Laser Sharp Career Goals - Essay Must!

Guys, I can't overstress the importance of having a clear and realistic, yet ambitious career goals in your essay.

I have been actively talking to several MBA admission consultants through their initial cosultation, and they have all been stressing the importance of presenting clear career goals (ST, MT, LT) that logically tie to the previous working experiences.

I even emailed a draft of my Wharton #1, and to my dismay, most consultants cite the vague, unrealistic career goals and my lack of enthusiasm for the school as the significant shortcoming of my essay.

Thus, it seems all inevitable and very likely that I am gonna hit the magic number "10" for the number of drafts before the R1 deadline.

Some of them made a good point that I should devote myself in illustrating why my careers goals make sense, why wharton, why now, etc. in a more extensive manner. Furthermore, the Wharton #1 is not to provide what you did in your professional working experiences, rather the essay should serve as the medium to give brieft overview of what you learned through the experiences.

From strategic point of view, they all stress the same thing. Distinguish myself from the rest of pack, by heavily emphasizing the detailed plan of my career goals, incorporating the unique characteristics of each school.

I am just awed by some of the advice, since it really opened my insights as to certain approaches required to draft essays. How much I know at this points far exceed how much I knew just a couple of days ago.

Many people are still concerned about their GMAT scores, GPAs, and other stats. However, I am slowing realizing the fact that a clear and feasible vision in your essays can picture you as a compelling candidate in a true sense. And I hope that fellow MBA bloggers take this very seriously.

For instance, let's look at this stat from last year applicants in Korea. (I found this from website) The list shows the stats of the applicants who were invited to Wharton last year. (For your information, Wharton interview 50% of the applicants, from which they select 30~35% for the class.)

Disclaimer: Koreans are sterotyped for their passive, less enthusiastic approach to classroom discussion and their preferance to only hanging out with their countrymen. In other words, they must have some compelling academic profiles in order to warrant an interview, since the streotypical behavior patters of Korean students often put them at disadvantage, against fellow Americans.

(GMAT, GPA, TOEFL, # of Years)

660, 3.1, 273, 13
680, 3.1, 250, 10
690, 3.4, 260, 6
700, 3.27, 270, 3
700, 3.6, 267, 5
710, 3.3, 263, 5
710, 3.2, 267, 7
710, 3.5, 280, 5
710, 3.1, 260, 3
720, 3.0, 277, 3
740, 3.1, 277, 4
740, 2.9, 263, 5
760, 3.0, 280, 5

Thus, from this shortlist, we can easily conclude that while GMAT score is somewhat consistent overall with the range of 690~760 for the most part, the wide range of GPAs suggest that Wharton is clearly more focused on people with professional achievements and growth than with cum laude notation on their transcripts. I am really shocked at this finding, given the logical notion that Korean students should have more impressive academic profile to compete against Americans who graduated from US undergraduates. After all, Korean students have not demonstrated that they can communicate with fellow students during classroom discussion. From what I hear, Columbia heavily relies on interview to gauge the applicant's communication skills, and Columbia has stated in the past that they will not admit Korean students without an intensive interview.