If you have questions that you would like to ask me, please leave a comment on this page and I will try to answer them here.
Question:
You couldnt help me out with my essays, or publish your own ones, could you?
On a more serious note, could you tell me about the structure and most important characteristics of your essays?
Answer
From what I hear from my classmates, the most successful essays are ones that are deeply personal and really go into what matters to you the most whether it’s family, money or whatever else you care about. The passion that you feel for something you honestly care about will come out on the essay and that will differentiate you. So that’s the best I can say I think. Take a day or two to think about your life thus far and try to see why you did what you did.
On other essays (other than the “what matters most”), I’d still try to be as reflective as you can be… i.e. talking about your feelings as you went through things rather than telling just a story about what happened.
Question
I am considering doing an MBA ( I have a GMAT score of 680 and more than 10 years of professional experience in IT, Academics and Journalism ), but so far have been leaning towards an Executive MBA since I thought that funding options for a top notch MBA like Standford GSB would be fairly limited. Because of that I was thinking of doing an Executive MBA while keeping my job. Provided I do give a try and apply for Stanford GSB for the MBA and if I do get selected, will there be any funding options available ? How feasible or accessible such options be ? Is there any place where I can see this information ?
Answer
If you have 10 years of work experience, I would recommend the executive MBA route as well, although not for funding reasons. For some reason or the other, many of the major MBA programs seem to be leaning towards less experience than more of late. For the core MBA, they seem to believe that there is more chance of molding someone who doesn’t have significant amount of experience than someone who has worked in industry for many years. Because of this, if you have a lot of experience, you need a really good story about why right now is the best time for an MBA for you and even then I think it’s exponentially harder to get in. However, there are individuals with a lot of experience who do apply, have a clear reason as to why an executive MBA is not suited for them and get in, so I don’t want to discourage you from going the MBA route. In terms of funding, I think its probably easier to get funding for an MBA (from the school) than an executive MBA, at least at the GSB. Since aid is based on demonstrated need, if you are in the executive MBA, they could assume that your employer will fund you or that you will have other funding sources. Then again, I am not a financial aid expert and have very little knowledge about the executive MBA program here (called Sloan). As an MBA (non exec. MBA), based on need you receive a package of loans and fellowships usually about 20-30% fellowships (don’t need to be paid) and the rest in loans. I would suggest you talk directly to the financial aid offices of schools you are interested in to get more details, they are usually eager to provide more info.
You couldnt help me out with my essays, or publish your own ones, could you? 😛
On a more serious note, could you tell me about the structure and most important characteristics of your essays?
Answer posted above. Sorry about the delay in replying.
I am considering doing an MBA ( I have a GMAT score of 680 and more than 10 years of professional experience in IT, Academics and Journalism ), but so far have been leaning towards an Executive MBA since I thought that funding options for a top notch MBA like Standford GSB would be fairly limited. Because of that I was thinking of doing an Executive MBA while keeping my job. Provided I do give a try and apply for Stanford GSB for the MBA and if I do get selected, will there be any funding options available ? How feasible or accessible such options be ? Is there any place where I can see this information ?
Hi Daya,
If you have 10 years of work experience, I would recommend the executive MBA route as well, although not for funding reasons. For some reason or the other, many of the major MBA programs seem to be leaning towards less experience than more of late. For the core MBA, they seem to believe that there is more chance of molding someone who doesn’t have significant amount of experience than someone who has worked in industry for many years. Because of this, if you have a lot of experience, you need a really good story about why right now is the best time for an MBA for you and even then I think it’s exponentially harder to get in. However, there are individuals with a lot of experience who do apply, have a clear reason as to why an executive MBA is not suited for them and get in, so I don’t want to discourage you from going the MBA route. In terms of funding, I think its probably easier to get funding for an MBA (from the school) than an executive MBA, at least at the GSB. Since aid is based on demonstrated need, if you are in the executive MBA, they could assume that your employer will fund you or that you will have other funding sources. Then again, I am not a financial aid expert and have very little knowledge about the executive MBA program here (called Sloan). As an MBA (non exec. MBA), based on need you receive a package of loans and fellowships usually about 20-30% fellowships (don’t need to be paid) and the rest in loans. I would suggest you talk directly to the financial aid offices of schools you are interested in to get more details, they are usually eager to provide more info.
Thanks a lot for the advice !
I will do a little bit me more research and see, but the rationale you laid out make sense to me.
Daya.
What were your stats?
GMAT/GPA and institution/Work Experience, etc.
Hi Cappii,
I’ve tried to keep this blog relatively anonymous so I don’t want to talk too specifically but I have work experience in finance but I studied technology in school.
Don’t focus too much on GMAT/GPA etc. It is a relatively important component but not more important than other aspects of your application. I think the best way to portray yourself to the GSB is to talk about what makes you a well rounded individual in terms of experiences at work and out of work. I think the more varied your experiences, the more interesting you will look.
Hi,
I just found your blog and really enjoyed reading some of your older posts. I’m the CEO of Beat The GMAT. We’re the largest online community of MBA applicants and GMAT students. According to Google Analytics, we had over 350K visits and 1.5M pageviews last month.
Would you be interested in blogging on our site? I’m sure that many of our readers would love to hear about your perspective on GSB!
David
Hi
I’m a Srilankan MBA applicant and came across your blog. Last year I was admitted to BU SOM for the MBA HSM program but due to unavoidbale circumstances had to withdraw my admit.
So I’m back to bandwagon of applicants and trying to figure out my best options. Will it be ok if I contact you through a personal mail if so please let me know. or I can post my questions in here itself.
Thanks in advance and really happy to see a Srilankan MBA student’s blog. There are relatively none out there. 😀
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