How Joseph cracked Minnesota University’s Carlson School of Management

Joseph had 4 years of work experience as a Chartered accountant and wished to move into an Investment Fund post-MBA. With a GMAT score of 710, Joseph cracked Minnesota University’s Carlson School of Management.

Here’s how he did it.

Joseph’s goals story

Joseph was writing a very politically correct essay. While there is nothing wrong with that, it was neither memorable nor inspiring.

For example, saying that an MBA will help you create an impact is not good enough. Everyone knows that an MBA will certainly provide you with additional skills to create an IMPACT. In fact, you can create an IMPACT even without an MBA degree. What you really need to talk about is what that IMPACT will be, and how an MBA will help you create it.

What would Joseph not be able to do if he could join an Investment Fund, his short-term goal, right now? And how will an MBA help fill in this gap that he will face?

He also needed to talk about his motivations for his short-term goal. He needed to explain to the admissions committee, why he had selected his short-term goal before he could even begin explaining the “why MBA?” part of his goals story.

Joseph’s essay analysis

Before starting with the essays, we provided Joseph guidance on pre-MBA networking and asked him to start on that as the information would come in handy during his essays.

In his first essay to his target school, Joseph was writing a very school-oriented story, i.e. a story he though the school admissions committee members would like. But his resume did not mention any achievements that pointed to him having the skills his essays focus on. Many applicants try to accommodate a skill in their essays that they believe the school would be impressed by, but if you don’t have facts to back up your claims of philanthropy the admissions committee will definitely reject you.

The other problem in his essays was that he had written very superficial accounts of incidents. He was trying to explain how he had learned that leadership was an important skill but failed to give the specifics of the incident that had formed his opinion.

When applicants make such generalizations, the impact of their conclusion, in this case, the importance of leadership, gets watered down.

Joseph hardly had a month before the deadlines for his target schools started approaching. Our complete focus was on getting the apps done quickly while making sure quality did not get compromised on at all. Thus, most of his assignments, be it the goals story, resume, or the essays, got overlapped.

Although things got a little chaotic, Joseph was able to create a great result for himself and cracked Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

Like Christopher Poindexter said, “The thing about chaos, is that while it disturbs us, it too, forces our hearts to roar in a way we secretly find magnificent.”