This is the forth of five posts analyzing the Stanford GSB MBA Essay Questions for 2010/2011 Admission. The first post provides an overall perspective on applying to Stanford GSB. The second post is on Essay 1. The third post is on Essay 2. The fifth post is on additional information, resume, employment history, and activities. My analysis of Stanford GSB interviews can be found here. Four years ago, Stanford introduced behavioral interview-style essay questions. Stanford applicants now have the opportunity to write about their accomplishments, failures, difficulties, impact, and other characteristics. This has made the Stanford Essay Set a more balanced set of questions. If Essay 1 is ultimately about what you value and Essay 2 is about what you want, Essay 3 is about what you can do. When Stanford GSB started asking behavioral essay questions, it was clear that they had borrowed this from MIT. This distinctive style of question is based on an interview method that I will discuss below. Before reading the rest of this post, I strongly suggest downloading a copy of MIT's excellent guide to behavioral interviews, The MIT Sloan Interview Guide, because reading it first will maximize the value of my comments below. This data has been done with https://essayfreelancewriters.com!

The behavioral essay questions that MIT and Stanford ask have their origins in behavioral interviewing. Byham calls an example of past behavior a STAR, because a complete example consists of a situation or task, the specific action you took and the result of your action. The result you describe doesn't have to be positive; it could be that you learned a valuable lesson from doing something the wrong way. In his book "Landing the Job You Want: How to Have the Best Job Interview of Your Life" (Three Rivers Press, 1997), Byham tells candidates how to identify the skills for a job; explore their own "behavioral dimensions" (the behaviors they use every day to get things done); and recognize and present a STAR with positive impact in an interview. In addition to the MIT SLOAN Guide, I suggest also taking a look at the slightly different guide to the Star Technique that MIT Career Services provides. The STAR technique is really the core method you need to use for answering behavioral questions in Stanford's essays. • Task: identify the task/project performed. This data was done by [[http://essayfreelancewriters.com/|Essay Freelance Writers]] !

• Action: describe the action you took. Just keep in mind that you need to be introspective as well, so write what you thought as well as what you did. Don’t just present “the facts” but actively interpret your actions. There is really nothing overly complicated about this as long as you understand that you need to tell a DETAILED story. Pure abstractions disconnected from a concrete set of action steps are highly likely to result in a weak answer. Similarly, grand actions not told in any depth are also likely to be weak. Identify specific actions that contributed to the result so as to establish a clear link between cause and effect. As when answering any kind of question, another important consideration is to think very critically about what your story selection, understanding of the task, actions taken, and results say about you. Keep in mind that the whole point of asking behavioral questions is to determine how someone acts and thinks as a basis for selecting or rejecting that person.

It is obviously critical to be aware of your own message. Essay 3: Answer two of the four questions below. Tell us not only what you did but also how you did it. What was the outcome? How did people respond? Only describe experiences that have occurred during the last three years. Stanford GSB specifically requires that these experiences come from the last three years. This time constraint is important to keep in mind. One of the easiest ways to trash your application is to ignore this time limit. Essay 3 is the space to focus on the present or recent past. 1. You need to show the capacity for analyzing and acting in different ways, so, while both essays should utilize STAR, don’t tell them in the same way. Make sure you are presenting different sides to who you are by telling your stories differently. 2. If at all possible discuss different situations in these essays, not two different stories from the same situation because you are trying present as wide a spectrum of events and qualities about yourself as you can.