Targeting The Prompt: “Four Slides About Yourself.”

So many personal statements, so little (but just enough!) time. Applying to business school is a grueling, time-consuming process, but the Ivy Eyes Editing team is here to help you. Today we’ll look at the third essay prompt for the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business:

“Considering what you’ve already included in the application, what else should we know about you? In a maximum of four slides, tell us about yourself.”

Sneaky, sneaky Chicago Booth. We see what you did there. It isn’t difficult to see that this essay is a test of your presentation skills, minus the presentation, wrapped in an opportunity to provide the Booth admissions officers with a better picture of who you are and what defines you. There are some guidelines that you must keep in mind when crafting your response:

  1. Acceptable formats are PowerPoint or PDF.
  2. Embedded video, music, or motion images are not supported.
  3. All content must be included in the four pages; hyperlinks will not be viewed.
  4. The file will be evaluated on the quality of the content and ability to convey your ideas, not on technical expertise or presentation.

For starters, let’s cover some presentation basics that will help you structure your approach to this essay. It is highly likely that by this point in your careers you have lost count of the presentations you have prepared and given, but there is always room for improvement. Remember that each slide in a presentation needs to show AND tell. A balance needs to be struck between the visuals and the amount of words placed on the slide. A picture might be worth a thousand words, but it doesn’t say any of them. You don’t want to simply throw up an image and let the admissions officers read whatever they want into it.

You also want to avoid using each individual slide as a page from a word processor. Fight the urge to use the space to write your complete autobiography. That perfect combination of words and visuals will serve to hone the clarity of your slides. While the essay guidelines specifically mention that your response will not be evaluated on the basis of technical expertise or presentation, that does not give you carte blanche to ignore the basics of crafting a proper presentation. Keeping these fundamentals in mind will help you in crafting the best response.

Now comes the hard part, finding the right content. In the first two Booth essays you have already covered your short and long term goals, and the development of your leadership skills. Now it is time to focus on everything you haven’t mentioned. Imagine someone asks you the question, “What do you do for a living?” But with the caveat that you are not allowed to mention anything about your job or your career, how would you respond? Make sure that you do not discuss anything that you already covered in the second Booth essay. What would your friends or family say about you?

You can pick four different aspects of yourself, or flesh out a single one across the four slides. The most important thing is to focus on things that really define you as a person, and clearly and succinctly describe why that is the case. Make a list of all the hobbies, interests, and events in your life that define you, and then make a slide for each one. If one slide isn’t enough for a particular event or interest, focus on that one and ask yourself why it wouldn’t fit, and if it really defines you, then make it fit. In the end you will have a wide visual representation of who you are sitting in front of you, and from there you can pick the slides that truly speak to who you are.

Good Luck!

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

Targeting the Prompt: “How Has Your Family, Culture, and/or Environment Influenced You as a Leader?

As the third round of application deadlines creep closer and closer, it’s time to start honing those essay writing skills and putting the finishing touches on your personal statements. Today we’ll take a look at the second essay for the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business:

“At Chicago Booth we believe each individual has his or her own leadership style. How has you family, culture, and/or environment influenced you as a leader?

In order to craft a proper response to this prompt, we are going to have to initially mentally situate ourselves in those distinct moments that we feel best represent our leadership abilities. These instances will not be forming the basis for your personal statement, but rather the starting point by which you will trace back to the origins of the abilities that you exhibited during these examples. This part will most likely be fairly simple at first. We all have a personal mental note placed on all the moments that we feel best represent us as leaders. Once you have made a list of these, now comes the more challenging part of the exercise: pinpointing the different traits that you exhibited during these moments and tracing them back to their origins.

Many of the quality traits that we exhibit in our greatest hits of leadership moments come from fundamental character traits that we developed growing up, and then honed through years of practice and implementation. Leadership isn’t a concretely defined character trait. It is composed of several different traits in several different combinations. It is from this variety that you will be able to cull the best possible personal statement that adequately represents your leadership skill, while simultaneously differentiating you from the rest of the application pool. So don’t try to provide a laundry list of different traits that fall under the umbrella of leadership. Think about the traits that truly define you and your ability as a leader, and focus on those. Even if you end up with one defining character trait, it doesn’t matter. The point is to craft an honest and genuine representation of you.

Once you’ve started to trace the development of the characteristics back to their origins, and likely find yourself with several source of influence from your family, culture, and environment, the challenge will be presenting these in a manner that is unique and sets you apart from your peers. It is very likely that, given the size of the application pool, there is someone with a similar background to you applying for the same spot in the incoming class at Booth. Focus on this. Imagine your clone is currently filling out an application to Booth (there isn’t an actual clone. Even though that would be really cool in a science fiction thriller sort of way, it would also be incredibly creepy) and that you are now trying to describe the exact same family, culture, and environment as another applicant. How would you describe them differently? What aspects of these influences don’t appear on the surface? If you have to, craft one response, then go over it and try to say everything about your influences that you didn’t say the first time. This will take a lot of time and effort, but in the end you will have the best possible response you can get. And that is what you’re striving for.

Submitting essays for Round 3 MBA applications? Visit www.ivyeyesediting.com for free initial feedback on your work.

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

ESL MBA Applicants: How YOU Should Tell YOUR Story

Many ESL MBA applicants come to us looking for the ‘Ivy League varnish’ on their MBA admissions essays. However, that’s simply not our core mission here at Ivy Eyes Editing – and that’s something we convey to each and every one of our prospective clients. Our fundamental belief is that the best content comes from you.

Through our signature Advanced Service, in addition to helping our clients identify mechanical issues in their writing, we take a Socratic approach – asking targeted questions intended to generate the deepest thinking. While some ESL applicants may be in search of a final editing product that reads like Hemingway, we know this would be a faulty admissions strategy. Revealing how you think is so much more important!

You’ve grown up in Taiwan, attended college at National Taiwan University, and you started studying English just 3 short years ago. Your English should not be on par with HBS applicants who also attended Harvard undergrad – and it won’t be expected to be.  Your candidacy will be evaluated differently – on its own terms – and not exclusively or primarily based on the refinement of your language.

Here’s a more practical shortlist for all ESL MBA applicants to keep in mind:

What To Do:

-Tell your story in crisp, precise language.

-Focus on communicating your concrete strengths through substantive career, academic and personal anecdotes. Show versus tell really works!

-Convey a confident, honest communication style in your prose and your personality will shine through.

What NOT To Do:

-Fill your essay with substance-less, woolly language, business jargon and abstraction you’ve read after googling “great sample MBA admissions essays.”

-Try to interpret or translate colloquialisms or philosophies that are unique to your native country.

-Pander to an admissions committee  through sycophantic or hyper-polite language (a strategy exceedingly common many international applicants).

If you’re an ESL MBA applicant, we encourage you to submit for our free critique (admin@ivyeyesediting.com) in advance of upcoming Round 3 and Round 4 MBA deadlines.  If there’s one thing we love to do at Ivy Eyes Editing, it is help people to communicate their stories, in their own words, with their own authentic style.

And though English may not be your first language, you and only you have the best things to say about your experience and what you are poised to share at an MBA program.

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

Where Do I List Education on My Resume?

Job and graduate school applicants frequently ask us where to place the education component of their resume. We thought we’d map it out for you guys to make it a bit easier. Let’s start with the most common placement for the education category, which will apply to the majority of you:

 

When to Put Education at the Bottom of Your Resume

-After graduating from a graduate school program (Do you want to present yourself as a career-driven leader or an eternal student?)

-If you’re applying to graduate schools (Again, the irony here is that you want to use your career impact as the real thrust of your resume, not your bachelor’s degree in American Studies, your merit scholarship or your 3.8 GPA)

-When you’re applying for a job (Nota bene for seasoned executives: it may be time to streamline your educational achievements, too—your leadership position in the Frisbee Club won’t be critical in your SVP role at D.E. Shaw)

 

When To Put Education at the Top of Your Resume

-If you’re applying for internships while you’re still studying in a graduate program.

-If you’re continuing your academic studies (more graduate degrees anyone?) and want to make your academic trajectory more transparent and clear.

-If your resume lacks heft or substantial career experience (there are other creative ways to magnify your strengths—email us at admin@ivyeyesediting.com for suggestions).

Occasionally we do work with applicants whose backgrounds defy some of these conventions, and in some unique cases, rules can be bent depending on the person and the resume. However, if you have questions about your resume and its strategic direction, submit it to www.ivyeyesediting.com today for free initial feedback!

Happy resume writing! :)

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

Latest GMAC Employment Survey Yields Positive Results For 2012 Advanced Degree Holders

Every year, the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) conducts its Year-End Poll of Employers.  Aimed at comparing current-year employment data to hiring projections for the coming year, the survey offers valuable information to those seeking advanced degrees.

In November of 2011, the GMAC polled 229 employers at 216 companies worldwide.  The information found in the survey results yielded a positive outlook for those entering the workforce in 2012.  Not only does it appear that employers plan to continue hiring, but many indicated a likely uptick in staffing for the coming year.

MBA students in particular appear to be entering a more favorable job market.  Of employers polled, “74 percent plan to hire MBAs (up from 58%), 59 percent plan to hire specialized master’s (up from 38%), and 51 percent look to hire Master in Management candidates (up from 36%).”

Hiring trajectories are up for the non-MBA graduate field as well.  The poll indicates that 70% of employers planned to hire non-business master’s graduates, up from the 53% that hired them in 2011.  Specialized master’s are projected to be desirable to 59% of those polled, a noticeable increase of the 38% from 2011.

Perhaps more importantly, as cash is king, 2012 salary projections for MBA students appear promising, or at least appear poised to remain at 2011 levels.  According to the survey, “Nearly a third (32%) of companies planning to hire MBAs in 2012 expect to increase the annual base salary of these hires compared with 2011. In addition, 65 percent of companies plan to keep starting salaries at the same level as those offered in 2011”

As for non-MBA graduates, the news is similarly positive.  Masters in management graduates are expected to see an average salary increase of 27%, while specialized master’s and nonbusiness master’s are projected to enjoy an increase of 26%.

One employer offered some insight on the anticipated salary increases – “From our current recruiting processes, the candidates we have offered [jobs] are all considering multiple offers. The market seems to be robust at the moment.”

Though these projections may seem promising on paper, you may be wondering how well they stack up to actual employment data.  The survey addressed this concern, and demonstrated great accuracy (around 95%) with their 2011 projections in comparison to actual 2011 employment data.

Aside from salaried positions, many graduates obtain internships at the onset of their career.  Internships are an integral part of the genesis of many careers, as employers often consider on-the-job experience equal to and in some cases more valuable than an advanced degree alone. Here are two responses received by the surveyors from employers they queried on the value of internship programs in the current market:

“It is more competitive than ever…build your resume with work and internships and a great MBA.”

 “If the student[s] determine they will go straight into graduate programs, it is important that practical work experience is completed, at least through internships or co-op work experiences.”

 As for the poll’s results regarding the 2012 internship outlook, both paid and unpaid, graduates can once again expect in increase in opportunity.

MBAs led the pack with a 69% share of employers planning to hire them in 2012 for paid internships (25% for unpaid).  Following closely were nonbusiness master’s with a 69% paid internship projection (17% unpaid).  And lastly, specialized master’s in business and master’s in management graduates are expected to be selected for paid internships by 56% and 54% of the employers polled, respectively, and by 16% and 17% for unpaid positions.

In conclusion, the survey yielded positive results and a largely optimistic hiring outlook for the range of graduate degree types in its scope.  Hiring trends are poised to either meet or exceed 2011 totals, and compensation projections are favorable.  Additionally, those searching for internship positions can expect a more robust hiring market than in 2011.  Overall, 2012 portends to be a good year for advanced degree holders seeking to take the next step in their careers.

Cheers,

Rich

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

How to Write a Great Cover Letter

We work with applicants all the time who are unaware of a cover letter’s intended purpose. Some use cover letters to cram in as many skills and career wins as possible, like a well-narrated resume; others use cover letters as a very cursory means of introduction to a prospective employer.

Of course, both approaches are inherently flawed, given that a great cover letter is neither an expanded resume nor a half-hearted introduction: it is an opportunity. Beatrice in HR/recruiting may not understand what the Senior Manager of the Retail Strategy Group does on a daily basis, but she knows a stellar cover letter when she sees one.

So what IS Beatrice looking for in your cover letter? The best cover letters accomplish the following:

• Map to the prerequisite and/or desired skills for a given position.

• Complement and expand upon the content of the resume, bringing cohesion and humanity to your story.

• Convey genuine understanding of and passion for the prospective employer/ organization.

• Present transferable skills (both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’) as well as demonstrated impact on other organizations (professional and/or academic) and communities.

The most effective cover letters achieve all these elements, wrapped up in one impeccably articulate [proverbial] bow. They get your foot in the door for an interview. In fact, some of our clients have shared their interviewers’ positive, unprompted feedback on their cover letter and resume. While we are confident this is in no small part due to our impact, we are equally confident that 99% of cover letter writing is underdeveloped and subpar.

Given that cover letters are a strong barometer for one’s communication skills and professional presence, it makes sense that some top MBA programs are requesting them in place of traditional essays. With diligent work (try budgeting 3-4 hours vs 30 minutes) your cover letter can land you an interview, and set the stage for a successful hiring process.

Looking for feedback on your cover letter and/or resume? Visit us at www.ivyeyesediting.com for a free assessment, or sign up for our cover letter/resume editing package.

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

Targeting The Prompt: “Please Describe Yourself to Your MBA Classmates”

Greetings MBA applicants,

We are already well into the month of February, and I’m sure you are all starting to feel the pressure of the Round 3 application deadlines that are quickly approaching. Take a deep breath, try to remain calm and focus on crafting the most precise essays possible. Below let’s take a look at the third essay for NYU’s Stern School of Business:

Please describe yourself to your MBA classmates. You may use any method to convey your message (e.g., words, illustrations). Feel free to be creative. All submissions become part of NYU Stern’s permanent records and cannot be returned for any reason. We do not recommend submitting anything that must be played or viewed electronically, that is perishable (e.g., food), or that has been worn (e.g., used clothing). If you submit a written essay, it should be 500 words maximum, double-spaced, 12-point font.

We can’t truly express how much we love the fact that NYU had to specifically ask people not to submit food and clothing. In the event that you are capable of baking a dessert that fully encompasses all the minutiae of your personality, we would be happy to review it personally.

The phrase “target the prompt” is critical to this essay question–every word in the prompt does really count here. For starters, it is important to try and ignore the fact that the question is being asked (and the answer read) by admissions officers at one of your desired business schools. The admissions officers are trying to get a natural sense of who YOU are as a person, and that is why they are asking you to introduce yourself to YOUR MBA CLASSMATES, and not to them. You’ll be collaborating with and leading your peers, so your communication style must be relatable, organic and human (nota bene: keep the business jargon at a minimum).

So how do you craft a humanizing, compelling introduction? The Ivy Eyes Editing team is stronger with words than colored pencils, so we wouldn’t jump at the illustrations option. If you are sufficiently capable of crafting an incisive visual introduction of yourself, by all means go for it. This will likely set you apart from a lot of the other candidates. Two suggestions if you go this route: Don’t use a preexisting artwork (create an original from the prompt), and accompany it with an explanation as to why it is an introduction of yourself.

For those of you who do NOT have the ability to illustrate your introductions, the process I just outlined can still serve as a method for approaching this essay. A mental mindmap of sorts. If you could draw your introduction, what would you include? What would you be wearing? Would you even be in it? What location would you depict? Who, or what, else would be depicted alongside you? The purpose is to look back on your life and determine what events and actions led to the development of your most elemental qualities, and by extension define you as an individual. You aren’t going to introduce yourself by rattling off a history of all these events, but they will provide you with the fodder for telling someone you are meeting for the first time about your origins as well as your present self.

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

 

No Consolation Prize at Vassar

Over the weekend Vassar College’s admissions website experienced a serious staff oversight when all 254 early admissions applicants were sent acceptance letters. According to Jeffrey Kosmacher, director of media relations at Vassar, the reason for the mistake was a human error on the part of admissions staff that forgot to replace the acceptance letters that were being used as placeholders with individualized letters. By the time Vassar was able to fix the problem, 122 students accessed the admissions website and received the letters. Of those students, 76 were sent apologies and denial letters a few hours later.

First off, using acceptance letters as placeholders should garner at least an honorable mention from the Darwin Awards. These are digital, so literally anything could have been used as a placeholder. A small note saying, “place individualized letter here,” a link to Vassar’s admissions website, or a picture of puppies and/or baby otters. Instead, they decided a suitable placeholder would be letters telling all students they had been accepted. Needless to say, Vassar deeply regrets the mistake.

Unfortunately, there really isn’t anything that Vassar can do to compensate for the heartache that these prospective students have suffered as a result of the error. The decision to admit or deny the early applicants had already been made prior to the admissions office’s mistake. If the college or university has already concluded that a student does not merit acceptance, the last thing an applicant should desire is a second chance that is entirely the result of human error, and not because they actually deserved one. Nobody wants concessions from universities that they apply to. When you are admitted, you want it to be because the university weighed you equally with all the other prospective candidates, and determined that you were among the best.

 

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

[YNN]

The Best Goals are Purposeful and Heartfelt

I attended a wedding in New York City last year, which was, as expected, essentially a 10th Year Yale reunion. I suspect that many of the attendees felt the same emotional wave of inquiry that I did before going to this involuntarily “Eli Yale!” event: What were people doing now and how successful were they at it? Who was making the most money? Who seemed the happiest?

Of course, Yale (and college) had set us up to think this way. When I first arrived at Yale, I was struck by the conceit of it all. People seemed hungry to develop outlandish personae, and I was a willing participant in that process. Choose Your Own Identity, but don’t deviate from it. Oh, you must be Theater Girl, or Science Guy, or Green Guy! (Costuming, respectively: all black + 1 Camel Light, khakis, half-tucked in polo + disheveled hair, unironic overalls.) In those prehistoric, pre-Facebook days, kids at Yale were their Facebook profiles: the hyper-manifestation of everything they wanted to be. Success AT Yale was measured in grades, intelligence, popularity, talent and overall presentation. Of course, lurking beneath the surface of every exceptional college student was/is a doubt, an unresolved question, or a secret desire.

These would of course inconveniently present themselves later, in our careers, graduate school educations and personal lives.

As I spoke with wedding attendees from my Yale classes 2001-2004 , I was pleasantly shocked: time does have a way of humbling people.  Time had certainly humbled me, but it had also impacted some my equally narcissistic classmates. What I loved was seeing (or feeling, rather) how people’s general contentment centered around whether they were working toward something that meant something to them. That “something” was a wide-ranging smorgasbord of pursuits: writing a YAF book, starting a landscape architecture firm, or filming a documentary. Suddenly, I palpably felt that post-Yale success was measured on a different scale – one based on individual contentment and self-satisfaction. Anyone could make money..but were they inspired by the process?

In the end, the classmates I was most happy to speak with were the ones who still seemed ambitious and humble. Does that make sense? It seems contradictory to simultaneously speak about contentment and desire/dissatisfaction, and ambition and humility, but they are linked in the people I most respect and admire. What had brought us to Yale was an insatiable desire to fulfill our destinies, and that is as good a definition of ‘contentment’ as I’ve ever encountered. 10 years out of Yale, ever-so-slightly worn down (though not beaten) by some of life’s challenges, we were still those people, but made more humble and inspired by the journey.

Whether you’re an MBA, law school or medical school applicant, you’re thinking about how to tackle your goals. My best advice is to really choose your own goals – don’t waste time writing about someone else’s goals in your essays (or the goals you think will put you in a special admissions niche). After all, you’ll have to speak to your goals in interviews, live with them once you’re inside certain programs, and tell all your future classmates about them ad nauseum. If you start speaking truthfully and fearlessly about your goals now, you’ll spare yourself all that exhaustion and nausea later. And trust me, it will be nauseating.

Admissions writing has a way of making the truth readily apparent. Even the best writers – those who can make a case for their interest in non-profit work following a 5-year career in investment banking, or the reverse – will have a tough time showing passion where there is none. To that end, the best goals, and the best goals in the best admissions essays, are truly purposeful and heartfelt.

Cheers,

Janson

Managing Editor

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

Juris Prudence

Recently there have been several class action lawsuits filed against law schools across the country alleging that they published misleading or false post-graduate employment rates.

Following in the footsteps of cases filed against Cooley Law School, New York Law School, and Thomas Jefferson School of Law, another wave of complaints have been filed against several law schools alleging that the schools mislead their students by providing false graduate employment statistics. Among the schools listed as defendants are: Brooklyn Law, Hofstra Law, Albany Law, Widener Law, Florida Coastal, Chicago-Kent, Depaul Law, John Marshall Law School, California Western, Southwestern, USF Law, and Golden Gate School of Law. Among other things, the complaints allege that the schools included graduates that were employed in jobs that did require a law degree as part of their employment statistics. The schools in the three earlier complaints have moved to dismiss on the grounds that they followed American Bar Association guidelines when it came to reporting their job placement statistics.

The employment rate for graduates from law school has been a rather sore subject lately. Following the dip in the US economy, the legal industry saw an unprecedented belt tightening. As a result, there were fewer and fewer jobs available for graduates. First and foremost, it must be stated that all of these schools are innocent of any wrongdoing until proven guilty in a court of law. That being said, there is a degree of accountability that must be apportioned between both parties involved.

As I have stated in the past, there is a responsibility on the part of prospective students to properly research both the career you are considering, and the schools that you plan to apply to. The news about the effects the economic downturn has had on the legal services industry isn’t hard to come across. If you are going to be considering the psychological, physical, and fiscal investment that is law school, you should be doing everything you can in order to ensure that your final decision is the most informed one possible.

On the other hand, law schools are responsible for providing prospective students with the most accurate and objective information in order to assist them in making the right decision. The fact of the matter is that both the schools and the applicants are trying to present themselves in the most attractive light possible. While it’s okay if the school occasionally wears too much makeup, it can’t lie to you about who it is in order to convince you to commit. While the American Bar Association guidelines give schools a bit of leeway in terms of how they calculate and present their post grad employment figures, it does not allow them to flat out fabricate statistics. In that case, the school is defrauding the student, and should be held accountable. The problem is that the misrepresentation has to be blatant. While some schools may have massaged the numbers a little bit, others have provided ethically dubious information to prospective students in the past. In the end it will be up to a court of law to decide whether the schools should be held accountable.

So there is accountability on the part of both the students and the schools. The schools have to report accurate statistics, but the student must also make an informed decision based on a variety of reputable sources.

Full disclosure: I paid little to no attention to career statistics when I was applying to, and subsequently entering law school. I knew that the job market was abysmal, and was reminded of that fact every time I tried searching for summer positions and could barely find ten to fight over with NYU and Columbia students. Then the number of firms that were scheduled to show up for OCI (on campus interviews) was cut from 22 to 11, which did not bode well for post-graduation prospects. I always took full responsibility for my decision to go to law school, and once I realized the job market was a mess, I knew it was my job to deal with it.

Cheers,

Francisco

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

[WSJ]