Do you know the three most common things that get you rejected? These three things are prevalent across the majority of the student community.
- You Don’t Care About an MBA:
Even while chasing an MBA education, You don’t care about an MBA, and they know it. Think about it. You are applying to a business school, and you are not interested in the MBA Program. Sounds like an irony, doesn’t it? .
No. Do you know that when they ask you why MBA, or Why Goals, etc. and what do you want to do in the short term long term, you find this question hard. Have you already not had enough education in your life without knowing why you’re doing it, or just because your parents said so, or your friends started influencing you in some way. For most of you hopefully, MBA will be the last education, formal education. Don’t you think it should be the one where you make an informed decision? What if you become seriously interested in an MBA? The entire game becomes so easy man. Your way of approaching answers will start to become common sense. When Stanford says “What matters most to you?” you will not have to pretend. Do you know how many shallow answers Stanford gets to read every year for What matters most to you and why? Don’t you think they are also tired of applicants telling them that “Contributing matters most to you, or making others happy matters most to me.”?
- You’re Not Proud of Your Profile:
Most of you are not proud of what you have done. And trust me, I respect your resume more than you do. I recently talked to an applicant studying at HEC. He had two consecutive years of rejections from even the mediocre programs, and in the third year, when he and I worked together, we cracked Duke and HEC. So I asked him what was one thing that changed, and he said, “Jatin you told me that my accomplishments are worthy and we just have to go deep into these rather than finding ways to cook stories”.
Don’t cook stories, you will end up becoming a pressure cooker. I’ll tell you what, when I work with these applicants and before I speak with them for the first time, I scan their resume, and LINKED IN and form my own opinions. Then the person comes on the phone, and I say “I like your resume”. He says, “No I do not have a profile, let me share 5 reasons that make me a loser. And hey, it includes IIT Two-digit rankers as well. I am not kidding. I have worked with a lot of IITians, and a lot of them on the first call just say, “You think my profile is good enough?”. I say, “YEAH!”, and they say “what” and I say “I mean it”, they are like “okay, let me tell you why I am a LOSER” and they go on and on and on. So I am like, “Alright I believe you now”. Think about it. I am a stranger to you. You find me, and then you convince me that you are a loser and that you are not proud of all the things that you have done.
I am not trying to give motivational crap, but the reality is that you honestly do not believe in your accomplishments and you only look at fancy profiles across the internet. Not everyone has raised a million-dollar or has sold start-ups. For you, just because you do not have these accomplishments, you try to cook random stories. And that is why while convincing the schools or the admissions committee members about how you are a Rockstar you have to pretend so much. Imagine yourself in an interview room with Wharton for 10 minutes and it will feel like it is a cage fight.
- (Don’t Care About MBA)+(Not Proud of Your Profile) = Zero Motivation:
Zero Motivation. Full tension. Think about this deadly combination. If you are a person who is not interested in an MBA but are keen on an MBA and you want to get in, but also do not care about what it will do to you. Plus you are also someone who is not proud of yourself. This person goes through the entire process like a ROBOT. Everything that you do will seem like so much heavy lifting. You do this plastic surgery on your answers, you have to act, you have to pretend and they catch you all the time.
Zero Motivation. Full tension. Think about this deadly combination. If you are a person who is not interested in an MBA but are keen on an MBA and you want to get in, but also do not care about what it will do to you. Plus you are also someone who is not proud of yourself. This person goes through the entire process like a ROBOT. Everything that you do will seem like so much heavy lifting. You do this plastic surgery on your answers, you have to act, you have to pretend and they catch you all the time.
