Creative Applicants

I am sure appli­cants have seen these lists already but prob­a­bly a per­fect way to close down the appli­ca­tion sea­son on a lighter note. These Real Essays and Cars Analo­gies do show how cre­ative MBA appli­cants can be. Who needs Stern’s Essay 3 after this?

Here are REAL ESSAYS for these schools: (taken from PaloAlto­ForAWhile & BW Forum)

Har­vard: Of which For­tune 1000 com­pany are you going to become the CEO and why would you pick that company?

Whar­ton: Of which For­tune 1000 com­pany are you going to become the CFO and why would you pick that company?

MIT: Draw an ASCII pic­ture of your favorite Lord of the Rings char­ac­ter and describe three lessons that today’s busi­ness lead­ers can learn from Lord Of The Rings.

Stan­ford: Why? (100,000 words recommended)

Chicago Booth: Pro­vide a detailed sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of why Chicago-Booth is #1 in BWeek and never higher than #3 in USNews. Do the math in your head.

NYU: How badly do you need a vaca­tion from your ibank­ing job, and what makes you think you will be able to get back into ibank­ing upon graduation?

Yale SOM: Which non­profit orga­ni­za­tion do you plan to run, and what about run­ning a non­profit makes you feel important?

Colum­bia: In your opin­ion, what is the best way to sab­o­tage the Whar­ton­ian CFO of your com­pany and become CFO?

UC Berke­ley Haas: What makes a hip­pie like you think you can suc­ceed in busi­ness? Use the words ‘sus­tain­able’ and ‘green’ at least twice in your response.

Cor­nell John­son: Describe how awe­some being an Ivy Lea­guer would make you feel.

UVA Dar­den: How badly do you want your ass to be kicked by our pro­fes­sors on a scale of 9 to 10?

Notre Dame: Describe how awe­some Irish Foot­ball is, and list ten ways we can make our MBA pro­gram as well-known as our NFL train­ing program.

Lon­don Busi­ness School: Answer NYU’s essay and use the find/replace func­tion to replace all ‘NYU’ with ‘LBS’, ‘New York’ with ‘Lon­don’ and ‘pro­gram’ with ‘programme’.

Wash U Olin: How early are you will­ing to wake up to serve cof­fee to our med­ical students?

UNC Kenan-Flagler: See Notre Dame but replace Irish Foot­ball with Tar Heel bas­ket­ball, and NFL with NBA.

U of Phx (pick 2 of 4): When your boss finds out you have enrolled here, how loudly will he/she laugh? Have you ever wasted a lot of money on some­thing use­less before? Would you be will­ing to appear on a bill­board or would you rather keep your enroll­ment a secret? What is 5+8?

Tuck: Do you remem­ber sum­mer camp? How amaz­ing was that!?!? Don’t you wish you could go to camp for 21 months? Attach a let­ter you wrote to your par­ents in fifth grade sum­mer camp explain­ing how awe­some it was.

UMich Ross: What was the cra­zi­est thing you did while tail­gat­ing dur­ing under­grad, and are you pre­pared to tail­gate like a pro again? In your essay, try to include the words moon­shine, goat, and anus.

Kel­logg: Explain why you think good quan­ti­ta­tive skills are not required in busi­ness and dis­cuss the impor­tance of team­work in sit­u­a­tions in which no one is skilled enough to do the job by himself.

UCLA Ander­son: Have you seen that show “The Hills?” Isn’t it amaz­ing? Dis­cuss your strate­gies for get­ting into clubs to party with the cast of “The Hills” so you can feel important.

Duke Fuqua: What are your short-term and long-term career goals? Begin your essay with the sen­tence, “My career goal is to pro­vide invest­ment and busi­ness advice to the much more suc­cess­ful grad­u­ates of the Duke Law and Med­ical Schools.”

Carnegie Mel­lon Tep­per: Draw an ASCII pic­ture of your favorite MIT stu­dent and list three things that busi­ness lead­ers can learn from MIT.

INSEAD: List the num­ber of lan­guages in which you are flu­ent, and explain how know­ing a bunch of lan­guages and study­ing in one of the world’s slow­est economies for ten months will make you an effec­tive busi­ness leader.

CEIBS: Would you rather be upper mid­dle class in the US, or rich in China? Pleeeeeeeease say rich in China!

And Cars anal­ogy from MBAAp­ply:

1. HBS is like the British lux­ury car of vary­ing qual­ity — Bent­ley, Aston Mar­tin, MG, Rolls-Royce. They are Estab­lish­ment, tophats and all. Some dri­vers are able to break the “unap­proach­able” mold and will take their cars for a bit of a joyride, but some are trapped in the pomp and cir­cum­stance of their cars.
2. Stan­ford is like the Ital­ian sports car — Lam­borgh­i­nis, Fer­raris, Alfa Romeos, Maser­atis. They are bold, dis­tinc­tive, and anti-authoritarian. They aren’t the most reli­able cars, but they sure look good, and they are the ulti­mate joyride car, risks be damned.
3. Whar­ton are like the Ger­man sports cars — Porsche and AMG-Benz. They com­bine the quality/reliability of Ger­man engi­neer­ing that the British and Ital­ian sports cars don’t have, with the cachet that rivals only the British and Ital­ian lux­ury cars. How­ever, they don’t quite have the same cachet of the British and Ital­ian lux­ury cars, even though many dri­vers would still kill for a Porsche 911 turbo or AMG.
4. Chicago GSB is like a Volvo — the qual­ity, per­for­mance and reli­a­bil­ity is prob­a­bly as good as any lux­ury automaker, but it doesn’t do as good of a job at mar­ket­ing itself. It has a rep­u­ta­tion for being a bit staid, boxy, bor­ing. But it’s like a tank — impen­e­tra­ble to any kind of crit­i­cism because its own­ers will try really hard to explain why its car is as good as any Ger­man car out there.
5. Kel­logg is like a Volk­swa­gen — they aren’t the most reli­able cars, but they are sure fun cars to drive. They also have a very young, hip and aspi­ra­tional image — but one that is within reach of many peo­ple. They are very good at pro­mot­ing and man­ag­ing its rep­u­ta­tion as a “cool and hip” car to drive.
6. Sloan is like an Audi — more peo­ple have them than you’d expect, and for a Ger­man car, they are a bit younger and hip­per. Par­tic­u­larly it’s S-series. They are men­tioned along­side the other great auto man­u­fac­tur­ers, but still fly under the radar in most discussions.
7. Colum­bia is like a BMW — an amaz­ing machine that com­bines per­for­mance, qual­ity and cachet, but it also attracts a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of aggro dri­vers who believe they own the road, and act accord­ingly (blast­ing their music for every­one to see, cut­ting peo­ple off in traf­fic, honk­ing their horns, etc.).
8. Tuck is like a Saab. It’s quirky, rel­a­tively small in num­ber, but has a fiercely loyal fol­low­ing of afi­ciona­dos. Not many peo­ple know the car, but those that do rave about it.

But where’s Bugati?

And I read a joke long time back:

What’s com­mon between a Colum­bia grad and a NYU grad?

1. Both were admit­ted at NYU.
2. Both were rejected by HBS.

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