Category Archives: Yale

The Yale School of Management has generated a lot of buzz recently, given its soon-to-open new campus and the school’s hiring of Wonder-Dean Ted Snyder last year. Not surprisingly, we get a lot of inquiries about the school. What does surprise us, though, is how many Yale applicants don’t really know whether the school is good fit for them. We always urge these applicants to go back and do their homework a bit more before they start crafting their applications.

Are you thinking about applying to Yale SOM this year? If so, why? How do you know if it’s really is a good fit for you? More importantly, how do you know the Yale admissions team will think you’re a good fit for the school? Today we present four things that you should know about Yale SOM before you apply:

“Raw Case” Approach
Yale SOM offers a unique version of the popular case method teaching style, known as the “Raw Case” approach to management education. Most case method programs use what are commonly referred to as “cooked” cases (or “closed” cases) that are packaged and synthesized before use. Yale SOM has developed its own set of cases which are housed on a multimedia platform and feature the types of open-ended, “fuzzy” source materials that a professional might encounter while analyzing a problem. Sometimes, the opportunity to tackle a “live” case presents itself, for example, when a high-visibility corporate issue is being actively followed in the media. These cases require students to sift through all the data and information to find what is pertinent and what can be ignored. Distilling information is often one of the most challenging aspects of real-world problem-solving, and Yale SOM attempts to teach students how to jump over this hurdle before diving into an analysis.

“Coopetition”
Many schools emphasize teamwork and a collaborative culture. Yale is a friendly school where generally, people are trying to help each other succeed. The term of art for this is “coopetition” (SOM Professor Barry Nalebuff even wrote a book on it) and you can find it in action both inside and outside the classroom at Yale.

Required International Experience
First-year students are required to travel to one of several destinations in the world as part of the International Experience Destinations program. (Stanford introduced a similar requirement after Yale launched theirs.) These ten-day trips allow students to study their businesses of interest within another culture and setting. The trip is linked to the spring course State and Society and the year-long Leadership Development Program. This furthers SOM’s long-standing history of maintaining a global perspective.

Diversity
Most top programs have some level of outreach to underrepresented groups (women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans). However, Yale is much more proactive in their diversity initiatives. The new Pre-MBA Leadership program is a fully-sponsored summer session for minority college students, which is designed to introduce them to the MBA experience – and hopefully help them choose Yale when they are ready for their MBA. Yale has also participated in The Consortium, a joint effort among many good schools that offers a streamlined application for minority candidates (though note that Consortium applications have different deadlines, and at Yale, all Consortium candidates are evaluated together, with decisions released for all of them in mid-February).

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The Yale School of Management has released its MBA application essays and deadlines for the Class of 2014. Yale has made some tweaks this year, and we’ll dig into each of them below. Here are the school’s deadlines and essays for the coming year, followed by our comments in italics:

Yale SOM Admissions Deadlines
Round 1: October 6, 2011
Round 2: January 5, 2012
Round 3: April 12, 2012

Yale’s Round 1 and Round 2 deadlines are virtually unchanged, but Yale has pushed back its Round 3 deadline by almost a month this year. Perhaps the school recognizes that very few North American MBA programs have deadlines past late March, and wants to keep its doors open for as long as possible so that strong candidates don’t have to turn to European programs (which tend to have later or different deadline cycles than U.S. programs). We still advise that you aim for Round 1 or Round 2, but this is a subtle signal that Yale truly does consider applications that come in after Round 2.

Yale SOM Admissions Deadlines

Short Answers

Please answer each of the four (4) questions below with a short paragraph of no more than 150 words. This is an opportunity to distill your core ideas, values, goals and motivations into a set of snapshots that help tell us who you are, where you are going professionally, and why. (600 words total)

1. What are your professional goals immediately after you receive your MBA?
2. What are your long-term career aspirations?
3. Why are you choosing to pursue an MBA and why now? (If you plan to use your MBA experience to make a significant change in the field or nature of your career, please tell us what you have done to prepare for this transition.)
4. The intentions of our students to engage in a broad-minded business school community and to connect to an eminent and purposeful university greatly influence the Yale MBA experience. How do you plan to be involved in the Yale SOM and greater Yale communities?

These super short questions carry over unchanged from last year, with the exception of #4, which is new and replaces a more straightforward “Why Yale?”-type question. These essays really challenge you to be succinct and get right to the point in answering the school’s questions. But, that’s okay. Each of these “micro-essay” questions covers a topic that you should be well prepared to answer by now. Yale just wants you to cut the fat and get right to the point, so the best thing you can do is answer these questions head-on. Career switchers should take special note of the additional instruction in Question #3. In this economic climate, Yale SOM, like all schools, is especially interested to know how well you will do in the post-MBA job market. Career switching is fine, and is even a great reason for pursuing an MBA, but you need to show that you’ve done your homework and are realistic about your intended career. The new question (#4) is a little wordy and “highfalutin” in our opinion, but at its core, it’s still a “Why Yale?” question that asks you to demonstrate that you have done your homework on Yale and are passionate about the program.

Personal Statements

Choose two (2) of the following topics and answer them in essay form. Please indicate the topic number at the beginning of your essay. (500 words maximum)

1. At the Yale School of Management, we believe the world needs leaders who:
   
   - Understand organizations, teams, networks and the complex nature of leadership;
   - Understand markets and competition in different contexts; and
   - Understand the diversity of economies throughout the world and the relationships between business and society.
   
   What experiences have you had that demonstrate your strength in one or more of these areas?
   
   This question is new this year. It asks you to demonstrate at least one of the following: teamwork, leadership, a global outlook, and a philanthropic, “do good” bent. At first glance it looks like this questions asks you to pack A LOT into your (approximately) 250 word response, but keep in mind that it asks you to demonstrate your strength “in one more more” of those areas. We recommend picking one story from your past that adequately describes at least one of these traits, and then telling it in the Situation-Action-Result (“SAR”) format that we always write about. No need to get too ambitious here… Simpler is better!
2. What is the most difficult feedback you have received from another person or the most significant weakness you perceive in yourself? What steps have you taken to address it and how will business school contribute to this process?
   
   This question carries over from last year. We like this one because it gives you a chance to really show off your self-awareness. Applicants are understandably uneasy about discussing their weaknesses and failings, but being able to show how you maturely and constructively handled tough feedback — and then how you put that feedback to use in a later situation — is a terrific thing for your candidacy.
3. Imagine yourself meeting your learning team members for the first time in Orientation. What is the most important thing your teammates should know about you?
   
   This question is new this year, and is similar to the “Introduce yourself to your future classmates” essay prompt that other schools (most notably HBS and Ross) have used. Think of this essay as the quintessential “elevator pitch.” You have just a couple of paragraphs in which you can highlight what the admissions committee absolutely must know about you. This is not an exercise is seeing how much information you can cram into approximately 250 words. Instead, your challenge is to distill down your candidacy to no more than a couple of key points. What do you think are your most memorable experiences or attributes? How do you want to be known by your classmates? It will be interesting to see how applicants tackle this one, but we recommend erring on the side of being less formal — friendly, written in the first person, and maybe even a little humorous. That tends to work better (when done well, of course) than many applicants realize.
4. Required for Reapplicants: What steps have you taken to improve your candidacy since your last application?
   
   This question says it all when it comes to describing what every top MBA program looks for in reapplicants. Ideally you will have at least one or two significant achievements or experiences that will bolster a weakness that may have kept you out of Yale last year. The most obvious examples are a big promotion at work, a higher GMAT score, or strong grades in some post-college coursework, but anything that demonstrates leadership, teamwork, maturity, or innovation — if one of these was a weakness in admissions officers’ eyes last year — can help your candidacy.

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