Amanda Huelse, MBA PodTV Host: Welcome to MBA PodTV. I’m your host Amanda Huelse. Today, we’ll be talking to top admissions experts on the personal essay. They’ll provide advice and some insight on how we can best translate our personal history into examples of leadership.

Betsy Massar is founder of Master Admissions, an organization that helps business school candidates gain entry into some of the top business schools. Of course, getting started can be an overwhelming process, let’s hear what Betsy has to say about writing the first line.

Betsy Massar, Founder of Master Admissions: I tell students to take a look at the essays when they come out, when they’re published, or even look at last year’s essays because those questions are pretty much asking the same thing, which is why you, why now, why the MBA. Have them look at the phrasing of the questions and then read them and then do nothing. Go, live the rest of your life for at least a couple of weeks or months. Once you’ve already read the question, it’s in your head so go off, do other things and then suddenly you’ll find yourself bumping into a situation where you go, oh my gosh, that question is relevant to this situation.

Amanda Huelse, MBA PodTV Host: Kate Casolaro is a communications consultant living in the Bay area who will begin a full-time MBA program at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business in the fall.

So, Kate, what was your first step in writing these essays and how did you get the ball rolling?

Kate Casolaro, Communications Consultant: I started actually by sitting down one afternoon and writing a chronology of my professional life starting from my college and my decisions to major in American Culture and to focus on multidisciplinary education when I was in college, and then talked through all the major decisions I had made in my career to the present. As I did that, stories began to come out and the document ended up being about six pages long in the end, and it turned a wonderful database for me to tap into and then I was able to narrow it down and focus in on certain points.

Amanda Huelse, MBA PodTV Host: Often, we hear students complain that they have no idea what in their life history would be meaningful to an admissions committee. What are some ideas that you might have for them?

Betsy Massar, Founder of Master Admissions: First, when students go back through their history, everything is fair game. They should go back and look at both influences, that is, things that have happened to them that they may not have had a lot of control over and choices, that is, decisions that they have made along the way that may have turned out to be turning points in their career.

Kathryn Bezella, Senior Associate Director of Admissions, Wharton: One of the mistakes that students make especially in regard to their professional backgrounds is they describe them in terms of what they’ve done. If someone’s in a consulting field and they’re around the same age, they have kind of similar education background then probably what they’ve done in terms of project work is going to look very similar. But it’s when they start to tell us about what they’ve learned, how they reflect on their experiences, so thinking about making a mistake and how that influenced their career choices, having a strong success in an area and what that taught them about what they’d like to do later on, those kind of reflections and analysis or insight can really make one person coming from a common field like consulting totally different than another person with a very similar background even potentially at the same firm and the  same job function.

Amanda Huelse, MBA PodTV Host: Now not everyone has been the leader of a team or earned some big fancy title, but we’ve all experienced leadership.

Betsy Massar, Founder of Master Admissions: You don’t have to have a title or a corner office or be head even of a workgroup to be a leader. We see people who have stood up for perhaps an unpopular position. They’ve really made a stand and they’ve been really passionate about something. They’ve expressed themselves with heart and they’ve been able to influence others and in fact lead others.

I worked with a student, she was based in Japan and she was an English teacher in Japan. She didn’t have any real work experience in an office and she wanted to get her MBA and her master’s in film from NYU. So we had to go back and go through all of her history as to where she showed up and where she showed leadership in her university days or in stuff that she actually did as an English teacher in Japan. It turns out she got the Japanese government to agree to use videos that she was producing in the schools in Japan. That is changing a government and she was like, oh, is that a big deal?

Amanda Huelse, MBA PodTV Host: What about teamwork?

Betsy Massar, Founder of Master Admissions: Business schools absolutely want to hear how you work in a team, how you work in a group. Once again, you don’t have to be the head of the team to influence people; you simply have to be able to participate with passion in order to be able to say what you need to say in the organization.

Kate Casolaro, Communications Consultant: I wanted to make sure I represented myself as a leader also as a team player because leadership and teamwork were elements of my career that were very important.

Amanda Huelse, MBA PodTV Host: How did you convey that you’re a leader in your essay and is it something that you carried throughout your whole application?

Kate Casolaro, Communications Consultant: I wanted to make sure that each essay represented a few critical points about who I am as a person and what my personal brand is. I thought about client experiences that I’d had over the years and professional experiences, professional growth moments, moments of challenge and I wrote about those as part of my chronology because those all represented real moments of impact in my life. I wanted to make sure that every story I told conveyed more than just one element of what I was trying to get across. So I wanted a story to represent the fact that I was a leader and that I had strategic thinking abilities perhaps even demonstrate some of my entrepreneurial qualities. I wanted my stories to do double or triple duty as much they possibly could. I just kind of presented it as a whole package and let the success speak for itself.

Amanda Huelse, MBA PodTV Host: How does an applicant write an essay describing their leadership skills without sounding like they’re bragging?

Betsy Massar, Founder of Master Admissions: It’s pretty tricky because you don’t want to sound like a jerk when you’re writing like, oh, I am a great leader or I have so much social and emotional intelligence. So it’s important to actually have the recommender come out and say this person shows a lot of emotional intelligence or this person has a lot of leadership potential. You yourself can also tell the story. Instead of just coming out and saying I’m a great leader, tell a story that demonstrates you’re a great leader or tell a story that demonstrates, you showed a lot of patience or showed a lot of vision when working in a certain situation.

Christina Shelby, Associate Director of Admissions, Columbia Business School: Again, it’s important to tell your story within the essays and within the application. We want to see sort of a clarity in the narrative why an MBA is the right step for you. You know, have you really thought about this degree and the value that it’s going to bring to you and your professional goals and why is this the next logical step.

Amanda Huelse, MBA PodTV Host: Picking the right story can be tough. Let’s hear what Kate has to say about showing and not telling the right story.

Kate Casolaro, Communications Consultant: I picked stories and occasions throughout my career where my story would illuminate for the admissions committee the fact that I was a leader, I was a strategic thinker without having to say it. So if it was a case of me and my team leading a client to have an article placed in The Wall Street Journal, you know, the end goal, the end results of that achievement spoke for itself in terms of the process that went into it and I of course illuminated that process as well.

Amanda Huelse, MBA PodTV Host: What kind of person provided the most helpful advice?

Kate Casolaro, Communications Consultant: I had friends and family that were confidantes, editors, sounding boards and I also worked with an admissions consultant who was the wonderful person to help me contextualize the work that I was doing. She helped me in the very beginning stages and the very end stages of my essays to frame sort of the bigger picture ideas that I was talking about and then when the essays were written, she was one of the final set of eyes on it because she’s seen hundreds if not thousands throughout her career.

Amanda Huelse, MBA PodTV Host: Looking back at the schools that you did get into, what do you think worked for the essays that you wrote?

Kate Casolaro, Communications Consultant: I really tried to be conscious of projecting the truth about myself and my experiences and I had some difficult decisions that I had made in my career. I also had some stories about my personal life that I wanted to share that I thought helped illuminate who I was as a person and helped to explain my professional interests and drives. At first, you know, I wasn’t quite sure if that would be an appropriate forum because there’s the sense that you have to always keep your stories, you know, relating to business in some way or they have to be demonstrative of your work experience. But I think that the two essays in the end that I was most proud of were essays where I really showed a little bit of who I was beyond that work or professional experience and where I also showed a little bit of my vulnerabilities or weaknesses without necessarily being prompted to talk about those, but, you know, talking about my evolution and growth as a person and how that had informed my professional decisions that I had made.

Amanda Huelse, MBA PodTV Host: Just like its applicants, each school has its own personality. Let’s hear what Betsy has to say about writing your essay for a particular school.

Betsy Massar, Founder of Master Admissions: Harvard has some great new questions that tell you something about the personality of the school. In addition to the questions about the three most significant accomplishments, now they’re asking for three most significant setbacks. Those are really good questions to get you to talk about leadership because resiliency is a very important part of how you can demonstrate leadership. At Harvard, I’ve heard it said that the admissions committee is looking for the Wizard of Oz combination. You have to have brains, you have to have heart, and you have to have courage. If you can put those three together in writing your applications for Harvard Business School, then you will be very competitive there.

Stanford is about big dreams. Just look at the cornerstone of their brand new building at the business school that says, “Dedicated to the things that have not happened yet and the students who are about to dream them up.”

Amanda Huelse, MBA PodTV Host: As someone who’s been through the process already, what would you recommend to somebody who’s just starting it?

Kate Casolaro, Communications Consultant: First of all, hang in there. It’s a really grueling process, but you’re going to get through it just remember to breathe and constantly remind yourself of the end goal and why you’re doing this, and, you know, here I am a year later and the reward was great for me so if you really just keep your eye on the prize you’ll get there