Paul Bodine, Accepted's Senior Editor and author of Great Application Essays for Business School and other fine admissions books, just emailed me the following news:

1. Great Application Essays for Business School is available again on Amazon. You can also buy it from Accepted's bookstore, if you are in the U.S., and you will receive a free bonus ecourse.
2. Great Application Essays for Business School has been translated into Chinese.

A Korean version is in the works.

It's an excellent and very practical book. If you are drafting essays or thinking about drafting them, check out Great Application Essays for Business School.

2012 MBA Applicant posted recently that thanks to an upcoming employment review he will have material for the question, “What is the toughest criticism you have ever received and what did you learn?” While we’re glad that  2012 MBA Applicant has material, I thought you (and maybe even 2012 MBA Applicant) may want tips on how to answer that and similar questions.

Regards,

Jennifer Bloom

You spend innumerable hours preparing essays that highlight your strengths and achievements, why on earth would you want to then take up space in your application with examples of situations in which you didn't measure up to your managers' expectations and were the object of their criticism??

Unfortunately, this is exactly what many MBA programs ask applicants to do both in their essay questions and their letter of recommendation forms. In today's post, I'll explain why the schools ask this question, and I'll detail methods for answering these types of questions to the benefit of your application.

In the past few years we have seen a significant increase in the number of programs that are asking for examples of situations in which the applicant doesn't measure up to expectations. For example:

Tuck 3: Discuss the most difficult constructive criticism or feedback you have received. How did you address it? What have you learned from it?

Wharton 4b: Tell us about something significant that you have done to improve yourself, in either your professional and/or personal endeavors.

Chicago 2: Describe a time when you were surprised by feedback that you received. What was the feedback and why were you surprised?

Chicago LOR: Please provide a written letter of recommendation. Be sure to include…areas of development, including efforts the applicant has taken to show improvement.

Stanford LOR: Describe the most constructive feedback you have given the candidate. Please also detail the circumstances that caused you to give the feedback.

These questions are all seeking the same two attributes from the applicants: the ability to accept when their methodology or style just isn't right, and to repair that shortfall. So why has this capability become such an important aspect in evaluating the applicant pool?

The people who will benefit most from an MBA program are those willing and able to change their approach when introduced to a better one. In other words, it does absolutely no good to show someone – at Tuck, Wharton, Chicago, or Stanford, for example – the best way to do business, manage people, and guide companies if he is unwilling and/or unable to integrate that method into his own working style.

So how do the admissions committees determine who has the potential to actually learn from their programs and become a better manager? They seek applicants who have proven in the past that they have the ability to learn about their shortcomings and then integrate new and better methods into their decision making. Prove to the top MBA programs that you possess the maturity to accept and grow from criticism, and you will be one step closer to the thick acceptance envelope.

The best way to demonstrate that an applicant possesses an attribute – in essays, interviews, and letters of recommendation – is to share specific examples of times in which you demonstrated those attributes in the past. First, the answer should explain what the circumstances were: what actions had you taken and what impact, or lack of impact, had they made? Second, what was the feedback you received? What had this person felt was missing from your approach or what did s/he say you did wrong? Third, discuss how you took this criticism. Frankly, if someone immediately accepts criticism without analyzing it, I suspect the person of being a doormat*; instead, I want to hear why the advice rang true for you. Finally, share what you changed about your own behavior or actions following that criticism and the impact that you had as a result.

Obviously, for the letters of recommendation you cannot write the answer to the "criticism" question for your recommender. However, your recommenders might find this post helpful in writing their responses. In addition, you may offer to discuss specific examples of advice that you benefited from to help them thresh out potential topics for their answers.

Using space in your application to show you possess the introspection and maturity to grow as a manager is essential to earning a place in a top MBA program, and my fellow editors and I are here to help you identify and write about the best examples of these attributes for your essays.

*doormat: (figurative) Someone who is overly submissive to others

Senior Editor Jennifer Bloom has been successfully helping applicants demonstrate their readiness for the top MBA programs for 10 years.

No B-school application essay may be harder to write than the ethics essay. For most applicants, one challenge is simply identifying an appropriate story. Many applicants assume that the ethics essay is designed to put their morals to some stringent litmus test. They brainstorm for examples that show them proudly refusing bribes, pointedly excusing themselves from insider-trading deals, or sternly rejecting other blatantly illegal schemes. They misunderstand the ethic essay’s purpose.

Admissions committees use the ethics essay to see how you analyze and propose solutions to thorny problems that lack black-and-white answers. Managers who expect to lead organizations well must be comfortable with ambiguity and have the emotional intelligence to find their way to solutions that balance complexities. Essays in which you pat yourself on the back for resisting an obviously illegal scheme (which admissions officers would expect you to reject outright) tell them nothing about your ability to balance ambiguous alternatives or conflicting values.

To inventory your own experience for possible ethical stories, look under every rock, including your community, academic, and personal experiences. The key is to search where ethical issues are usually arise: at the intersection of competing interests, such as public versus private, individual versus organization, shareholder versus employee, labor versus management. You're hunting for gray areas, moments where your loyalties and instincts feel conflicted or collide.

The heart of the ethics essay is your analysis of the alternative decision paths open to you and their potential costs and benefits. Remember that schools don't pose ethics questions to poke around in your scruples but to see how you tease out a course of action where all your alternatives seem poor. You should explain clearly whom your decision will affect and dispassionately weigh the pluses and minuses of each "solution," without appearing to judge the various participants or predetermine the outcome.

You should always try to draw the “moral” from the story, the lessons you learned and have applied in similar situations since. This is where you extract the particulars of your ethical challenge into a larger insight or principle. If the best you can do is, "honesty is the best policy" or "do onto others as you would have them do unto you," you need to keep digging.

By Paul Bodine, author of Great Application Essays for Business School, Perfect Phrases for Business School Acceptance, Perfect Phrases for Law School Acceptance, and Perfect Phrases for Medical School Acceptance.