The Bane of Admissions Officers

I wanted to pass on a link that one of my staff happened upon. It's an essay service that offers to review your essays for $19.95 or edit them for an additional $20. They provide sample responses for many b-school's essays, including our own.

http://mbaessayguru.com/sample-essays/michigan-ross-essay-1

I hope you haven't used this site to model your own essays after, or worse, paid for their services. I've shared this link with our small team of readers so their antennae are up for similar essays. We purposely maintain a small cadre of readers so that readers can better calibrate their evaluations across a larger pool of applications, and also, to better detect similar essays (like last year's hit parade essay, "If I were a fruit, I'd be a ...).

Years ago, MBA2s used to be involved in the application evaluation process but we discontinued that because reading 3 - 5 applications per week didn't lend itself to developing the insights needed to make comparative evaluations. That's a critical component of the admissions process - the comparative view, not just a view of an applicant's admissibility on its own. That's why some applicants that are admissible are not admitted. This leads me to another cautionary tale. One of our students alerted me to a posting by an indignant applicant who claims that s/he was rejected by us and admitted by HBS despite having a stellar academic record from MIT and a near perfect GMAT score. This is the flaw with online forums - participants can claim whatever they want, even if it's not true. For the record, we did not have an applicant with that profile apply here. And if we did, such an applicant would have been rejected if that kind of attitude had come through in the application or interview. Everyone involved in the evaluation process cares too much about our community to let that happen.

Comments

[Renato Sá]

Dear Soojin,

I can say I am proud to be waitlisted in such a serious, rigorous, respectful and careful admission process.

We invest a great deal of intelectual, emotional and physical energy into our applications and it is reliefing to observe your and your team´s dedication to promoting a transparent admission process.

I read closely all your posts!

Thank you,
Renato Sá - Brazil

[Anonymous]

Dear Soojin,

I'm R1 applicant called for interview in R2. I've been asked to upload any recent developments at my end. However, it's status quo and there's nothing to report. So my question is: Will I be looked upon unfavorably if I don't submit any updates?

Thanks!

[Soojin]

Dear Anonymous - no you will not be looked upon unfavorably if you don't submit an update. We don't expect that many applicants will have a noteworthy change in the short time between being placed on the waitlist and the subsequent months. However, unlike some schools, we do want to provide applicants who have a notable, substantive change in their status with an opportunity to share it with us. The most important thing is to respond to the waitlist offer and let us know that you would like to remain in consideration; if you don't, then we'll assume that you have made other plans and/or you're no longer interested in attending Ross.

[Anonymous]

Dear Soojin,

Thank you for the update. I interviewed with a Ross alum last week. It was a very pleasant experience and I'm looking forward to an even better outcome on or before March 15th.

Regards,
-Anonymous