EssaySnark — The no-BS MBA admissions consultant

Time 2020-06-22 08:04:40

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Duke s admissions policies in the face of coronavirus are what?June 19, 2020 by EssaySnark - Discusses Duke Fuqua Leave a Comment For the Class of 2023 unless their website has only gotten a partial update and some of the information available there is still from last season, which is possible Duke Fuqua are apparently REQUIRING some candidates to come to campus to interview.Ummmm . requiring??Well, not requiring in that if you want to apply, you have to come to campus. But, if you want to apply in their Early Action round, which basically is the candidates who really really really like Duke because they re agreeing in advance to go there if admitted, and you live in the Eastern part of the U.S., then, just like every year, Duke is requiring you come to campus to interview.If you are applying in Early Action from the West Coast of the U.S., or from any other country, then no, you don t have to come visit. But if you re gung ho for Duke and you re in their geographic region Yes, REQUIRING.That requirement made total sense in a non-pandemic time. Getting applicants to put forth the effort of getting on a plane and coming for a visit helped tremendously with their process in deciding who to accept for their binding Early Decision round. But this year? It seems like they re not offering any virtual interview experiences. So, Open Interview means interview here with us on campus. Again, we could be misunderstanding? But that s what it seems like their website is saying. And, the dates of the Open Interview period are reflecting the current season October 12 to October 28, 2020.It actually seems like Duke is saying that ALL interviews must be in person. Really???The bonus of the Open Interview process is that Duke allows anyone to interview then, not only those who are applying in Early Action. So on the whole, it s quite the positive. It s a real opportunity for folks to experience the school and it is an excellent way for an applicant to demonstrate motivation and initiative. But in coronavirus? Keeping it REQUIRED for any part of the candidate pool just makes no sense. And not making Skype/Zoom interviews an easy option for candidates is not sending a great message.Except of course as a deterrent: It means that those candidates who might feel uncomfortable with travel right now will forego the Early Action round completely. For context:Most states in the U.S. are experiencing increases in coronavirus counts. Whether it s characterized as an uptick or a surge depends on what state you are asking about, and who is doing the asking.The United States is basically FAILING at containing the virus. We re like one of the worst countries on the planet in terms of mitigation efforts. Coronavirus has killed more than 120,000 Americans in only three months. Yesterday, June 18, 2020, North Carolina reported 857 people hospitalized for coronavirus which is 100 more people than one week ago. Experts are saying that hospitalization rates are the data to track if you re concerned about impact of the virus in a community. North Caroline reported about 1,300 new cases that same day, which isn t a high but is pretty close to it (see below). Durham County, where Duke is located, also has the highest per-capita rate of infections in the state, at 88.4 infected per 100,000 residents.Aren t public health experts recommending that we limit travel under such conditions?Are you comfortable getting on a plane right now?Maybe you feel differently about coronavirus. Maybe you feel it s not a huge risk for you. But shouldn t the schools be making more options available, given the range of responses and personal levels of comfort to the current situation? What if a candidate has a vulnerable person in their home? Duke is requiring they interview in person anyway?It will likely be a little awkward to interview wearing masks, but maybe we ll all be used to that by October when these interviews will happen. Maybe Duke is worth it to you, and this is something you want to take on despite the risks. It can surely be valuable to experience a school firsthand, it s just that school is going to be a different experience entirely right now only because of all the restrictions that society must put in place to protect everyone. Doing your interview remotely is absolutely acceptable in this time, and you may want to take advantage of the Open Interview opportunity to do so, regardless of when you are considering submitting your app.What if you go to all this trouble, jump through all these hoops, travel to campus, interview through a mask sitting six feet apart and everything else and then you don t get in?And what if you contract coronavirus on that trip?Most schools are putting in place practices to PREVENT people from unnecessarily traveling in to their area. Duke University s President even stated about three weeks ago that they will have a policy for Fall term that students cannot leave the Durham area for the duration of the semester. WTF Fuqua? WHY ARE YOU REQUIRING APPLICANTS COME TO CAMPUS AT ALL?In addition, they are apparently also preserving their in-person interview practices where the Fuqua admissions team will be fanning out across the globe in Rounds 1 and 2 to visit far-flung cities and conduct interviews for invited candidates.WTF AGAIN!Sure, by the time those interview periods come around in October and November and February, maybe HOPEFULLY the infection rate in North Carolina will have moderated and even dropped significantly.We get it, the schools want to be putting on a business as usual! front. Lots and lots of schools are plowing full speed ahead into their Fall plans of bringing students back.However, in the United States, in many places, the first wave never actually rolled all the way through. It stalled out for some weeks, and dropped down from the initial peak, but then picked up steam again, and now appears to be roaring back. Which is not at all surprising, given how impatient members of the American public seem to have gotten with the requirements for safety around masks and social distancing.But being impatient with the virus and being frustrated with the restrictions on our lives does not mean anything has changed. The virus does not care if we re impatient.This is such a charade that it s hard to watch.Yes, it s true, people truly need to get back to work, they are suffering. Unemployment is getting worse and that worsening is likely to continue in lockstep with infections. We re all in for a world of hurt.Yes they have found success with a low-cost widely-available steroid (steroids reduce inflammation, so it makes total sense that this would be effective unlike a malaria medicine, seeing as malaria is a totally different disease, caused by a completely different class of pathogen from a virus). Yes the hospitals have capacity now, and PPE is not in short supply. There are beds and ventilators available. But shouldn t we still be trying to limit the spread and prevent it? WHY IS DUKE PRETENDING THAT CORONAVIRUS IS NO LONGER A THING?We re baffled.More than perhaps any other admissions source out there, for years and years, EssaySnark has pushed the importance of the school visit as integral to researching an MBA program. It can be incredibly helpful for an applicant to experience the school firsthand. In the past, we ve applauded Duke for this Open Interview policy, and encouraged all applicants interested in Fuqua to hustle their butts out to North Carolina to see for themselves what a great place it is.But this? What is going on with this policy?We truly hope that this is only a matter of a not-well-updated website, and that this required in-person interview thing will be clarified, with options for remote interviews too. C mon Duke. What s the deal?And oh yeah while we re on the soap box: All schools should publish full data on race of applicants and accepted students.Filed Under: coronavirus, school reviews insights, school visits Bschools: Duke Fuqua($) Identifying your priorities: What matters most to you in an MBA program?June 18, 2020 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment This casual beginning-of-summer season is alluring, and deceiving. She s a seductive mistress. She s wooing you with these dreams of a fancy MBA and it all seems so easy, that it ll fall into place no problem. You re planning on submitting apps in Round 1 and sitting here right now, you have all the time in the world. Don t even really need to put in any effort yet. You know it ll happen, you ve been thinking about this for ages.Well guess what? Now is the time to actually get started!!Premium content starts here Premium content ends. Not yet a blahg member? Buy access to all the snark here!Yes it s daunting but that s why we re here! You re starting early enough to truly make the most of your opportunities. Dive in, BSer! Have fun with it!Filed Under: Uncategorized ($) A question to explore before starting to understand why you want an MBAJune 17, 2020 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment Most readers of this blahg who are pre-MBA are in the age range of about 26 to perhaps 32 years old. There s some older folks too but today s post is more focused on this age range. When you re trying to figure out what to say in your MBA essays about why you want to go to business school, there s one fundamental question that can be q true goldmine if you are able to crack into it.Premium content starts here Want to take your self-reflection to the next level? Today s post will guide you!Premium content ends. Not yet a blahg member? Buy access to all the snark here!This isn t the only route to understanding yourself, but it can be a useful one. It can shed a new light on many of the questions you re grappling with as you seek to make a convincing case to the admissions team on why you need an MBA from their school. In the midst of this coronavirus disruption that s causing everyone to re-examine priorities and figure out what a new normal will be, it can be a fundamentally useful question to explore just in general, as a way to navigate through decisions and identify what you need now to grow, survive, and actually thrive.Filed Under: "personal interest/life experience" essays, "why MBA" essays, Personal Statement or Statement of Purpose Not done yet: More on microaggressionsJune 16, 2020 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment Did you catch our post from Friday? You ll need to read that one to understand today s.The woman in the hallway story from Friday is an example of a microaggression because of the assumptions made about the woman. An interesting question for you to ask yourself: Did you assume that it was a White woman in the client s office? If you re like 99% of other White people, you assumed that the woman in the hallway was White. Because White culture does that. We see movies with only White people (thankfully this is slowly changing) or we see advertisements with only White people (ditto) or we see government run only by White people (unfortunately we ve regressed in this area since 2016), and our brains get conditioned to only expect White people in all contexts. Then, the White brain feels the need to explicitly mention if someone is Black.The way that White people use race to describe a person only when that person is not White is also a problem. My sister is going on a social distancing date tonight. Some Black guy she met or We interviewed four candidates for the spot. I really thought the dude Ryan and that African American woman were the strongest. or I think Eddie Murphy is the best Black comedian ever. Start to notice where you do this.Also start to notice that you never do it when identifying White people. Do you remember that new girl who joined the Zoom on Tuesday? The one they just hired onto the Finance team? (There s also a problem referring to an adult as a girl )In our vignette from Friday, it s a microaggression for the protagonist of the story to have assumed that the woman in the hallway is the administrative assistant, and it s White culture that makes most readers assume that the woman is White. Our culture influences what images are created in our heads when we see the story in the mind as we read. The race of the characters was unstated, and that means that most of us automatically assume that everyone in the story is White. It s an even more serious microaggression to assume, when you go out to try and get your file printed off your thumb drive in the client s office, that the Black woman is the administrative assistant. This happens in restaurants all the time or it used to, when we were allowed to go into restaurants. You re sitting at a table that s full of dishes; you and your friends are pretty much done with the meal. You re planning on sticking around for another round of drinks, but the table is crowded. A restaurant staff person walks past and you signal for his attention. Hey scuse me, when you get a minute, can you clear these for us please? The guy smiles and says Sure thing, we ll take care of it, and he keeps walking, disappearing into the kitchen.A moment later, a busboy appears and silently clears things.The first guy is over at another table taking an order.Does it matter that you grabbed the attention of another waiter? No, not really, most restaurants want to foster a service mentality and if a table needs clearing, they prefer the guests tell someone so they can get on it. The waiter handled it fine.Does it matter that you assumed that the Black person was a busboy? Yeah kinda.No, let s correct that. Not yeah kinda but instead the true answer is YES THIS MATTERS. A LOT.That s another form of microaggression.These are the things that all of us need to ponder. Why do we assume one person is in a lower position than another based on the color of their skin, or their gender?It s what our culture has conditioned us to do.This is internalized racism. It s what we have inherited from all the messages in the world around us.It doesn t mean it s your fault that you do this but it does mean that it s your responsibility, and mines, and all of ours, to change it.When we re looking at these issues of institutionalized racism, and the society at large being a power structure that s stacked in favor of White people, it can feel like an insurmountable problem to solve. Even if you consider yourself very open-minded, you still may not know where to start or what you personally can do. But I m not racist! you may even think, or perhaps you ve said that to your friends when you re talking about the protests.Please don t say that anymore. Just drop that as a defense, because that s all it is. You don t have to be out there with a white hood on your head, or carrying a tiki-torch in 2017 in Charlottesville, to be racist.Instead, start to get educated on what it means to be anti-racist. A stance that says Enough is required. We all need to dismantle these systems that have created these horrible realities for vast numbers of people.There s been gobs of recommended reading lists going around social media already, so we re not going to give you more homework assignments, since all of this is very easily accessible in this moment. We do encourage you to learn more about this, to understand the barriers that exist inside you if you re White, the realities of White privilege and how harmful it is to all of us, and to start to recognize that we re the ones who get to create a new world. We re doing it now. By talking about it. By looking at it honestly, and owning our own part.If you re White, please don t ask your Black friend what you can do. Educate yourself independently, and start to do it. It is going to be uncomfortable.It is going to be uncomfortable.It is going to be uncomfortable.And that is okay.Because it s been way more than just uncomfortable for so many people for so long.Those living today didn t create the problems we re living in now, but all White people have benefited from the power structure as it has existed till now, and it s up to White people to invest in the systemic, and individual, changes today not from a savior mindset, where White people get to rescue POC or swoop in with their benevolence and goodness. But it takes more than statements and an expression of interest.It takes more than policies or mission statements.It takes action, from all of us.If you re wondering how this relates to applying to business school oh yes, it relates. We ll get back to the practical matter of researching business schools and identifying targets and preparing your MBA admissions strategies on the blahg very soon (like tomorrow, probably). But this social issue needs all of our attention, and we are likely to continue talking to you about it further. If social change is not a priority for you or you think these posts are a waste of your time, then EssaySnark is not the right fit to you as an advisor in your pursuit of getting admitted to a high-end business school that will set you up with greater access to power and privilege and wealth, and please don t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.Filed Under: the world, values A call to the business schools: TRANSPARENCYJune 15, 2020 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment First: Why do we say Asian-American and African-American and Native American but not Caucasian-American ? Shouldn t we start to use that explicit label? Who cares that Caucasians are the majority. Just saying that Caucasians are American means that when we say American we expect it to mean a white person which is a flaw of logic. Americans come in all these colors. What s up with the way we label things?That s a side note. Our post today is on something directly related to what s happening in admissions at these top MBA programs.EssaySnark is issuing a statement today to all of the admissions professionals at the top MBA programs at Harvard, Columbia, Wharton, Duke, and everywhere:POST YOUR ADMISSIONS DATA BY RACE.There are a few bschools but only a few that publish the percentages of their incoming classes in different categories, and none of them actually publish the percentages by race. We don t see any schools post actual data on applications received by race or ethnicity, and the data on their student body make-up is often abbreviated and summarized. A very few programs are more detailed.But most schools? Most schools get cutesie.They describe their student body based on percentages, in categories, but they don t describe how they re defining the categories.This causes a problem because the schools can effectively hide behind the ambiguity. There are intersecting issues involving race, class, and access in the U.S. involved here, and we appreciate that it s complicated. But we believe the schools should do better. Asian-Americans are a minority in the U.S. However, Asian-American applicants tend to be overrepresented in the pools of candidates trying for top educational programs. When a school reports on the percentage of their class who are minority students, should they include Asian-Americans? Yes of course. They are minorities in America. But they re not a minority of the pool. It can even be quite difficult for highly qualified Asian-American candidates to get in because of the level of competition they face. You d think Americans would only be competing against other Americans. Like, Asian-Americans would be competing against Caucasian Americans. But that s not really how it happens. A school doesn t want to have an entering student body share too many of the same characteristics. If you get a huge percentage of the applicant pool from people of the same demographic, then the adcom will want to limit the number of apps from that demographic that they accept. A typical American school has between 30 and 40% international students. So we have 60 to 70% Americans or U.S. residents. There s often numbers of like 15% of minorities but given how many applications the schools get from Asian-Americans, it would be fairly easy for them to have a minority student population of 15% and yet only a small handful of BIPOC students.BIPOC is the acronym that s now being used to represent the minority population of America that has been treated the worst. It means Black Indigenous Person of Color. So, the people that Americans took land from. The people that Americans took liberty from.Truly, Americans have treated pretty much ALL other races and ethnicities horribly at one time or another. White Americans don t tend to speak of the Japanese internment camps during WWII, but that happened. It s not like we ve been welcoming to people from Asia and particularly right now, there has been increasing violence directed towards Asians out of prejudice and ignorance surrounding coronavirus.However, the current social consciousness-raising has in large part been about police brutality and violence against African-Americans in particular, and historically speaking, they are parts of our population who ve had it the worst.There s the stereotype of the overachieving Asian-American applicant with the 770 GMAT score and a 3.8 GPA from UCLA. There are lots of African-American applicants with similar profiles too, but nowhere near the same numbers as those of Asian-American heritage.The problem is when the schools lump them together in their class profile as U.S. minorities or a similar label.If a school reports as Underrepresented Minority that typically is more like this BIPOC definition. Underrepresented because of lack of opportunities, systemic racism, the deck stacked against them.As an example, our notes show that for the Class of 2016, Kellogg reported that 26% of their class were minority students. Wow, 26%! They had 36% international students that year, and just to be thorough in sharing the data, 37% women. They re now at 34% internationals and 46% women for the Class of 2020 so that s certainly an improvement on the gender part. That minority thing though? Apparently that was including all non-White Americans, and the largest part of that category of student is the Asian-Americans who have higher numbers of applications. Of the 26% minorities, only 12% were in that underrepresented label of African American, Native American, or Hispanic/Latinx. Presumably, that means that the 14% were the Asian-Americans.It s not that we believe schools should be accepting fewer Asian-Americans not at all. But many schools have been able to hide their rather dismal records of who is getting accepted.This is a majorly complicated thing. EssaySnark called out Yale SOM on diversity many years ago This is not a new issue. The schools have all tried to increase diversity. In more recent years, things have improved, especially with the efforts of The Consortium and Management Leaders for Tomorrow and other such organizations focusing on increasing the numbers of these underrepresented populations. But there is still a massive problem and the fact is that the reporting at most schools is opaque.This is unacceptable.Wharton only like last year started posting the percentage of LGBTQ+ students (5%) and we have yet to see other schools do the same for that population. Why don t these schools share these truths about the results of their own outreach efforts? If these schools care about diversity so much, why can t they SHOW us what they are producing from the work they are supposedly doing to bring more students of color into their programs?Greater transparency on the makeup of their business school classes is IMPERATIVE.NYU has done better than most at carving out the figures for underrepresented minorities compared to U.S. minorities , but they re one of the only schools that does so, and even that isn t as granular as it needs to be.The public also should be given application statistics broken down by race. Why don t the schools provide that? Why aren t they publishing the numbers of candidates in these different demographic categories? The systems of society are broken, but how can we even tell how broken they are if we don t get a chance to see the reality of the brokenness?As all business schools teach: You can only improve what you measure.We know that these schools track all of this data very very closely.It s time to PUBLISH this data and allow the world to see the reality of race and MBA admissions by school.Filed Under: the admissions consulting industry Tagged With: diversity MicroaggressionsJune 12, 2020 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment You re in a big meeting at a client site. You ve never been there before. The meeting is hot into discussion, and your boss turns to you and says, Can you go print out the Acme Report for last quarter? Get copies for everyone. I think we need that to make this decision. It s not your office; it s the client s office. Your team just flew in for the day. But you re the kind of person who makes it happen when your boss asks for something. So you drag the file to a jump drive, then hop up and race out of the conference room and see if you can track down someone to help you out.Luckily you run into a woman in the hallway and you say, Oh hi, can you give me a hand? I m in the Dursley meeting. You jab your thumb over your shoulder in the direction of the conference room you just exited. I have this file that we need. Would you be able to print it and make 10 copies for us? You offer her the jump drive and a big smile.She gives you a funny look, but she takes it. Sure, I can get someone to do that, and she turns and walks away. We need it right away, you call after her. No problem, she calls back, and disappears around the corner.You go back into the meeting. Your boss looks at you, and you nod. Under control, you think, hoping she realizes how important it is. About ten minutes later, some dude walks in and holds a stack of copies up in the air with a question on his face. You go grab them from him. These for you? he asks in a whisper. Yeah, you whisper back. Thanks. Yeah, sorry it took me a minute. My boss said you needed them fast. (You can probably see where this is going )Another example is something called deadnaming. If you knew a trans person pre-transition, then you probably know their deadname. The deadname is the birth name, the name that represents the gender they were assigned, but that doesn t represent the identity that is really them. When someone transitions, it can be very difficult for those who know them to remember to use the person s chosen name and some people refuse to do so. If someone in your life has informed you that they now have a new name, the correct thing for you to do is to accept it. To call them the wrong name is careless, disrespectful, rejecting, and completely disempowering. You are denying the person s reality, and it is harmful. Same goes for misgendering, which is referring to a trans person by the wrong gender. All of the things we re talking about today are examples of microagression .Along with the discussion of race, power, and privilege, a very real-world conversation that affects all of us needs to happen around this.Microaggressions seem innocent, and usually, the person committing them is wholly unaware of what they have done. That doesn t mean that they are victimless crimes. Those who occupy any minority position in a culture are on the receiving end of microaggressions pretty much all the time. The constant onslaught of these microaggressions results in very real symptoms of mental distress. Most Whites and others in positions of power who hold privilege and status do not easily identify with or acknowledge any internalized racism that they may harbor inside. Most people think of racists as only those who engage in out-and-out racist behavior, like using a racial slur or actively discriminating against others based on skin tone or sex.Once awareness is offered, though, and if the person is willing to self-examine and look, those in the majority often realize that they have committed microaggressions on a regular basis throughout their life.It might be something seemingly innocuous like laughing when you re introduced to someone who has a name that is unusual to you, and saying to them, Oh that s a really weird name! How do you say it again? Dang, I ll never be able to remember that! It s assuming that the Black woman is the administrative assistant, without even considering that maybe she s the Executive VP.It s referring to a neighborhood that s mostly non-white as the rough part of town or the bad side of the tracks. It s the common ways that majority culture trains those with privilege to think without thinking.It requires becoming educated, and being willing to look at our own behavior, and to monitor it, and intercept it and correct it when we slip up.If you re curious about what your implicit bias actually looks like, this amazing set of tests from Harvard can tell you. Changing the way the world works means each of us changing ourselves. Nurturing an awareness of things like microaggressions requires a willingness to change. Hopefully that s something you have and are interested in. If you re one of the many White people who are currently looking around going, Wow. This has been really bad for a really long time. I feel guilty. I want to be better than this. And you re then stuck on what being better means, and you feel helpless, and maybe frustrated, and you don t know what to do with the emotions Well, this type of self-examination is a good first step. It s likely uncomfortable (if it s not, you re probably not doing it right). It can absolutely be painful, and that s OK. Feeling bad about what you ve done in the past out of ignorance is OK. It s not OK to keep being ignorant, and crimes committed due to ignorance are still crimes. We re not excusing that. We are saying, feeling guilty about what you ve done, now that you realize it? That s fully appropriate to the moment.If you now see how you acted out of ignorance before, you re likely feeling pretty shitty about it. Recognizing you may have hurt others is no fun. Be willing to look at it, and own up to it. You and many other people are trying to face this right now. The biggest risk? That we move on from this too quickly. That we have some uprisings and protests, and culture pretending to get woke, and then it all falls by the wayside when some other new drama inflicts us and distracts us. (Like, OMFG, if there were an international terrorist attack on U.S. soil right now? O.M.F.G. Who knows what would happen.)The biggest risk is that we don t stay feeling bad about our role in racism long enough, and we let ourselves off the hook. We can t let that happen, either individually or as a society. And oh yeah, White person, if you re feeling bad: Please don t go running to your one Black acquaintance wanting to talk to them about you feeling bad, with a bunch of apologies and shit. Just be willing to feel bad. Sit with it. Deal with it. Understand it. Let it motivate you. Be willing to change. Have you committed a microaggression something you did unknowingly, and later realized Ugh no, I screwed that one up ? Been on the receiving end of one? Or, does all of this talk about race and equality on the blahg get tiring for you? We d love to hear your experiences.Filed Under: values Tagged With: diversity, your life Is this change for real this time?June 11, 2020 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment There s a criticism going around social media directed at these suddenly woke white folks accusing them of only NOW recognizing that Blacks and other non-white minorities have been dealing with racism since forever. Because suddenly it s trendy or cool to be all #BLM, but it s not legit. It s just because other people are doing it too, so now when it s safe, white people are jumping on the bandwagon.We get it and that accusation could be lobbed our direction too (even though we did publicly call out Yale for lack of diversity back in 2013 but no, we haven t exactly been making statements about equality and the abuses in the system as prominently and regularly as we could have been). But these accusations are missing the point, aren t they? Better to wake up to the problem really late, and only after massive numbers of people have been suffering, then not to wake up at all.Right now people are waking up, and many are wondering Now what?What actually will happen?There s been protests and demonstrations before. Eventually, they die down and people go home. The status quo keeps chugging along. Nothing actually changes.Except now there are all these major brands making statements about the need for equality and how the systems must change.There s a conversation happening today a long overdue one. It appears that at least some in power are at least somewhat motivated to try and do things differently.Somewhat.This is what s called a shift in the Overton window , which means that public perception and public opinion on this topic has changed. It s why politicians (some of them) are feeling empowered to speak up: Because they can do so knowing they re going to be supported by enough of their constituents that they won t lose in their next election because of it.Will this be an issue that actually converts into ballot box behavior? Because that s truly how the system will change in this country (unless there s actually an overthrow of the government which we don t think is going to happen anytime soon, but you never know things are mighty uncertain rn and we never would have predicted the moment we re in).If you feel strongly that change does need to happen, and you re hoping it does, and you re worried that maybe it won t, then this is your time to act.Posting on social media about how cops killing Black people is wrong or that the cops shouldn t be beating up protesters is not really going to bring about much change.If you re motivated to do so, and able to do so (current health situation considered), then protesting does help. That s showing your community that people care about this. It s taking action.Even greater action is to get deeply educated on the issues, and learn about the history, and the attitudes, and the psychology of racism and privilege. If you are in the majority, this requires a willingness to be made uncomfortable. As we posted before, White people are the ones who need to change.What that change will look like will be revealed. It will happen organically through all of us changing. Changing attitudes. Changing beliefs. Understanding the experience of people who don t look like us. Most of this change needs to come from White people, because they re the ones who have prevented it for so long. That s due to the power structure present in society that benefits Whites. That change will also look the way we imagine it. Can you imagine a world without police? Most people can t. And yet the defund the police movement actually has merit, if you understand the argument being made and what s being asked for. This panel hosted by Trevor Noah is a good introduction. The tl;dw is, if you examine the actual budget of the actual town or city where you live, and see what percentage of that budget is allocated towards the police, then you start to get a sense of how as a society, we re placing priorities in a very strange place. Anyway. Watch the video. Do some reading.Or don t.Try this thought exercise instead: Can you imagine a world that s totally different than the world all of us know today?Can you objectively examine the privilege you carry?If you re a POC then you don t have status in American society unless you re male, and/or middle class, and then you have at least some. If you re White and male, especially if you are also heterosexual and cisgendered, and especially especially if you make more than $100k year, then whoa you re privileged. It is what it is. You didn t ask for that privilege, but you have benefited from it, possibly your entire life, without even recognizing the way it lets you move through the world. That s just a statement of fact. It may be difficult to read about privilege; it may feel like an accusation. It may make you feel defensive or guilty.Convert those feelings into actions. That s how you can make use of the privilege you have. Bring change to the system of injustice you see. Does this mean you will be forced to give up some of your privilege?Inevitably, yes. Most likely, it s very hard to face this idea. It is experienced by many Whites as threatening. Why defund the police? The police are there to protect me. But that s not the experience of Black people. More police mean they are less safe. It s really tough to say how this is going to play out, and we re not even going to try, except to hope that this truly is a time of actual change, that systems will be dismantled and power structures change. Perhaps four years of having a racist in the highest office has finally forced America to look at its problems and realize how ugly they are.We often see BSers write cliches in their MBA essays about how they aspire to be the change they want to see in the world which is fine and dandy, but we say, what s stopping you? Now is the time.Finally, an apology: We keep trying to get back to a standard editorial calendar of writing posts that are targeted and practical for the admissions season that s here, publishing advice that s geared towards helping you understand the challenges ahead and how to prepare for your MBA applications. Many schools have released news of essay questions and deadlines, and EssaySnark is behind the curve on the admissions cycle compared to where we usually are in mid-June. We re working to rectify that. But, sorry not sorry. There are more important things for all of us to be looking at, talking about, and acting upon in this moment in time.EssaySnark is committed to change. We hope these discussions about what s going on in the world can also empower you or inspire you or keep you motivated to think through the difficult questions and look for ways that you can create a new world that lives under new rules and a society that better serves all.Oh yeah: Please wash your hands and keep a social distance. Coronavirus cases are climbing steadily across the U.S. Don t get complacent. This thing has totally not gone away.Filed Under: the world Tagged With: diversity Heads up BSers! We re getting busy price increase on the horizon! If you want to use us for 2020 apps, lock in the best deals now. Many schools have released at least preliminary info on app requirements for getting into the Class of 2023, so no reason to wait! If I knew what I wanted to do with my life, I wouldn t need an MBA June 10, 2020 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment Why do schools ask you about career goals?Not all of them do, but some of them do and those that do often tend to care a lot about how you respond.No you don t really need to know what you will do in three years when you (hopefully!) will be graduating with that shiny new degree.But actually yes you do.The whole point of going to get an MBA is to either advance your skillset significantly to accelerate your progress in your current career path say, someone in finance who wants to study much more advanced topics in finance, and specialize further. Or, the MBA is to help you switch paths completely.Almost everyone these days is trying for an MBA for that latter option.There s something about your current career you re not satisfied with, either feeling like you re in a dead end, or you re in a technical role when you want to move into management, or you re in an analyst role and you want to move into tech, or whatever it is.Or hopefully not the case but for some of you you ve been laid off recently, lost your job as fallout from the crisis hitting the world.Or maybe you ve got that holy grail idea that you re going to be the next Zuckerberg. You re gonna blaze a trail to California and strike it rich in the Valley. launching the Next Big Thing, sweeping the world by storm. Or at least get a job at Facebook.It s true that sitting here right now, you likely have no frickin clue what exactly your life will look like in three years. Honestly, that s true for every single one of us.But the things that are worth working towards in life tend to take time and effort to actualize, and like the sage Yogi Berra said, If you don t know where you re going, you ll end up someplace else. So there s this weird dichotomy, where you know you want to do something different, you re pretty clueless what that might be, and yet the business schools want you to have answers you don t have in order to jump through their hoops of admission.Heck, you probably don t even need the MBA to go do it. Actually, that s an 100% accurate statement: You do not need the MBA at all.You re smart. You re already accomplished. You re likely already in the top 10% of whatever measure you might want to use to judge yourself against your peer group. If you weren t, you wouldn t even be in a position to be considering higher education and advancing your career.If the bottom line is that you want to make more money, and you know that those spit out the other end of an MBA program tend to command very sexy salaries, then that alone might be sufficient motivation for you to apply.Yet you still need to figure out why you re doing this and how you re going to navigate your life.It s totally true, the immersive experience of two years in bschool is designed to help you figure yourself out. You re surrounded by smart people, coming from all sorts of paths, and you re exposed to massive amounts of new ideas and opportunities. You re forced to take classes in subjects you never would ve volunteered to learn about otherwise. The entirety of that experience will change you, and you ll uncover new talents and interests, and (probably) realize what new path you want to explore.Or, you ll do it like so many others do, and you ll just follow the herd into the career du jour, which these days is tech and product management (even though there s actually a gazillion other jobs available in tech beyond that), or default to consulting if you can t settle on anything else. In which case, you ll still not really know what you want to do with your life, but at least you ll be getting paid more to do it.What we re talking about today is not just figuring out the right thing to say in an MBA application when you re asked to describe your short-term career goals. Yes, you can take the short-sighted view and try and finesse your answer so that it sounds good to the admissions committee (Pro Tip: This rarely works in reality. Read up on the entirety of this blahg to understand why. Or go here.)What we re talking about is figuring out at least a little bit what makes you tick, what you have learned that you re good at what you perhaps already know that you really don t like. And researching the world of work to understand where you might apply those gifts that you ve been given.We re all born with a certain set of skills that may need practice and training to sharpen, yet once they re revealed, become so obvious in informing a path-forward in life that it almost is laughable. You likely don t know fully what those innate abilities are yet, and absolutely, the MBA will be totally valuable in helping you to discern them.But so can many other educational programs, whether other master s tracks or a doctoral path or just a Coursera certificate. And many other life paths also can teach you. Sure, the MBA is a fun two-year vacation full of excitement and Instagram-worthy travel and do-gooder tasks. The MBA will make your mom proud. The MBA can easily get you somewhere new. It s a proven track to a new destination, that by definition will be different from where you began.Spending time now, before you even have your first application written, to explore some of those options in the Big Bad World and understand what the MBA can do for you, and how, is a worthwhile investment. You ll continue with those tasks and that research all the way until you ve signed the acceptance letter for that first post-MBA job, so this is not a one-and-done assignment we re giving you. All of this is about learning who you are and having an appreciation for why you ve been put on this earth. Yes it s that big and no, your purpose in life does not have to be some massive altruistic charitable effort. You might have been put here to be a consultant. The world needs consultants. Nothing wrong with that at all. You being a consultant might totally fulfill your destiny. Or it might be a stepping stone, to build more of those skills and shape more of those abilities into full-blown utility, so that when you realize, many more years post-MBA, that you re again in a dead end and needing to make a change, you have the foundation of strength to build from, and the confidence in knowing how to navigate to something entirely new all over again.* * *Looking for more practical support in actually figuring out how to present your post-MBA career goals in an MBA app?The Career Goals App Accelerator is designed exactly for that!Filed Under: career goals ($) A great way to brainstorm about your post-MBA career goalsJune 9, 2020 by EssaySnark Leave a Comment Here s a follow-up to our post from yesterday about how you re MBA or otherwise going to go out there and change the things in the world that need to be changed.Today s idea was actually inspired by an exercise that came out of Stanford s d.school, which is what the Design School is commonly known as. You know, design thinking. Let s apply a bit of that philosophy that to coming up with some career goals, shall we?Premium content starts here Premium content ends. Not yet a blahg member? Buy access to all the snark here!Career goals are only one part of the pitch that you re making to bschool, and different schools put a different amount of emphasis on the goals in terms of how they evaluate you as a person through the combined elements of your MBA app. If you re convincing in the case that you make, then you re going to help yourself in the process. Being convincing often comes through in a) knowing yourself, what you re good at, your motivations and how you intend to maximize your strengths, while also b) showing you know what the school offers, and how you can leverage it, and in what ways you ll be able to make the most of those opportunities based on your determination, your abilities, and their resources.There isn t really a formula, though there are techniques for presenting that can let you convey your plans most effectively (that Career Goals App Accelerator has a bunch of them!). Starting your process of strategizing your content strategy by nailing down goals often helps many other parts of the app to come together most easily. Hopefully today s exercise makes some of that fun! Dream big, but then make sure you re coming down into the practical world of pitching, in a way that shows you have a plan and will be highly likely to succeed as you execute on it. That s what most adcoms are looking for. That s the essence of a powerful why MBA pitch.Filed Under: "why MBA" essays, career goals Sign up for the Snark via email Enter your address to get weekday blahg posts by email. Email Address Follow UPCOMING MBA APP DEADLINESINSEAD Jan '21 Intake Rd 3in 0 weeksINSEAD Jan '21 Intake Rd 4in 1 month, 0 weeksDarden Early Action: Sept. 2in 2 months, 1 weekHarvard Round 1: Sept. 8in 2 months, 2 weeksINSEAD Rd 1: Sept. 11in 2 months, 2 weeksThe 2020 Harvard MBA Application Guide - completely overhauled and updated for the coronavirus era!Brave Supplicants' latest reviews on The 'SnarkApr 10, 2020 by George on EssaySnarkGreat Starting PointI thought getting over the GRE/GMAT hurdle was fairly straightforward--disciplined study then test execution... Read moreApr 10, 2020 by George on Single Shot Express MBA Essay ReviewWorth Every PennyI used the Single Shot Express to decimate essay #1 at my first-choice school. Paired with the school... 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