Am I Cut Out For This?

The level of introspection needed to write essays is unbelievable.  This week was tough.  I received feedback on my first round of essays and basically need to re-write them from the jump.  That's all I need to say right now.  I'm feeling defeated right now and am wondering if I'm cut out for this.  The balancing act between essays and GMAT is becoming unsettling.  

But!  Don't cry for me Argentina...once I redo my essays I'll feel better.  But right now... ::sigh:: is all I have to say.

Addressing Weakness in Essays!

Hello everyone... I have returned!  As I continue studying for the GMAT, my friend Brett Nowak has so kindly provided me with some more content for my blog.  If you don't remember Brett, he was the guest blogger on my 5000th Visitor post.  He owns Ivy App Success and has some great advice as to how one should address weakness in essays.

How to Address Weakness 

The Art of Bridging 

- Brett Nowak, www.IvyAppSuccess.com

There are two effective ways to address weaknesses in the MBA application.

1.) Don’t Include the Weakness

An often overlooked option for weaknesses is to not include them at all. This is highly recommended if the weakness was not addressed with positive actions.

For example, one of my clients had a lackluster academic performance throughout college. Although this was a weakness, she had taken little steps to improve her GPA. She had, however, excellent examples of leadership at work. Instead of explaining her poor GPA, we wrote the optional essay about additional leadership examples at work. By focusing on her strengths, she got accepted into her top choice.

2.) State the Weakness and Bridge to Strengths

If you overcame a weakness, fixed a wrong, or proved that it won’t happen again, weaknesses can actually becomes strengths. To do this effectively, you must make the reader focus on the positives. This is done by stating the weakness as an unapologetic fact then moving on to the positives.

For example, one of my clients had plagiarized a paragraph in his last college paper. He had, however, admitted to his error and learned from his mistake. Instead of writing the essay about why he plagiarized, we addressed the issue in a way that stressed his strengths. Here is an example of what he wrote:

“In the last semester of college, I plagiarized a paragraph in a paper that resulted in a one semester off punish before graduating [unapologetic statement of the weakness]. The school’s response was forgiving because I admitted to the mistake and had such a strong academic record to this point [bridged to positive]. From this experience, I have learned that the best way to overcome a problem is to be honest and forthright [transition to positives]”. (The rest of the essay included the stories of how he addressed the issue properly.)

With this bridging technique, the essay, which was supposed to be about plagiarizing, was filled with stories of honesty, integrity and growth.

Remember that the application process is about selling and marketing. It is not a confession, diary, or journal. Weaknesses should be address with the end goal in mind: to win the application game.

Ivy App Success

Kaplan: Destination Business School

Hello All,

So last night I said that I would be writing today about the Kaplan Event that's occurring this weekend here in NYC.  Thanks to Eric at BeatTheGMAT, I'm able to proudly represent BTG.  See - I even got this sweet BTG T-Shirt!

I see a BTG retailing opportunity ahead of us!  But... I will say that you can expect me to wear this T-Shirt when I take the GMAT the next time!  People are going to think I'm crazy, but that's alright because they already do!

So this weekend is the Kaplan Event.  Here is a rundown of the schedule:

Saturday August 7th

10:00 - 10:30 = Kick-Off

10:30 - 12:00 = Your B-School Blueprint - A complete overview of the admissions process

12:00 - 1:00   = Working Lunch

1:00   -  4:30  = MBA Fair

Evening -       = Happy Hour  ( must contain myself haha) 

Sunday August 8th

9:00  - 10:00 = Elevator Pitch Breakfast - Practice your pitch for your interviews, essays, and networking

10:30 - 12:00 = Mastering the GMAT: Scoring 700+ (I could probably give this presentation... do as I say not as I do, since I haven't scored 700+ YET)

12:30 - 1:30  = Lunch and Mock Business School Class

1:30 - 2:30 = Career Round Robin - Speak with MBA's in Consulting, Banking, Government, etc.

2:30 - 3:30 = Application Essay Clinic featuring mBaMission.

3:30 - 4:00 = Closing

So I'm excited for every single one of those sessions.  Of the schools that will be there, I'm interested in... well Tuck of course but you guys are tired of hearing about that one lol...  But I do need to add some more schools to the list.  I'm going to stake out UCLA Anderson, Cornell since I still have more questions, Michigan Ross, Darden, and Yale.  I have never spoken to anyone from Darden, so that will be interesting.  

Anyway I digress...  It's going to be a jam packed weekend.  Now for the good stuff.. In order to prepare for this event, an email went out to I'm assuming all attendees... We have homework folks!  

1.) We have to update our resumes and bring 10 copies.

2.) Practice our Pitch

• Practice explaining in a minute or less, where you'd like to be in your career in five years and how you will get there.
• Practice your pictch on 8-10 friends and note their reactions and questions.

3.) Make a list of target schools.

• List 5-15 target b-schools (easy enough for me...)
• Identify your top 4 factors that you value in a school. (again easy enough for me)

4.) Pack your business cards - 50 should be more than enough

And then there are two optional assignments, which I won't have time to get too before the event, but definitely after the event before I finalize my essays and have completed the GMAT... soo... September for that assignment.

So yeah... there is some preparation that needs to go into this event.  The title of the event kind of fits into  the summary of my blog... funny how things come full circle huh?  

Full circle will be great when I hopefully get into the school of my choice and it's the first night and I write my final official b-school journey blog post!  I've been imagining that day a lot lately... That will be a great story!  ::fingers crossed::  

Ok I must be going now so I can review the Quant problems that I got incorrect tonight.  Data Sufficiency is NOT fun by any means!  Well the Geometry DS problems are fun... but the number properties = death.

BATTLE-BAXTER = OUT!!

Writing Essays is DRAINING!!!

Goood Morning Goood Morning I'll Love Ya... Good Morning!  wait... hhmmm I think it's "Toooomorrow.. tomorrow.. I'll love ya... Tomorrow..." ok anyway choose your favorite it's unimportant!

So today I had many conversations, but I'll get to those in a second.  I want to address my studying.  So during the hour or so that I get for lunch I try to go do one of my MGMAT guides.  I just re-finished, for the umteenth time, the MGMAT Equations, Variables in Choices, and Inequalities book.  This time around I'm not allowing myself to skip any hard questions.  I'll admit that previously, I would just skip it and say that I'd come back to it and never do that.  So now, I force myself to sit there for 10/15 minutes and solve the problem.  It's a good confidence booster actually.

In addition to that lunch homework... I've been making sure that I do Quant sets every day.  My tutor had me do some problem sets last week, which were for him to get a sense of what we need to work on.

On Monday I did the first 37 problem solving out of the OG.  I got 5 incorrect... upon further inspection 3/5 were because of miscalculation errors on my part.  Now I am not taking these stupid errors lightly this time around.  I need to understand WHY I'm making these errors.  For example, one was about LxWxH but then all three were doubled making it 2Lx2Wx2H... for some reason my brain said ok 2x2x2=6 and not 8 like it should.  Those are the things that CANNOT happen on G-day!

On Tuesday I did the next 37 problem solving out of the OG and got 4 wrong.  My weakness is beginning to peak it's little head.  I know which questions I have issues with.  2 of those 4 were incorrect due to a stupid error on my part, but I did not include that in the debrief to my tutor because there must be a reason for me to make those mistakes and THAT'S what we need to figure out.

Tonight I did 37 of the DS questions.  I didn't do so hot here...so that too is very concerning.  Hopefully I'll have better luck tomorrow night when I do the next 37!  For DS I need to force myself to write more down.  I have a bad habit of doing things in my head which does not work 100% of the time for DS because you assume things that you don't have.

Now... on to the conversations I had today with a couple folks.  It's interesting when you start talking to current applicants and the same theme comes up.  Today it was all about Essays.  I spoke to 4 different people today and we were discussing essays and essay timelines.  One of my friends sent me his essay for NYU's PT program to look over.  I marked it up with comments and sent it back over to him and told him that I loved him and to not hate me.  I think he understands I'm only trying to help.

I started my Tuck essays tonight!  I decided to go sit on the pier by my house for inspiration.  I live on the west side so I went to the pier by the Intrepid.  Here are a couple of pictures!

The first thing I did upon sitting down was re-read my Dartmouth Tuck Visit debrief.  For me, the reason I was soooo detailed in that debrief was for this exact purpose.  I wanted to relive my trip up there while I was writing essays.  So... to that I say... mission 1 accomplished.  

I started writing the first essay - Why an MBA and Why Tuck?  I've had this essay in my head for months now, so to get it on paper was not difficult.  I wrote about 800 words and will of course need to trim it down but I feel better knowing that there is a hard copy of my thoughts saved on my hard drive.  

I skipped the 2nd essay about leadership because I'm waiting to hear back from someone about something.

I started writing the 3rd essay which is about a challenge I've overcome and what not... the topic I chose was a no brainer... however I did not think that writing about it would be so draining and time consuming.  I know I've had to overcome but I've never ever had to write about it so thoroughly.  What I thought would be one of the easier essays for me to write about has become the more difficult.

The 4th essay is when I packed up and walked home.  It was dark and my eyes were hurting.  I wrote down my ideas for this essay, but I needed to come back and connect to the internet so I could research something.

I was definitely exhausted from all of that thinking! 

Cheers mate!