MBA Essay Advice From John Rice

Lately I've been getting lots of calls from old friends, classmates and coworkers who are applying to business school and looking for advice. Some of them applied during round one and are anxious to hear back, and so they've been calling to ask me what I think their chances of admission are, especially considering the economic challenges of 2009 (check out my new post on that topic). Others are wrapping up round two applications. I remember being in the same process last year, and I remember how stressful things can feel in the last few days. This is especially true if your preparing to submit your application to some of the heavy hitters, many which come in mid to late January (List of MBA Deadlines)

As a result, January is usually one of the hardest times of the year for applicants. Not only are applicants scrambling around to pull their application materials together while also cramming to fine-tune their essays before the deadline but they're also sitting on pins and needles worrying whether they'll get in to the schools they applied to in the first round. But the best thing to do now is sit back and relax a little. This is completely normal. I still remember these feelings of anxiety and uncertainly like I had them yesterday, But I still ended up doing really well, so in the end, these feelings were never really all that relevant except for motivating me to work harder. In my opinion however, what was most relevant were the essays. In fact, I consider the essays to be the most significant part of the application by far, and in my experience, the best business school applicants spend a significant amount of time writing so they can develop their stories. Similarly, you should also make sure you're happy with your essays and hold off on submitting everything until you're absolutely finished.

That said, the point of this post is to pass along a few final tips on how to ensure you've submitted the best possible business school essays possible. The advice actually comes John Rice, an HBS grad, business school admissions guru, and founder of Management Leadership For Tomorrow (MLT, www.ML4T.org). MLT is a national non-profit organization dedicated to developing diverse leaders and professionals, and it is an organization I'm proud to be part of. (As usual, I can never really say enough about how valuable MLT is) I'll note that John originally posted his information on a website named GottaMentor (gottamentor.com) which which was co-founded by his wife Andrea Rice and is a social networking site created for high potential professionals to share information. All the B-school applicants, students, and graduates out there should definitely check it out. Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn, and other networking sites, Gotta Mentor is geared specifically toward business professionals and "allows you to engage people who will add true value to YOUR career." Have a look at John's article below and ionce you finish up the essays, come back and check out Gotta Mentor as well.

Good luck!

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Source: Gotta Mentor
Author: John Rice
Title: Business School Essays That Get You In
Link: http://www.gottamentor.com/ViewGeneralAdvice.aspx?g=14

Here is an excerpt from John's Article

"One of the most important aspects of applying to business school is understanding how to tell your story in a way that translates your strengths and accomplishments into high potential for positive impact at your target MBA campus and later as a leader over the course of your post-MBA career. Focus the body of your story on articulating and illustrating the following things:

1. What you are passionate about and why, and what that implies for your long-term career goals. Your story should focus on what you want to accomplish in life/why and secondarily how business school fits into that plan. Failing to be introspective and genuine about what you really care about and what you really want to do with your life virtually eliminates the chance that you will tell a unique, memorable, and compelling story. Many applicants make the mistake of .... " (Click here to see the rest of John's essays advice)

Recruiting Tool That Provides Company Salaries, Interview Information and Reviews

Hey all, I hope everyone is enjoying December so far and that you have fun plans with family and friends for the holiday break. As I mentioned in my last post, I just finished my first semester law school final exams a couple of days ago, and just yesterday I left Chicago for the warm weather of sunny Arizona. But I was lucky. Despite a small delay on the runway, I was able to escape the winter snowstorms in Chicago, though it sounds like a lot of people did not. I hope all those headed back east, especially out to Philadelphia and Virginia, are able to make out soon. Also, just wanted to give a big congratulations to those of you who just finished your first semester of law school or business school, It’s definitely a big accomplishment, and from what I hear it only gets a lot easier from here. I'll let you all know if that's true at Northwestern once the semester begins in a few weeks.

Anyhow, the point of my post here was just to pass along a quick website to you guys. I recently stumbled across the company named Glassdoor (Click Here for Website) If you have not heard of the company yet, you should take a minute to browse the website. You'll see that it has a lot of pretty interesting career-related information, such as reviews of companies, interview information, and salary levels, all of which are pretty important to anyone in the job market. While I don't know enough about the company to vouch for every single piece of information here, most of what I've seen doesn't seem too far off. To see most of the information, you'll have to sign up with a user name and password. But I’ve found the information here to be pretty interesting and worth the five minutes it takes to sign up. Also, there is information here for those in both the business and legal fields.

It looks like Glassdoor also just came out with a Best Places to Work in 2010 list (Click Here for List). I’m not sure exactly how they analyzed the companies to come up with the rankings, but I suspect it has something to do with the individual feedback on the site. Have a look when you have a chance.