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Turner Publishing Company - Carol Carpenter , Phil Carpenter

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157 pages

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Expert advice helps you get into the business school of your choiceEarning an MBA from a leading business school can be an important career boost. But first you have to get accepted. This straight-talking guide is dedicated to helping you conquer the business school admission process. Here, Phil and Carol Carpenter show you, step-by-step, how to confidently develop your own winning marketing campaign, including:
* Tips on matching your strengths and interests with those of your target schools
* Candid interviews with admissions directors and alumni
* Advice on writing focused, persuasive essays
* Twenty actual applicant essays on frequently asked topics --with frank evaluations of why these essays worked
* Ratings of the top programs from U.S. News & World Report

"This easy-to-read guide demystifies the MBA admissions process. It provides a detailed and useful strategy for all MBA applicants by illustrating ways in which applicants can exert control and influence over the process." --

"Candid and comprehensive...the Carpenters write with the voice of experience and share practical knowledge rather than generalized suggestions." --Jon Megibow, Director of Admissions University of Virginia, Darden Graduate School of Business Administration
The Importance of Personal Positioning.

Market Research.

Managing the Details.

Tips for the GMAT.

Personal Positioning.

Diversity and Your Personal Positioning.

Writing.

The Essays--Common Themes, Examples, and Analysis.

Interviews: The Inside Story.

Packaging the Product.

The Envelope, Please.

From the Horse's Mouth: Advice from Top Admissions Directors.

Appendices.

Index.

Sujets

Graduate School Guides

Study Aids

MBA

Master of Business Administration

Informations

Publié par	Turner Publishing Company
Date de parution	21 avril 2008
Nombre de lectures	5
EAN13	9780470301531
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0850€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Marketing Yourself to the Top Business Schools
Marketing Yourself to the Top Business Schools
Phil Carpenter
and
Carol Carpenter

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
New York • Chichester • Brisbane • Toronto • Singapore
This text is printed on acid-free paper.
Copyright © 1995 by Phil Carpenter and Carol Carpenter Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
All rights reserved. Published simultaneously in Canada.
Reproduction or translation of any part of this work beyond that permitted by Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act without the permission of the copyright owner is unlawful. Requests for permission or further information should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If legal, accounting, medical, psychological, or any other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought.
ISBN 0-471-11817-6
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
To our parents and to our friends from the Harvard Business School Class of 1994
Acknowledgments
Writing this book has been an adventure for us. During the last year, we’ve pushed ourselves to produce a book that would be a maverick in its category, the first to take a focused, marketing-oriented approach to the business school application process. We began this book while completing our MBAs at Harvard and finished it while working fulltime jobs. Without the support of our friends, colleagues, and families, this simply would not have been possible. Thank you for your patience and understanding.
Much of the richness and flavor of this book comes from primary research. We are grateful to all who contributed to this effort, whether through interviews or by passing on their application essays.
Finally, we would like to thank our agent, Mitchell Rose, our editor, Judith McCarthy, and the staff at John Wiley & Sons. Your candid advice, professionalism, and enthusiasm have been essential in taking this project from sketch pad to shelf.
Contents
        Prologue
  1   The Importance of Personal Positioning
  2   Market Research
  3   Managing the Details
  4   Tips for the GMAT
  5   Personal Positioning
  6   Diversity and Your Personal Positioning
  7   Writing
  8   The Essays—Common Themes, Examples, and Analysis
  9   Interviews: The Inside Story
10   Packaging the Product
11   The Envelope, Please
12   From the Horse’s Mouth: Advice from Top Admissions Directors
Appendixes
A    The Top 25 Business Schools, U.S. News & World Report , 1995 Survey Results
B    The Top 25 Business Schools: A Directory
C    Information Checklist
D    Tracking the Details
E    Diversity at the Top 25 Business Schools
F    Assessment of MBA Programs
        Index
Prologue
It was November 12—the middle of the business school application season—and that morning I found myself sitting face-to-face with John Enyart, the Director of Admissions at the time for the Wharton School of Business.
Only moments before, I had been sitting in the crowded admissions office reception area, waiting my turn for what I thought would be an interview with some lower-level admissions functionary. Enyart strode into the room, grumbled to the receptionist about having to cover for a sick co-worker, and looked down at the file he held in his hands. “Carol Carpenter,” he called, his eyes sweeping the crowd of anxious faces. My stomach turned.
Enyart brought me into his cluttered office, pointed me toward a chair, and sat down across from me. He opened my file and pulled out my finely tuned, laser-printed resume. After scanning it for all of 30 seconds, he tossed the resume on his desk, turned to me, and said, “So?”
“So what?” I asked, wondering what he wanted to know.
“So tell me what makes you any different from the hordes of other applicants that come through this place. A good undergraduate university, an investment bank, a consulting firm . . . your resume looks like thousands of others I read every fall. So, what makes you special?”
1

The Importance of Personal Positioning
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.
L AO-TZU The Way of Lao-tzu, 1
In the fall of 1992, more than 75,000 people applied to MBA programs in the United States. This deluge of applicants meant that the odds of getting into a top business school now seemed depressingly low. That year, 4,393 prospective students applied to Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management; roughly 900 were offered a spot for the fall. Harvard Business School received 5,793 applications from more than 55 countries; only 16 percent were accepted.
When we applied to business schools in 1992, we realized that if both of us were to be admitted to the schools on our short list, we needed to come up with an innovative way to present ourselves on paper, an application strategy that would help to differentiate us from our fellow applicants. Our efforts at crafting a focused strategy for the MBA application process paid off in spades, winning us acceptances at Harvard, Wharton, UCLA, Kellogg, UNC (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Duke, Tuck, MIT, Michigan, Chicago, and UVA. In Marketing Yourself to the Top Business Schools , we want to pass on to you the results of our experience. This book presents you with a proven, marketing-oriented plan of attack that will help you to set yourself apart from your competitors in the struggle for a spot at the school of your choice.
OUR APPROACH
If you’re looking for GMAT (Graduate Management Admission Test) hints or descriptions of different MBA programs, stop reading now.
There are plenty of other books on the shelves that give that kind of advice. Marketing Yourself to the Top Business Schools is a guerrilla marketer’s battle plan—a clear, concise description of how to develop and implement a unique personal marketing program. It’s also the only book of its kind on the market. While there are plenty of publications that can tell you about the nature of Berkeley’s curriculum versus that of Stanford or contrast UVA’s social life with that of MIT, the amount of information those publications give you about the MBA application process itself is sparse. In our book, this is all we write about. We are committed to helping you devise and implement an outrageous personal marketing campaign.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
Like it or not, the MBA admissions process is a bit of a game. While grades, GMAT scores, and other quantitative measures contribute to an admissions committee’s decision, the review process is highly subjective. Admissions officers will review your essays, your work experience, and your recommendations. They will develop opinions about your ability to succeed in the academic environment of their particular program, about the skills and experiences you have to offer that will enrich that environment for your peers, and, finally, about your potential to succeed as a business leader once you’ve left business school (B-school) behind. And they’ll make some judgment calls.
So while there is not much you can do to change the fact that you got a C in Microeconomics, you can definitely influence the subjective side of the admissions equation. The crafting of your application essays, the way in which you present your work experience, and the selection of your recommenders are all elements over which you have control. This book gives you both the overall framework and the tactical information you need to exercise that control most effectively. After all, if you’re going to play the game, you should play to win.
WHY SWING FOR THE FENCE?
Developing a strong set of B-school applications using our personal positioning strategies is not for the slothful. Formulating your personal marketing plan and completing exceptional applications to support this plan takes time, patience, and a sense of humor. But if you compare the investment of time and energy it takes to produce a solid group of applications to the amount of time, effort, and money you plan to invest in a two-year MBA program, the potential return on your investment is high. If you’re going to spend two years of your life and a significant sum of money to get a management education, it’s worth putting in the extra effort to make sure you get a good shot at your schools of choice. And when you end up in your post-MBA dream job, you’ll wonder why you ever even flinched at the thought of spending the time to do it right.
We would argue that, for those with ambition, the personal-positioning process is downright essential. The following excerpt is from a recent Business Week article:
The opportunity gap between elite MBA schools and the second rank appears to be widening. This year, only 4% of the graduating classes at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management or Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School were without job offers by commencement. Compare that with Ohio State, where 40% of grads lacked a single offer at graduation.
The message is clear: Spend the time necessary to get into a top school. If you don’t, you may end up several years from now with a degree of questionable worth.
WHERE DO YOU CO FROM HERE?
Start by giving this book a thorough reading. The strategy we outline will give you the foundation you need to develop your own personal plan of attack. (While we focus primarily on full-time MBA programs, the advice we give here would be equally appropriate for evening, accelerated, or executive MBA programs.) Next, get moving on some of the administrative items, as it may take longer than you think to get through the grunt work. While you are waiting for transcripts and other materials to arrive, begin doing your market research—it’s the infor