a complementary story to tell that nullify your mistake. If you have truly learned from your mistake and have taken corrective actions, then you might well write about it. However, I would suggest you to focus on the less costly mistake.

Costly Mistakes

The truth is that - we make decisions based on our belief system and less based on the facts that we are presented with. Do we have to tailor-make our essays for the business school?

Are you following a process in collecting the information, breaking down the information and creating proper inferences out of it? We all make the initial action plan based on the information that we have. However, most of the time, information changes and our ability to adapt and make the right decision depends on the experience that we have developed over the years (this forms part of our belief system), which we call as intuition.

Experienced managers have excellent intuition. They don't have to go through bar charts and graphs to make a decision. For them, intuition is the result of the experience that they have developed over the years.

If you are writing about costly mistakes, write about the rationale that you followed in coming up with a particular decision . If change in information or factors over which you had very little control was responsible for the mistake, then mentioning it is acceptable. If your decision was based on wrong information then do not mention it (it is your responsibility to check the validity of the data). You can mention mistakes caused by error in judgment if it was during the initial years of your career. Business schools are not kind towards people who repeat their mistakes.

1) Write about mistakes that you made at the initial stages of a skill development( Due to lack of knowledge of certain processes)

2) Write about the corrective measures that you took.

3) Write about the lessons that you have learned from the mistake

Avoid mentioning mistakes that you cannot explain or for which you cannot answer two and three convincingly.

Does that mean that you have to be dishonest or write what the admission committee wants to hear?

The admission committee has read hundreds and maybe thousands of applications. They can easily distinguish between applications that are honest and that are 'made to fit'.

Be honest and think strategically before writing your essays. List your five strengths and weaknesses. Ask your friends and colleagues to list your five strengths and weaknesses. Compare the two lists and pick the common ones.

When you apply for an MBA, you are competing against candidates on Entry factors - GMAT, GPA, Work Experience, Nature of Work Experience, Extra-curricular activities, motivation and Critical Success Factors – Maturity, Communication and Leadership.  Apart from this, you are also fighting against your “Typecast” (read MBA Admissions typecast)

Class diversity is a factor that business schools will not compromise. Rightly so! Even if you have a balanced score with the Entry Factors, there are MBA Candidates from your country with similar background and achievements. Now what I was suggesting with honesty was that objective evaluation of your failure is not enough to guarantee your place as an MBA. Mistakes that will not raise a red flag should be mentioned in your MBA application essays. Even if you mention your biggest mistake, the critical success factors, especially the maturity with which you reason your mistakes is what matters.

If you want to know whether your essays satisfy the Critical success factors : Grammar, Spelling, Style, Tone, Uniqueness, Pace, Completeness and Coherence, submit your essays to us. Our MBA consultants will review it for you with suggestions and corrective actions.

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