How do I know when my MBA application is finished?

One of the most challenging parts of the MBA application is knowing when your application is finished. Your MBA and the school from which you get it can have dramatic impacts on the future trajectory of your life, so it's easy to overthink every detail. Many applicants agonize for hours over every word choice, signing into the online application portals at all hours to change a word or two, only to change them back a day later. Wouldn't it just be easier if you could determine that you were, in fact done?

When we run a Final Check on application packages, we comb through every detail with the lens that we know the admissions committee will use. That's a little hard for individual students to replicate, but here are some things that you can look for yourself:

1. Is your resume in the template of the target MBA program?

This is a super easy way to fit in, and demonstrate your commitment to the school. Plus, it creates sort of a cognitive dissonance for the adcom to read a resume in their school's template and then reject that student -- essentially causing the document they are viewing to disappear.

2. Does your whole application tie to one simple story?

You are not under oath. You do not have to tell the whole truth, so help you god. In fact, explaining every part of your job, explaining every reason for why you pursued every opportunity, or listing the many divergent career options that interest you will not help your application, but hurt it. Your application is telling a story, and the best stories are simple linear ones. The best story characters are have clear motives and take decisive action. Often the key to telling a great story in your application is not to add things in, but rather to cut out all extraneous details.

It is also important for every part of your application to tell the same single story, from your resume to your recommender. If your essay is all about working in renewable energy, but your resume is all about finance, the adcom might not think that you're all that credible. The easiest decision that the Adcom can make is to not admit you.

3. Have you mitigated your weaknesses?

Your application is an argument and the best arguments bring up the opposing case and offers counter points. Do you have a lower GPA? Find space in the application to explain why that is the case and what you have done subsequently to prove that academics are no longer an issue. Is your work experience less impressive? Then point out all the ways in which your employer, position, client, or projects were impressive. Ignoring your weaknesses is not a winning strategy. The adcom will still see them, they just won't have the benefit of your counter argument.

4. Have you connected your candidacy to a larger problem you're trying to solve?

Adcoms don't like "admitting students" so much as they like "funding solutions to problems." In that way, you can think of them less like hiring managers and more like venture capitalists: ready to provide funding and mentorship to entrepreneurs out to tackle big markets. If you are able to argue that you have spent your career fighting to solve a specific, important, and urgent problem (ideally one that resonates with the school’s unique values) and that you are now poised to achieve the next level of impact, if only you were equipped with the unique resources that an MBA has to offer, you will be a much more credible candidate than a generic professional looking to go to graduate school.

5. Have you had a second set of eyes? 

One of our most popular options this time of year, with the HBS deadline coming up on September 6th, and both Wharton and Stanford GSB on September 19th, is our Final Check service, wherein we comb through the entire application offering feedback on ways to tighten up and improve your answers, aligning your resume with your essays, and correcting any grammar and spelling errors. For the rest of the Round 1 season, we are offering same day / 24-hour turnarounds. Click the button below to check it out!

Fascinating MBA Talk of the Week: The Worst-Designed Thing You've Never Noticed (Roman Mars)

This week's fascinating MBA talk comes to us from the maker of the Podcast 99% Invisible is a bit of an analogy -- both as an analogy for good design in business and specifically good design in crafting a business school application. Watch it and then consider the applications I suggest in the highlights below.

Highlights:

• The principles for good flag design - and how they apply to the MBA application
  • Keep it simple (so simple that a child can draw it from memory) - Your application should tell a simple story with a beginning, middle, and end, and you as the hero
  • Use meaningful symbolism, ideally things that play pivotal moments in history - you story should have a theme and cover all the pivotal moments in your life
  • Use no more than 2-3 colors from the major color wheel - choose a few themes, not too many. Sometimes the whole truth can get in the way of a good, truthful story.
  • No lettering or seals, no writing of any kind - here is one departure from the analogy. While good writing will not beat the symbolism and meaning of the prose over your head, we believe that subtly should be minimized in the application.
  • Be distinctive - You want your story to stand out in the mind of the admissions committee. It should easily identify you in some pithy statement (e.g. "That Nigerian education guy")

Fascinating MBA Talk of the Week: What Pixar and Disney know about MBA Storytelling (Steve Jobs)

One question we often get is why Ivy Admissions Group is more efficient at navigating our Complete School Package clients through the admissions application process than other consultants. The answer comes down to our approach to storytelling. Rather than let our clients flail in the wind by having them writing resumes and essays for us to edit and form into a compelling story, we start with a personal narrative and build the entire application around that. In fact, we don't let our clients write a single word of their resume (of course, in the provided template for their dream school) until they complete the Narrative Bootcamp Exercises that comes with all Complete School Packages.

Don't take our word for it. This is the same approach that Steve Jobs took when he made Pixar, a technique that he argues enabled the movie company to have such a long string of smash hits, while other traditional live-action movie companies plod along with their fair share of flops. In this week's fascinating MBA talk, note the approach that he recommends for storytelling and then think about how to apply it in your own application.

Highlights:

• Traditional movie companies shoot between 10-100x more film than is needed, and then build their movies in the editing room. If they have a flop, they only realize it in the editing room.
• Because animation is so much more expensive to shoot, it is impossible to produce even 10% more footage than is necessary.
• To overcome this and ensure a hit, companies like Pixar build minimum-viable products, watching and perfecting their movies at every phase of construction, correcting problems before it comes time to animate.

Last week to purchase Round 1 Packages

Ivy Admissions Group will hit its quota for Round 1 clients this week. The last day to purchase Complete School Packages with the intention of applying Round 1 will be Friday, August 25. After that date we will be happy to work with new clients on their Round 2 and Round 3 applications. We will continue offering Ace the Interview, Final Check, and Conquer the Waitlist services for Round 1, but will reach out capacity for Complete School Packages.

If you are still interested getting expert, low-cost, high-value assistance in crafting that perfect MBA application, please complete the transaction using the link below before Friday.

Fascinating MBA Talk of the Week: How to spot a liar (Pamela Meyer)

The business world requires trust. So how can you tell when someone is lying to you? We seem to be an anti-lying society, but yet we are often complicit in letting lies slide. In this talk Pamela Meyer steps through the sociological underpinnings of deception and ways of identifying it.

Highlights:

• Lying is a cooperative act, often for the sake of social graces. Lying is an attempt to bridge what we wish we were, with what we are. The key is knowing "what it is you're hungry for".
• Financial deception eats up to 7% of US company revenues.
• We lie more to strangers than to coworkers, men lie 8x more about themselves than about others, extraverts lie more than introverts, women lie more to protect other people, married people lit to their spouses in 1 of 10 interactions.
• Regular people can only tell who's lying 54% of the time. Trained lie-spotters can get to 90% identification.
• Common hotspots of lying: qualifying language, overly formal responses, too much detail, distancing language
• Honest people accused of wrongdoing: will be cooperative and enthusiastic in helping you get to the truth, willing to brainstorm and name suspects, will be infuriated throughout the entire course of the interview if they are being falsely accused, and will suggest strict rather than lenient punishment for the real wrongdoers.
• Deceptive people accused of wrongdoing: will look withdrawn, include way too much irrelevant details, will tell their story in strict chronological order (but will struggle to tell the story in reverse chronological order), and will exhibit "duping delight" (i.e. smiling when they think they are getting away with the deception).

How many people apply to the HBS/HKS Joint Program?

If you majored in political science, are interested in public service, have ever interned for your congressman, or just enjoy reading FiveThirtyEight or Politico, you should consider applying to the joint degree program between Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School -- the three year program that results in both an MBA and a Masters in Public Policy or a Masters in Public Administration in International Development.

It's hard enough getting into one graduation school, let alone two programs at Harvard! Some people may be intimidated by how many people apply to the joint degree program, which routinely comes with prestigious fellowship funding from both PE Juggernaut David Rubenstein and CEO/Philanthropist Bill George.  The schools themselves are pretty tight-lipped about application numbers, but we can back into it with a little math.

If there are about 25-30 Jointees a year, and the yield for the joint program is about 80% then we have 30-38 admitted students per year. (Note: those who don't enroll in the joint degree program almost always enroll in HBS alone. Some choose GSB instead. Everyone else stays in the workforce.)

If HKS admits about half of the prospective Jointees that get into HBS, then there are about 60-75 students admitted to HBS each year expressing interest in the joint program. (Note: a lot of the MBA-minded applicants take the HKS application for granted, which they shouldn't since HKS is more selective than most elite MBA programs.)

If the admissions rate for prospective Jointees is the same as the general HBS applicant pool (11%), then the joint degree program has 545-680 applicants a year.

Podcasts to listen to as you apply to your MBA

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Build your vocabulary with Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day! Each day a Merriam-Webster editor offers insight into a fascinating new word -- explaining its meaning, current use, and little-known details about its origin. (~2 min per episode)

• Good for: studying vocabulary
• The narrator of this podcast, Peter Sokolowski, combines wordplay and interesting facts in every one of his expositions. For the vocabulary-intensive GRE, I can think of no other podcast to listen to on the go that will expose you to a greater number of obscure and arcane words that you might encounter on your test. Sometimes you'll even encounter a word or two that will perfectly explain a concept that was previously ineffable. 
• The episodes are interesting and very short, making them especially easy to binge consume when you're waiting for something -- like deboarding an airplane.

Finance Career Launch

David Mariano is a Director with Western Reserve Partners, a middle market investment bank in Cleveland, OH. David has spent most of his career working with business owners, CEOs, CFOs and Heads of Corporate Development as an advisor, part-owner and/or business leader. David has served in many other capacities, including Manager of Financial Planning & Analysis, VP of Finance, Head of Marketing and General Manager, and has made the transition from an entry-level, analytical role to one focused on leadership and business development. You and I and everyone else in the first 10-15 years of their career (and beyond, for those willing to admit it) would really like to be mentored, but mentors are impossible to find. I am frequently asked for advice about careers in finance and can do some of this in person or over the phone, but nowhere near as much as I'd like or as often as I'm asked. Finance Career Launch fills this void.

• Good for: exploring careers in finance
• Each episode gives an insight into what it is like to work in or recruit for traditional jobs in finance. Worth listening to as you do your due diligence on the future career you want to have.

HBR IdeaCast

A weekly podcast featuring the leading thinkers in business and management from Harvard Business Review. Produced by Harvard Business Review. (~15 min per episode)

• Good for: interview prep, understanding the state of business research, due diligence on Harvard Business School
• Articles from the acclaimed (and expensive) Harvard Business Review magazine come to life as the staff of the publication sit down with the authors and thought leaders behind the main articles of each issue. Topics are wide ranging, but can veer on the dry and academic side of things. These podcasts are great for finding topics to bring up in your MBA interview, especially if at HBS. You'll have a great answer if you ever get asked about the research you've done on the school.
• Great for plugging in on long commutes.

a16z Podcast

The a16z Podcast discusses tech and culture trends, news, and the future -- especially as ‘software eats the world’. It features industry experts, business leaders, and other interesting thinkers and voices from around the world. This podcast is produced by Andreessen Horowitz (aka “a16z”), a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm. Multiple episodes are released every week; visit a16z.com for more details. (~30 min per episode)

• Good for: understanding the VC, tech, and start-up industries. Specifically, what are the latest ideas, companies, and concepts circulating around Silicon Valley
• Not so much journalism as advocacy, but you're getting it from a market leader in the VC industry. At the very least, it is worth knowing what Andreessen Horowitz is thinking about, especially if your stated goal involves working in the San Francisco ecosystem.

Bigger Pockets

Imagine you are friends with hundreds of real estate investors and entrepreneurs. Now imagine you can grab a beer with each of them and casually chat about failures, successes, motivations, and lessons learned. That’s what The BiggerPockets Podcast delivers. Co-hosted by BiggerPockets’ founder & CEO Joshua Dorkin and active real estate investor Brandon Turner, this podcast provides actionable advice from investors and other real estate professionals every week. The show won’t tell you how to “get rich quick” or sell you a course, boot camp, or guru system; instead, the BiggerPockets Podcast will give you real strategies that work for real people. 

• Good for: personal finances, understanding real estate and investing.
• Solid tips and advice presented in a no-frills way. Little frills, little fluff. Mostly conversations with those who have made it in the real estate industry. Criticisms include that the hosts talk too much relative to the guests and that the level of sarcasm becomes grating.

Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders

The DFJ Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar (ETL) is a weekly seminar series on entrepreneurship, co-sponsored by BASES (a student entrepreneurship group), Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and the Department of Management Science and Engineering. (~60 min per episode)

• Good for: those who live on the east coast but want to speak the language of technology, entrepreneurship, and venture capital spoken on the west coast.
• A good blend of thought leadership, high-information/low-noise conversation, and questions asked by an intelligent business school student body. Packed full of good lessons for tech entrepreneurs and inspiring anecdotes to motivate them when times get tough.

Fascinating MBA Talk of the Week: Science Of Persuasion (Dr. Robert Cialdini and Steve Martin)

How can you persuade someone to do what you want? There is perhaps no greater skill for business leaders to master. Is it something innate? Are only certain people charismatic enough to consistently get buy-in from others? In this lecture on the Science of Persuasion, Cialdini and Martin show that techniques for persuasion are actually quite logical and learnable. With only a few minor nudges based on universal human behavior, aspiring MBAs can more effectively persuade peers, clients, and superiors.

Highlights:

• The six universal shortcuts that guide decision-making: reciprocity, scarcity, authority, consistency, liking, and consensus.
• If the waiter gives a mint at the end of the meal, what is the effect on the tip amount? Does the manner in which it is given matter?
• Real estate agents increased business by 20% by having their receptionist list their credentials before putting clients through to them on the phone
• The keys to getting someone to liking you: similarity, paying them compliments, and cooperation towards mutual goals
• Those little cards in your hotel bathroom asking you to save the environment by reusing your towels result in towel result in 35% compliance with towel reuse. There is a way to use the principle of consensus to increase that rate even further.