The mbaMission Podcast

Ep 68 | Avoid These Last-Minute MBA Application Traps

• mbaMission • Season 2 • Episode 68

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When working on business school applications, MBA applicants tend to focus on their essays, resumes, and recommendations. But inside the applications are a myriad of additional questions that require equal attention. This week on the mbaMission podcast Harold Simansky is joined by mbaMission Managing Director Rachel Beck and Executive Director Jessica Shklar. Harold, Rachel, and Jessica break down the MBA application short answers, share the most common last-minute questions they hear from clients, and discuss the importance of tackling the questions inside the application EARLY.

00:00 Welcome to the mbaMission podcast
01:26 MBA application short answer questions
06:29 Read each school's directions carefully!
08:24 The application activities section
12:59 How to report compensation
14:49 Optional essays
20:34 Treat your application as a mosaic
22:18 Company descriptions
23:45 Recommendations
24:47 Using AI on your applications
27:07 The risk of oversharing 

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Harold:

You're sitting in front of the screen. It's 11 p.m. Who knows what comes out at that point?

Jessica:

If you don't read the application itself, you don't know what you have to work with.

Harold:

Open the application as soon as you can, because we've heard from the admissions committee members, they will look and see when you open that application as a gauge to your interest.

Jessica:

Oversharing, stuff that doesn't have to be shared. This is a business school application, not a therapy

Rachel:

session. This year, a big new question that we've seen is the AI question. Wharton says very directly, we are using our Not at all.

Harold:

the deadlines are right around the corner and you're second guessing everything you've been working on. Did I report my salary correctly? Should I say I used AI in my application? What if I have a typo in my essays? We at MBA Mission have heard these questions over and over again from countless applicants over the last two decades. On today's episode of the MBA Mission podcast, we're joined by MBA Mission Managing Director Rachel Beck to answer our most commonly asked last minute MBA application questions to help you ease your mind, feel confident when you finally hit that submit button. So Jessica and Rachel, you know what scares me the most out of the entire application process? the short answers. And the reason for that is people only start digging into the short answers at the, let's say, very last moment. And short answers are very hard, very nuanced, and actually a great place to add value.

Jessica:

Can we actually clarify for a minute what the short answers are? Because I think there's a lot of terminology. When I tell my clients about the short answers, they think I'm talking about 200-word essays. That's right. So it's really the application itself is the terminology I started using. The application prompts. Right. You log in and it says name, and then it says, where did you go to school? And it says father's address, a permanent address. But as you get more and more into that, there are a lot of questions ranging from your job description to the biggest challenge at your job. It's almost like mini essays, except that the character count is so tight and so rigid. And there can be pages. I think Harvard and Stanford are the worst. I think they have, actually London Business School is the worst because they have 400 word mini questions and they're hidden. But pages and pages up.

Harold:

Of things you may not know, at the end of the day, what was your salary five years ago. And that's a very hard number to find.

Rachel:

Yes. And I think because so many applicants don't listen to us and they wait, wait, wait, wait, wait to dig into the applications, then there's this scramble that takes place of, I don't know what my bonus was two years ago. Where do I even find that? And the answer is, I don't know where you're going to find it. Maybe in your bank account, maybe in your pay stub. I don't know the answer. And we can always tell when they start

Jessica:

working on it because we get questions every 15 minutes or so. How do I fill out this? What about this? I'm like, consolidate. Jeremy does this one thing that for his clients that's great. He says it's short answer template week. And about a month before the deadline, he says to everyone, it's short answer week. All of you spend this week working on your application. And it's a little cheesy, but it's so effective at getting them to look at it early. I remember hearing a horror story, not one of our clients, of someone who the hour before the application was due, like it's due at noon or 5pm, logs on, figures it's only the essays in the resume and there's pages of questions so how do we avoid that last minute

Harold:

that's right and i'm actually going to put in a commercial for us and that is on track i think one of the biggest values of our virtual consultant on track it has these templates that you can download and you can start filling them out because they have to be treated by like essays they're nuanced questions they are comprehensive questions and it makes it is very hard to give good answers when you have 300 characters and 300 characters including spaces as well and Right.

Jessica:

The good news is you can use ampersands, you can do apostrophes, but it's still tight.

Rachel:

I think that a lot of applicants also forget that they need to give the same laser focus to those answers as they are with their essays.

Jessica:

Right. It's often the first impression that the

Rachel:

admissions office gets. And just little things that you have to answer, your job description, your duties and responsibilities, a question that comes up all the time is, can I just copy it off my resume? And I say, my answer to that is, kind of. Your resume might have more accomplishments, and this is asking for your duties and responsibilities, so you can shift things a little bit to be more, this is the kind of work that I've done. But if your best stuff is on your resume, and you feel that reflects, I'm not against bringing that over, but you have to do this in this very confined workspace.

Jessica:

I tell people, you're the same person, and the application and the essays need to reflect that. But why waste the real estate to just repeat what you said? Sure, there are people who copy and paste from their resume. But if you plan in advance, then you can use that application to teach them more. I actually often ask my clients to open up our template, the short answer template, and just have it open on their screen while they're editing their resume or their essays. Because when it comes to editing and they have to cut something out of their resume, they can toss it into the application. And now it's a way to look at every part of the application as a whole.

Harold:

That's right. Not to mention, there are actually some very pointy questions What's the biggest challenge you've had at your job? And frequently we'll have to point out challenge, singular. Immediately we know that's a hard question. Biggest, very hard. And it just doesn't work if in the last few minutes you're like, okay, the biggest question was figuring out the pizzas for everybody.

Jessica:

And you also want to show that you overcame the challenge. You want to treat these 230, 180, 320 character answers as mini essays. is where you're selling yourself. The whole thing about applications is you're selling yourself to admissions. So why say a challenge that leaves them on a negative note? Show that it was a real challenge, but that you overcame it. Now do that in 320 characters.

Harold:

That's right. And what's really fun, though, about these is you'll be doing four, five, or six schools, and the character count is always different for every school, and that in itself is this big adventure of trying to shoehorn things.

Rachel:

Which kind of builds on this next point, which is read the directions that they're That's right, activities. They're saying, put it in order of importance. So you should put it in the order of importance versus just listing, I did these three things in college and these three things in my life since. And even when it comes to the activities,

Jessica:

some schools say three since college and three in college. Some schools say eight to 10 activities and mix them up. So how do you do that? There really is a strategy and a mindset that you need to take for this.

Harold:

Definitely. Definitely. And let's be honest too, it is easy to go wrong here. It simply is. You You're doing it at the last minute. You don't have a lot of space at that point, and you just have to sit there and type into an application, and you're not giving it as much thought as you should.

Speaker 00:

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Harold:

So the activities section in particular can be very, very daunting. For some schools, Harvard, only three activities. Clearly, they really want to know what's most important to you. Wharton is 10 activities. How can you not reach a point when you're doing activities that are completely immaterial to you by the time you get to number

Jessica:

10? And is it okay to leave them blank? Right. But there are clients who say, I need to put even like, you know, walking the dog as an activity. But maybe it's better to leave it blank than to have walking your dog. unless you formed a dog walking group and you used it to go help disadvantaged kids,

Rachel:

then it becomes a big risk. Well, I think that actually brings up a good point. Like there are activities that are structured that you're part of a group that it like quote unquote counts in the sense that it's an organized group that you're part of. But then there's a lot of other material that you can use that I'm not against. Like I had a client a few years ago who was a college athlete in lacrosse and in hockey when he moved to New York City, he played in two rec leagues for both those sports. So I said, this is legitimate activity for you. Let's include it. People are doing the Ironman or running marathons. These are things that you do. These can count as activities. Or if you're really involved in your company outside of your direct line of work, that can count too. A lot of my clients use that in this area. So don't think in your post-college life it has to be like, I joined this perfect group. And that's the only way I can put it down. I usually tell people most

Jessica:

important to you, but also with recency. So college, if it was more than four or five years ago, shouldn't be the first one, no matter how important that was. I like recency importance, and then maybe the college importance, and then vary it from there.

Harold:

Do you have activities that you are very wary of people putting down?

Jessica:

I generally downplay fraternity activities. Depends on the kind. Like if you were VP of philanthropy, and you took that really seriously, that's really different than being rush chair.

Harold:

Right. Or beverage chair. I once had a client of mine who said he was beverage chair of his fraternity, which really meant getting beer. And at the same point, he probably had the most important job in the fraternity, but I was sort of somewhat reluctant to have him included. One activity that I hate people saying is that they're foodies, which for me means that you just like to eat. And at that point, it just feels, and this I think is what I mean by sometimes missed opportunity. When you say foodie, you're really missing the opportunity to say, I'm actually pretty self-aware. I know that by mentioning foodie, and I'm sort of using the negative here, by mentioning foodie, suddenly I always feel like there's a lack of self-awareness when you put down an activity like that. And what I mean by that, it's a very limited universe of people who can, quote, be foodies. What does it mean that you spend time doing something like that? What is it saying about yourself? Here's where we're looking at activities, not only just how important they can be, but also, again, the nuance around that, what you include, but most importantly, what you donate include

Rachel:

actually this year something interesting relating to the foodie because i find that something that a lot of people want to talk about and i had a client a few years ago who it was like an extreme sport for him his he had like a google map of every city with all the places he'd gone to and wanted to go to and it became this thing that he shared with everybody and it was kind of part of his story but do you know what the app belly is it's an app where people go to restaurants and they take pictures of their food and then they post it up on the app and then other people it's It's kind of a refined Yelp for the 20-somethings. And I've had a few clients who have in their interest line like belly enthusiasts. What do you do with people who want to put hunting or

Harold:

cigars? I don't mind hunting. I think I'm less thrilled with cigars. Hunting, one hopes, that is also a social activity. It actually requires some level of expertise. And at that point, I'm like, okay, that certainly makes sense to me. Cigars, again, I always feel like this is a little bit self-indulgent. It's like, okay, It requires some element of wealth. It requires you actually sort of doing a lot on your own, in my mind.

Rachel:

Well, I think the question that I ask people all the time when I look at any experience they have is if somebody is reading your resume or reading your application or reading your essays, and they form a judgment about you from the thing that you're writing, then you have to decide is that it could be a positive, but it could also be a negative. And is it accurate? Right. So you have to really think about that. into round two now and do my kickoff calls, I usually say get your college transcripts. I'm also going to say make sure you have your pay stubs for the last few years because you're going to need that information. If you get accepted, the

Jessica:

schools hire a company to do a background check on you where they will verify not the number of people in a club that you said, but anything that you said in terms of work salary, start and end dates, reason for leaving, they will do a background check, a deep dive on that. And if they discover that you're not being honest or that there was some shading, they will give you a chance to explain. But we have certainly heard of people whose acceptances were revoked because they were not honest on their application.

Rachel:

Yeah, I haven't heard a lot of them being revoked. But I had one client who annualized her internship salary. And they did question her on that. And she said, I thought that's what I was supposed to do. And when she showed that, you know, it was just for the summer, she was went on her happy way. But it needs to be accurate. And I also have I've run into a lot of clients who get stock compensation, which some schools want you to include that. Other schools don't want you to include that. Again, read what the schools are asking for. But I always say, let's play it safe and write something in an optional essay that just explains, I've received this amount of stock compensation, and I haven't cashed anything out yet, or part of my compensation comes in stock. If you're getting ahead, think of the optional essay, which often lives in the application itself. That's right. is your chance to put your spin on things that might need explaining, right? It's not an opportunity to throw some other story in there. And in the compensation area, this is a great place to include it. It also can be where you say, I don't have my bonus for this year yet because I haven't received it. This is where, based on the metrics that were laid out at the beginning of the year, this is what I'm on target to get, but I have not received it, so it's not part of my compensation.

Jessica:

And this kind of leads to the whole idea of starting early because a lot of people, that optional essay, I don't like calling it an essay because it's really short, but it's, is there anything else you want to tell us? We always think of that as a chance to explain a low, a failing grade, a big job gap, a low GMAT score. And often people write those essays and fill up all the space. And then the last minute they're working on the application and they realize they need to explain their stock bonus or their compensation somehow, and they have no more space. So now suddenly at the last minute, they're rewriting that essay. So the earlier you work on all this, the more time you have to fit everything.

Harold:

That's right. And the admissions committee also is very smart when it comes to issues like compensation. They know how much a consultant is making and how investment banker is making, but they also know how much an engineer is making. And they also know if you go to join a startup, your pay goes down to zero and they recognize this. So the reason you're honest is obviously to be honest, but also because you can really expect the admissions committee will understand what these numbers look like.

Jessica:

Well, I was interested I had a consultation yesterday with a woman who's deciding whether to take a job. She's not working right now and she got a job offer and it's a little junior from her role, but it is a little bit different, but it's about a 25% pay cut. And she said, I can't take it because it will look bad to admissions that I'm making so much less money. I said, no, you just have to explain the story. You're learning a new set of skills that will help you for your career. And it actually shows that you're not driven by money and that you're willing to learn and take a step back in order to move ahead. And it was a completely different different mindset for her because she thought that

Rachel:

the more the better. And I tell clients all the time, don't compare yourself to the investment bankers. They're making a lot more than most people at your age. And I think that's something important to keep in mind. Everybody is not on an even playing ground in terms of compensation, and that's okay. They're just looking for compensation growth and growth in your career.

Harold:

I think one other thing that can be very deceptive in short answers, the application itself, is sometimes you're given a huge amount of room to explain what may be something very simple. And people really see this as, hey, let me put in another essay there. How do you advise your clients?

Jessica:

So I always laugh at this. This year, Harvard's optional essay is 75 words, but historically it's been 500 characters, including spaces. Whereas Wharton had said limit of 10 pages. And it's the same essay. So I basically say, say what you need to say as succinctly as possible, but don't make it look like you just copied it from another school. So if you have something that fits in 500 characters, because you used ampersands and abbreviations don't abbreviate that for the one where you have a little more space write out the words make it flow better so if you have to abbreviate abbreviate but if you don't have to don't say more than you need to but also don't make it look too crowded

Harold:

no no i think that's right including something that is actually quite important why didn't you have a recommendation from your direct supervisor the reality is very important but at the same point the answer can be very simple because i'd lose my job if i asked for a direct supervisor and And that's sort of it. That's all you have to write.

Jessica:

Yeah, we talk about the optional essay, but again, read every application. There are schools that say, if you had a job gap of more than three months, explain why. There are schools that say, if you don't have a recommendation from your supervisor, explain why. You don't have to explain it again in the optional essay. So read what each one is. If you don't read the application itself, whether you download our template from OnTrack or just start an application and create it, you don't know what you have to work with. And LBS is kind of the most egregious. On the web But then when you go into the application, they have about five essays that are two to 400 words. That's a substantial essay. And if you don't know those are coming, how do you plan out what's going to be

Rachel:

in all the applications? It's the same with Stanford. Like people do the what matters most and why and why Stanford for me, but then they get to the application. And I like when people say, well, these essays are optional. No, optional is not optional. Taking out the optional essay. That's not what we're talking about. about here. The prompts are not optional if they relate to you. There are some prompts that might come up in your application when you answer things that you don't have to answer if they don't relate to you. So don't answer something that's not for you. And also

Jessica:

use common sense. People can get so tense. Here you are, you're leaders in your company at your level. You are responsible, you're intelligent, you take leadership, you take ownership, and then you come to these applications and it's like you can't make a decision. We want to remind you that you have the answers. You can absolutely ask your consultant, but you can make these decisions in an intelligent way. My favorite example of this was a fantastic client. She had so much going for her. She was a superstar. She had great personal story. Everything was showing her as a leader. And I got a panicked phone call from her as she was filling out the application because she said, the question asks for the ages of my siblings, but I don't have any. What should I write? And it was one of those like, okay, take a deep breath moments. What would you say if you were at work? She's like, well, I would say I don't have any. I'm like, okay, that's the answer.

Harold:

Yeah, there we go. I mean, picking up on a point that Rachel touched on is this idea here of an application is really a mosaic. From that perspective, you certainly have the essays, you certainly have the short answer, short answers, but then you also have these individual questions inside the application itself, again, challenge questions. So you have to put everything together so you get one mosaic or one picture. If you're only putting these application questions in at the last minute, it's not part of the mosaic. It hasn't sharpened the picture of who you are. It hasn't given a lot more information. So bring it in, consider it like an essay, consider it as important as some of the other pieces of the overall profile, because it really is or it can be. It depends on how you approach it.

Jessica:

Right. And remember, again, as we said earlier, this may be the first thing that the admissions office sees about you. So don't give away everything in your you know you don't have to put many essays and don't get put so much that when you get to the application essays they're like oh i already know this story it's a chance to teach them more about you and don't be sloppy with it yes it's okay to abbreviate but don't have typos don't like just look like you didn't take it seriously and honestly the best advice is treat it like an essay it is something you should be planning out early and working on steadily i'm a big believer in matching your work to your energy level so if you're really tired at 11 and clock at night and you've had a full day of work and you've been working on other things and you just don't have the bandwidth to start a new draft of a new essay. Well, that's a great time to fill out your bonus compensation or grab the description of the company from the website and stick it into the job description, the employer description category. Match your energy level or match your workload to the energy

Rachel:

that you have at that moment. It's funny that you mentioned the description of the company that you're working for. I think I get that question from every single client like what are they looking for here the description of the company you work for that's

Harold:

right

Rachel:

so you can look that up like this isn't creative writing this is actually just describe where you're working and you can pull it

Jessica:

from the company website you do not have to write this one you can copy this one because that's the company's already done that for you when it comes to your job when it comes to the challenge when it comes to your biggest accomplishments yes you have to write those but the company description

Rachel:

you don't I suggest often to my clients that they should open the application when they add their recommenders, right? That's a step in the process. So you have to like, that's where you're beginning your application. And a great idea is to go through the application. You don't have to write anything down, but set your expectation in your head of what's coming, what you're gonna have to do. Because if you knew what was coming, you would never leave it to the last week.

Harold:

That's true. That's very, very true. I just have one quibble with you and I tell my clients, open the application as soon as you can because we've heard from the admissions committee members they will look and see when you open that application as a gauge to your interest. Clearly somebody who opened the application months before has a different level of interest than someone who opened the application days before.

Rachel:

And that's a good point because I have clients who just we're not talking about recommendations here but the recommendation is part of the application and you have to add your recommender's name and email and that has to be sent to them and for some reason, I have a lot of clients who hold off on that until they think their recommenders are ready. And I'm like, no, you want to do this well ahead of time. I

Jessica:

have had some horror stories where the client filled in that recommendation that immediately triggered an email with a link to the recommender before the client or the applicant had a chance to

Rachel:

talk with them. That has to happen at least two months before the application is due. I have clients who say, I'm waiting until the recommender says it's ready. And then I open the application. So it's not really a cruel, it was an alignment a week before the application is due, versus that, you know, if you're applying in September, July one is fine. August 26 is not right.

Jessica:

But you don't want the recommender to submit the same day they get it without you actually having a chance to work with them on it. But as long as there's that fine

Rachel:

line. Yeah, this year, a big new question that we've seen is the AI question. Harvard is very which is, we know you're using AI, so tell us how you're using it and cite your sources. My clients have answered that with my coaching very honestly. This is how I'm using AI. It actually surprises me in some ways how some of them are using it. We're not using AI, nor have we ever used AI, so I made that point to them. But if you're using AI, it's better to be forthcoming with the information than to pretend that you're not using it at all, because there's an expectation that everyone's using it in some way.

Harold:

That's right. It's like asking the question, how much do you use Google? It's one of those things. Who is not using Google today? Right.

Jessica:

I really like what Wharton is saying. We see AI as a tool, just like spellcheck is a tool. And we don't expect you to write your applications with AI any more than we would expect you to write your applications by hiring someone to write them for you. But we recognize that it is a tool that many of you are using. And they don't ask an explanation beyond that. But during the integrity, when you sign the integrity that everything is something that you

Rachel:

wrote, that's the assumption. Wharton says very directly, we are using our own proprietary AI detectors, which should scare everybody because the AI detectors are not perfect in any way. Not at all. And so a school is telling you, we're using something. So if I were an applicant, I would say, nope, I'm not going to partake in that. So I think this is going to pop up more and more and more. Harvard is usually a trendsetter in MBA admissions. And I foresee in the future, meaning next year, that we're going to have more schools kind of acknowledging that AI is in some ways part of life, right? It's really the ramp up in AI has really taken place over the last year. And so we're now at this like new world order with AI. So I think applicants have to be very cognizant of the way they're using it and the risks involved in that. So I agree that the biggest one is

Jessica:

AI. But I will give a sort of a jokey answer to what's the biggest pitfall is the reason for leaving question can be tricky. So if you're in your current job, I find people often will say, well, I'm going to be leaving for my MBA. You don't have to write that. The reason for leaving means really reason for having left

Speaker 03:

or

Jessica:

reason for leaving if applicable. So for your current But for the other schools, people often overshare. They say, reason for leaving. Well, I was being bullied by a colleague and I was being sexually harassed by... That's not really something you want to put in that answer. If that's a big enough issue, let's talk about that as a separate essay. But you really leave for business reasons that are legitimate. Those are always going to be a factor as well. So just be careful about that answer because that can be a place where people make mistakes without even realizing it. because they think they're supposed to be not just honest. Obviously, you're going to be honest about everything, but oversharing, stuff that doesn't have to be shared. This is a business school application, not a

Rachel:

therapy session. Correct. And this is what happens when people rush. Instinct is to give this kind of, well, but this is what really happened story, and we don't want to know what really happened. Well, we want honesty, but we don't want oversharing. Right, right. Exactly.

Harold:

Right. No, that's right. You're sitting in front of the screen. It's 11 p.m. The application Exactly. It's like, who knows what comes out at that point? We want to hear from you. We want to hear your questions. And hopefully we can give you some answers. Answer them all. Yeah.

Jeremy:

If you want to be one of our success stories, sign up for a free consultation with a member of our full-time MBA admissions team. Since we've worked with tens of thousands of applicants over the past two decades, we can give you our honest opinion on your chances and help you put together your very best application. That is not a sales call, but rather your first session with one of us for free. We can give you a profile evaluation, answer specific questions about the process, review your resume, talk about your school choices, and so much more. Sign up at MBAadmission.com contact We look forward to working with you.