Sharpen Them Goals

June 24, 2010 :: Admissionado Team

1. Sharp goals are memorable. It’s hard to remember the guy who wanted to be a Telecom entrepreneur, or found a non-profit for education in India, or become the future CEO of Coca-Cola. Sharpen your goals. Personalize your commitment to them. A lofty but not-so-likely goal is a bad investment for a school. A small but successful goal has a great chance of blowing up. Schools remember goals they can picture.

2. Sharp goals give your essays focus. It’s easier to argue why you want to become Product Manager at HP than it is to explain why you want to have a “middle-management job at a high-tech corporation.” General statements lead to fuzziness.

3. Sharp goals will force relevant references of your work history. We see it all too often. For no apparent reason, the applicant spirals into a long chronology of his career. But… we have your resume! The work history in your essays are necessary only to prove that you are capable of succeeding at your goals. The sharper those goals are, the easier it is to pick and grab at ONLY the relevant career experiences.

4. Sharp goals prove that you know what you want. This is not just a matter of ambition, but also of convincing the AdCom that you can actually reach the goals you have proposed, because you know exactly what they are. An applicant with unclear goals is reckless. An applicant with crystal clear goals is… a juggernaut. This is hugely important: the post-graduate hiring statistic is one of the most important one for all schools.