Darren, a former MBA Admissions Director, shares concrete ways you can strengthen your MBA application and materially improve your chances of getting IN to your target schools.
Darren shares 3 design thinking exercises from Bill Burnett and Dave Evan’s Designing Your Life that will help you build a joyful life – and find MBA programs you are excited about.
Inspired by Kevin Kelly’s Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I Knew Earlier, Darren shares 10 bits of life wisdom that could materially improve your chances of getting into business school and building a successful career.
Darren shares more hard-earned application lessons from four listeners (now graduated MBAs): drawing a roadmap for the admissions team, prioritizing conversations when picking schools, “prematurely applying” and being strategic yet flexible
Darren shares three lessons from three admitted applicants that have stood the test of time: how to present yourself if you work for a relatively unknown company, how to determine best-fit b-schools, and how to deal with dings.
Darren shares his top 5 “undercover” subrankings that can help you shortlist best-fit MBA programs.
Inspired by The Moth, Darren highlights three tools you can use immediately to improve your stories, so you can show adcoms who you really are and draw them closer to you. Darren also shares over a dozen questions that will help you identify your most compelling stories.
We’re nearing 200 episodes of Touch MBA. Feeling nostalgic, Darren reflects on 10 lessons for applicants from 10 years of Touch MBA!
What if you could figure out MBA programs you’re excited about AND competitive at, that would be a great investment in your future? And do this with the least time and effort?
What are corporate recruiters looking for from business graduate students? And how do median MBA salaries compare to those of specialized business masters programs? Darren shares 3 interesting findings from GMAC’s Corporate Recruiters Survey. This way, you can think more like an admissions officer, and put forward your strongest application.
Darren shares three foundational application strategies from Avi Gordon’s MBA Admissions Strategy: From Profile Building to Essay Writing (2005) that have stood the test of time. It’s always advantageous to master the fundamentals of any art form – including constructing a winning MBA application. Listen on to review the basics!
Darren shares how you can use the five senses – sight, sound, smell, taste and touch – to make your application more three dimensional.
Darren shares three strategies you can use to mitigate your track record of job hopping. How can you present this as an asset to your target MBA programs?
How to demonstrate you’re a great fit for your target MBA programs – or your next employer – even if you’re short on experience.
Darren recently attended a panel “Preparing Your Application: Advice from MBA Admissions Directors” at the MBA Tour in Ho Chi Minh. In this episode, he unpacks the application advice given by five admissions directors.
Do you feel like your MBA story is a bit bland? Or uninspiring compared to the applicant profiles you see online? What if you haven’t overcome insurmountable odds or accomplished something amazing?
Darren explores the possibilities of kishōtenketsu – a four act story structure used by Japanese and Chinese writers for centuries. What makes this story structure interesting is that it relies on contrast – not conflict – to generate interest.
Listen on for ways you can use this Eastern story structure to keep admissions officers’ attention AND demonstrate your self-awareness.