Linda Abraham, Founder & President, Accepted.com admission consulting agency: I think the Silicon Valley location plays a major role.There are a lot of Stanford Grads going into start ups.

Bob O’Keefe: Welcome to MBA PodTV. I’m your host Bob O’Keefe. Today we’re taking you to the heart of Silicon Valley to none other than the Stanford Graduate School of Business.Not only is Stanford one of the leading business schools in the world but they’re also one the most selective when it comes to the admissions process. I’ll be sitting down with Linda Abraham, President and Founder of Accepted.com, an MBA admission consulting and essay editing service. She’s going to break down the Stanford application and give you strategies for tackling each of the essay questions. You’ll also meet several Stanford MBAs who will give you their insight on what it takes to get in. What are some aspects of the MBA admissions process that applicants may not learn from brochures, the website, and printed materials?

Linda Abraham, Founder & President, Accepted.com admission consulting agency: Well I’d like to step back and first go over what they say they are interested in. Let’s go back first. They have three stated primary criteria.The first one is what they call “Intellectual Vitality” then there’s “Demonstrated Leadership Potential” and last is the rather the nebulous “Personal Qualities and Contributions”.If you look at Intellectual Vitality, the easy to measure that is your grades and your GMAT score, GRE score, Stanford also accepts the GRE, Stanford insists, and I think for some good reason, that it’s not looking exclusively at your test scores and GPA, that they also look at other evidence of Intellectual Vitality.In terms of Demonstrated Leadership, I think the applicant has to realize that the word “demonstrated” is there for a reason. It’s not just because you want to lead sometime in the future. They want to see evidence that you have led recently.The Personal Qualities and Contributions which is very, very broad, to put it mildly, when I think of the successful Stanford applicant, I think of the applicant who can combine an “I care” attitude with action and initiative.

Bob O’Keefe: So to be a successful Stanford candidate you need to put your words into action and then convey that into your application.Stanford receives over 7,500 applications each year with an acceptance rate of less than 10%. So you really need to be able to stand out among the crowd. When I was applying to UCLA Anderson, I spent time talking about my family as well as my experiences in engineering and oil production, which was need to my story. Let’s talk to Linda about how you can stand out about writing essays.But first let’s talk to some recent Stanford School of Business graduates.

Alex Pitt, Recent Stanford MBA Graduate:I applied to Stanford school knowing that it was a very small school, that I would have intimate experience. I was really drawn to that small class size and that’s definitely being held up since I got here. An incredibly collaborative community which has been fantastic. And also a very innovative school and I love the focus on entrepreneurship which is not something that comes naturally to me as I’m a very risky person but the whole spirit of entrepreneurship, which has been great.I wanted a General Management and Leadership MBA program which is definitely another reason why I applied to Stanford over some of the other schools which are much more focused on particular function, like finance or marketing.

Shan Lyn Ma, Recent Stanford MBA Graduate:When I was working in Sydney I was involved in start-up companies and entrepreneurship and I really love that.I love developing new products and services.I found that I started to define what I wanted to do in my long term career and it was really around creating great products and services and being a leader or founder of a successful and great company that makes an impact. I really felt before I came to Stanford that I didn’t nearly have all the skills that I would need achieve that and so that’s the main reason why I wanted to do an MBA and then also the reason why I wanted to do it at Stanford.

Linda Abraham, Founder & President, Accepted.com admission consulting agency:Graduates of Stanford, they go on to manage great companies, but I think the Silicon Valley location plays a major role.A lot of Stanford grads are going to start ups. Google ten years ago is a classic example, but you also have Nike, so that entrepreneurial tradition permeates the experience and I think it leads to a certain outcome.

Bob O’Keefe: How should applicants approach the essay portion of the application first hand for an MBA?

Linda Abraham, Founder & President, Accepted.com admission consulting agency:First they have to approach it like a puzzle in which each piece, each element, is going to bring out a different aspect of you, a different part of the picture that is you, the applicant.So, what I would suggest, is that the applicant sit down and just jot down notes, they don’t have to write full essays, about what are the experiences they want the Stanford Admission’s Committees know about.What are they proud of? What is revealing of themselves and their values?Again using that jigsaw puzzle analogy, you say: these experiences are going to best answer this question and when I put them all together it is going to paint the most textured, comprehensive and impressive picture of me.

Bob O’Keefe: The first question in the application process for Stanford 2010 applicants is, “What matters most to you, and why?” How should they consider tackling this question?

Linda Abraham, Founder & President, Accepted.com admission consulting agency: The key there is soft reflection. Derek Bolton, who’s head of Admission at Stanford, has said many times that Stanford’s application essays are an exercise in accounting.He maintains that there’s no marketing involved, I would disagree there, but I would certainly agree that the foundation for most successful applications, at Stanford in particular, is a thorough self assessment and accounting exercise. So first of all you have to know your values.You have to have them, you have to know them and you have to know where you reflected them in action.If you want to save the whales and you’ve never been to the beach, it’s not going to work.If you value something you think is important, then how has it affected your behavior?When have you acted differently or acted specifically because of this value?If you haven’t acted in accordance with the value, you can’t point to anything concrete, then it’s probably not terribly important to you because maybe you spent more time watching television.I think that that question, and really the quality that is going to permeate the essays, is an “I care” attitude combined with initiative.If you see a problem and you react and you develop a program or do something that addresses that problem,I mean a problem that’s out there, that’s bigger than you, and you do something to address that issue, that’s something that Stanford is going to be very interested in and I think very impressed by.

Bob O’Keefe: Essay number two says, “What are your career aspirations?How will your education at Stanford help you achieve them?

Linda Abraham, Founder & President, Accepted.com admission consulting agency: You have to know what your career aspirations are.An MBA is not and end in itself, it is a means to an end.So, what do you want to do with your post MBA degree?It’s not a place for soft exploration, it’s not like four years of undergraduate, you know “find yourself”.You’re supposed to have a goal. And then the question becomes, “What are Stanford’s particular resources and programs and attributes are going to help you achieve your goal?”

Mareza Larizadeh, Stanford MBA 2006 Graduate, Founder of Doostang.com online job database: The one thing that really sort of gravitated me to my stay at Stanford was the second year. And it’s just the people on the roster that you can take classes from.So the first year I think a lot of the business schools are very similar; and Stanford I know has just re-done their curriculum so I think you get the materials in a different way but it’s more or less a lot of the same material.The second year I think they call it the practitioners, the lecturers, and it’s just you know a who’s who of people who just did amazing things. Andy Rachleff one of the founders of Benchmark, Mark Leslie he was former CEO of Veritas, Eric Schmidt the connoisseur of Google and you know, just off the top of my head, Joel Peterson, absolutely fabulous, he is an investor at JetBlue, he was a big real estate guy he started his equity fund, just an unbelievable guy. All these people, I was fortunate enough to get to know them.So I think it’s just really the caliber of these professionals as well as the great teaching in the first year.

Bob O’Keefe: The third essay question asks to choose two of four options.First of all, how should an applicant decide which of the two to choose?

Linda Abraham, Founder & President, Accepted.com admission consulting agency:That’s actually fairly easy: you want to choose the two that are going to best present you. So if you have great teamwork experience, you’ll choose the option that relates to teamwork; if you have great leadership experience, keeping in mind that Stanford wants demonstrated leadership, you can choose that one.I think these options and essay number three really reflects Stanford’s mantra: Change lives, Change Organizations, Change the World.The key is going to be what is going to help you tell your story.

Bob O’Keefe: If an applicant had to choose one aspect of their application to really focus on to impress Stanford, what would that be?

Linda Abraham, Founder & President, Accepted.com admission consulting agency: I think the applicant may want to, in the self assessment and accounting that we were talking about a minute ago, may want to assess what’s the weakest element in their application and then work on that to improve that.They’re going to want to sell their strengths to be sure but the weakness can keep them out.So first you have to know why you want to go to Stanford and why you are fit with Stanford.What you’re going to contribute to Stanford?And then you have to convince Stanford of the same things that you have convinced yourself but you can only do that if you know your strengths and weaknesses, how they match the Stanford’s values, how you’re going to achieve your goals by attending Stanford.

Bob O’Keefe: Now that was a lot of insightful information that we hope you can use when putting together your Stanford application.That’s a wrap today on MBA PodTV, I’m your host Bob O’Keefe.Visit us at www.mbapodcaster.com to register for weekly audio and video shows.Follow us on Facebook and Twitter to keep up with the latest news and insight on your MBA application process.