The essay-writing process begins with introspection; there's no shortcut around it. Before you begin writing, even before you know the questions your schools asked, begin developing a short personal marketing message or "handle" that integrates the key themes (strengths, experiences, interests) you want your application to communicate. Imagine the admissions process as a cocktail party. Your hosts' (the adcoms) time is limited. They must make the rounds with all their “guests” (applicants) before the night’s over. Since you can't give them your whole life story, everything you say must communicate a compact, multidimensional message that's distinctive enough for your host to remember long after other “partygoers” have made their pitch. Take your time, cast your net widely, and ask friends and family for their input, so the handle you devise reflects key uniqueness factors from your professional, personal, community, and academic lives.

As a rule of thumb, construct your self-marketing handle out of four or five themes, each one rich enough to build an essay around. If you come up with "a natural leader with strong analytical skills and a social conscience," you're thinking far too broadly. If your handle runs past a sentence or two, unless it's truly scintillating, business schools may lose it in the crowd. The blend of themes should emphasize your multidimensionality. That is, you're not only a testing team lead at IBM, but you’re also a Norwegian American raised in Ecuador who also loves taxidermy and tutoring immigrant kids for the Knowledge Trust Alliance.

Remember that your admissions "hosts" will be bringing a long memory of past conversations to your brief encounter. Simply telling them you're a banker or marketing manager will trigger all sorts of valid assumptions about your skills and professional exposures. If you’re applying from a traditional MBA feeder profession like consulting or investment banking, for example, your handle will come equipped with analytical and quantitative strengths. So round it out distinctively by including themes that B-schools don't automatically associate with your profession, such as creativity (e.g., your lifelong devotion to basket weaving), social-impact causes (e.g., that stint training subsistence farmers in Malawi), or out-of-the-box professional experiences (e.g., your first career as a geography teacher). Or look for unusual childhood or family experiences, distinctive hobbies, or international experiences that offset the predictability of your professional profile -- and incorporate these into your handle.

Although a distinctive multidimensional handle is ideal, it must truly capture who you are. Don't try to force a theme -- "internationalism," for example, or "creativity" -- onto your profile if you don't have the experiences to back it up. Again, each of your handle’s themes must be deep enough that you could write a full essay around it.

Excerpted from "Great Application Essays for Business School" (McGraw-Hill) by Paul Bodine.

Think you know how to write an effective wait-list letter? Test your knowledge with the following quiz:

1. Wait-list letters may be three or more single-spaced pages long:  (a) when the applicant has a lot of accomplishments to talk about, (b) they should never exceed two pages, (c) only for law school wait-list letters, (d) if you are not enclosing an additional letter of recommendation.

2. Expressing some frustration or disappointment in the wait-list letter is: (a) OK if the school is really your number-one choice, (b) appropriate if it reflects how you honestly feel, (c) never a good idea, (d) useful in the letter's conclusion to elicit sympathy.

3. During the wait-list process, you should generally aim to contact the wait-listing school: (a) every other day if it's really your number-one choice, (b) weekly by email or letter, (c) only when prompted by the school, (d) every three to four weeks (if the school allows contact).

4. The main topics of a wait-list letter should be: (a) your recent professional achievements, (b) new reasons why this school is a good fit for you, (c) developments in your community work since applying, (d) any substantial recent examples that offset the weaknesses of your application, (e) all of these.

5. It's acceptable to repeat wording from your application essays in the wait-list letter: (a) never, (b) if you run short of time, (c) if it was an especially strong part of your application, (d) if you think it's important enough to reinforce.

Answers:  1b,  2c, 3d, 4e, 5a.

The essay-writing process begins with introspection; there's no shortcut around it. Before you begin writing, even before you know the questions your schools asked, begin developing a short personal marketing message or "handle" that integrates the key themes (strengths, experiences, interests) you want your application to communicate.

Imagine the admissions process as a cocktail party. Your hosts' (the adcoms) time is limited. They must make the rounds with all their “guests” (applicants) before the night’s over. Since you can't give them your whole life story, everything you say must communicate a compact, multidimensional message that's distinctive enough for your host to remember long after other “partygoers” have made their pitch. Take your time, cast your net widely, and ask friends and family for their input, so the handle you devise reflects key uniqueness factors from your professional, personal, community, and academic lives.

As a rule of thumb, construct your self-marketing handle out of four or five themes, each one rich enough to build an essay around. If you come up with "a natural leader with strong analytical skills and a social conscience," you're thinking far too broadly. If your handle runs past a sentence or two, unless it's truly scintillating, business schools may lose it in the crowd. The blend of themes should emphasize your multidimensionality. That is, you're not only a testing team lead at IBM, but you’re also a Norwegian American raised in Ecuador who also loves taxidermy and tutoring immigrant kids for the Knowledge Trust Alliance.

Remember that your admissions "hosts" will be bringing a long memory of past conversations to your brief encounter. Simply telling them you're a banker or marketing manager will trigger all sorts of valid assumptions about your skills and professional exposures. If you’re applying from a traditional MBA feeder profession like consulting or investment banking, for example, your handle will come equipped with analytical and quantitative strengths. So round it out distinctively by including themes that B-schools don't automatically associate with your profession, such as creativity (e.g., your lifelong devotion to basket weaving), social-impact causes (e.g., that stint training subsistence farmers in Malawi), or out-of-the-box professional experiences (e.g., your first career as a geography teacher). Or look for unusual childhood or family experiences, distinctive hobbies, or international experiences that offset the predictability of your professional profile -- and incorporate these into your handle.

Although a distinctive multidimensional handle is ideal, it must truly capture who you are. Don't try to force a theme -- "internationalism," for example, or "creativity" -- onto your profile if you don't have the experiences to back it out. Again, each of your handle’s themes must be deep enough that you could write a full essay around it.

Excerpted from Great Application Essays for Business School by Paul Bodine (McGraw-Hill, 2006).

The trend toward accepting GRE scores in lieu of GMAT scores is continuing to gather force. Motivated by a desire to expand the applicant pool beyond the traditional MBA feeder professions, Stanford University began accepting GRE scores in June 2006.

As Stanford's MBA admissions director Derrick Bolton candidly put it in a Marketwire article released last month: "The GRE test takers are more likely to be women, and more likely to be undergraduates or just a year out, while the GMAT is more popular with those who have been out a few years. ... If we are able to fish in both of those pools, how can that hurt us? [There are] definitely some people who would not have applied to the MBA program had we put an additional barrier of requiring the GMAT." Other U.S. B-schools have followed suit, including Georgetown's McDonough School, MIT's Sloan School, University of Michigan's Ross School, and Johns Hopkins University's Carey Business School.

The days of the GMAT's hegemony appear to numbered in Europe as well. Helsinki School of Economics, Barcelona School of Economics, and ESADE Business School, among others, are also accepting GRE scores. In February, the GMAT suffered another defection when Madrid's Instituto de Empresa (IE) Business School announced it too will accept GRE scores. David Bach, Empresa's Associate Dean of MBA Programs, argues that "Accepting the GRE supports our efforts to attract high-quality participants from very diverse backgrounds, including students who may not have previously contemplated an MBA," according to the March 25 Marketwire story.

The trend is not as shocking as it may appear. According to ETS, the developers of both the GMAT and GRE, neither test is a specialized business skills test, both test math ability at an equivalent level, and 70 percent of the data interpretation questions in the GRE's Quantitative Reasoning section are presented in a "business context."

Source: /www.marketwire.com, March 25, 2008.