Tuesday Tips: Stanford GSB Fall 2017 MBA Essay Tips
Stanford Graduate School of Business continues to ask applicants to delve deep into their personality, values and motivations for this set of MBA essays. The classic “what matters most” essay should be your primary focus, and secondly you will answer why Stanford is the next step in your journey.
Total word count for the essays must not exceed 1,150 words, so be judicious in deciding how much or little to write for each prompt. As a general guideline, Stanford GSB suggests 750 words for essay one and 400 words for essay two. Check your deadlines before you get started to make sure you are maximizing the time on your essays.
Essay A: What matters most to you, and why? (suggested 750 word limit)
– Focus on the “why” rather than the “what.”
– Do some deep self-examination, so you can genuinely illustrate who you are and how you came to be the person you are.
– Share the insights, experiences, and lessons that shaped your perspectives, rather than focusing merely on what you’ve done or accomplished.
– Write from the heart, and illustrate how a person, situation, or event has influenced you.
This classic Stanford GSB MBA essay is your opportunity to demonstrate who you are, what motivates you, and why. Topics can range from personal history to grand visions of the future. While this topic should not be explicitly career related (and the strongest essays are likely not career oriented at all) it is possible that some of your themes will continue in your career essay.
Your accomplishments and achievements are part of why you have developed into the person you are today, however it’s far more important to explain your influences, lessons learned and motivations. Introspection and honesty should persist through the entire set of essays.
To generate ideas, try brainstorming over a period of a few days. Ask friends and family what values they see you demonstrating in your life and choices. Keep a notebook by your bed so you can record your first thoughts upon waking up, and mine your personal history for ideas. What keeps you awake at night? When you look back at your life what will you admire and regret about your choices? These are the kind of questions to ask yourself as you approach topics for this essay.
Though the essay question may seem open-ended, answering the question with vivid and specific examples will provide solid evidence that you have demonstrated or experienced “what matters most” throughout your life. Keep in mind as you select examples that Stanford GSB specifically advises focusing on people and experiences that have influenced you, rather than accomplishments or achievements.
Essay B: Why Stanford?
Enlighten us on how earning your MBA at Stanford will enable you to realize your ambitions. (suggested 400 word limit, 450 for applicants to both the MBA and MBx programs)
– Explain your decision to pursue graduate education in management.
– Explain the distinctive opportunities you will pursue at Stanford.
-If you are applying to both the MBA and MSx programs, use Essay B to address your interest in both programs.
After you have explained what is most important to you in life you need to explain why your next step is a Stanford MBA. The sub questions for this essay cover both why you are interested in pursuing an MBA at all, and why you specifically want to attend Stanford GSB. Stanford GSB wants to know your aspirations will be uniquely satisfied by the program at Stanford GSB, and research will help you determine what aspects of the academic program, community and students are crucial to your aspirations.
Be as specific as possible in your response to provide evidence that you have done your research. You should know everything about the aspects of the program that most appeal to you. Have you met current students and alumni? Who are the professors you are excited about? What are the unique programs?
When you discuss how Stanford will help you achieve your ambitions consider that Stanford likes to see applicants who dream big, and have the credibility to achieve their goals. Be bold with your aspirations. Don’t focus on what your parents or partner want you to do. Don’t think about the next job on the corporate ladder. What do you, with your own unique background and values, want for your life?
If the question seems too vast, take a few minutes to close your eyes and reflect. Envision your life in twenty years. Where do you live? How do you spend your days? What is your favorite activity? How does this vision fit into your career aspirations? Don’t be shy about your ambitions. Once you have identified your dream career, you also need to make sure an MBA is an important part of achieving your plans and explain that part in your essay.
Though you should think big, don’t make the mistake of acting as if you are already perfect with no development needed. Remember that MBA programs want to help promising candidates reach their goals and be a step on an ambitious career trajectory.
Finding the Stanford essays challenging? Contact Stacy Blackman Consulting for personalized guidance through the application process.
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Apps up another 6% after last year's 25% jump …Timing is hands down one of the biggest challenges test takers have for the GMAT. The exam recognizes this, of course, and in fact sets up a penalty for those who leave the exam unfinished. Smart test takers have a solid understanding of the foundation of the GMAT – high scores come not from being a math whiz or spending your time memorizing obscure grammar topics, but realizing that the GMAT is looking to assess how well you critically think and leverage your assets in a demanding, time-sensitive environment.
That being said, when faced with complex, or seemingly complex, quantitative questions, many test takers acknowledge that they often revert back to trying to calculate a concrete, correct answer rather than assessing answer choices to determine which answer choice is “most likely” correct.
Beyond the standard strategies of plugging in answer choices when we see variables, or seeing which one of the answer choices stand out (say, an even integer in the midst of odd integers), remembering that there is a right answer listed for each problem is a key foundational concept that the best test takers recognize is a mindset that always need to be at the forefront of their strategy.
It can be difficult to adjust the very nature of how students are used to tackling quantitative, i.e. math, questions because the majority of educational systems focus on topic by topic, free-response oriented exams from primary through secondary schools, and even to college. Adjusting to a standardized, applied examination after years of doing it differently can be a tough challenge. But there are a few questions test takers can ask themselves while working through problem solving and data sufficiency questions that can encourage them to stay the course:
Question #1 – What is this question asking for – exactly?
It may seem like a very basic question, but many test takers assume that say, when facing with a two-variable equation question that they need to solve for one and/or both variables, when in fact, the question may be looking for x/y or x + y, which would require significantly less calculations.
Getting a good, and accurate, handle possible on what end point we need to arrive at is crucial to the 700+ score. And at the end, asking “did I give them what they are looking for?” can help us to avoid careless mistakes in say, solving for the wrong variable or failing to fully solve for a number of items in a ratio question.
Question #2 – What do the answer choices look like? Do I see any patterns?
In the same way that we focus on assessing what is “changing” in sentence correction questions, we should be doing the same with problem solving questions. Are all the answer choices multiples of 6? Are the answer choices relatively small numbers for a factorial question?
When faced with a question that seems completely impossible to solve in two, even five minutes, assessing the answer choices are an excellent way to figure out where to start. It also helps us avoid the common challenge of “solving” a question and coming up with the completely wrong answer and wasted precious time. Getting our bearing helps us be more competitive test takers. Most often, setting up the problem is a huge part of getting to the right answer, and leveraging answer choices to decide the problem approach is essential to good GMAT strategy.
Question #3: How can I use less brainpower on this question?
Read: the same as asking “is there an alternate, hopefully easier, way is solving this question?” The answer is very likely “yes” because many GMAT quantitative questions have multiple ways of getting to the right answer. Always staying cognizant of alternate approaches helps primarily with time management, but also helps test takers keep abreast of diving into a calculation minefield.
In summary – be as lazy, but as accurate, as you can be when it comes to the GMAT quantitative section. You’ve still got a verbal section ahead of you!
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