Competition is intense during the MBA admissions process, and some applicants feel intimidated by the impressive qualifications of their peers.
Insecure MBA applicants are occasionally tempted to puff up their resumes and exaggerate their credentials, experts say, but this critical mistake may lead to automatic rejection if it's discovered.
Paul Bodine, a California-based MBA admissions consultant and founder of Paul Bodine Consulting/Admitify, says he has a cautionary tale for clients about the dangers of exaggeration – the story of a misguided customer whose fib about the length of time he spent working for a community organization resulted in a business school revoking its admissions offer.
"Dishonesty and exaggeration have very serious consequences, actually the worst possible consequences: loss of an admission offer," Bodine said in an email. "So applicants need to be honest from the start."
Carrie Marcinkevage, MBA managing director at the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University—University Park, says honesty is ultimately in the applicant's best interest. "Authenticity allows you to find the right school and that school to find you," she says. "Allow them the chance to find the real you." Consequences for Cheaters
Rosemaria Martinelli, a former associate dean for full-time MBA admissions at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and director of MBA admissions and financial aid at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says business schools often do background checks on applicants to verify their credentials.
Cheating is a perennial problem in MBA admissions, she says.
"It's been a problem because the stakes are so high," says Martinelli, who has more than 20 years of experience in higher education and who now serves as a senior director at the Huron Consulting Group, where she advises leaders of colleges, universities and academic medical centers on how to achieve their institutional goals.
Martinelli says during her career in MBA admissions, she encountered situations where students were expelled from business school due to lies on their application right before graduation.
Plagiarism in application essays is also severely punished, experts say. If it is exposed during the admissions process, plagiarism leads to a swift rejection. Stick to Facts
Very few applicants go so far as to plagiarize admissions essays, but exaggeration is a common problem, experts say. Sometimes the desire to make a good impression becomes a slippery slope that leads to deception, experts warn, so applicants should be vigilant about ensuring the accuracy of every single claim made in an MBA application.
"Application readers are savvy," says Dan Bauer, CEO of The MBA Exchange admissions consulting firm. "By reviewing hundreds, if not thousands, of applications they get clear sense of what achievements, experiences and responsibilities are reasonable for applicants."
Andrew Ainslie, dean of the Simon Business School at the University of Rochester, says he puts his guard up when he reads an MBA application that makes the applicant seem superhuman. Ainslie prefers an application that includes an admission of a weakness that the applicant is working to address, because that indicates the humility necessary to learn and grow.
"When I'm looking through essays, I want to see that I'm talking to a real person," he says. Acknowledge Mistakes
Jesse Mejia, founder and CEO of the MBA Catalyst admissions consulting firm, says that failure can actually be a source of inspiration for powerful admissions essays.
"We all have blemishes in our past," Mejia said in an email. "The way to explain these mistakes is to be upfront and candid."
Mejia said applicants who made a significant mistake in the past, such as those with a criminal record from their teenage years or those who were once kicked out of school for having a low GPA, can describe how they have evolved since then and what they learned from a difficult experience.
"This is how you illustrate how you overcame adversity and describe your grit," he says. "Be honest with yourself and know that your setbacks made you the successful person you are today."
Show Personality
Ainslie, the Simon dean, warns against relying too much on the feedback of others when crafting an application, because the result is an impersonal application that feels inauthentic.
Mejia says it is critical to ensure that your personality does not get edited out of your MBA application.
"Asking for support is a smart idea, however, feedback from friends and family that are not familiar with the application process can also hurt if they try to 'change your voice,'" Mejia said in an email. "The way you write is the way you write. How you tell your story must be narrated in a way that the reader can hear you speak from the heart."
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