Business School - Your Skills and Knowledge

An applicant who has assembled a whole range of solid and conscious reasons for going to business school is only part-way there. There’s another, and even more important, issue that you must consider up front:

It is expected that business school students will learn as much from their peers as from their professors. You have to bring things to the table.

This doesn’t mean you have to be an expert in some field. But you have to have had specific experiences, and learned from them — lessons that your peers can learn as well. (This is why most business schools require two or more years of full-time management experience.)

One section of your notebook should be devoted to a list (as long as possible) of the specific skills, knowledge, experiences, and do’s and don’ts that you have amassed in the course of your life and your career: the specifics that your peers will benefit from in the b-school setting.

Most applicants focus most or all of their attention on what business school will do for them. They totally ignore the issue of what they will bring to the table…and then they wonder why they receive rejection letters.