Business Week had a recent article on a business school that, for a couple of years, gave “students the option either to write a second essay or to craft a thought-provoking tweet.”
The school was the Tippie School of Management, which I had never heard of, and which, I must admit, I thought was a misspelled joke. (Surely, only a tipsy school of management would ask for a tweet…) But Tippie is, in fact, for real. It’s the B-School at the University of Iowa, and is named after its benefactor, Henry B. Tippie, an Iowan business success who, I’m guessing, has twittered nary a tweet in his life.
I rather like the idea of tweeting your way in to B-School, but the Tippie School was really looking for prospective students who would include a tiny url in their tweet that would lead to something more creative, like a video or a slide show. Which is what the winners of the domestic and international “best in tweet” scholarship contest winners did last year. The international winner’s tweet, which included a link to a photo essay, definitely has his finger on today’s brand-me pulsing pulse.
In an age where packaging is as imp as content, I present myself in a manner that makes me stand out from the crowd.
Rahul Rathi definitely gets that packaging is as imp as content – maybe even more so.
But most Tippie tweeters just stuck to the 140 characters, so the school decided to discontinue the practice.
I think that this is a shame. In fact, I think they should have expanded the program, and given applicants the choice of doing a link-less tweet or a tweet that embedded a self-aggrandizing and/or self-explanatory and/or self-created video.
After all, 140 characters calls for ingenuity, cutting to the chase, the ability to manage under constraints – all good things in business. (By the way, that’s a cool 139 characters, including spaces.)
Consider the possibilities:
There’s the mixed message of do gooder and greed-head:
I want my MBA so that I can become a job creator, plus make lots of money. (74 characters)
The overtly earnest and noble (with implicit greed-headedness):
Understanding business is essential if we’re going to turn our economy around, and I want to be part of that work. (114 characters)
The unabashed suck up:
I’m inspired by the business success and philanthropy of Henry B. Tippie, and hope to follow in his footsteps. (110 characters)
Or the god’s own truth:
As a Kelly Girl and Durgin-Park waitress, getting an MBA is like getting my “union card” (to use a quaint term) for professional employment. (Jackpot: 140 characters)
I could, of course, go on. But the Tippie School’s off tweet.Plus I already have an MBA, and – if at this advanced age – I actually wanted one, I wouldn’t be dragging out to Iowa for it. (Now University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop…that might be worth the haul…)
Tippie may have rethought its twitter contest, but it was not alone in admissions innovation.
Perhaps admissions innovation runs in oddly named business schools, but Duke’s Fuqua (which is pronounced “few-kwa” and not, as you may have imagined, “fuk-yah”)
…now requires applicants to submit a list of 25 “random things,” including life experiences, achievements, or fun facts.
This sounds like fun, until you start to thinking about how to craft a list of 25 things that aren’t random, but sound random, because a lot of random crap that pops into your head when you think ‘fun facts about me’ may not be the sort of material that you want the admissions director to read. Plus, every time you start thinking about your not so random list, that name “Fuqua” (with the wrong pronunciation) starts running through your mind – like the theme to Gilligan’s Island – and you can’t shake it out, and it’s coloring every possible random life experience, achievement, and fun fact you can come up wtih.
And then you start thinking, Duke’s great and all that, but do I really want a degree that says “Fuqua” on it, which will make everyone think Fugazi and Fukawi and a lot of other random things that start out with FU.
So this one seems innocently interesting and amusing enough at the beginning, but rapidly deteriorates into a sweat that has you wishing for the old “in 300 words, please explain why you are applying to the Fuqua School, what you bring to the school, and what you hope to achieve here.”
Other innovations include Chicago’s Booth (phew!) School allowing applicants to submit an optional Power Point presentation. Now I realize that a lot of business activity entails creating and/or giving and/or suffering through Power Point presos, but should such a reputable B-school be encouraging the practice of PPTX behavior?
The Wharton School – and what’s not to like about a business school named after a great American writer?*– is:
…inviting some of its most promising applicants to participate in a discussion with six other applicants, who will then work as a team to find a solution to a real-world business problem.
Which means that there are a whole lot or promising applicants gaming how much effort they should devote to prepping for this endeavor, rather than throwing more effort into their Harvard and Stanford apps.
Meanwhile, the Tippie school has not given up on innovation. This year, it’s asking applicants to send in a photo, and
…explain,in 350 words or less why the picture is meaningful to them,
Why is it that the first picture that comes to mind is me (in the company of my sister Kath, brother Tom, and my way late and much lamented father, the split second before I stopped believing in Santa Claus?
Perhaps I am just not B-School material…
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*Yes, I do know that the Wharton School is not named after Edith Wharton.
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