While the final prompt for the UCLA Anderson School of Management is listed as optional, we highly recommend that you take advantage of the opportunity to expand your application as much as possible by drafting a response.

“Are there any extenuating circumstances in your profile about which the Admissions Committee should be aware?”

While the connotation behind an extenuating circumstance gives you the sense that you are confessing to a past indiscretion or in some way accounting for some discrepancy in your application materials, you should not be under the impression that the answer to this prompt will be detrimental to your admission prospects.

One of the aspects of holding a higher professional position and exemplifying the characteristics of an MBA (or any professional degree, be it MBA, MD, or JD) is the necessity that one be completely and utterly candid. As an MBA, you are responsible for representing both your alma mater and the profession as a whole. To that effect, it is important to provide as clear and detailed a picture of your experience and character as possible. This not only serves to give the admissions officers the best impression of you, but it will also serve to further set you apart from your peers. In regards to the extenuating circumstances, you might immediately call to mind events that you would prefer not disclosing to the admissions department.

So you now have to look back upon these events and see them for what they really are: learning experiences. If there are any parts of your application that you feel are not representative of your overall character and abilities, now is the time to show the admissions officer why that is the case. There may have been obstacles throughout your personal and professional lives that you were forced to deal with. Whether or not you felt you dealt with these events in the best possible manner, you can still show how you grew as an individual as a result of the experience. If you would have done things differently, what would you have done? If you learned an important lesson that you have subsequently implemented in your life, what was that lesson? You aren’t pleading guilty to anything in these essays, you are showing accountability and personal growth.

If there do not seem to be any extenuating circumstances that you feel you need to discuss in this prompt, then you can use the definition of extenuating a little more loosely. Still take advantage of this opportunity to present the admissions officer a part of your character that they will not be exposed to via your other application materials. You want to avoid taking the prompt as carte blanche to write about any topic. But once you find one that relates to your professional aspirations or why you would make a great MBA candidate, do not miss this opportunity.

Show the admissions office why you’re made of.

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

Good day everyone,

We’re back to tackle the second essay for the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

“Describe your short-term and long-term career goals. What is your motivation for pursuing an MBA now and how will UCLA Anderson help you to achieve your goals?”

On the surface this appears to be a rather straightforward prompt. Most of you undoubtedly have already thought through the answer to this question several times during your professional careers, but it is vital that you avoid simple mistakes that could lead to a disorganized and unclear expression of your ambitions.

So first things first, take a step back from the prompt. Like the vast majority of MBA applicants, the decision to go to graduate school is not the first step in your professional career ambitions. You have been working hard towards this particular goal for quite some time, and you have built up a highly detailed timeline for your professional goals. What UCLA Anderson wants to see is the calculated build up and execution of the steps that have lead you to the MBA admissions process, and why they have been targeted as the next chapter in achieving your professional aspirations. Don’t flatter UCLA. They don’t want to hear about how U.S. News & World Report ranked them the 15^th best MBA program in the country. You will never get a number by telling the hot girl at the bar how beautiful she is. You need to explain how your future together will be a symbiotic relationship that is for the mutual benefit of both parties involved.

Start with your long-term goals, at the moment when you originally realized what you wanted to achieve. This will symbolize the summit of your career. Now you need to go back through your professional accomplishments and focus on decisions that defined those aspirations, and worked in furtherance of them. The timeline will be altogether rather intricate, but in order to properly utilize the allotted word count you will have to focus on how UCLA Anderson fits into the timeline. The aim is to show how your decisions and accomplishments have made UCLA Anderson the best fit for fulfilling your future goals. What does UCLA specifically offer that will set up you up for future success? What about your future plans defines you as the ideal candidate for Anderson? The specific details will have to be backed up with examples from your personal timeline. In the end you will want everything to lead into and out of your MBA experience at Anderson. You’re presenting your case for admission, and you will use the evidence of your achievements and aspirations as the evidence for why Anderson will be making the right decision in taking the opportunity to play a role in your success.

Looking for feedback on your UCLA Anderson application or your MBA goals essay? Visit www.ivyeyesediting.com or email us at admin@ivyeyesediting.com.

Cheers,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

With the deadline for the third round of applications to the UCLA Anderson School of Management right around the corner, we are going to focus on their first essay prompt. Get your taxes in early so you can focus on crafting the best essays.

“What events or people have had the greatest influence in shaping your character and why?”

Unless you are applying for an MBA program after years of living an ascetic, hermit-like lifestyle (in which case, bravo on stepping outside of your comfort zone!), you have undoubtedly encountered several events and people that have helped to develop you as an individual. The challenge will be setting yourself apart from the hundreds of other MBA applicants.

The moment you read this prompt you very likely already have a short list forming in your head of those people that have had the greatest influence on you growing up. Start writing the names down so that you can get them out of your head for closer scrutiny. Then consider two important aspects concerning this essay: 1. The high volume of essays means that overlap is inevitable, and 2. Your first inclination was likely to think about people you respect and admire, and there is possibly source material in a list of individuals that don’t elicit that impression.

First we have to consider the high likelihood of overlap. Everyone has family members or next of kin that have played an integral role in shaping their characters. The challenge is framing the influences of these individuals in a way that sets you apart from the other applicants who are also writing about similar subjects. The key will be to focus on the overlap between the people and events. After you have crafted your list of your most influential people, start focusing on different events in the timeline of your relationship with each individual that fully encompass development of your individual character. Don’t necessarily focus on the people themselves, but seek out the instances that left the most indelible impression. These events should be the vehicle for describing the person who influenced you, as well as the impression they had on your persona. By focusing on unique individual instances associated with these people, you will be more likely to derive an essay response that is less likely to share similarities with those of your fellow applicants.

The second thing to consider is where you plumb for potential source material. You definitely want to strive for a positive, glass-half-full mentality in your writing, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t viable subject matter in the hardships and obstacles that you have experienced. Think about the people that have been obstacles to your achievements. They may not be individuals that you admire or respect, but they had just as much of on impression on your development as that you do. You may not have had to encounter them as often as the positive people in your life, but the times that you did most likely helped to define who you are by setting yourself apart from that person and the negative qualities they portrayed. You should spend some time thinking about how qualities that you strive to define yourself with help develop your character as much as those you endeavor to avoid.

Looking for a free critique of your Round 3 or Round 4 MBA application? Email us at admin@ivyeyesediting.com!

Good Luck,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

Happy Friday to you all,

Let’s take a look at the final essay for Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business:

“Describe what there is about your background and your experiences that will contribute to the diversity of the entering class and enhance the educational experience of other students.”

So what are the admissions officers looking for? Having committed a considerable amount of time and effort throughout our academic careers, we can all attest to the fact that the strength of an institution lies in both the strength of its faculty and the strength of its student body. To that effect, what Kelley admissions is looking for is an insight into what else you will be contributing to the incoming MBA class aside from your drive and determination.

Diversity tends to conjure some very specific images. A better way to approach this question would be to consider it more an inquiry about what makes you unique. Being part of the incoming class of aspiring graduate students will provide you with many things in common, but now you have to set yourself apart by describing your difference in detail. You will have to plumb the depths of your experiences.

First and foremost, focus on your experiences outside of the professional sphere. You aren’t going to completely ignore your experiences in this aspect of your life, but you will have to curate them very specifically in order to avoid any overlap with earlier essays for Kelley that discussed work place experiences. Look at hobbies, non-workplace projects, challenges you have faced. Make a quick time line of your history that highlights the most important events in your life. You won’t use all of these, but the more examples you have to work with from the start, the easier it will be to select the ones that represent your unique qualities the best.

Once you have created this timeline, you have to connect it to your development as an individual. The events themselves aren’t as important as how they define you. How were you a different person after experiencing each particular event? What did you learn? Most importantly, how are you able to show others what you learned from your experience? This last part is integral. Diversity is inherent in all of us, whether that is immediately clear or not. But what matters most to the admissions officers is how you will be able to transmit that diversity to your fellow students. The point is to be able to contribute as much as possible to the education of your classmates. So in order to describe the totality of the experience in relation to your personal development, you have to show how you express what you have learned to others, both consciously and unconsciously. The other parts of your application express your ability to learn, this essay is an opportunity to show you ability to teach.

Good Luck,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com

Greetings Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today we’re going on a road trip with the third essay for Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business:

“Suppose you had to choose three people—people alive now or people from another era—to travel with you on a cross-country automobile trip. Who would you choose and why? What would you hope to learn from them? (Think carefully about the company you want on those long stretches through Nebraska or Kansas.)”

A good place to start is mentally placing yourself in the context of a cross-country road trip. You are going to be in a car for a LONG time. You might stop at a bunch of fascinatingly oddball places along the way (the Petrified Forest, an alligator farm, a gas station with its own mountain lion), but most of your time will be spent in the vehicle. For argument’s sake, let’s also say that you will be doing all of the driving. This means that you will have to rely completely on the conversation and entertainment provided by your fellow passengers. Now that the stakes are sufficiently clear it is time to start thinking about the individuals you are going to invite on this caravan across the United States.

Sit down and make a laundry list. You are only going to end up selecting three people from this list, but you are now playing the role of admissions officer for the University of Those Three Seats. There are a plethora of options, but whom you select isn’t as important as your ability to explain why you selected them. Next to each name in the list, begin jotting down quick notes about what makes that person a good candidate. Write down a quick reminder of who that person is as well. You are going to want to aim for some diversity in the backgrounds and professions of the characters that you select. If everyone is from similar backgrounds or professions, you aren’t taking full advantage of the selection process. A homogenous carpool is a boring carpool.

The prompt provides a great guidance tool by asking you what you would hope to learn from those admitted to your vehicle. It will be easy to come up with a long list of individuals that have incredible accomplishments to their name, and who would qualify as a great potential candidate simply on the merit of what they have experienced. But it is important to focus on whether or not that person is also capable of providing insight into the intentions behind their experiences, as well as ways they were able to grow and improve afterward. It is one thing to be able to experience and accomplish great things, but it is another to be able to transmit the knowledge of those experiences to other people, and to recognize the value of one’s mistakes.

Don’t worry about getting too specific either (focusing on one person’s era of accidental greatness vs at the end of their lives), or selecting a lesser known individual. What’s most critical is that you articulate why this individual has been selected, and in that explanation you may fully introduce your choice to your reader.

So whom would I pick? My car would include Nikolai Tesla (because he would be the most likely candidate for a real life Dr. Emmett Brown), mid-1970s Steve Jobs (because I want to see where that ride started), and Cary Grant (because he’s Cary Grant).

Looking for insight this fantastically creative essay, and others from the Kelley application? Visit www.ivyeyesediting.com for free feedback on your work.

Cheers,

Francisco

Ivy Eyes Editing

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Greetings Everyone,

Today we’re going to take a stab at the third mandatory essay for Georgetown’s McDonough School of Business:

“Describe the essence of who you are both personally and professionally.”

It isn’t difficult to be left slightly cross-eyed and daunted by this prompt. It is a vague and highly open-ended prompt that requires some advanced introspection. A combination of narrowing the focus and diligent editing will provide you with a potent distillation of the “essence” that Georgetown is inquiring about.

First let’s make the question slightly less open ended. Georgetown isn’t looking for an all-encompassing mélange of your individual duality. What they want to see is where these two parts of the whole meet in the middle. Imagine a simple Venn diagram, two circles, one for personal and the other for professional. What you are going to focus on in this essay is where these two circles overlap. How do aspects of your professional life carry over and influence your personal life? What have you learned in your personal dealings with friends and family that has allowed you to strengthen your abilities as a coworker and leader in your professional life?

In order to find this middle ground between your personal and professional lives, you will have to fully define each one individually. This will take time, but without a clear understanding of both sides it will be incredibly difficult to see where they overlap. Flesh out the fundamental aspects of each one. What qualities have defined you professionally? What skills have allowed you to achieve your professional goals thus far? How have you been able to hone these skills in your personal life? How will these qualities continue to improve and allow you to achieve your future goals?

It is important to pinpoint specific events that highlight of your personal and professional personas. You will not be focusing on these individual events in your essay, but by determining the concrete examples of your abilities you will be able to more easily reflect on the actions that got you there, and by extension the character traits that helped you succeed.

Trying to distill the essence that Georgetown is asking for from your entire history is a whittling process that will take time and effort. You need to take it step by step and focus on what you believe are the most self-defining moments in your personal and professional careers, and then work your way down from those to the reasons those moments were so defining. Whether the event involved an example of you being proactive or reactive to a given situation, the outcome helped define you in some way, and from a combination of these defining moments you will be able to define your personal and professional essence.

Good Luck,

Ivy Eyes Editing

www.ivyeyesediting.com