1. Show self-knowledge. If you know who you are, where you’re going, and why it requires an MBA, you’re more than halfway to getting in.

2. Show past success. Admissions committees have to rely on your past successes and referees as a shorthand indicator of your future success.

3. Show leadership experience and aptitude. Leadership is the ability to motivate and co-ordinate others to achieve a common goal. It is the key management skill and the key to management success.

4. Prove it with evidence. You think you’re great, and you surely are. But what counts is the evidence. The strongest evidence is concrete: promotions, awards etc, but stories and anecdotes will do the trick too.

5. Position yourself away from competitive categories. Even if you’re not radically different, look for ways to emphasise the differences in your profile and so exit from the herd.

6. Have clear, interesting, ambitious goals. Nothing turns the admissions committee off as much as a candidate who wants to become a consultant or who doesn’t know what he or she wants. They want you to make a difference in some unique or relevant way.

7. Focus on telling your story and don’t try to give them what you think they want to hear. If you get your profile right you can get in anywhere.

8. Don’t praise the school. They are fully aware of their value and their charms. What they want to know is why you are valuable and how you will add value to them.

9. Don’t try to be too competent. Success is good. Perfection is highly dubious. If you are too good, not only is it suspicious, but you leave them no role to add to your skills and build your profile.

10. Be personal. Give the admissions committee a real insight into your character, passion, personality and self-understanding.

11. Be unique. If what you say could be said by the next applicant or the one after that, it’s generic. If what you say could have been said only by you, it’s unique.

12. Be likeable. People always choose people they like as colleagues and co-workers, and the admissions committee is no different.

Precis from MBA Admissions Strategy, by A. V. Gordon (£13.99). Order copies at the discounted price of £11.50 (plus p&p): telephone McGraw Hill on 01628 502700 or order at www.mcgraw-hill.co.uk and quote Times MBA05. Offer ends December 8, 2005.

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