And so it begins!

HBS is the first of schools I'm looking at to post their Fall 2010 essay and letter of recommendation guidelines/topics. You can find the essays here.

At first blush I am pretty excited about the essay choices - you actually have choices! Allowing us to pick 2 of 5 very different topics to write on (vs. 2 of 3 or 1 of 2 pretty similar questions I think is a great idea (hint hint to Kellogg & Booth). I never understood why such an involved application process at these schools was at the same time so narrow in your essay topic choice. With each AdCon reading hundreds of applications they will still be plenty comfortable working with all 7 essays so why not allow applicants the latitude to present themselves how they think best? In some sense it makes the AdCon's life easier - you can easily weed out & reject anyone with a weak essay because with this much choice there's simply no excuse.

After the choices, the next thing that struck me was the number and length: 5 essays with 4 of them being only 400 words. Structure as interesting to tackle as much as content. Each one needs to be like the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan as they assault the beach, instantly powerful and dynamic. With 5 essays over 2,200 total words you're much more writing vignettes than essays.. .and I'll feel right at home having just taken the CFA. Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing :)

The next thing to strike me… "I've seen these somewhere before". I like that HBS took the best of other schools' ideas and adopted some of them - in addition to the ubiquitous "difficult decision" & "career vision" essays, you also have a version of Sloan's cover letter, as well as an option time to address your undergraduate experience.

Two things about the Undergrad Experience essay:

• First is that you'll note it is worded to allow for much broader content than a standard "explain away your crappy GPA" but if that's what you need it for the option is there.
• Second, and unfortunately for me, the "undergrad weakness" essay isn't an extra/optional essay like at many schools. Instead it takes up one of your 2 "elective" spots in which people with stellar undergrad resumes will instead be bragging about career accomplishments , goals, or their community involvement. Just makes your other essays and parts of your application, including interview, even more important.

Hopefully a few other schools do something similar as HBS did this year - there's no denying this will be a huge help to people spending 70+ hours at work then going home and trying to apply to 5 schools all in R1. Obviously you don't want to select essays simply because they overlap schools, and you also need to make sure they fit both the particular verbiage of each question while focusing your content individually for each school… but a lot of the thought process should be able to bridge the gap between different applications. Ideally it's moving to something like a BSchool Common App, although since BSchools all like to market themselves as very different from one another I doubt it'll go all the way.

Maybe one day we'll see the top schools (then trickling down to the rest) having half of the word count be common across all schools, which still allows for 2-3 short individual essays specific to each application.

Some quick notes

With this year's Round 3 decisions being made and wait list people hearing their fate, we're slowly starting to see a shift in focus to next fall's application season.

• HBS is going to publish the Class of 2012 essay questions next week (thanks to ClearAdmit's blog for pointing me to the post)

• Chicago Booth released their application & acceptance timeline

• There's a new edition of the GMAT Official Guide (12th Edition)... for those of you not yet done with the GMAT, hopefully this new edition fixes some of the glaring errors they've been printing for a few years in the 11th edition

…and along with the general shift to next year's season it's time for me to get my own butt in gear. I've stalled in my (pre)application work the past week so here's a to-do list for the next 2 weeks:

• I am going to reach out to a few consultants in the next two weeks. I don't know if I'm going to use one but I want to figure it out and, if so I want to get started with them during a time (late May/early June) when I assume I'll be one of their only "active" clients. The main thing I want them to do is help me put a framework around how to best market myself as a complete package.
  
• Need to update my BSchool resume so that I can move forward with a consultant if I decide to. A recent reorg at work resulted in a new title (it sounds like I'm more important now). I've got to essentially add a new section to my resume which will be tough since my actual responsibilities didn't change that dramatically.
  
• I also took on a real leadership role in one of the volunteer groups I work with. I'm now running events of 15-30 people and organizing social outings for the volunteers. Hopefully my volunteer/community involvement will be something that actually sets me apart from other financial services worker bees
• Further discussions with the Significant Other, who is also thinking about applying to BSchool this fall, need to happen. We've already had some really long and in-depth talks about this and the likely result is that we're both going to target a single school as our "top" and go above and beyond to get in. At the same time we'll likely have 3 others (which are already identified) as backup that we will also apply to in R1
  
• I've already been talking with the leader of the main student group I plan to be involved in at my target school and want to try and set up a lunch over the summer if possible
• I know at least one person that will be starting at each of my top schools this fall. Contact them and set up a time to pick their brain about the application process / Adcoms they met / interviews / how they presented themselves / etc.
  
• Finally, create folders for each of my top schools and get all the preliminary information gathering stuff out of the way: what each school sees as setting itself apart, any special programs or focuses I'd be interested in, club to contact this call, etc.

Opportunity Cost

A very simplified analysis of the price of BSchool (financially at least):

Assume for a moment you and your Significant Other both work. You're in your mid/late 20's and live in a big city. You were lucky enough to graduate college with no debt, and you grabbed a good job where you've stayed since graduation. You rent your apartment and neither of you owns a car. For simplicity say you make a combined $200,000 per year (gross, including 401(k) match & etc.) You each live on $60,000 per year which means you save $80,000 combined.

And now you're both considering applying to top BSchools. What's the true cost if you both go?

(One year all-in $75,000) * (2 people) * (2 years) = $300,000
(Foregone savings $80,000) * (2 years) = $160,000
Foregone 2 years' work experience = ignored for simplicity
Total = $460,000

Let's invest that for 35 years and say you make 7% = FV(.07,35,0,460000) = $4,911,227.48

Woah. Actually let's go with "Holy Shit".

It's sobering to think you're going to be 30 years old with a $4,900,000 gap to make up. That's a pretty large increase in earnings needed in order to make BSchool worth while (financially).

Reviewing my GMAT experience (Part 2)

I don't imagine many people are interested in the minute details of how my test day went. Instead I will lay out some of my personal lessons learned, observations about test day, and other tidbits from my experience.

Some of the points here are highly geared to my personal preferences but the idea is to try and deviate from the more generic advice you've already been given/read.

• Register early for two reasons. First, it gives you a date certain by which you need to be done studying - this allows you to set in stone a study plan/schedule and acts as a goal to work towards/light at the end of the tunnel. I made the mistake of not registering very early but I already had point one taken care of - I was trying to get it over with before Christmas/New Years travel - what I missed out on is reason two. Reason two is that there are a set number of slots and you want to make sure to get one that works for you. When I registered I think a lot of Round 2 applicants were trying to get in their test as well. The only available time slot was a Saturday 8am (December 20?). Ugh. I am not a morning person.
• Scope out the test center ahead of time, especially if you're in a city. For me the test center was only a half mile walk, but it was in an office suite, with a pretty much unmarked door (small placard), at the end of a hallway, on a random floor of a nondescript office building I had never been to. Yeah, awesome. Add in a -30 degree wind-chill and 7:30am on a Saturday… well there aren't many people walking around. The building was totally deserted save for a lone security guard by the single unlocked door (of about 10 entrances). If I hadn't visited to make sure of the location ahead of time there's no way I would have found it.
• This one is more for my own piece of mind: I'm pretty sure they call you in order of when you registered… not when you check in. I had a very unnerving experience of being the first one to check in and the last one called into the testing room. Others seemed to be going in no particular order and the guy at the desk was less helpful than someone at the DMV. He did little to allay my fears that I had been forgotten as I waited until 8:20 to be called for my 8:00am test slot. Just an FYI from my own experience, no idea if it's the norm. I registered really late so I assume this is what was going on.

Now to the actual test experience

• Sound. I used the headphones provided by the test center to block out the furious keyboard tapping of other test takers. Luckily once I'm "in the zone" I can tune out almost anything. If you're more easily distracted I'd recommend doing practice tests with your own earplugs to get used to them and then bringing those to test day.

• Keyboard. I have a personal hatred of those seemingly ubiquitous black Dell keyboards with huge spaces between the keys… which is what my test center had. I can't type on them to save my life; probably about 75% of my normal speed which is frustrating during a timed essay. Thankfully I checked out the test center ahead of time and was aware of this so I did some practice at the library.
• Scratch paper. You would think this knowledge is more prevalent but I didn't find it out until well into my classroom GMAT sessions (maybe I'm just slow). The laminated yellow legal-sized notepad that the prep-class providers all give along with a crappy erasable marker? Yeah, that's what you actually get on test day. If you write small or tend to erase a lot in math, I'm sure this will wreak havoc with your math. It's also kind of awkward working with 6 pages of spiral bound legal paper.
  

I'll finish with 2 more items that are probably on every other advice article but I believe bear repeating

• Don't solve practice problems in the practice book! Use scratch paper (or the erasable notepad but you won't be able to review the problems later)! You have to use scratch paper on test day… solving problems presented on a computer screen is VERY VERY different than solving them directly in the practice book next to the problem itself. If you don't practice this ahead of time you WILL be slower and you WILL make stupid mistakes.
• Use your breaks. Go to the bathroom at each break even if you don’t think you need to. Drink a little bit of water and have a little food (almonds & a chewy granola bar for me). Being thirsty/hungry/gotta pee! are small distractions that are easily avoided - there's simply no need for them. Along with this tip I'd make sure to eat well the day before your test. Your previous day's lunch and dinner will have more of an effect than test day breakfast if you have a morning session.

Good luck!