Whether you’re applying for an MBA, a PhD in Public Policy (or many other doctoral fields), or a Masters in Social Work, you’re likely to talk about social enterprise, or community service, goals. For some, this will be your primary objective—those of you seeking careers in non-profit, for example. For others, community service may be secondary, but you’re likely to mention service-related goals in the context of how you’ll contribute to the program or in outlining your post-degree volunteer/philanthropic efforts.

Regardless, you should follow a simple piece of advice: use rich specifics to bring your social enterprise goals to life. I can’t tell you how many essay drafts I’ve seen with something like “. . . and I look forward to giving back by helping those in need in my community and addressing major global issues like poverty and global warming.” You may as well write, “I’m a good person, I swear.” It would have about as much impact.

Instead, use powerful details to paint the picture of your goals. For those of you whose careers will focus on social enterprise, this is especially important. If your future path is related to microfinance (i.e., managing micro-loans to entrepreneurs in emerging economies), on top of the places where you would seek employment talk about the specific countries on which you would like to focus (e.g., India, Mexico, African regions), the target segments and types of entrepreneurship you would seek to fund (e.g., women selling handiwork), and the partnerships you would try to forge (e.g., with banks and NGOs).

Okay, you may say, but my social enterprise goals are harder to define because they’re not in a well-established field like microfinance. For example, you may be an IT engineer who wants to use technology to improve the lives of those in underserved rural regions of a country like India. In that case, do your best to specify how you’d like to do this, including by using statistics on relevant trends. You may point out that though Internet use is still minimal in rural India, the mobile phone subscriber base has grown by 70% a year (made-up stat; you should use a real one), representing a great opportunity to . . . whatever it is you’d like to do.

Hold on, you may say, what if I don’t know exactly what I want to do within social enterprise? Well, you should probably have some idea, but it needn’t be highly specific. This is where you can rely on existing examples to lend richness to your essays. Remember, the majority of successful people didn’t reinvent the proverbial wheel; they just figured out new and better uses for it. So find examples of people doing the kinds of things you’d like to do, and (briefly) tell their story to support yours. For example, the December 2008 issue of Esquire Magazine profiles Tapan Parikh, a UC Berkeley computer scientist who has designed cell phone applications to help manage microfinance-related paperwork in India using a simple barcode-reader and voice prompts for illiterate users. His technology has improved record-keeping, transparency, and loan success rates. That example covers both scenarios I’ve mentioned: microfinance and using IT for social enterprise in rural areas. Another example is the One Acre Fund, non-profit organization started by Kellogg MBA alumnus Andrew Youn that is attacking Africa’s hunger problem by providing individuals seed and fertilizer on credit, weekly on-site agricultural training, and improved market access, with all operations and results assessed with quantitative measures.

It’s ideal to paint your own vision of your career path, but it’s wise to use such examples when you’re venturing into new territory or truly don’t know exactly what you want to do. Many of my clients have used this approach successfully at top programs.

And remember: those of you for whom social enterprise will be a sideline or something you do primarily while in the program (e.g., all top business schools have multiple community service clubs and activities), you’re still not exempt from using specifics. Point out how you’ll build on past community service activities with specific efforts at the school and beyond: “At Kellogg I’ll build on my hospital volunteer work with Lion’s Club by driving healthcare initiatives for the Social Impact Club. Post-MBA I look forward to joining NGO X to drive AIDS awareness efforts in rural India.” You get the idea.

So while community service goals are admirable, they won’t have much impact unless you use strong specifics to paint their picture. My fellow editors and I would be happy to help you do that.

By Dr. Sachin Waikar, Accepted.com editor.

Describe your key leadership experiences and evaluate what leadership areas you hope to develop through your MBA experience.

That’s Kellogg’s leadership question for MBA applicants. Simple enough, right? Well, yes and no.

Yes, it’s simple if you take a by-the-numbers approach to the first part of the question, merely restating bullets from your resume in sentence form: “My key leadership experiences include leading a four-person team of engineers to develop a new quality assurance process for a multimillion-dollar client and mentoring three new hires about our policies and practices.”

But taking the “simple” route guarantees a flat essay unlikely to stand out. Instead, you should take a strategic, more story-oriented tack, grabbing them with a concise but rich tale of leadership trials and triumphs: “When I was asked to take over a $1.5 million consulting project for a major new client, I inherited a four-person team of demoralized engineers who were already 50% behind schedule.” Then you’d go on to relate how you led that demoralized team to a positive result, highlighting how you overcame major task-related and interpersonal obstacles along the way with problem-solving creativity, coaching, and persistence.

But that’s just one leadership experience, and the question asks for “experiences,” so I counsel my clients to include two to three such compact stories of leadership, ideally in different domains: professional (usually the easiest one to find examples of), extracurricular (community service, cultural organization, and sports-related experience), and even personal (such as helping to lead your family or a small group of friends to solve a difficult problem or navigate a difficult time).

After presenting the stories you can “sum up” the key leadership skills you’ve gained—developing a vision and rallying others around it; bringing out your team’s strengths and providing development opportunities for them; resolving conflicts; many others—and mention briefly (no room for more stories) how you use these in other roles and contexts such as X and Y.

But that’s only half the question.

The second half is about the “leadership areas you hope to develop through your MBA experience.” “But I just told them how great a leader I am on all these dimensions, so what do I write here?” my clients sometimes say. It’s true that you’ve just related many dimensions of your leadership strength through the stories, but I doubt you’ve addressed everything. A typical area of development involves “soft skills” such as coaching individual teammates and giving feedback, especially of the “constructive” variety. Kellogg is renowned for its people-focus, so these are always worth mentioning. Even if you feel you’ve covered hard and soft skills with your stories, you can always benefit from developing the ability to create/sell higher-level visions (where to take your company, rather than where to take your project), negotiate much higher-stakes deal, and resolve conflicts among groups/units rather than just among individuals. So talk about that stuff. If you have space, even present a real-life scenario from your work where such skills would have been useful.

Now you’ve addressed both parts of the question, so you’re all done, right? Well, no. The key part my clients are most likely to leave out is naturally the part that doesn’t appear in the question: How can Kellogg’s specific offerings help you develop into a stronger leader? Here, in the last part of your essay, you need to map the leadership areas you wish to develop onto Kellogg courses, seminars, workshops, and clubs. Go to Kellogg’s website and find three or four specific ones that relate strongly to your leadership goals, then write about them. Briefly. It also never hurts to mention how much you’ll learn by leading your highly diverse study teams at Kellogg.

Now you’re all done, right? Right.

But remember, if you don't want to go it alone, my fellow Accepted editors and I can help you craft compelling Kellogg essays and those for other programs.

By Dr. Sachin Waikar, Accepted Editor

The University of Pennsylvania announced yesterday the creation of a three-year joint MBA/JD program between Penn Law and the Wharton School. According to the announcement:

"Students in the new program will spend the first year in the Law School and the following summer in four Law and Wharton courses designed specifically for the three-year J.D./M.B.A. The second and third years will include a combination of Law and Wharton courses, including capstone courses in the third year and work experience in law, business, finance, or the public sector in the summer between the second and third years."

The announcement claims that this is "the country’s first fully integrated three-year program offered by elite law and business schools. The new program will target potential applicants with typically two years of work experience, especially in finance, who are entrepreneurs or are planning careers in investment banking, private equity and related fields."

However, Northwestern also has a three-year JD/MBA and claims the program is "fully integrated."

Penn expects to enroll about 20 students in the program each year, beginning in September 2009. For complete details, please visit http://www.law.upenn.edu/crossdisc/study/jointdualdegree/mba.html

Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management is a dream school for many of my MBA clients. And why not? The program features a top-notch marketing and general management curriculum, the standard-issue highly accomplished but well-rounded student body, and what’s viewed as the most people-focused culture among top business schools. Today an increasingly popular Kellogg offering is the Global Initiatives in Management program, or GIM. Each year over 500 Kellogg students—from the full-time, part-time, and executive MBA programs—participate in GIM, “an intensive global business leadership course designed by students” (according to the school’s website). For GIM, student teams plan a 10-week curriculum including two full weeks in the country of focus for field study that typically includes company visits and interviews with top managers, industry experts, and government officials.

According to the website, recent GIM topics have included tourism in South Africa, E-commerce in Thailand, and microenterprise in Ghana. Given the value of insights regarding global business practices and specific industries across nations—not to mention the value of spending two weeks in a foreign land with a group of dynamic classmates—GIM is a very appealing program for Kellogg-minded applicants, and one mentioned often in my clients’ essays. But unfortunately that mention frequently goes something like this: “I would love to participate in GIM.” Or maybe, “I would be very interested in a GIM trip to China, given the increasing importance of that country to the global economy.”

Don’t do that.

Instead, make much more clear both the value of the GIM program to you and what you can bring to GIM. For example, are you an aspiring product manager with pharma experience? Then you could talk about the appeal of a healthcare-focused GIM trip to India to understand the challenges of marketing and distributing pharmaceuticals, biotech products, and medical devices in a fast-growing and increasingly de-regulated economy. To the trip you would bring insights from your pharma experience, including knowledge of US-based marketing strategies and how well these might apply overseas. Remember, GIM trips are student-run, so you should portray yourself as someone who could conceptualize and initiate a specific trip/curriculum. Spell that out: “I would love to initiate a GIM trip to country A to study topic B, which would provide great insights into industry X, which I hope to enter.”

My fellow Accepted editors and I can help you incorporate Kellogg’s GIM program into dynamic and engaging essays that show your fit with the school. In general, the more carefully you construct your essays, the more likely you may find yourself studying Japan’s wireless phone market in Osaka, or microfinance in South Africa, or fast food trends in Beijing . . . on your Kellogg GIM trip.

By Sachin Waikar