The Questions You SHOULD Be Asking – ANSWERED! [Episode 500]

Invaluable insights into all aspects of the graduate admissions process [Show Summary]

In celebration of Admissions Straight Talk’s 500th episode, Linda Abraham invites Accepted consultants to pose and answer the questions that students should be asking – and frequently don’t ask. This conversation is filled with invaluable insights that will benefit anybody preparing for graduate school. 

Accepted consultants share invaluable insights into the questions that students should be asking [Show Notes]

Welcome to the 500th episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for joining me. This is a very special episode. It’s the 500th, and I am very proud of that. We’ve been working hard to present a particularly informative show. I’ve invited different Accepted consultants over the course of the past few weeks to respond to one question that each one believes applicants should ask and know the answer to. And they frequently don’t ask and, therefore, never learn the answer. So this is a collection of clips with different consultants – all experienced experts in their area of admissions – addressing different issues. I think you’ll find it invaluable as you apply. I’ve been finding it very interesting to hear what they’re asking and also what they’re answering.

I’m going to start with a question right now. What is the paradox at the heart of graduate admissions? I’ll tell you, you need to fit in and stand out. You can learn how to master that paradox by downloading Accepted’s free guide, Fitting In and Standing Out: The Paradox at the Heart of Admissions.

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Let’s start with our first guest, Cydney Foote, who is one of Accepted’s most experienced and, consequently, most beloved consultants. Before joining Accepted in 2001, Cydney was an administrator at the University of Washington School of Medicine. She has also written three ebooks on med school admissions, and she’s guided hundreds, if not thousands, of applicants to acceptance, mostly in the healthcare field. 

The question for Cydney is: What’s a useful tool that applicants can and should use no matter what stage of the application process they’re in? [2:57]

[Cydney Foote] I think one of the most useful things that someone can do before they even start to write their application materials is to keep a journal. It sounds very simple. It sounds like something a little kid would do, but so many people will sit down to write their first question and they don’t know what to write about. If you keep a journal for the months, or even the years, before you start writing [applications], you can flip back through it and see what you’ve done. Often, you’ll see patterns arising from things that you enjoyed and things that you did well. It’s kind of the way that the universe is nudging you towards a certain area. A lot of that can just slip by you in your daily life as you’re running from one event to the next. If you’ll write it down just five minutes a day, then you’ll have a whole wealth of material to go back on and look through later. 

Another really good reason to journal is that it helps you support your claims. This is one of the most severe flaws that I see in a lot of people’s writing in their first drafts is they will make claims about things that they did like, “I am a great team player,” “I’m a great leader,” or “I am a great communicator,” but without the examples to support that, there’s nothing that will help the person who’s reading the application believe that you are that. It’s not that they necessarily disbelieve you, but they don’t have anything to reference. If you have something written down, those examples can be used to support your claims, and it will just make your application process so much more powerful, compelling, and convincing.

There’s also a final reason for doing this. When you start to write your application, especially for medical school, but for any field, you’re going to be doing a lot of writing. If you’re not used to doing that on a daily basis, which you probably aren’t if you’re a science major, it can be difficult. If you will just take five minutes a day and start exercising your writing muscle, it will make the rest of the process feel so much easier when you finally dive in.

That’s great advice. In terms of what to include in the journal entries, do you recommend just focusing on what happened or perhaps what they learned from it? [5:22]

[Cydney Foote] I think both are useful. I think that a lot of people start out just writing about their daily activities: something that impressed them that they saw in the ER, something that a clinician did that they thought was really neat or that they said to them. It can be anything. But those concrete examples are really important in my opinion. As you start to break out and get more comfortable with writing, then I think you’ll start to notice things about what you think but it depends on how reflective you are as a person. 

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I’d like to introduce our next guest, Dr. Valerie Wherley, who is the former Assistant Dean of Student Affairs at the William Beaumont School of Medicine and former Director of Pre-Health Advisement at Sacred Heart University. Dr. Wherley has over 20 years of experience working with successful pre-med, pre-health, and pre-masters students, helping them to create their most competitive applications. She brings that experience in guiding her clients at Accepted and in answering our question today. 

The question for Dr. Wherley is: For any pre-health applicant, what is the benefit of revealing a hobby or two on your application? [7:11]

[Valerie Wherley] Well, first of all, thank you for having me. I love this question. I think there is great benefit in pre-health applicants revealing and sharing a hobby or two on their application. I will say that with a caveat. I do think when talking about a hobby, applicants should think about whether or not the hobby is meaningful. Can they reflect on what they have learned as a result of participating in this particular hobby in terms of skills acquired or things like interpersonal communication? Have they been participating in this hobby for a long-term period of time?

I think if they can think about those three aspects of the hobby, then it would qualify as being eligible for going on one of those pre-health applications. Hobbies are the portion of the application that reveals something very unique and interesting about an applicant. These pre-health applicants have done an incredible amount of work in terms of taking science classes, getting a competitive GPA, doing clinical work, and proving themselves in that domain. Hobbies are a way to reveal a specific component of themselves that is interesting and unique and maybe shows some diversity that could really click with a member of an admissions committee and really elevate that application into the next round.

One other thing is, hobbies also are that part that shows that applicants really understand the benefit of work-life balance. They not only devote time in the classroom into their clinical work, but also know how to unwind and unplug. When they get into graduate school, they are going to have to work very hard in class with didactic work and clinical work, but when they have time off, do they know how to give some time to themselves? Whether it’s dancing or singing or exercising, whatever it is, that’s really an important thing that admissions committees are looking for because it’s important for both mental health and wellness and even avoiding burnout.

I remember one of my earliest clients, this was well over 20 years ago, was a med medical school applicant. He was a butterfly collector and he listed it as one of his additional activities on the AMCAS application. He said every interviewer asked him about that hobby.

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It’s my pleasure now to introduce Dr. Karin Ash. Dr. Ash has her Ph.D. in Educational Psychology and Organizational Behavior from Cornell University. She has been an Accepted admissions consultant since 2015 after serving as Head of Career Services for both Cornell University and the Cornell Johnson School of Business. She also has worked in the engineering program at Cornell University. 

Here is the question for Dr. Ash: What is the most important part of the application for applicants in the STEM field? [11:10]

[Karin Ash] Well, first of all, just in case anyone isn’t familiar with STEM, it’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.

This isn’t an uncommon question and my response would be that all parts of the application are important, but you can’t change your GPA. It’s a fact. You can take the GRE only so many times, and your score is a fact. If you’re applying to top schools, you’re competing against a lot of other people who also have good scores. Those are facts. Your resume is a list of facts. In your references, there’s some room for creative thought on the part of the writer, and it’s your job to provide the facts to him or her to make sure that they can write a very detailed letter that provides examples that show how your skills are the right skills for that grad program and you’ll be successful.

But the essay is where you have the most room for creativity and to present yourself to an admissions committee. Why did you major in what you did? Why did you choose the work that you did? Why did you focus on the particular research area? You have more control over your essay than any other part of your application. I wouldn’t say that the essay is the most important part, but it’s a critical component that you have the control to steer. 

Your motivations are where you really want to start in your thought process. Identify your goals, and then work backwards. How does your story directly relate to those goals? The other thing you can do is reach out to current students or recent alumni and learn more about the program from their perspective. You can learn more than you can get from a website, and you might be able to incorporate some of what you learn into your essay. I just think there’s so much more room for you to maneuver in an essay than any other part.

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I’d like to now welcome Kelly Wilson. Kelly has previously been a guest on Admissions Straight Talk, when she was the Executive Director for Master’s Admissions at Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business. Prior to that, she was Assistant Dean and Director of MBA Admissions at Georgetown McDonough, which I think is actually where I met you. She brings almost 25 years of admissions experience to us today.

The question for Kelly is: Admissions directors frequently say, “Be authentic, don’t write what you think we want to hear.” How can an applicant be authentic and put their best foot forward, especially when responding to goals questions, where the applicant is worried their goal is too distant from what they’ve done in the past. [15:10]

[Kelly Wilson] I think that’s a valid concern. From an applicant’s standpoint, there are times when I think the tendency is to think about what the admissions committee wants to hear. For me, that’s flawed thinking, but I understand why people think it. What I would like to encourage people to think through is, what are the goals you want based on where you are currently and what are the aspirations you have for your career? There might be a goal that is too much to accomplish in a short period of time of the MBA program. I think some thought and some conversations with a coach help this process greatly. Is the short-term goal really the short–term goal, or might that be an intermediate goal where you should think about an interim step to get you to that goal? That’s one way to think about it. 

One thing that I caution people against is to think about stating goals that they think will sit well with the admissions committee. So for example, I had a conversation not too long ago with a candidate who was working in a tech startup space, and they were thinking about business school and said, “I think I should say that I’m interested in consulting since many more people go into consulting.” I said, “Okay, let’s talk about that a little bit” because I understand that for a lot of MBA programs, consulting is going to be one of the top sectors that students go into, but it’s not the only one. It’s better for the applicant to think about how they should connect the dots between what they’re doing and what they want to do, while conveying an openness to opportunities that might arise once they get to school. Nothing that a candidate writes in their essays is set in stone by the school. No one from the career office pulls that out and says, “But you said this.”

If schools aren’t going to hold you to your goals, why are they so interested in them? [18:44]

[Kelly Wilson] That’s a really good question. This was my philosophy the whole time as I was looking at applications. I wanted to see that somebody did the work to think through a plausible path of what makes sense and what they can accomplish at the school they’re applying to. I remember working in admissions and being at an event with prospective students and having a panel of alums. It would happen more often than not that the alumni would say, “Well, don’t tell admissions, but that’s not really what I wanted to do”, or “I didn’t know that that’s what I wanted to do.” Our expectation isn’t that you have to know. It’s that the plan you lay out makes sense.

Because if you lay out a sensible plan now, you can do it in the future if your interests change. [20:09]

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Our next guest is Natalie Grinblatt Epstein. Before joining Accepted way back in 2008, Natalie was Admissions Dean and Director for three top MBA programs. Her clients have been accepted to U.S. M7 MBA programs and admitted to elite programs around the world. 

My question for Natalie is: What would you advise applicants to do if they were rejected from Round 1 applications and they’re debating about what they should do with Round 2 applications? [20:45]

[Natalie Grinblatt Epstein] That’s a great question because every year, I run into this situation, where maybe students went alone in Round 1 and didn’t use any kind of counseling or coaching and then they come to me and want to know what they should do. 

The first thing that we’ll do is gather some data. We want to assess the application. What went well? What didn’t go well? What are some holes or things that you can improve between Round 1 and Round 2? Maybe it’s updating your resume. Maybe it’s being more clear about goals. Maybe it’s answering the prompt more clearly. Maybe it’s connecting with the school and showing that you share your values. There is the possibility that it might just be numbers, in which case, we might advise you to retake a test or to offer to take a class. That’s hard to do in a month but if you enroll in a class, you can discuss that with the admissions committee in an optional essay.

The second thing we do after the assessment and figuring out what we can do between now and January is try to figure out how to highlight the strengths and mitigate the weaknesses. That’s how we will approach the application. Of course, we want to cast the net a little bit more widely. Are there schools out there that would still allow this candidate to achieve their goals without there being another issue? If you’re only looking at rankings, you might not be finding the school that’s best suited for you. We’re going to cast the net a little bit more widely and discuss those schools. We’ll do the same sort of research that we would do with Round 1. We’d want that person to get in touch with people at the school, students, alumni, and staff. We’d want them to visit either virtually or in person so they get a sense of what the schools are like.

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Our next guest is Vanessa Febo, who joined Accepted about a year ago. Vanessa has been teaching writing at UCLA for the last 10 years and has guided applicants to acceptance of top schools like Harvard, Stanford, UCLA, and USC, as well as to leading scholarships, including the Fulbright, Ford Foundation, Knight, Hennessy, Marshall, and Truman. 

The question for Vanessa is: What is something that is often missing from the first draft of an applicant’s statement of purpose? [24:14]

[Vanessa Febo] Great question. Something that is often missing from the first draft of an applicant statement of purpose is the very basic, who, what, when, where, and why type of information. This is something that I see time and time again, working with clients. They spend a lot of time trying to articulate their deep reasons for wanting to join the program, which is absolutely necessary. They spend time talking about their research experiences, which is absolutely necessary. But in the process, they might forget to mention what school they went to or what their project was about?

I recently met with a client who was working on an engineering project and he didn’t state the problem they were trying to solve or even the purpose of doing this work. It’s kind of funny because in a lot of the first round edits, I’m asking questions like, “When was this?” or “ What company was this with?” It’s oftentimes not the deep, philosophical questions but more the timeline for your work.

Why are you going to put yourself through more schooling? Why do you want to be there? What do you plan to do while you’re there? One thing that I almost never see right off the bat on an application, on the statement of purpose is the purpose. What do you want to do with your degree when you are done? That is an obvious surprise too, how many times clients haven’t really thought about that. 

I always talk about a statement of purpose being a very forward looking document while a personal statement is a little bit more backward looking. In a statement of purpose, you will talk about your past experiences, but they really want to know what you are going to do in the program and what are you going to do afterwards. It can actually be really difficult to figure out. Oftentimes, we know we want to do something, but we’re not exactly sure how to explain it. Or sometimes the reason might be that you like the location of the school, which is a legitimate reason, but it shouldn’t be your only reason.

So I guess the bottom line is don’t forget who, what, where, when, and of course, the why regarding your purpose.

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I’d like to welcome Alice Diamond to our episode today. Alice was the Associate Dean for Career and Community Service at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She has 35 years of experience in career and admissions advising for undergraduate and graduate students. She joined Accepted in 2021. 

Alice, the question for you is: How important are extracurricular activities in a graduate school application? [28:55]

[Alice Diamond] The answer is extracurricular activities can be really important, but it depends on a couple of things. The first is how much of a connection you can make between the activities that you have and the field that you want to enter. Did your activities actually have an impact on your decision to go into this career field? Let me give an example. You’re applying to grad school in clinical social work or marriage and family counseling, and you want to be a therapist. You were a Resident Assistant in your residence hall as an undergraduate. That experience can be extremely relevant if you think about the skills that you developed. You mediated conflicts between roommates, you created a living learning environment in your residence halls, I’m sure you had to develop crisis management skills, and you were a peer leader. If you can articulate those experiences and how they relate to the counseling field, it’ll be tremendously helpful.

Another example is you’re going to go into the healthcare professions, for example, occupational therapy or speech and language pathology. One of your experiences was volunteering over a period of time at a shelter for people in need. Whenever you’ve interacted with diverse populations, and especially those that are underserved, especially dealing with people who have been facing challenges like housing, finances, social and emotional challenges, it gives you the kind of experience that’s really relevant to working in a healthcare setting. It’s great to mention that in your application. 

Often people are members of an athletic team and those experiences of being part of a team, collaborating together, and facing challenges are great talking points. Sometimes an athletic team member will have a direct experience like interacting with the team trainer that impacts their decision to go into a field like physical therapy. That’s really helpful to mention.

I’ll mention a couple caveats. One is that it’s depth, not breadth that matters with activities. A long list of things that you did one time, while they’re wonderful, are not going to have an impact on your application. It’s the ongoing activities where you really learned, contributed, changed. Most importantly, you can reflect on the experience because where extracurricular activities matter is when you learn and grow. It’s great that you worked at a soup kitchen, but more important is the reflection that you had about what you learned about hunger and homelessness from that experience. I encourage you to think about the activities that made a difference to you and describe them often. The grad school essays will be really helpful places to bring this in. 

I also want to mention that, in higher education, we’re actually going from the word extracurricular to the word co-curricular because of the idea is that it’s really not “extra.” Let’s say you’re applying to grad school in political science and you had a leadership role in student government, that experience could be essential and also a really good complement to your academic experiences in the classroom. We use the word co-curricular now to give the sense of how important it is to your personal and professional development inside and outside of the classroom.

Excellent points all around. That’s a wonderful answer.

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Our next guest is Dr. Herman Gordon a.k.a. Flash who is the past Chair of Admissions at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. He has an A.B. degree from Harvard College and a Ph.D. from Caltech. Since 2014, he has helped Accepted’s clients gain acceptance to medical schools and Ph.D. programs in the sciences. 

The question for you is: How can applicants avoid triggering negative stereotypes and implicit bias when applying? [33:27]

[Herman Gordon] Let me take a step back and talk a little bit about what happens in the committee room when the client’s application comes in. I’ve served on national grant review panels as well as on an admissions committee, and it’s similar dynamics in both. Everybody wants to find good people and develop them and help nurture them. There’s a real positive aspect to it, but there’s also the need to select in both grants and med school applications. The acceptance rate can be less than 10%. It’s pretty brutal. 

There’s an aspect of admissions, which is weeding people out. In medical admissions, that gets weeded out at several steps. The first step is the invitation for an interview and then the next key step happens when the application goes forward to the whole committee and then gets reviewed there. In all those steps of the way, there’s the opportunity for bias and stereotypes, and I think an important concept as part of this is red flags. What tends to happen, at least at the end of the line, when it gets to the committee, is that if somebody doesn’t want the application to move forward, they can pick up a red flag and say, “We can’t accept it because of this,” and then the application is tubed. A serious red flag would be a couple of DUIs, but there are much more subtle ones. 

Part of what I do with applicants is bring that perspective that anything that could be picked up as a red flag. I help notice those things and present or phrase them differently. The other aspect is that there are just certain biases that different people have. Not all reviewers have them but some definitely do. Twenty years ago, we talked about racial biases. Today, it’s much more subtle. 

Let’s take engineering students as an example. I personally have loved teaching engineering students in med school. They have really good problem solving minds, and I think it’s something that should be mined for med school. But I have seen this both in working on committees, as well as working with applicants who have engineering backgrounds, that they just have a harder time with it. I think that’s because there’s this stereotype that engineers are nerds; they’re bad with people, and they’re not going to be good doctors. It’s just not true. You can think it, but it doesn’t mean that it’s true. It’s wrong to apply it to everybody and to rule people out for that kind of reason. Being aware of those kinds of biases is important so you can create an application that defends against those biases.

How would you advise an engineering client to fight the stereotype? [37:04]

[Herman Gordon] It’s very important that they present their people skills. Those could be on the job, in collaborations, in small groups, and hopefully, it’s in their community service efforts and in their clinical pre-medical training. They’ll want to demonstrate that they can work effectively with people and that it’s a driver for them. This will break the stereotype and allow the application to go through and be really processed on its merits instead.

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Our next guest is Esmeralda Cardenal, former Associate Director of Admissions at Yale School of Management, Director of MBA Admissions at MSU Broad and consultant at Cardiff Business School in the UK. Since 2014, Esmeralda has guided Accepted clients to acceptance in various graduate programs, including MBA, masters in finance, business analytics, data science, sustainability, and public policy. 

Esmeralda, the question for you is: What are the most underrated parts of the applications by applicants? How should they be viewed and treated instead? [38:21]

[Esmeralda Cardenal] In my twenty years of working in admissions, I would say that the most underrated and perhaps forgotten part of the application is the application boxes or the short answer questions. These questions are not on the website but are on the portal once you go in and create your account. They’re usually the ones that people tend to forget and leave to the last minute.

What happens is that people usually spend a lot of time on their essays and resume which is wonderful. Then, at the 11th hour, when they’re submitting everything, they find out that there are all these required short answer questions with very tight character limits. The problem with this is twofold. 

One is that usually at this time there is not much time left. They’re rushing something that should not be rushed. A lot of times, this is what the admissions committee sees first. You don’t want to rush anything, but especially these questions.

The other problem is a lot of these questions ask about elements of work experience or extracurricular leadership that many times have already been touched on in the essays. The problem arises when applicants begin repeating things they already said in the essays. 

I tell all of my clients as soon as they know that they are interested in a school, to go in and create their account so they know exactly what that school asks. Get all those short answer questions and put them in a Google Doc and treat them as you would treat an essay. Answer them carefully and make sure that you are answering within the character limit.

These questions have a very tight and strict character limit. When they say about 300 characters, we’re not talking about 300 words. Once I had a client who thought they were writing 500 words. It was 500 characters, which is very different. That’s about 100 words. You want to make sure that you are writing concisely and to the point and answering all these questions. 

Another thing to remember as you’re putting together your resume, you don’t need job duties and responsibilities and what you do on a day to day basis because that is going to be asked in those short answers. There is a lot more that you can say in the application just make sure you don’t rush it.

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Our next guest is Jamie Wright, who has been on Admissions Straight Talk several times before. First, when she was Senior Recruitment and Admissions Manager at London Business School, Early Career Programs, and later after joining Accepted in 2017. Since then, she has helped clients gain acceptance to top programs in the United States and the EU, including London Business School, INSEAD, Oxford, Cambridge, Judge, Imperial, and others. 

Here’s your question, Jamie: What’s the ideal candidate to business school? Can you give me a percentage chance that I can get in even if I don’t meet the ideal? [38:21]

[Jamie Wright] I think the quick and simple easy answer to both is, there’s not an ideal and no, I can’t give an exact number percentage of the chances of your application being successful. 

In terms of the profile, I think that there still exists a rumor that in order to attend business school, you have to come from a certain background. I hear it all the time talking to clients. They say you need to have worked in finance or consulting. That’s not to say that they don’t add any value, but they’re not all of the profiles.

I don’t think that schools want a homogenous grouping of students, nor do I think that applicants want to be in a classroom filled with people who look and sound just like themselves and have the same background and experience. I know I don’t have to say it, but this range of experiences, be it academic or professional or extracurricular, results in a diversity of perspectives, discussions, and debate. It’s so interesting in the classroom.

That’s all to say that there might not be an exact profile that schools are looking for, but there are what I would consider common attributes. These are things like passion, leadership potential, commitment, and drive. There’s a lot of talk about EQ, IQ, and AQ skills. These are all the attributes that make not only successful students, but eventually, successful employees as well. I would say these are the more common qualities that schools are looking for, but there’s not a cookie cutter that applicants need to come from.

So if I was working on a not for profit, but I showed initiative, ingenuity, creativity, leadership, etc. I’d have a chance? [45:43]

[Jamie Wright] Absolutely. I think it’s interesting you say nonprofit. A lot of times that comes up as a non-traditional category. These students are making up a much bigger proportion of the classroom. Admissions committee members love to see an applicant coming from a different background. I used to love it when I would see people coming from different journeys because that’s what makes the classroom experience unique. I think most would agree that you learn as much from your peers as you do from faculty. Schools are very aware of that. They want to make sure that that peer-to-peer learning is happening and that you want to learn from these interesting people coming from different backgrounds.

And to answer the second question, what I would say is that, we can always give our recommendation as to whether we think a candidate stands a chance at a particular school. We can acknowledge they have a good profile or if there are some interesting things about their profile. But whether or not they’re admitted really depends on the whole application and not just what we see on that one page resume or CV. I don’t think that it’s possible to give that percentage without going deeper.

When I worked at London Business School and led the Early Careers admissions committee, I would reject candidates who looked good on paper, but I couldn’t understand their ambitions and couldn’t see any real motivation for their career or the program. We’d sometimes have to cut those people lose because the lack of interest and motivation at the application stage is usually a red flag and not a great indicator of what would happen once they came into the classroom. That’s all to say that the applicant’s journey and their story and their research and all of that does play a huge role in any decision. We need to be able to dig deeper into that before getting to any percentages and likelihood of being accepted.

I also say that at the end of the day, you’re going to be 100% in or 100% out.

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I’d like to welcome now Dr. Christie St- John. Dr. St- John joined Accepted a few years ago after a distinguished career in international, MBA, and graduate admissions at both Vanderbilt and Dartmouth Tuck. She also served on the board of directors of the MBA Career Services Council and the Consortium for Graduate Studies in Management. That was in addition to her duties at Vanderbilt and Dartmouth Tuck. 

The question for you is: What’s the value of attending school admissions events, whether virtual or in person? [49:51]

[Christie St-John] I think this is critically important because a lot of times when I’m talking with clients and I’ll ask them, “Why do you want to go to the school?” They’ll answer, “It’s ranked high.” That’s all they know about it. They don’t know whether the companies they want to work for recruit at that school. They don’t know the personality of the school or what the students are like. It’s so easy now to go to virtual events. Now that COVID seems to be laying low for a while, in-person events and MBA fairs all over the US and the world are taking place again. That’s an important place to go and meet the people who are on the admissions staff of the school. They usually bring alums with them and sometimes even current students. You can get a lot of information that you’ll never find on the website from those people. 

If you visit in person, you get to look at the building. Where are the faculty located? If you need to go to career services, is it in a totally different building or is it going to be convenient to get to? Where are the faculty located? Are they all over different buildings in the campus? Are they in the same building that most of your classes are in? These are things that you’ll never find out on the website because they don’t get publicized. 

Another thing that’s really important is finding out what sort of activities you can do there. One of the best ways is to go in person, but I know that’s not feasible for some people, especially if you’re international. But you get to sit in on a class and see the dynamics in the classroom. To remedy that for people who can’t get there, a lot of schools do online classes that you can sit in on. I’ve done that myself because I just find it really interesting. 

One thing that people don’t know is that, schools have very sophisticated technology today that actually records when you come to visit. Anytime you click on their website to go see something, they know it. If you have never even bothered to go to the website or even go to a basic webinar, they know that. At the end of the day, if applications are piling in and they’ve got to choose between you and someone else and you’re both saying, “I’m really excited about your school,” they aren’t going to believe you if you haven’t been to a single event.

You should reach out to students, alums, and your admissions point person. This is something that I know a lot of international students I’ve worked with are afraid to do because it’s not what they do in their country. But here, it is not only encouraged, it’s really expected of you.

Are there risks in messing up when you’re at these events? [54:04]

[Christie St-John] Yes. If you are unkind or rude to students or staff members, they’ll make a note of that. We had one of our receptionists report back to us. If you are very arrogant or standoffish, if you go to lunch with students and are disengaged, these things are noted. Schools don’t want to invite someone who isn’t open to learning who they are and finding out more about the school. If you don’t seem to be interested in the school and you’re sitting on your phone the whole time, they’ll notice. So mind your manners.

Overall, I think it’s really one of the things that is most misused or not used at all by people. When you’re talking to people during the interview and they say, “What do you like about our school?” and you answer, “You’re highly ranked, and I like the city of New York,” that’s not enough. It’s like going up to a young woman and asking her for a date because she’s beautiful.

It is like dating. Definitely an analogous situation there.

____________________________________________

Next I want to welcome Dr. Mary Mahoney, who, when she’s not helping Accepted clients get into medical school, healthcare-related programs, or English-related programs, is a tenured English professor and Director of Medical Humanities at Elmira College. She has advised applicants for over twenty years. 

Here’s a question for you, Mary: How do I convey empathy effectively in a medical school personal statement, and later in interviews? [56:27]

[Mary Mahoney] So let’s tackle the writing first. When you’re writing the personal statement, in order to convey empathy, you probably want to tell a story that belongs to someone else. The story could be about a patient, it could be about an experience shadowing, it could be any kind of relevant experience that is associated with medicine. When telling the person’s story however, we want to make sure that we tell the story according to what it meant to them. We don’t want to compete with who gets to put meaning to this story. We want to demonstrate that we could actively listen well enough to understand the nuances of the experience for someone else. This demonstrates that you have the ability to pay attention, listen and glean what an experience means to someone else. Someone reading your essay is able to see that you have the ability to understand deeply the life that someone else is living.

But then you can add your perspective as well. As a medical professional, what could you possibly do to help them? Where do you see a problem that could possibly be rectified? Adding what this means or what could be done to help this person is not necessarily a bad way to conclude.

By listening and narrating someone else’s story, we actually grow in our ability to have compassion and recognize the significance of differences in the world. We have an obligation as someone in a leadership role to know how to intervene. That takes practice and it takes trial and error at times, but also the work of the team. 

As far as relaying this in an interview, maybe it is a surprise, but the key message is that you listen and engage with someone. You engage in a conversation, which is an exchange between two people. You don’t override anyone speaking or interject, but acknowledge what someone is saying with responses like, “That was challenging.” Or you can share how you feel like, “Oh, that’s so sad.” Or you can show gratitude and say, “I appreciate that you shared that with me.” Or you show interest by asking, “And what happened after that?” Or you can show support and then that might sound like, “I’d like to help you out with that. What can I do to help with this?” Then you create this reciprocity in conversation that demonstrates that you’re really having a conversation, and this conversation means something.

That’s great advice, thank you so much again for joining me.

____________________________________________

I’d like to now welcome Michelle Stockman, professional journalist, former Columbia Business School admissions insider, and experienced MBA admissions consultant. She joined Accepted in 2007 so when I say she’s well experienced, I’m not kidding. It’s been fifteen years; is that hard to believe? [1:02:28]

[Michelle Stockman] It’s hard to believe. It’s gone by so fast. I have really enjoyed all the clients that I’ve gotten to know through the years, and it’s really been a fun journey both personally and for my clients.

Certainly one of the perks of this work is getting to know our clients and helping them.

The question for you is: What aspect of the application usually requires the most work? [1:02:59]

[Michelle Stockman] Nearly everyone who comes to me as a client is an incredibly exceptional individual, otherwise they wouldn’t be thinking about doing an MBA. In terms of their transcripts, resumes, and job qualifications, everything is top notch. It’s up to refining a story. Where we spend a lot of time, is thinking through future goals. I think that a lot of applicants come and have a general idea of what they want to do. They know they want to do something different in terms of the future, whether they’ve gone as far as they can go in the position that they’re working in and the industry they’re working in, and they need that MBA to gain the skill set to move up within the company or the industry, or they want to switch industries.

These are all absolutely valid and good reasons to want to do an MBA, but if you come with just that and put that in your application, that is not specific enough, and that’s not really compelling because that is what everyone wants to do when it comes to deciding to pursue an MBA. What makes the difference is people who have really thought that through. 

When you walk off the stage with your diploma in hand, what would be your dream job? Does that job exist? What can you find out about that job? Can you network around people who are working in those companies or who might know what is entailed? What skill sets are people in that job valued for? What do you have now that you can bring right away? What will you gain within the MBA program that will make you a strong candidate for that?

We have just been through some pretty intense worldwide events, in terms of the pandemic and energy crisis. You need to show you’re flexible. It’s good to have a couple of companies where you could see yourself working or a little hint of a plan B in case that first plan A doesn’t work for some reason. If you’re an international person, you can show that you want to work in North America or Europe if that’s your target, but you’re also willing to look somewhere else if that’s where the company needs you. That is one thing that we work on together first. 

The long-term goal is also something that you need to put some thought into. It needs to be something that is inspiring and that answers a big question of life. How are you able to capture the attention of whoever’s reading your application with this big idea that you want to solve? That is something that’s going to make whoever’s reading your application sit up from wherever they are, look at their stack of applications that they might be ho-hum about, and read this one and say, “Yes, this is in the yes pile. I’m going to fight for this person because I like their idea. I think it’s exciting. I think I learned something new when I read their application because they gave me some context and some background that I didn’t know. I think they’ve got the skill set and the personality to be a leader in that aspect of the field or industry they’re in.”

When I work with applicants, I find we spend a lot of time talking about these things. I challenge them to really brainstorm and think it through because it’s hard. It hasn’t happened yet. It’s something that takes a little bit more thought and effort but when it’s done well, it can be really exciting to read. That is the goal.

That was a fantastic question and answer. I really want to thank you for joining me for number 500. [1:07:23]

[Michelle Stockman] Well, congratulations to you, Linda. It’s always a pleasure and you’re an incredible business woman and entrepreneur. Much respect.

Thank you so much.

At this point, I want to thank all of the consultants who participated in this very special episode. I really appreciate your contributions, your time, your thoughts, and of course your expertise. 

Listener, I want to thank you for joining me for our 500th episode. There would be no 500 if you and others had not listened for the last 499 episodes. Thank you for your support. I’m rather proud of this milestone, and I want to give credit where credit is due: It goes to the fantastic guests we’ve had for the last over 10 years and to listeners who’ve consistently listened week in and week out.

Related links:

• Fitting In and Standing out, a free guide
• How to Write a Goal Statement for Graduate School
• B-school Selectivity Index
• Med School Selectivity Index
• Accepted Resource Library
• Accepted’s Admissions Consulting Services

Related shows:

• How to Write a Great Statement of Purpose
• When Should I Plan to Apply to Grad School? NOW!!!
• Applying to U.S. Business Schools from Europe, Asia, the Middle East
• An Insider’s Look at MBA Admissions

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The post The Questions You SHOULD Be Asking – ANSWERED! [Episode 500] appeared first on Accepted Admissions Blog.