The mbaMission Podcast

Preparing Your MBA Profile

June 18, 2024 • mbaMission • Season 1 • Episode 4

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Summary

In this conversation, mbaMission Senior MBA Admissions Consultant Harold Simansky interviews Katharine Lewis, an executive director at mbaMission, about the process of applying to business school. They discuss the importance of clarifying objectives and understanding that business school is about leadership, not just business. They also talk about the timing of the application process, the significance of visiting schools, and the role of essays in the application. Katy emphasizes the need for strong recommendations and highlights some common flaws that can lead to unsuccessful applications. She concludes by reminding applicants that there are many excellent business schools and that success is not solely determined by getting into Harvard or Stanford.


Takeaways

  • Business school is about leadership and teaches the key functional skills needed to run anything.
  • Clarify your objectives before applying to business school.
  • Timing is important in the application process, and it's best to start preparing ahead of time.
  • Visiting schools and demonstrating knowledge of the school is important in the application.
  • Essays should communicate what's driving you and your accomplishments.
  • Strong recommendations are crucial for top schools.
  • Common flaws in applications include bad timing, missing the mark in essays, and weak recommendations.
  • There are many excellent business schools, and success is not solely determined by getting into Harvard or Stanford.

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Harold Simansky (00:11)

Hi, this is Harold Samansky with the mbaMission Podcast. And today we have one of our most senior consultants here, our executive director, Katy Lewis. Hi, Katy.


Katy Lewis (00:22)

Harold, how are you?


Harold Simansky (00:24)

Good, nice to see you. Katy, you are out in California, is that right?


Katy Lewis (00:28)

Yes, San Francisco.


Harold Simansky (00:30)

Then how's the weather out there?


Katy Lewis (00:32)

Actually, it's very nice today, which is we're in the middle of, the minute the weather gets good, we start fire season. So it's not, it's a mixed blessing.


Harold Simansky (00:40)

I understand that. Well, why don't we jump right on in here. Katie, as we talked about previously, you are one of our most experienced consultants. You've had tremendous success, Harvard, Stanford.

Katie so if I were someone who approaches you I have a general sense I want to go to business school But I'm not quite sure what to do or how to get the process started. What would you tell me?


Katy Lewis (01:00)

I think you first have to know whether you wanna do this. I mean, business school to me is honestly misnamed. It should be called leadership school. It's a school you go to if you want to know how to be a leader in the private sector, in business, in the public sector, or even in the nonprofit sector. It's the ultimate degree that teaches you the key functional skills you need to understand to run anything.

And so be clear on your objectives. If you want to run something, this is a good business school. If you don't want to run a business, it's still a good school to go to. I work with people who want to be minister of finance of their government. I work with people who have political objectives. So be clear about your objectives. It's a very practical, hands -on degree.


Harold Simansky (01:49)

No, that makes sense. And from that perspective, let's say I, again, I'm just thinking about it broadly, I decide I do want to go to business school. How do I even think about my candidacy? Because listen, I know the quality of the people you work with, what do you say to them, I only want to go to Harvard, Stanford, wherever. Do you encourage them to go other places? Again, what would you say to someone who comes with you with sort of that mandate?


Katy Lewis (02:15)

A lot of people do. I work with people who are specifically looking for those schools. I think it's very important to first...know if you're ready to apply to business school. I think my most successful applicants to top schools have honestly started preparing ahead of time to have their profile ready to apply. You need to have worked a certain length of time. You need to have your test scores in a good place. You need to have the sort of blowout personal recommendations that you're likely to get. You need to be ready to get into a very top school.

Top schools like Harvard and Stanford, you know, have seven and eight thousand applicants. They could easily fill their class three times over with highly qualified applicants from around the world. So if you want to make a reasonable run at one of those schools, you really have to have your ducks in a row.


Harold Simansky (03:13)

That makes sense then. And I guess when should we come and see you or when should we come and see a consultant? How much should be done beforehand? How much do you help people with? How do I think about that?


Katy Lewis (03:26)

Most people tend to come to me several months before they plan to apply. If you're applying in round one where you have the September deadlines, that means they come to me in February or March. Typically, the clients that I often work with the best have come to me six months earlier. And they check in with me. I'm very clear about the kind of...steps they need to take before they're ready to work with me. And so, so often by the time we reach May, which is when our round one application season starts, I'm fully booked with clients who are ready to go. The one thing you don't want to do is start working on your applications in May and still have to do your testing. You haven't visited schools. You know, I mean, timing is really matters. You want to have the timing right. So I, I suggest that if someone's interested in working with a consultant,


Harold Simansky (04:05)

Yeah.


Katy Lewis (04:21)

They ought to be contacting that consultant within the 12 months before the application season.


Harold Simansky (04:28)

Okay, that makes sense. And it sounds like some things to do beforehand is obviously take your tests. Now, certainly, probably have your recommenders at least in mind, if not necessarily prepped. And Katie, you mentioned visiting schools or connecting with schools. For the very top schools, how important is it?


Katy Lewis (04:48)

Visiting schools is important for you and it's important for this school.

Applying to business school is not like applying to college through the common application. Each business school wants to feel when they read your application that they are the only school you're applying to. So it's very important to communicate that level of knowledge of the school. The best way to do that is to visit. You set up an appointment with the admissions committee, attend a class, have an info session with an admission director, go on a tour. I always tell my clients to reach out to friends of theirs in the business school and try to tag along to a second class with them.

And take copious notes. Most schools have essays that ask why do you want this school? And the more you can answer that by pointing to the class you attended, the students you talked to, the conference you went to, the more successfully you communicate your fit with that school. On the flip side, business schools also note whether you have visited their school. I remember when I was in admissions, we might really want a candidate, but if we noticed they had never visited us, we often would wait list them because we felt they were probably leaning towards some other schools. So schools, some schools pay a lot of attention to these contacts. You can also do webinars online. You don't have to do personal visits and you can also attend info sessions in your local town. If they pass through very often admissions, people remember people they meet on their traveling visits more than the ones they meet on campus. So,


Harold Simansky (06:05)

Yeah ok.


Katy Lewis (06:27)

This is an opportunity and I strongly urge that you do it. You do visit schools.


Harold Simansky (06:34)

That makes sense. And then do you use the information you gathered in your from your visits? Do you use it in the application itself or is that something that they're going to know?


Katy Lewis (06:43)

Absolutely.


Sometimes you might say, gee, you were blown away listening to Professor So -and -so talk about XYZ, or you had a great talk with a student in the second year class about such -and -such club. So you can, it just shows you've done your homework. This is also very important for you because I mean, you know, business school is a big investment. You're investing a lot of money and you're investing in a lifelong network. So the best way to get a sense of what the school and the culture is like is to visit it. It's also

It's also honestly fun. It's really fun to visit these schools. It makes you excited about the process. It's way more fun than studying for the GMAT. And so ended up going to business school because I spent a day visiting someone at Harvard Business School. I had no idea what a business school class would be like. And so valuable part of the process.


Harold Simansky (07:39)

No, that makes sense. That makes sense. So Katie, let's assume that I've taken my test. I visited the school. At that point, I come to see you. I feel like I've got everything that I should do beforehand. I have done that. And I come to see you. How would you then guide me? What would you do? And how should I, again, continue to think about the process?


Katy Lewis (08:03)

The first thing I do, certainly when I do consultations, is I analyze.

I would analyze your profile. And as I said, business schools are looking for leaders. They're not looking for academics. So they're going to look at you pretty holistically. They're going to look at three big areas. The first is grades and scores. They want to know you can do the work in the school. They want to know that your scores are competitive, your grades are competitive. That's the first thing. But that's not the only thing. If you were applying to law school or med school, that could be the only thing they'd be looking at.

Business schools, because they're looking for leaders, they're going to look at two other big areas of your profile. First, they're going to look at your work accomplishments. Where have you worked? How long have you worked? Have you had one job, two jobs, three jobs? How have you advanced? What's your trajectory of promotion been in those jobs? And then finally, what do you want to do? Are your post MBA goals logically grounded in what you have been doing? That's, I would say, a core part of your application appeal. The business schools essentially want to know what's driving you and they want to know how you're going to be a leader in the future. They're admitting people who are going to be leaders in the next decade or two, so they want to see evidence of that. The third category they look at is what do you do outside of school and work?

You know, these schools are not counting community service hours. They are honestly, once again, looking for leadership in these activities. Were you someone who actively engaged in your college and changed organizations while you were there? Are you doing the same in the community now that you're working? Are you working in your local community, maybe a nonprofit where you're taking a leadership role? Or are you working within your firm to build your firm? Let's say you're men.


Harold Simansky (09:32)

Right.


Katy Lewis (09:55)

and coaching new hires, you're very involved in orientation or interviewing. All of that leadership, I mean, it all comes back to that core issue. Are you a potential leader who's leaving a footprint on the world around you?

Evaluating your profile that yes, you had all those elements, you'd worked a requisite length of time. I mean, I rarely see a top school like Harvard and Stanford ever interview somebody who would matriculate with only four years of experience. If you're ready, then I say, okay, you're good to go. And that's the right time to start your application. I would say a final thing that I usually try to determine is,


Harold Simansky (10:28)

Okay, that's good to know.


Katy Lewis (10:39)

Are you in a good position to ask recommenders to write your recommendations? You may have all of those elements in place.


Harold Simansky (10:46)

interesting.


Katy Lewis (10:48)

But if, for example, you don't have a great relationship with your supervisor or you haven't been able to do the deal work in your private equity firm that would really showcase you to be competitive, sometimes I actually counsel a client to wait a year until they perfect you've got to have those recommenders in place to really cement an application.


Harold Simansky (11:17)

No, that makes sense. Katie, as I think about the clients that I work with, I think one question, maybe it's the most common question, is something along the lines of, listen, I'm working 80 hours per week. I simply don't have time to get involved in my community. I simply haven't done anything. At that point, I'm sure it's something you also see. What do you say to those people at that point?


Katy Lewis (11:41)

almost always. one can find other ways they're giving back. There's no question that in jobs like investment banking and consulting can be literally, I mean, I was in those jobs. I know what those feel like. You don't have a lot of time for outside, you're traveling all the time, you can't make commitments. In those cases, there are ways you can still set yourself apart. You can get involved in your firm's activities, maybe,

Maybe you're getting involved in training, you're on an employee resource group, you're doing a white paper in a particular new area. There are ways you can...


Harold Simansky (12:14)

Yep. Right.


Katy Lewis (12:25)

demonstrate an impact above and beyond your job within the confines of your company. Alternatively, there may be personal things that you're doing that matter. I've worked with a client who did absolutely nothing outside of work. He had five younger siblings. He was the first in his family to go to college and he had time actively.

counseling as younger siblings, mentoring them through high school, trying to coach them to go to college as well. So.

or maybe you're involved in your church. The business schools aren't, they're honestly not judging what you do. You don't have to be on the board of a nonprofit. They're looking for where you as a potential leader are following your passions and how you're trying to have an impact. And so there may be many different ways you're doing that that are important to you. So don't, if you're doing anything outside of those 80 hours,


Harold Simansky (13:08)

Right.


Katy Lewis (13:26)

it could be potentially mined as a distinctive factor that helps your application.


Harold Simansky (13:32)

Right. No, that makes sense. That makes sense. I've also said to my clients, even if you only become the guy who orders the pizzas on Friday night and you're sort of the team spirit person, that in itself is a value add. That in itself gives you, you can be a member of the community.


Katy Lewis (13:44)

Exactly.


Yeah, I had one client who did not have any outside activities. She had put together an eight -person house.


Harold Simansky (13:52)

Sure, please.


Katy Lewis (13:57)

in Washington DC with seven roommates and she was the one who negotiated with the landlord and handled all the issues that sort of the sort of administrative issues of running this house. I mean everybody was paying their own rent but that was a very differentiating factor. I mean she had a lot of stories to tell about that but it was kind of her outside activity but it was also the way she could live economically.


Harold Simansky (14:10)

Yeah. Yeah.


right.


Right. No, that makes sense. That's that's really interesting. Katie, so obviously you work with, again, people very, very really for the top schools here. And frequently we will get clients who say, OK, now I'm ready to write my story, which frequently is not the case. And then they believe that it must be almost novel quality. You know, Henry Short story quality.

essays. I know you have some thoughts about that. How good does your essay have to be? In actual fact, what is its purpose? Is it a piece of creative writing or is it some sort of other broader message? How do you think about the role of essays? Let me put it to you though.


Katy Lewis (15:08)

When an admissions officer opens a file, all they read is your resume, your essay, your recommendations, your short responses on the online form, and your transcript. That's it. That's all they see. The essay's a fairly small part of those pages, and I like to quote what a Harvard Business School admissions person said a few years ago that the essay serves to intrigue the reader. It's not an encyclopedia of your accomplishments. It's...


Harold Simansky (15:43)

Okay.


Katy Lewis (15:45)

To me, it's the one place you can communicate what's driving you. It's the glue that holds together your accomplishments on your resume and in your recommendation. So to me, the essay needs to communicate that spark. You know, they're looking for leaders. These schools wanna bet on you as a leader. So they wanna know what's driving you. And they wanna see that it's been driving you and you have demonstrated accomplishments towards that goal.

So that's pretty much the job of the essay. This is not a creative writing contest. When I was in admissions, I frequently admitted people who wrote honestly not particularly interesting essays, but I looked at their resume and I read the recommendations and they blew me away. So keep in mind the schools are looking for leaders, not creative writers. I mean obviously a well -written essay is always a plus, but

But your main job is not to become someone you're not. If you're a fairly prosaic writer, there's no reason not to write a fairly prosaic essay. But communicate with striving you. Get your message across, use the time wisely, but don't try to reinvent yourself. It's not gonna happen.


Harold Simansky (16:55)

Yep.

Right. So with that in mind, Katie, someone comes to you after the fact, meaning that they have maybe either done the application on their own or they, God forbid, use one of our competitors without getting great results. They come to you. What do you see as some of the biggest, most flaws you see, some of the fatal flaws among folks who just don't get the results they want?


Katy Lewis (17:35)

This happens a lot. I get a lot of people coming to me for what we call ding reviews or consultations because they're just devastating that they apply. There are a number of factors that I see. One is bad timing.

I mean, I just talked yesterday actually to an applicant who honestly was a strong applicant, wrote a good essay, and he applied three months after he'd taken a brand new job at a top AI company. So he was thinking of going to business school nine months later, actually nine months later.

And I told him, and he's a pretty senior guy, he'd been working four years. And I said, that is a complete no -no at a top school. A school like Harvard and Stanford Wharton considers it very unprofessional to take a new job at a top company, a career job, and not tell your employer you're also applying to business school. I mean, you've already got a foot out of the door before you even take the job. So I told him that was a huge problem. Plus,


Harold Simansky (18:37)

right.


Katy Lewis (18:40)

If I were any business school, I would look at that and I go, well, actually, I'd much rather look at this application a year and a half from now once the guys actually worked in this role. So that's a big no -no. Second no -no, sometimes the essays really miss the mark. You know, that's very subjective, but you can tell. Other times the grades or scores are not even within the ballpark of what the school expects.


Harold Simansky (18:49)

Right. Right.

Okay.

right.


Katy Lewis (19:09)

A fourth thing I often see is the recommendations don't pass muster. They're either very short or they come across as performance reviews. If you want to get into a really top school like Harvard or Stanford, you need quite simply blow out recommendations. And those schools are looking for exceptional people and you've got to have letters that communicate the ways you're exceptional. So it's a...

Combination of factors, I actually do quite a bit of consulting with clients who then want to reposition themselves to reapply in a year or two. And so I've seen what strategies work there. It's hard to reapply at a top school. You've got to wait usually a year and a half or two because they're not going to touch your application if there hasn't been significant change. You've got to have a new job. You have to have a new score. You got to shake it up or they're not going to invest in other.


Harold Simansky (19:50)

Okay.


Katy Lewis (20:09)

five hours of admission time into the application.


Harold Simansky (20:10)

Yep.

That makes sense. Katy, and just to sort of wrap up this episode, though I'm happy to say we're going to have you on other episodes of the MBA admission podcast. And that is, what does it take to be a candidate who actually gets into a Harvard or Stanford? What are they looking for at the end of the day? Is there one sort of the 30 seconds on, okay, here's who gets accepted and here's why.


Katy Lewis (20:42)

You honestly cannot dial your way into these schools. And it's a lot of it's the number, the same exceptional, I work with candidates applying to both these schools all the time. Maybe four or five times a year, one of my clients gets into both.

which is simply an indication of the fact that same outstanding person didn't, most outstanding people don't get into both. So the problem with these schools is they have three outstanding people for every spot. So it's, so to some extent there's, there's some luck. There's some, there's a lottery aspect here. You gotta be the right person that that school needs. I mean, I'll give you a good example. I have a client who's,


Harold Simansky (21:15)

Right.


Katy Lewis (21:25)

on the waiting list at one of these schools who's Peruvian. Actually, it's on the waiting list at two schools. If Harvard needs Peruvians, they may take her or Stanford. You never know. The schools are trying to create a distributed class. However, the one thing you can do is do your best to create an application that positions you as a distinctive, compelling leader in a specialized way. And just hope,


Harold Simansky (21:37)

Right. Right.


Katy Lewis (21:55)

you know, apply to both schools and hope you get in. The other thing though that I tell my clients applying to these schools is there are 10 to 12 remarkable business schools in this country and frankly even more. And unless there's something wrong with you, you would get a tremendous amount of out of going to other schools. I mean, the Harvard brand is really not that important.


Harold Simansky (21:56)

Yeah.

Right.


Katy Lewis (22:24)

in terms of learning to become a leader. And that's what you're trying to do with this business school. So don't get too starry -eyed over at Harvard and Stanford. I've had people actually go to both these schools and honestly think it wasn't really what they hoped it would be. So it's, you know, don't get blindsided. You know, be open -minded. I always like to tell people that, you know.


Harold Simansky (22:29)

right.

Okay.


Katy Lewis (22:53)

You know, people like, you know, very famous people have not gotten into schools like Harvard and they've done fine. So you have to, you just have to keep in mind that you may have the last laugh.


Harold Simansky (23:04)

Yes. Yeah. No, absolutely. That makes sense. Well, Katie, thank you very much for joining me today. Very much appreciated. And listen, I look forward to talking with you more on our next episode of the mbaMission podcast.


Katy Lewis (23:19)

Nice to see you Harold, bye.