'Applications' tagged blog posts in Betsy Massar's Master Admissions Blog

Now that most top business schools have released their essay questions for the entering class of 2013, there's a lot of talk about the reduced essay word count. It started with Harvard Business School’s announcement on May 22 to reduce the essay portion of the application to two 400-word responses.  Now many other schools, such as MIT Sloan, Kellogg and Chicago Booth...

If you know anyone who is applying to business school for the class of 2014, you may have heard them muttering to themselves, “What does matter most to me and why?” (Stanford GSB) or  “Have I ever learned anything from a setback?”  (Harvard Business School). They may be victims of an energy-draining syndrome that shows itself every year about this time called MBA essay nightmare.  It’s a regular sinkhole of drafting,...

Imagine this: an admissions interviewer has read hundreds of essays, maybe thousands, by eager students trying to gain admission to their school. Many of those essays are written by those who are fully qualified, but just put down a laundry list of their accomplishments, like a resume in prose.  And they will be dinged.

Admissions committee members spend a long time writing questions that they believe will bring out the...

Many of the results are in. Most aspiring MBA students who submitted applications this season know where, and if, they are going to business school. Some students will not get their wish – they will have applied to one or many schools, and were not admitted anywhere.

I believe that the act of applying is worth applauding. It’s a complex project, practically requiring a Gantt chart for project scheduling: take GMAT...

Every time I go to a school’s MBA information session, I learn something. The other night I attended a session at UC Berkeley’s Haas school, and , despite the amount of time I put in to learning about this school (it’s right in my neighborhood), I still come out with something new.

In discussing the major essay that asks, “Please tell us about yourself and your background....

If you know anyone who is applying to business school for the class of 2012, you may have heard them muttering to themselves, “What does matter most to me and why” or “Have I ever learned anything from a mistake?” They may be victims of an energy-draining syndrome that shows itself every year about this time called MBA essay nightmare. It’s a regular sinkhole of drafting,...