Why Our School? — The Inevitable MBA Essay …
Oh, MBA admissions committees. Always wanting applicants to show the love. To
prove that their school is the best and there is nowhere anyone would rather
be.
Makes sense. No one wants to be second best, not even the worldˆs top MBA
programs. And if youˆre spending the time and money to apply, you should
want to be there, right? Right.
Yet this question trips up tons of folks. How do you…do it?
Well, itˆs easy. Sorta.
The key to a compelling response here is to make your response BULLETPROOF.
What does that mean? If you say ¨I like Stanford because of its reputation,
its pre-eminent staff of award-winning profs, its prestige, the breadth of
courses it offers, blah blah blah…〃 Great. Except, those things are also
true for just about every other school in its class. So, while youˆve said a
bunch of really nice things, for our purposes, you havenˆt made any movement
toward a convincing, meaningful argument.
Imagine those questions said this: ¨Assume that our school has the same
books and professors and clubs and classes as school x, y, and z. Taking all
of that for rote, why do you (a) STILL want to go (b) HERE… And not (c)
THERE?〃
Imagine the argument that goes ¨Harvard will provide me with the necessary
tools to go out into the real world and accomplish x, y, and z.〃
Maybe so, but will Stanford NOT do that?
Hereˆs a silly example, meant only to illustrate a point:
If you say, when I visited Harvard, I saw a bright yellow tree in the center
of campus, and was awe struck. No other school has trees with color, let
alone a BRIGHT YELLOW one!!! Iˆve always wanted to go to a school with a
great big tree in the center of the campus and my favorite color is yellow,
and Harvard hit it out of the park. It is for THIS reason I want Harvard (and
nowhere else).
Absurd example, obviously, but hereˆs what nice about the nature of that
response: no matter how hard you try… You just canˆt ARGUE with it.
1. The guy likes trees
2. Loves the color yellow…
3. Harvard has the only yellow tree of any school
4. Conclusion: he wants Harvard
Makes SENSE. And is AIR TIGHT. Now… Itˆs your job—when answering this type
of question—to define what YOU want out of B-School… And to find that ¨
yellow tree〃 in the school for which youˆre making an argument. Talk to
people, do research, spend time there if you can… Develop a GENUINE love of
certain (specific) things and talk about them. No one can tell you that you
donˆt like xyz that are SPECIFIC to that school.
Donˆt just write ABOUT the stuff youˆve pulled from the Internet—-anyone
can do that (and most do). And itˆs obvious when it happens. Figure out the
ways in which this school complements what YOU want to do. Poke holes in your
argument, tweak, and keep doing it until you find yourself with an argument
that you simply canˆt pick apart.
I guarantee you thatˆll happen when you get SPECIFIC, and specificity is
pure gold on this one.
Jon Frank
HBS 2005
Founder Precision Essay
http://www.precisionessay.com
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