Crafting Your Personal Statement: Lessons from Memoir Writing

A memoir requires more than a recounting of events from your life. Rather, you must show the reader that you’ve experienced transcendence. Marion Roach Smith calls it the “golden rule” of memoir. She writes, “Memoir is not about what you did. Memoir is about what you did with it.” The experience is not the focus or the reason for the writing, just the vessel for sharing a more universal learning with your audience. 

Smith expands this thought when she writes, “Specifically memoir is a promise from me that I experienced something, I’ve given some real thought to it and now know what it is, and now I am going to share what I now know with you. The promise is not that I am going to recreate the experience or make you relive it with me.” 

This approach also aligns with what admissions committees are seeking in your personal statement. From your past experiences, they want to learn more about your potential and character. Show them how a recent discovery helped you evolve, how you’ve refined your abilities in innovation and/or leadership, and/or teamwork. Prove to them that you are ready to pursue a graduate education and career path.

Below, we’ve compiled a few other takeaways from Marion Roach Smith’s approach to memoir that will help you craft a strong personal statement. Also, be sure to check out her memoir manifesto. 

1. Structure. Memoir is created out of three components. Prior to writing, sit down and consider the building blocks of your piece. 1) What is this about (think: universal, e.g., connecting with and empowering your team, trying and trying again to find the right approach to solve a complex problem)? 2) What is your argument (something that you learned based on your experience)? 3) What experiences from your life will you deploy to prove your argument? 

2. Think small. Memoir requires that you share your growth with the audience, which can be done effectively by incorporating small details. Smith notes the power of observation for showing the reader your journey to transcendence. She writes, “Never forget about the small stuff and how it reveals the big stuff of life.” Small details also create a relationship with your reader, drawing them into the experience. 

3. Don’t forget your audience. Your memoir should hit on universal themes that are relatable to the reader. When you’re writing, and more importantly editing and rewriting, keep in mind how your audience will take in what you’re saying. Did you provide enough detail of the experiences to show growth and to make your argument? Did you provide too much or extraneous detail? Were you vulnerable and honest in your writing? 

4. Keep it tight. Focus only on the experiences, sentences, and words that you absolutely need to support your argument and demonstrate your growth in the piece. You want to go deep, not broad. Adding in additional stories can distract the reader, and potentially lose them. Once you have demonstrated growth and made your argument, your personal statement is complete. Fight the urge to turn it into an autobiography or a resume.

More MBA Programs Offer Admissions Accommodations to Laid Off Tech Workers

A number of business schools are joining Northwestern’s Kellogg in offering special admissions accommodations to the tens of thousands of recently laid off tech workers. 

MIT Sloan will extend its Round Two deadline from January 18th to February 23rd for recently laid off tech employees. Applicants will still need to submit the full application, including GMAT/GRE scores. 

Indiana Kelley is offering laid off employees an application fee waiver, and highlights that they offer GMAT/GRE waivers to all applicants (in any round) with a strong past academic record that includes the successful completion of quantitative coursework. Upcoming application deadlines are January 5th, March 1st, and April 15th.

UC-Berkeley Haas is offering any applicant who has been laid off in the past six months (regardless of industry/location) an application fee waiver for the full-time MBA program, as well as an extension for the Round Two application deadline from January 5th to February 2nd. 

NYU Stern announced that it will waive entrance exams for the one-year Andre Koo Technology and Entrepreneurship MBA program (May 2023 start). Upcoming application deadlines are January 15th and February 15th.

Related: Kellogg Waives Standardized Test Requirement for Laid-off Tech Employees

Growth Slowing for GRE in Business School Admissions

Applicants’ use of the GRE over the GMAT in MBA admissions continues to grow, but at a slower rate, according to a recent Poets & Quants analysis. For the past six admissions cycles (since 2016), GRE submissions have been increasing, while GMAT score submissions have been sinking significantly. The last two years, though, have shown a slowing in the GRE growth rate. The flexible test submission policies enacted in response to the pandemic have likely impacted the trend. 

GMAT testing volumes have declined annually since 2012, with the exception of 2016 when the numbers increased slightly compared to the year before. Last year’s GMAT testing volume decreased by 47.7 percent compared to 2018, the last pre-pandemic testing year. And the 2021 testing numbers totaled less than one-third of GMAT’s record-high numbers in 2012. 

Amidst this decline, the GRE testing volumes steadily increased. However, in the past couple of years, this growth has slowed significantly. Poets & Quants points out that, “For every Virginia Darden School of Business, which saw a 10-percentage-point increase in its GRE submissions from MBA applicants in 2021, there is an Indiana Kelley School of Business, which reported an 11-point year-to-year decline.” The analysis notes that in 2019, an average of 13.5 percent of applicants submitted GRE scores at the Poets & Quants-ranked top 25 business schools, but that number jumped to 27.8 percent in 2020. Within schools ranked in the top ten, the GRE submission averages all increased in 2020. Dartmouth’s Tuck led in GRE submissions at 39 percent, followed by Yale and UC-Berkeley at 35 percent. 

This year, within the top 25 schools (24 reported data), the average proportion of GRE submissions increased only slightly, from 27.8 percent to 28.5 percent. And, within the top ten, the average submissions decreased slightly from 28.1 percent in 2020 to 27.9 percent. Stanford, Columbia Business School, Dartmouth Tuck, Duke Fuqua, Michigan Ross, and NYU Stern all reported lower percentages of GRE submissions this year compared to last.

The longer-term trend from 2016 to 2021, though, actually paints a clearer picture of the GRE’s growing place in MBA admissions. Of the top 52 Poets & Quants-ranked MBA programs, 34 schools have increased in the percentage of GRE submissions over time, while just eight have decreased. None of the programs with decreases are ranked in the top 25. 

Global Pandemic Spurs Demand for Graduate Management Education Worldwide

The Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) just released its 2020 application trends survey report, The Global Demand for Graduate Management Education. The survey data, which was collected over an extended period to include pandemic-related effects, shows that while demand for business education is up, matriculation is slightly down.

The findings reflected the unusual nature of the 2020 application season during which many business schools introduced greater flexibility—the extension of deadlines and liberal deferral policies—into the admissions process. As such, schools, both international and domestic, reported that the 2020 admissions cycle brought an increase in the number of applications received, as well as acceptance rates, but also a corresponding increase in deferral rates and a decrease in yield when compared to the 2019 cycle.

In the US, over two-thirds of MBA programs (70 percent) reported an increase in application volume for the 2020 application period compared to the prior year (only one-third of programs reported increases in 2019). But despite increased application volumes, the median acceptance rate in 2020 was slightly higher than in 2019 (76 percent and 74 percent, respectively). And the median deferral rate—the result of schools’ more lenient policies as applicants grappled with obtaining visas, online schooling, and travel amid COVID-19—doubled from three percent in 2019 to six percent in 2020. Both Canadian and European MBA programs reported even higher median deferral rates of 11 percent, likely due to their higher numbers of international applicants, who were three times more likely to defer than their domestic counterparts (15 percent and 5 percent, respectively). Median yield rates in the US decreased by two percentage points between 2019 and 2020 (68 percent and 66 percent, respectively).

It remains to be seen how program acceptance rates for the upcoming cycle will be impacted as students who chose to defer their start to next year begin enrolling. It is important to note, however, that Harvard Business School just announced plans to matriculate the largest MBA cohorts in its history over the next two years (approximately 1,000 students each year). In a blog post announcing the plan, Chad Losee, Managing Director of MBA Admissions and Financial Aid, wrote, “In April, when we announced our one-time deferral policy for those admitted to the Class of 2022, we were already thinking ahead to those of you applying in the next two years. We did not want you to be disadvantaged by spots already reserved for those who deferred from the Class of 2022.”

Though other elite programs have not yet made similar announcements, they may follow suit in welcoming larger classes in the near-term.