Contact current students at your target programs to test your contribution hypothesis

How will you contribute?

This post expands on my earlier tips for how to demonstrate your potential contributions to target schools.

Below, you will find the advice I have been giving to my admitted for year. It worked for them. I hope it works for you, too!

THE QUESTION

How will you contribute to our school/learning community?

How will you add value to our MBA program?


QUESTION BEHIND THE QUESTION

Why should we admit you? 

Five contribution situations


First, ask yourself

 

Step one

RESEARCH INDUSTRY CLUBS and CONFERENCES

Step two

 

IDENTIFY POSSIBLE CONTRIBUTIONS

Step three

 

CONFIRM YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS

Step four

 

SAMPLE EMAIL MESSAGE

Dear CLUB LEADER: (TRY TO USE A REAL PERSON'S NAME)

Nice to meet you. I'm First Last. I will apply to SCHOOL on DATE.

I received your contact information from First Last ‘XX (add how you found them so they know the context...)

Professionally, I am BRIEF CAREER ANALYSIS / TOP ACHIEVEMENT IN YOUR INDUSTRY

Now, I would like to confirm my contribution to CLUB NAME. For example, I noticed you are already doing "Hollywood meets Silicon Valley launch party" to discuss the convergence of entertainment and IT. Based on my background, I would like to organize a panel discussion to explore emerging distribution business models around the world.

I know you must be very busy now. If you have time, I would like to ask a few questions:

Please let me know if you need more information. Thank you in advance for your help.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely yours,

FirstName

Vince Contribution Essays Tips

 

AdCom wants to confirm that you understand two points:


Most of you will claim you have "passion" for your target schools, but talk is cheap.

The only way to demonstrate true passion is to do your homework.

Have you contacted alumni and current students? 

 

Q: WHY SHOULD YOU IDENTIFY YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS?

A: TO CONFIRM YOUR "FIT" WITH THE SCHOOL

 

Q: WHAT IS FIT?

A: YOUR ABILITY TO BENEFIT FROM AND ADD TO THIS SCHOOL'S UNIQUE STUDENT CULTURE

 

To quote Lou Gerstner, “Culture isn’t just one aspect of the game - it is the game”.

Read more about "fit" here (found at http://chicagogsb-dsac.blogspot.com/2008/12/school-culture-fit-in-application.html; accessed 11/2010)


AdCom wants you to take an active role in all areas of student life because doing so will increase your love for the school (and perhaps motivate you to donate once you graduate ;-)

How much do you know about student groups at your target programs? 

 

At many top MBA programs, campus groups are organized in four categories

 

Students are active in three to five campus groups, but their level of activity varies.  


CONDUCT A SWOT ANALYSIS

USE MECE LOGIC

MECE principle (from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The MECE principle, pronounced 'meesee', mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive, is a grouping principle.

It says that when data from a category is desired to be broken into subcategories, the choice of subcategories should be

The MECE principle is useful in the business mapping process. If information can be arranged exhaustively and without double counting in each level of the hierarchy, the way of arrangement is ideal.

Examples of MECE categorization would include categorizing people by year of birth (assuming all years are known).

A non-MECE example would be categorization by nationality, because nationalities are neither mutually exclusive (some people have dual nationality) nor collectively exhaustive (some people have none).

(found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MECE_principle; accessed 2011/10)

ONE MORE THING