GSB’s thoughts on MBA coaches

Stanford GSB announces their thoughts on prospective applicants using MBA coaches. They are strongly discouraging the use of admissions coaches; read what our president and founder, Paul Bodine, has to say about the announcement in a recent Poets & Quants article by John Byrne, “Stanford GSB Warns MBA Applicants About Coaching”:

“I salute Stanford and other schools for trying to ensure that their applicants are ethical people whose applications are authentic. “Business schools have had occasional bad apples among alumni, so it’s a very good thing that they want to send a loud and clear message about integrity. “We have always refused to write/craft any applicant’s essay (we are only very rarely even asked) and we work hard through our process to ensure that the applicant’s application represents their own ‘thoughts, voice, and style’ via their responses to our questionnaire, their comments in multiple phone conversations, their written responses to their consultant’s feedback.

“But I do think it’s important to mention that some applicants working only on their own will have a clear edge in an essay prompt like ‘What matters most to you and why?’. Through education, upbringing, affluence, English language skills, culture etc. they already have the tools, perspective, savvy and language skills to help themselves significantly in such essays. Applicants who are not Poets; who are not from educated or Western families, who approach essays with the tool kit of the engineer/tech type can totally fail to authentically and compellingly capture who they really are, perhaps because they misinterpret essay prompts as invitations to ‘BS’ some canned response or just ‘tell a sob story’.

“My concern is that Stanford’s new guidance might discourage such applicants who don’t consider themselves ‘Stanford types’ (we’ve worked with several whom we convinced to apply to GSB and were admitted) from knowing that a consultant can actually be a partner in developing a more authentic representation of who they really are than they would have managed on their own. We wholeheartedly support Stanford’s effort to ensure it admits ethical applicants.”

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