Stacy Blackman helps in designing the b-school strategy...

I have been fortunate enough to get hold of "DESIGNING YOUR BUSINESS SCHOOL BRAND" by Stacy. The book talks about various parameters that one should take into consideration while formulating the application strategy. It starts by explaining the important aspects of branding yourself, moves on to help you plan your branding strategy and ultimately touches upon the topic of communicating your strategy to the ad-coms.

The book has just 28 pages and i believe is a good resource for applicants who have started late. The book will help an applicant to understand his/her own strengths and accordingly create a portfolio of schools based upon the risk apetite. The book explores the characterstics of decision making body {ad-com}, and the nuances of app process, helping the applicant to create an effective sales pitch.

Then there is a brag sheet, an exercise that will come handy while working on various type of essays {basically helping you to answer the WHAT part}. Once you have listed all your accomplishments {small or big/ personal or professional} you need to articulate them in an interesting manner..and here Stacy suggests the STAR approach {Once the plot is freezed STAR approach will help you in building the narrative}..Lastly, the book will help applicants to answer "Why" and "How" parts of the app...

Having read Richard Montauk's bestseller {How to Get Into the Top MBA Programs } and scott shrum's "Your MBA game plan", i couldn't help but compare Stacy's product to these 2 books. Montauk's book is as detailed as it can get...it talks about positioning, effectively communicating your story etc etc in utmost details and to add to it the book has many sample essays...The problems that i see with Montauk's book are:

1. it is too detailed..gets boring at times...and after reading sample essays you might be tempted to think along those lines..in the way losing your own unique brand ... {reading sample essays is good but getting too influenced by them is bad..}
2. if you are starting late then Montauk is not for you...reading hundreds of pages and understanding them will take time...
3. reading some out of the world essays and recos might deter your spirit...the sample essays included belong to some of the Godly candidates...and i am not one of them....{these sample essays might create a self doubt..in some of the applicants}

The MBA game plan --

1. talks at 20, 000 ft level...
2. good to read when you are contemplating whether to go for an MBA or not...

Stacy's book
1. Short, crisp
2. has good exercises to help you create an app strategy
3. downside is the price...at USD 29+ i think price is a bit on higher side..but then you are going to spend 140k USD on MBA...so 29 USD is peanuts..

p.s: the views expressed above are entirely mine..