bskewl

Wharts and All: Blogging the Full-Time MBA Program at the Wharton School

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

Bloggers Beware: Adcom's Watching You [Edit 1]

As suggested in my post on how to write an MBA blog, I believe that the admissions committees and alumni interviewers of various schools are reading our blogs. Not only reading! Judging, perhaps. Weighing the merits of. Jotting notes on applications because of.

What evidence have I? Well, the secret society of MBA Bloggers were sitting in the tomb the other day and sharing some information about their logfiles when one of them looked up from the Indian skull he was drinking from and noted the following (small details changed to protect privacy):

i clicked on my stats counter to check out where my hits were coming from etc, .... it was sheer luck of timing but i saw that there was one access from [Selective Business School (SBS)] this morning. But, what was interesting is where exactly it was from. the 'sent from' link says that the hit came from [Top Dawg's] exchange server inbox! [Top Dawg] is the admissions top gun at [SBS]. The link also had part of the subject of the email and it reads: "Fw: [items of interest]".

That's pretty good evidence right there. Remember too that Alex Brown (Wharton adcom) is known to leave comments on many of the blogs, so it's no secret that he certainly reads them.

Therefore, I share the following thoughts with those who would blog about their MBA admissions experiences:

  • Admissions committee members at schools that you are applying to can and will read your blog at some point.
  • If you give enough detail (a GMAT score, your sex, your geographic location, and perhaps your alma mater) your identity can be discovered. (This is not to say that they're out there trying to actively figure out who the bloggers are, merely that it would not take much effort to do so.)
  • Readers will take a favorable or unfavorable opinion of you based on what you write.
  • Combine the second and third items above and it's feasible that admissions committee members (or alumni interviewers) might allow their judgment to be influenced by something you wrote in your blog. This can be good or bad. If you apply ED to Columbia and write in your blog, "LOLZ Columbia's my safety school. I applied ED just to have security going into my Harvard app" I can imagine that Columbia--as concerned as they reputedly are about yield--might be particularly motivated to figure out who you are and ding you.
  • Your blog's edit button will not save you. For example, one blogger wrote an emotional response to her Stanford interview that made her sound (frankly) like an entitled bitch rather than the overconfident but harmless 20-something she really is. Here are some quotes from the initial post (dated December 12th) prior to her edits. You won't find these quotes anywhere in the post-edit version, yet I still have them thanks to the wonders of RSS.
    I expected great things from a Stanford person. I expected him to be warm, friendly, charming, intelligent of course, but I expected more of a fuzzy, comforting feeling from Stanford people.
    The blogger implies that her interviewer was not warm, friendly, charming or intelligent when really all she meant to say was that the person was not warm.
    [The interviewer] made me drive to his office rather than meet me at a location I suggested which would have been much more convenient for me.
    The blogger implies that she was put out by having to come to the interviewer--the nerve of that guy to request that SHE drive to HIM! The horror! There's more where that came from, but the point should be obvious now: once you click "publish" you must assume it's out there for good and that the target of your blogging affections will read it in the worst possible light.
  • Conceal your identity. For many of the current crop of bloggers, it's too late (unless you want to scuttle your blogs and re-emerge under a new identity). To get personal for a moment: I may or may not actually live in NYC (though I know enough of the city to write about it). I may or may not even be male. I'm blogging as an everyman where only a few things are certain: (1) I'm a R1 Wharton admit, (2) I'm going to be at Wharton this fall, (3) I'm desperately horny. (I'll make a separate post on "how to remain anonymous as an MBA Blogger".)

In sum, I'd suggest that if you want to share interesting observations on your MBA life as it happens, you need to be specific and honest. If you want to be specific and honest, you need to be anonymous. If you want to be anonymous, you need to be paranoid. Therefore, interesting = paranoid. Q.E.D.

Comedians, critics, pundits and shock jocks are exempt from this rule because they (unlike you and I) are not lowly peons to be crushed when a Person in Power takes umbrage at something they say or write.

And though I hate to write disclaimers, I should say that I believe most adcoms would respond to this along these lines, "In order to give every applicant a fair chance, we evaluate only the materials submitted via the official application. We cannot allow ourselves to be biased by other materials, and we certainly do not Google applicants to learn about them. Your application will be judged on the merits of what you submit and nothing more." However, I guarantee that if your name were splashed across the front page of the WSJ tomorrow, they'd take note of it and it would influence your application one way or the other.

Edit 1: Minor grammatical fixes

12 Comments:

Blogger nobdy said...

Careful is boring. I challenge you to list a "careful" blog that actually gives an opinion or explores conflict in the least.

I'd rather not write at all than remove all specificity and color from my writing. I'm here to write a blog, not a blahg.

2/02/2005 10:41:00 AM  
Blogger Tanya said...

Worse, if the blogger turns out to be the only waitlisted candidate from her country then the school knows her for sure. Too late to realize now!

2/02/2005 10:46:00 AM  
Blogger TrailHonky said...

No real attempt is made though to match up a blog to an application (at least this is my understanding here at Wharton).

2/02/2005 03:26:00 PM  
Blogger nobdy said...

Wow good comments. I suppose I believe that the line between "too personal" and "comfortable" is one we've each got to draw for ourselves. I know that the best books and blogs I've ever read tend to be those that are most personal. As I think I noted in an earlier entry, Snapshots from Hell was interesting because it was personal and specific.

Various responses:

DM said, "My blog represents me, 100%"

I say that it only represents 10% of you. You're a far more interesting person than will ever come out in your blog. We only get a taste of it through text. Now compare/contrast to http://www.dooce.com/ ... There's a blogger that's clearly drawn the dividing line way over on the right-hand side of the paper.

As for Redwolf056's suggestion that an AdCom might yank an offer of admission if you wrote something particularly vile... That's interesting as a thought experiment, but unlikely to happen. If some admit suddenly became well known as the creator of a neo-nazi site, I bet they'd consider whether "diversity" necessarily includes outspoken nazism. But again, that's not likely.

And finally, "is there any point in trying to play 'who is bskewl' at Winter Welcome?" No, no point. Bskewl won't be at Winter Welcome. The creator of the personna generally known as bskewl may, however, be there. Then again, he/she may not.

2/02/2005 03:47:00 PM  
Blogger tiy said...

Gosh. We're at the stage where we're paranoid now about our blogs? This is a really helpful post, bskewl. Information being what it is--where more is generally considered better--I would agree that some folks might get caught up if an adcom were to take out a few minutes to procrastinate more endless essay reading to take a peek at what we're saying.

2/02/2005 07:26:00 PM  
Blogger Hawkeye said...

I think if the admit decision is a 50-50 call or they have decided to admit a person they would definetly (a) google the person (b) see if he matches any of the blogs they have currently "blackmarked".

I would do this. A google costs no time. I would do this as part of my 2 hr application & essay review itself.

I do not write anything B School specific in my blog. I dont know how your people do it. I deliberately avoided writing anything even remotely Bschool'ish in my blog. Writing the app essays has corroded whatever "essayist" (or) short story writer -- ambitions I had. If I maintained any sort of real world sanity in the last 6 months ..it was through my blogs. Blog gives me the much needed other non-bschool dimension because everything else I did was just bschool bschool. I guess you people are okay with throwing away your blog after you finish MBA or the application process. I dont intend to do so.

I thought i'd slip up and say something about Bschool I am surprised I maintained it.

2/02/2005 08:25:00 PM  
Blogger Hawkeye said...

There wasn't any apt place to put this coment ( its taken out of various sources) so here goes..

BSkewl Said (in his previous blog):

//* The world is lucky that you deign to acknowledge it. Please, bless us with your unvarnished pearls of wisdom, as nobody has ever written anything on the subject of MBA admissions ever, and it's about time someone wrote the definitive guide to the Stanford, Wharton and Harvard interview process. You! You are the Ron Jeremy of the B-school blog world. You fill a gaping hole in the community *//

The previous comment had this:
//*Yes, but peer-to-peer referral is a more powerful motivator and influencer for people who don't seek out alternative sources or references to make decisions. *//

This is from Tony Pierce's blog

//* 15. dont be afraid if you think something has been said before. it has. and better. big whoop. say it anyway using your own words as honestly as you can. just let it out. *//

What you said got me thinking at a personal level. I seriously thought about why I used to write GRE tips and M.S application tips many years before and why other people found that interesting. Why Megami or Brit-chic write GMAT suggestions and why people seek that out as opposed to the published books.

I think people love first hand experience. If its written by someone whom (dont get me on.. "who" and "whom".. I dunno.. i give up) people perceive as similar to themselves then they go for it. Thats why blogging about GMAt/application strategies is important. Its shows evolving technology ...where instead of going for books we can go for blogs by people who have been really successfull. When books on MBA admissions become outdated 3 - 5 years from now and blogs become popular you will know what I am saying.

2/02/2005 10:05:00 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Alex only posts on women blogger's site..encouraging them to apply to Wharton. What a cheeseball!! Power corrupts.... a-hole!!

2/02/2005 10:10:00 PM  
Blogger nobdy said...

Barath: You're right that the cost to Google a name is virtually nil. The benefit of doing so is also frequently nil... I can see why an alumni interviewer might want to do this, though, since they get so little information about us. Many applicants search for information on their interviewers prior to the interview; why wouldn't interviewers do the same?

Happy: I agree that their primary interest in reading our blogs is simply keeping up with brand perception in the minds of their target audience. Knowing what the e-influentials are saying can help them adjust their messages. You wrote, "Jeez, if you can't be honest, and express yourself in your own blog, you are a sad individual. Grow some balls and stand up for your convictions and opinions. Isn't that what most of the university mission statements say ad nauseum." I think that business school students in particular are deathly afraid of offending someone, because they tend to take a utilitarian view of every human being. "How can this person serve me? What is the future value of this relationship?" That sort of thinking generally squashes the desire to voice anything that could offend anyone.

Barath: You're right. I agree.

DM: At what point do you disclose so little that the external profile you've built stops representing you? You've heard the parable of the blind men and the elephant. If you're only showing the world (through your blog) your shapely gams, then we (the blind men) might conclude that Dirty Martini is built very much like a tree. Right?

2/03/2005 06:20:00 AM  
Blogger nobdy said...

I've been reading your blog for a while. What you say does make sense and is true.

HOWEVER, that's still only the elephant's leg. =)

2/03/2005 12:14:00 PM  
Blogger itheabsolute said...

GodIdIgo was paranoid about being anonymous. he was busted. he shut his blog. has he reappeared as bskewl?
1. godidigo is R1 wharton admit. bskewl too.
2. godidigo was irreverent. bskewl too.
3. godidigo was rejected by columbia. bskewl dislikes columbia
4. Bskewl is paranoid about being anonymous too.

Does not matter. Anonymous is indeed interesting. if your anonymity brings such fantastic blogs, we wont mind.

2/04/2005 08:47:00 AM  
Blogger nobdy said...

Thank you for the compliment. Interesting list of similarities you've brought up. In my limited experience, though, you could name a bunch of other people who share those same characteristics.

Perhaps I did inherit some of my paranoia from the previous generation of bloggers (Gododigo, Adam Stein, StanfordMBA, etc) who learned the hard way that nothing shuts down insightful writing like a little publicity.

2/04/2005 10:46:00 AM  

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