I’ll soon be applying to graduate schools. It’s interesting to see that most schools are evaluating students on the basis of several criteria (they’re explicitly listed for the recommenders to rate from a scale of 1 to 10). Many of which I suppose make sense if you’re looking for the stereotypical business leader, such as “creativity”, “confidence”, “analytical ability”, etc. However, some qualities that I feel are important, are not there. For example, I’ve seen some schools ask the recommender to rate how ‘confident’ the student is, compared to his or her peers. Now, conceivably, with this type of format, an arrogant asshole could score a perfect 10 for “confidence”, and the admissions staff would not know of the flaws, unless the recommender explicitly mentions this somewhere else in the application. Interestingly, humility is not usually one of the qualities asked by the admissions staff, since I feel humility is more closely associated with success than confidence is. I’m likely more confident than I am humble, which is something I know that I need to work on.

But I think this reflects the current trend of many hotshot CEO’s getting hired not to be lead, but to take care of the bottom line and inflate values of their stocks. And business schools may be unwittingly supporting this in their want for someone that, at least on paper, can fit that mold.