Let the Story Do the Work

INTRODUCTION

Why Stories?

How Story + Qualifications = Standout Success

IN 2005, THE UNIVERSITY of Chicago Graduate School of Business (now known as the Booth School of Business) decided to do something unusual: offer feedback to the thousands of MBA applicants who had been denied admission. As one of six admissions officers in the full-time MBA program, I was on the hook to deliver the feedback, via fifteen-minute phone calls, to denied candidates.

I understood that top-tier business schools didn’t usually share “deny feedback,” and that departing from that trend was a way of offsetting the University of Chicago’s reputation for being more aloof than many of our peer programs. Still, I dreaded making the calls. I didn’t realize how much I would ...