Some cheese with your whine and excuses?

What a great article from Business Week, "The Admit Office's Hate List." Chop full of vitamins, nutrients, food for thought for applicant essays and interviews to B-schools. The article has six points. Why the odd number? In the words of my nieces/nephews, "I dunno." Whatever happend to ten? An additional four tips would have made this article four more points better. hehe... Here's the summary of the article, but I HIGHLY RECOMMEND you read the orginial article in its' entirely.

1. Making excuse instead of explaining;
• Thin line between excuses and explaining your shortcomings other weakness. Show them what you have done since to address the problem. Don't talk about it, show them what you have done and stick to the facts.
2. Writing what you think they want to hear;
   
• blah blah.. no suck/kiss up. Don't use their buzz words. Don't regurgitate their brochures back to them. Say it in your own words, your originial ideas. What a novel idea! Yes the pun was intended. hehe...
  
3. Getting too personal;
   
• If that topic is not appropiate for a dinner conversation and NOT relevant to the topic at hand, then don't put it in your B-school essays. Stick to the point and topic.
  
4. Resume Padding;
   
• "If someone is a relatively recent college grad, and they're suddenly saying they're at a managerial level, that's a red flag..." Get it? Got it? Good.
  
5. Title shopping;
   
• "All B-schools prefer that recommendations come from someone who knows you well in a business... Even worse are recommendations from people who barely know you at all... Choose your recommender based on how well they know you, not their prestige factor..." Enuff said.
  
6. Playing Alpha-Dog;
   
• "It's a tricky thing, striking the right balance between being confident and a good self-promoter without being arrogant and over the top. But being too intense—or even worse, condescending or rude—is no way to win points. [Admission] office doesn't look favorably on alpha personalities that intimidate and exclude other people. Much of that comes through in the interview portion of the application process, but admissions officers scour essays for clues to your personality as well."

What is the the bottom line? Be the real you. Remember, you have to find a fit for yourself. An analogy; Remember having the super huge crush on the hottie in school. After months and years of silent yearning, imagine you now are finally dating that hottie. Now you realize the hottie turns out to be a super baddie. Getting into a top school and hating the experience would be a waste of your $$ and more importantly, time. Money will come and go, but you'll never get your wasted life time back. Time is the ultimate limited resource. I will have to include these points into my next essays edit, which BTW is on revision three.