MBAover30 posted some excellent information from a recent MIT Sloan information session in Santa Monica. Here’s a brief excerpt about goals on the application:
“I also got a burning question of mine settled once and for all. I had read some time ago on The Essay Snark’s blog that you shouldn’t mention your goals on Sloan’s app because their adcom really doesn’t want to hear it. Then at the Riordan/DMAC event I got my face cracked when the adcom officer who represented Sloan basically said that advice was bunk.
On this day, however, I learned from the horses mouth that the actual truth was at the midpoint between those two pieces of advice. I raised my question about the two opinions that I had received, demonstrated the obvious contradiction and put a period on my question with “which is it“? There were several giggles in the room over that.
The answer that I got was [basically] that Sloan isn’t really interested in what you say you’re going to do because you probably won’t end up doing that. Statistically, 80% of Sloan’s students change careers while in the program, many not even knowing about their chosen professions before they get there. That corroborated the bit about goals being less important.
She did, however, say that they’d like for you to be very clear on your need for an MBA and why now, which corroborates some of what the other adcom officer at Riordan spoke about. Why you need the MBA and why now is basically the first leg of your goals statement, which is traditionally followed by your immediate, mid (optional) and long term MBA goals. So finally, it was settled. I now knew exactly what I needed to do to tweak my Sloan essays, which had been bothering me for weeks.”
“I also got a burning question of mine settled once and for all. I had read some time ago on The Essay Snark’s blog that you shouldn’t mention your goals on Sloan’s app because their adcom really doesn’t want to hear it. Then at the Riordan/DMAC event I got my face cracked when the adcom officer who represented Sloan basically said that advice was bunk.
On this day, however, I learned from the horses mouth that the actual truth was at the midpoint between those two pieces of advice. I raised my question about the two opinions that I had received, demonstrated the obvious contradiction and put a period on my question with “which is it“? There were several giggles in the room over that.
The answer that I got was [basically] that Sloan isn’t really interested in what you say you’re going to do because you probably won’t end up doing that. Statistically, 80% of Sloan’s students change careers while in the program, many not even knowing about their chosen professions before they get there. That corroborated the bit about goals being less important.
She did, however, say that they’d like for you to be very clear on your need for an MBA and why now, which corroborates some of what the other adcom officer at Riordan spoke about. Why you need the MBA and why now is basically the first leg of your goals statement, which is traditionally followed by your immediate, mid (optional) and long term MBA goals. So finally, it was settled. I now knew exactly what I needed to do to tweak my Sloan essays, which had been bothering me for weeks.”
