Reviewing One's Candidacy

aaannnnddd I'm back!  I have to give a shout out to someone's mother because I'm told you're an avid blog reader  ;-)  You've got an incredible son and I'm glad that he and I met.  We will be lifelong friends!  He helped me with my essays without asking for anything in return and for that I am forever indebted to him.  I know you're very proud of him.  I will have to properly thank everyone who helped me this year in a later post.

As for now.  I need to make a blog post before people kill me.  I can make something up though hehe...

As the new round of applicants begin stressing over the GMAT and applications, I'd like to make this post about what I've recently learned.  So without calling anyone out I want to say that the other day (yesterday) I was reached out to by a blog reader who wanted me to read over his/her essays, letters of recs, and resume to see if I could figure out why he/she did not have much luck this year in terms of acceptance to business school.

Now at this juncture many of us have gone through this crazy application process, so initially when I agreed to read through this persons application I thought it would just make some essay corrections and send back my notes.  BUT what happened was very eye opening.

When I started reading the essays I was very critical - as I always am - but then as I read more and more essays I started to compile a, dare I say it, holistic view of this applicant.  Needless to say that after three essays, a resume, and 2 letters of recs... I could definitely see why this person may have not had much luck.  The two best pieces of the application that I thought were one of the essays that really gave me a great sense of who the person was... and then the 2 letters of recs.  The weakness was in the "Why MBA?" type essays.  I didn't feel any passion for what the person wanted to go in to.

(btw - I wrote all of these comments to this person, so I'm not blowing up his/her spot!)  I have a non-disclosure agreement that I hold myself too!

In any event... it was very interesting for me to "feel" for the applicant after reading the letters of recs.  And for us applicants this is not a piece of the pie that we are able to see.  Well... I guess we could see if it we check that box in the application that we want to see it - BUT YOU SHOULDN'T!  After reading the letters of recs I was wishing that the essays were more informative because then I would really advocate for the applicant if I were an admissions officer.

Then I began thinking how hard it must be for admissions officers to read through thousands of applications every year where there is one or two parts of the application that are detrimental.   I almost wanted to read the essays again looking for any nuggets of information that I missed or to see if I got the totally wrong impression of the candidate the first time I read the essays.  I didn't do this because I was on the bus and my stop was coming up, but I wanted too.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that I know the reason why the outcome was as such, but if me... a 3rd party can read through a whole application and see holes in it.. then I have to imagine that it would be the same for an admissions officer.

So with that being said... for all of you new folks to the game this year... when it comes time for you to get letters of recommendations and write essays make sure that they give a full holistic view of yourself.

1. Give your recommenders a packet (i can go into what I included in mine at a later date) and sit down with them and review it with them.  They should be your advocates!

2. Start and finish your essays early to the point where you have like a full month to just let them sit.  Then revisit them.  I didn't get to do this but I wish I had the time too.  #ItWorkedOutAnyway ;-)

3.  When you think you've finished your essays and your resume - read them OUTLOUD and in a row. Make sure that you are not being redundant in your essays and resume.  You want to be able to give the admissions committee as much information about yourself as you can.  It's amazing to see what you're conveying vs. what you want too and I think the only way to do this is go through your application just as the admissions committee will.

4.  After that... give your essays and resume to a 3rd party to read through and make comments... Here, you don't have to necessarily make all of the changes they suggest because remember you've done your homework and know what you want to convey, but do not take their comments lightly because there may be 1 admissions officer who sees things their way.