Everyone has flaws mba applicants included! , but you shouldn’t passively let flaws ruin your candidacy. Do you have a low gpa or a not quite high enough gmat score? are you older or younger than the average applicant to your target program? have you had a habit of frequent career switching in the past, or have you recently been laid off? answering yes to any of these questions doesn't disqualify you from the mba marathon you just need the right techniques to help you mitigate these weaknesses. Below you'll find numerous resources that will help you tackle your mba application weaknesses head on, so that despite your shortcomings, you present yourself as the confident, competent, and highly prized applicant that you are. are you seeking more in depth, individualized advice for your mba application? do you have questions about how your weakness or flaws may affect your application? choose from accepted's mba application consulting services to work one on one with an experienced editor and admissions expert! mba applicants are routinely asked the failure question either in mba essays or interviews.

It always takes more or less the same form: tell us about a time you failed and what you learned. As ive written before here, and in my book, the test is not to see if you have any weaknesses or failures. It is to see whether you are mature enough to recognize your failures and so address the implied weaknesses. Also, failures are more likely to occur in new, challenging tasks, so if you present no failures you are simply telling adcom that you havent been adequately challenged. The other day i picked up an interesting take on failure creating intelligent failure in the article are you squandering your intelligent failures? by columbia business school professor rita mcgrath, on the hbr blog. Mcgrath says: despite widespread recognition that challenging times place unpredictable demands on people and businesses, i still run across many managers who would prefer to avoid the logical conclusion that stems from this: failure is a lot more common in highly uncertain environments than it is in better understood situations. Instead of learning from failures, many executives seek to keep them hidden or to pretend that they were all part of a master plan and no big deal.

To those executives, let me argue that an extraordinarily valuable corporate resource is being wasted if learning from failures is inhibited. Naturally, to an executive raised on the concept of management by exception, any failure at all seems intolerable. This world view is reinforced by the widespread adoption of various quality techniques, for instance, six sigma, in which the goal is to stamp out variations by definition, failures in the pursuit of quality failures are crucial to the process of organizational learning and sense making. And failures can help you identify those among your team with the mettle to persevere and creatively change direction as opposed to pig headedly charging blindly ahead. Further, failures are about the only way in which an organization can re set its expectations for the future in any meaningful way. The point mcgrath is making is failure is a route perhaps, the route to learning and future improvement.

One needs to set reasonable prior fail safe mechanisms in place, and then interrogate a failure afterwards, to make a failure useful as learning. If you can show the mba adcom that you did this, that you didnt just fail dumbly, or have turned a dumb failure into an intelligent failure, your essay will shine in all the right ways. I saw it. the question was looming in an essay and hiding behind a corner in the brain and/or instruction sheet of my interviewer. So natalie, tell me about your weaknesses and what you did to overcome them ? gosh, there are so many, i don’t even know where to begin. ding! what do you do when you read/hear the weakness question? schools are assessing how well you self evaluate. Like a business problem, they want to hear your plan of action, your implementation, and your success rate.

If you are let go from a position, you need to discuss the lessons learned from this negative situation and how you overcame the situation. Don’t discuss your cousin’s attraction to arson or your mother in law’s conspiratorial behavior. If your weakness is that you work too hard and can’t say no, well, that is not a weakness, that is the life of an mba. Natalie is a former mba admissions dean and director at ross, johnson, and carey. professional custom writing from the top experts the field of business attracts a wide range of people with varying personalities. Successful business management requires knowledge of how strengths and weaknesses play off each other. For me, that means that i must understand my own abilities and inabilities as well as those of others. Through this understanding, i can ensure that after my mba, i can successfully start my own company with the right mix of personalities for maximal efficiency.

I have trained myself to do this because i understand that managing a business requires putting in 24 hours of work into a typical workday. I also have a talent for identifying the concepts others grasp easiest, so that they can also work to increase efficiency. As president of the student government association at my undergraduate institution, i was able to use these strengths to put forth more events and end up with more budget surplus than at any other year in university history. I will continue to develop these strengths during my pursuit of my mba so that i will maximize my experience. Answering the question, ldquo tell us about your weaknesses, rdquo throws many level headed mba applicants for a loop. After all, who wants to admit to his or her failings? the weakness question doesn rsquo t have to be difficult you can actually turn it in your favor by considering the following before writing your response. The first step to writing this essay is to recognize and internalize that the intent of this essay question is to ascertain whether or not the applicant is honest and possesses the self knowledge to know his weaknesses as well as the ability to learn from his mistakes.

Essay on Criticism Summary

Admissions officers will see right through this response and may very likely be turned off by the candidate rsquo s inability to take a close look at him or herself. It rsquo s ok to admit to weaknesses and to the fact that you know they are areas that you need to improve and that you are taking steps to make improvements and/or overcome those areas of concern. You can then write about specific events that illustrate the weakness and what you are doing to overcome the failing.

Admissions officers are looking at candidates for their potential to learn and improve. In addition, they will most likely recognize your level of maturity in being able to admit to a weakness candidly. While perfection is a wonderful thing, you can recognize that it is not necessarily a realistic expectation to have of yourself and others.

Then go on to give examples of how you are working to bring this trait into balance. If you can handle this question candidly and reveal what you rsquo re doing to improve rather than attempt to blame others for a shortcoming, you rsquo ll be on your way to acing this essay question. further reading: to wrap up our series on major application essay topics, here are a few thoughts on the weakness essay. I bet it’s your favorite! you, like everyone else, doesn’t like to write about or think about your flaws, especially when you are striving to present a desirable portrait of yourself. But if thats what the application asks for, then just as with the criticism question, that is what you must provide.

In fact, by answering the weakness question thoughtfully, youll be adding to your desirability, not detracting from it. Dont try and make up a flaw thats really a positive attribute in a shallow, transparent attempt to look good. Dont discuss the blemishes of other people as a way to minimize yours or transfer responsibility aka blame.

Human Nature In Romeo And Juliet Essay

For example, a weakness for chocolate is…a weakness indeed, but its not directly relevant to business school or your career. The only way to turn talking about your weaknesses into a strength is to talk about the steps youve taken to address the defect. If your quant skills are weak, have you enrolled in courses that will boost them statistics, accounting, etc. If you had difficulties delegating when you first became a manager, discuss how you learned to delegate more effectively and tell about a more recent managerial experience where your led an effective, efficient team. Try to choose a weakness from a few years ago and from an arena of your life not discussed in other essays.

Do Over Scholarship Essay

Doing so allows you to reveal another side of you and also gives you more opportunity to show growth. by linda abraham, ceo and founder of accepted.com and co author of the soon to released book, mba admission for smarties: the no nonsense guide to acceptance at top business schools. Linda has been helping mba applicants gain acceptance to top mba programs since 1994. our series on perfecting your mba essays: this post originally appeared on stacy’s strictly business mba blog on u.s.news.com some b school applicants balk at thinking of themselves as a product or brand. However, by taking the time to really examine your personal hellip rarr

this post originally appeared on stacy’s strictly business mba blog on u.s.news.com

some b school applicants balk at thinking of themselves as a product or brand. However, by taking the time to really examine your personal qualities, values and aspirations, you’ll ultimately be able to find out which mba programs provide the best match for your unique profile.