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What have you been told about applying to business school? With the advent of chat rooms, blogs and forums, armchair \u201cexperts\u201d often unintentionally propagate MBA admissions myths, which can linger and undermine an applicant\u2019s confidence. Some applicants are led to believe that schools want a specific \u201ctype\u201d of candidate and expect certain GRE scores and GPAs, for example. Others are led to believe that they need to know alumni from their target schools and\/or get a letter of reference from the CEO of their firm in order to get in. In this series,\u00a0<\/i><\/b>mbaMission<\/i><\/b><\/a> debunks these and other myths and strives to take the anxiety out of the admissions process.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n <\/i><\/b>You have poured your heart and soul into your business school applications and taken the time to craft the perfect essays. Now, you are eagerly looking forward to finishing up a few more applications to your target schools. You have heard that you can expect to spend as much time on your second, third, and fourth applications combined (!) as you did to produce your very first one. Encouraged by this claim, you might scan your third application and think, \u201cOh, look\u2014here\u2019s a \u2018failure\u2019 question. I can just adapt my Harvard \u2018mistake\u2019 essay to answer that one!\u201d or \u201cThere\u2019s a question about leadership. I\u2019ve already written an MBA essay on that, so I can just reuse it here. It\u2019s all so easy now!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Not so fast. First applications usually do take longer to complete than subsequent ones. However, this is <\/span>not<\/span><\/i> because once you have crafted several essays for one or two schools, you can then simply cut and paste them into other applications, adjust the word count a bit, change a few names here and there, and be done.<\/span><\/p>\n Admissions committees spend a lot of time crafting their application questions, thinking carefully about the required word limit and about each component of the questions. Schools pose questions that they believe will draw out specific information that will help them ascertain whether the applicant would be a good fit with their program. Therefore, if you simply paste an MBA essay you previously wrote for School A into the application for School B because you believe the schools\u2019 questions are largely similar, you will most likely miss an important facet of what School B is really asking about. For example, consider these two past questions:<\/span><\/p>\n Even though both MBA essay prompts ask you to explore leadership experiences, they certainly <\/span>do not<\/span><\/i> ask the exact same question. Kellogg wants you to share more than one leadership experience as well as a forward vision of the areas you want to develop while at Kellogg. Tuck, on the other hand, asks about only one leadership experience\u2014your <\/span>most meaningful<\/span><\/i> leadership experience, in particular\u2014and wants to know what you learned about yourself as a result.<\/span><\/p>\n If you were to simply paste your 600-word Kellogg MBA essay as your response to Tuck\u2019s question and cut 75\u2013100 words, its admissions committee would know that you did not answer the question appropriately\u2014a \u201cmistake\u201d and a \u201cfailure\u201d are not necessarily the same thing. And believe us, the schools have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of cases in which applicants clearly submitted their \u201cfailure\u201d MBA essay for one school in response to another program\u2019s \u201cmistake\u201d question\u2014and vice versa. Understandably, this is not the way to win over the admissions committee. Although you may use the same <\/span>core story<\/span><\/i> for more than one application essay, take the time to examine that story from the angle proposed by your target school\u2019s question and respond accordingly.<\/span><\/p>\n One simple rule will always stand you in good stead: answer the question asked. ?<\/span><\/p>\n What have you been told about applying to business school? With the advent of chat rooms, blogs and forums, armchair \u201cexperts\u201d often unintentionally propagate MBA admissions myths, which can linger and undermine an applicant\u2019s confidence. Some applicants are led to believe that schools want a specific \u201ctype\u201d of candidate and expect certain GRE scores and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[645523,645522,1362363,672694],"tags":[1362448,1362422],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-10672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-apps-and-admissions-mba-2","category-mba-2","category-mbamission","category-partners","tag-mba-admissions-myths-destroyed","tag-mba-essay"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/132"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10672"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10743,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10672\/revisions\/10743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10672"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.manhattanprep.com\/gre\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=10672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNorthwestern Kellogg: Describe your key leadership experiences and evaluate what leadership areas you hope to develop through your MBA experiences. (600-word limit)<\/b><\/h4>\n
Dartmouth Tuck: Discuss your most meaningful leadership experience. What did you learn about your own individual strengths and weaknesses through this experience? (approximately 500 words)<\/b><\/h4>\n
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<\/span>mbaMission<\/i><\/b><\/a> is the leader in MBA admissions consulting with a full-time and comprehensively trained staff of consultants<\/i><\/b>, all with profound communications and MBA experience. mbaMission has helped thousands of candidates fulfill their dream of attending prominent MBA programs around the world. Take your first step toward a more successful MBA application experience with a free 30-minute consultation with one of mbaMission\u2019s senior consultants. <\/span><\/i>Click here to sign up today. <\/span><\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"