“Know thyself” has been an application theme lately, with Darden’s Dean Bruner touching on it as well as Stacy Blackman’s comments featured in an article about reapplying to B-school published Friday on Forbes.com.
On the Chicago Booth School of Business Admission’s Blog, Rose Martinelli stresses that knowing yourself is one of the most important topics in admissions. She says that it’s very easy to forget about self-reflection when you’re trying to balance regular life in the midst of all the preparations to apply for business school – studying for the GMAT, researching schools, drafting essays, etc.
Martinelli offers several valuable tips in this post to guide your self-assessment process:
One of the simplest is creating a timeline and inserting points of importance on that timeline (whether good or bad) that were critical to your development. Don’t limit your reflection to work and school alone, but expand it to your interests, passions and community. Once you have completed this, go back and reflect on each point – What did you learn? How have you changed? Etc.
The goal is to gain an understanding of your history so that you can build upon it as you pursue the next phase in your life. This process should also help you come up with the “whys” behind your decision to go back to school and which degree may be right for you.
She acknowledges that it’s hard to find time to look inward in this way, but that applicants who’ve taken time to reflect end up writing essays that really stand out during the evaluation process. Sounds like time well spent.
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