Montana Will Template: Fill & Download for Free

Your question gets asked, in one form or another, many times a day during the fall. As I write, admission officers from hundreds of schools are covering cities in every State in the US as well as hundreds of cites across the globe in search of students. In my travels when I served as director of international admission, I heard many versions of the answer to this question from representatives of the most selective schools in the US. My answer, however, will try to provide a frame in which the answer branches into world we live in now.Whether we know it or not, most of us are Platonists. As Alfred North Whitehead famously said, all subsequent philosophy can be interpreted as a footnote to Plato. I for one think this is unfortunate. Plato’s great idea was the Ideal. He created another world in which everything on earth was but a pale shadow (see the allegory of the cave in The Republic for more on this) of the Ideal forms that exist, actually exist, somewhere. As a bit of mythmaking this approach to things—to the world—led to Western civilization judging the world by how any particular thing measures up the perfection of the Ideal.The search for perfection has led to all sorts of disappointments. The perfect place, mate, or school does not exist despite the way ratings games place people places and thngs on lists of what is best or what approaches most closely the Ideal.To me, however, and to admission offices, at least at some places, Plato’s approach does not work all that well. Why? I think most who work in highly selective admission do not have a template for what THE ideal student is.Valedictorian of the top secondary school in the world, 2400 SAT, 22 APs, captain of national winning football/crew team, founded a start up company listed on NYSE but gave all proceeds to charity, medal of valor for saving families from floods in Colorado, (as well as kitty cats from trees) who also happens to be a left-handed mix of African American, Latino, Native American and a descendant of Thomas Jefferson, Confucius, and Gandhi who has been raised by neighbors after he or she (or transgendered) was living in a homeless shelter after his parents died one of suicide after having been abusive to the rest of the family and the other killed by a drunken driver. His or her science research has been published in Science magazine. A feature film 'Bootstrap", based on his or her multimillion selling autobiography will be out released just in time for the Holidays with a cast including Brad Pitt, Frieda Pinto, Jonny Depp, Rihanna, Aishwarya Rai and Gong Li, co-directed by Steven Spielberg, David Lynch, and Abbas Kiarostamiwith a musical score by Daft Punk, Bob Dylan, XX, PSY, and Miley Cyrus. He or she, of course, played at least one instrument on each track and will have the lead vocal on the song that opens with the credits. And he or she will, of course, play himself or herself-- the Oscar buzz is already the subject of stories Buzzfeed, Huffington etc. etc.Get real. Forget the ideal. The ideal person described above does not exist. If you begin to compare yourself to this ideal you will find yourself feeling inadequate. People are flawed; that’s what makes us work for things. We need to learn from our mistakes as much as our successes (if not more). If you are thinking that I do not believe in role models, then you would be wrong. But role models are real people who lived in the world. Having high goals and role models, scientific research and data demonstrate, leads to success. But having an impossible ideal to measure yourself against is not useful or pragmatic.In Part II, I promote what I think is a more useful way of thinking about what schools look for and how best to think of ways to approach the process without as much stress and without having a perfect/impossible ideal to compete with.IIPlato was around for 2000 years before the US came into being. But the latecomers to the world of thinking came up with something I would encourage schools, students and just about everyone else to think about. C.S. Pierce and William James, a little over a century ago, founded a school of philosophy called Pragmatism. They dismissed the Platonic ideal as an unsuccessful and at times harmful way to measure the world. Instead of playing with Plato, they dismissed his Ideal and posited a new approach: is something, even something imperfect, as all things in the world must must be, useful to a task or thought? If so, then it does not matter whether it is even ‘true’ let alone an ‘Ideal'.Why this mini-lesson in philosophy? Admissions officers are, or at least should be, pragmatists rather than Platonists. Most admission deans do not bother to look for the impossible—the ideal student—since he or she does not exist. Instead they ask: Is this particular student useful to our institutional needs? This questions leads to decisions and thinking at odds with those who search for an ideal.Let’s start with the basics. Admission officers work for a particular school and the school has concrete needs. What these various and at the same time specific needs consist of will largely determine the kinds of students they accept. The needs vary from school to school, but here are a few that almost all selective schools pay attention to:PointyIs a student smart? Smart is not easily defined but in college admission it still gets quantified. A student taking challenging courses, earning top grades and doing well on a range of tests (SAT or ACT or AP or IB or A level etc.), with strong teacher recommendations and strong support from a school counselor ends up in the smart pile. Those having the top scores, programs and performance are often accepted to selective schools largely based on academic potential.But there are different ways of demonstrating intellectual promise and the old standby cliché ‘academic passion’. A student who has done exceptionally well in the sciences, has performed research and taken part in science competitions and received recognition often is not a great athlete will stand a great chance of getting into top schools which offer engineering or research based science. Almost all Intel semifinalists end up with great places to go whether or not they’ve done all that much except prepare for this competition.Sometimes this happens but it is rare. But admission officers are, as I have said, pragmatic. They look at what strengths a student brings and evaluate them. If the school wants great future scientists, then they may accept a student who has never participated in a sport or never done all that much outside of his or her passion. The common terms for this kind of student is pointy, not as in the pointy-headed intellectual as pointy describes other kinds of students too.Instead, they create a class of students with different talents, backgrounds, and worldviews. A student who is remarkably gifted as a writer will be not be expected to be a science whizz kid too. But this writer must compete against all the other students who have been identified as great writers and must be near the top of the stack.In other words, an applicant pool does not exist as an aggregate to an admission office. This highly selective admission process should be, at least in some ways, reassuring to students. One never competes against the whole applicant pool. Rather one competes in the group one is placed in.SpecialsOn the other hand, some groups are much better to be in than others. Legacies, under-represented students, and, to a lesser degree, students who demonstrate ‘grit 'tend to get a significant boost in the admission process—just look at the acceptance rates for these groups for proof.For example, a student who is a reasonably good student, but who has the talent to bring home a championship in a sport the school loves, will then go to the top of the pile of that subset of students.UnspecialsMembership in some groups also means that the chances of being offered admission to highly selective schools will be even harder than the published school profiles often indicate.Here are just two examples:A person in admission for 3 decades I knew well used to joke, politically incorrectly, about how bad it was to be a “girl from New Jersey” when applying to selective schools. It was not that he disliked the Garden State or females. Instead, demographics came into play. There are thousands of great female students in New Jersey who attend at great secondary schools. Females do better than males academically and New Jersey is densely populated but does not have a large number of state schools to keep them near home. Colleges cannot admit that they practice a form of affirmative action for men but an article in the New York times from an admission office at a liberal arts school admission officer admitted as much. Schools want to keep a balance between males/female ratios even if this means that they may hold females to higher academic standards. The same thinking goes into school’s efforts to get geographical diversity. Schools who want a national reputation need to show on their profiles that they draw students from all across the country. A student from Montana (the typical State named in discussions about this form of grouping) stands a better chance of admission that a student with virtually the same academic credentials from New Jersey. The thinking goes like this: a student is more than scores. Growing up on Montana will affect the thinking, experience, and outlook of an individual. Having people from different places will make the overall educational conversation on a campus more inclusive and wide-ranging. Whether this actually is measurable in any way is another matter. Or whether someone from Montana is inherently more diverse than someone from Teaneck or Trenton is a subject for debate, but at least at present the place someone lives does affect the chances for admission. Given that very few students apply from certain states to schools far away from hone means that they will be measured against the best students from their state rather than simply against the whole applicant pool. Some schools pay far more attention to geography than others, but the chances of being admitted from Montana with somewhat lower academic credentials are verifiable should the schools ever release the data to the public.Students from China applying to Ivies face enormous challenges. The stats show that Asians as a group have to earn significantly higher scores on tests in order to be accepted. But it doesn’t stop there for students from China. Because schools limit the overall number of international students they admit, those who apply from countries with huge numbers of applicants face greater challenges. In some cases the acceptance rate forChinese students to some schools are under 1%. Schools will not publish this information as then fewer students would apply and that would possibly mean they would miss out on a great student they wanted. Or more realistically, it would mean their application numbers would drop and this would hurt their selectivity ranking in the US News.***********************************************************************Lots of people do not like the fact that schools choose students based upon groups. But schools are not alone in favoring groups. We all do it at some level whether in terms of friendships, jobs, or life partners.Colleges and universities stress that the admission process is based on an assessment of each applicant as an individual. What I have written here would seem to undermine this assertion, but things are not quite so simple. Students are looked at as individuals but they are looked at as individuals who are also part of groups.The groups are divided in ways I have outlined but within the groups students are given a close look for individual achievement and abilities. I have said here before that the world exists far more on the axis of both/and rather than either/or and in the case of groups vs. individuals I would again ask that people looking to critique or learn about admission understand that there is room for paradox and overlapping yet differing approaches.Mutually exclusive thinking rather than pragmatic compromises often predominate political thinking these days but the challenge of trying to do many things well—bringing in lots of different great students with great being defined differently, seems a good way to, as the pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty said repeatedly , "muddle through" the infinite complexities of issues and life.

Thank you for your question. I receive questions about writing business plans all of the time. I’m not quite sure why but writing a plan seems to be a daunting task when it really doesn’t need to be one. Writing a business plan does not mean you must reinvent the wheel so to speak but follow a basic format. Today, it is incredibly easy to write a plan as there are numerous templates and formats for writing plans available on the internet. I find the best of the business plan software and templates is Business Plan Pro. I have used Business Plan for years. It is very user friendly and relatively easy to use.As an example it will ask you the relevant questions, i.e. what is your business, competition in the marketplace; team members, etc. Most importantly it enables you to drop in your financials into an excel type program. The template is already created; however, it is up to you to fill in the categories and numbers. Only you can give that information as it is your business. If you don’t know the numbers you may have a problem in creating your company? I find too it really helps to gel the company direction and financials in your brain. It’s a good and worthwhile exercise that ultimately serves you well.There are many good business plan software and templates available. It is up to you to find the one that works best for your purposes. Remember, no one expects you to be an expert in writing business plans. However, it is necessary for your company. The fact you use a business planning template does not reflect poorly on you. It is all about the professionalism of the presentation and the outcomes.I hope this is helpful. Good luck!

Thanks for the question. I have seen so many different business plans from entrepreneurs and business owners and their ideas of what they call business plans it will make your head spin! Some will tell you the bare minimum information and others will give the most elaborate plans you can imagine. One that I can think of was a business plan for a company that I was involved with and the CFO wrote the plans. They had the most elaborate financials that really gave no useful information. She thought the more information she would stick into it would make it look like they knew what they were doing? It was her elaborate financial analysis that actually prevented them from getting funding because no one, except for the CFO could understand it?When putting a plan together there really is a format to follow that includes critical information that will not only help you plot the direction of your business but will also help you in the event you need funding, investments or bank loans. A good plan, in my estimation, should include the following:EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThe executive summary should include your business concept its product and the market it will serve. It should point out the need in the market and why your service or product is necessary and its competitive edge.Financial features that highlight the important financial points of the business including sales, profits, cash flows and return on investment.Financial requirements Clearly stating the capital needs from starting the business and expansion if required. Detail how the capital will be used, and the equity, if any, that will be provided for funding and if so the source of the collateral.Basic information about the company with relevant information about the company, its legal form of operation, when it was formed, the principal owners and key team membersDetail any developments within the company that are essential to the success of the business including patents, prototypes, location of a facility, any crucial contracts that need to be in place for product development, or results from any test marketing that has been conducted.An Executive Summary is exactly what is says a summary of your business and its plan. The detail of your ES will be positioned at the beginning of your business plan.THE BUSINESS PLANThe beginning of your Business Plan should have a Purpose Mission, Vision and Values statement. The PMVV statement needs to be easy to read and succinct. A long and labored PMVV statement says to investors you really are not sure who you are as a company? I always tell my clients if you cannot capture my attention in the Executive Summary and the Purpose Mission, Vision and Values Statement I most likely will loose interest in the rest of the plan.The Rest of your plan should include detailed information of the following:Business DescriptionHow will you make a profitMarket Strategies and defining your MarketMarket Share Projections including place in the market, competition in the market, etc.Positioning of your business in the market placePricing of your product or serviceDistributionPromotion including advertising, packaging, SEO and web site production, sales strategies, etc.Sales potential and projectionsCompetitive AnalysisDesign and Development PlanGoals for Product DevelopmentProceduresScheduling and CostsDevelopment BudgetManagement TeamRisk AssessmentOperations and ManagementOrganizational StructureCapital Requirements and Cash Disbursement TablesFinancial Statements including cash flow statement, income statement and a balance sheetThe Financial Statements are always at the end of the Business Plan. I will admit, I often read the Executive Summary, sail through the business plan and go directly to the financials. As you know I believe numbers don’t lie. If the numbers support your plan that is a very good sign. If they don’t then you have a problem?I realize a Business Plan appears to be daunting and overwhelming, especially if you have never written one. However, the good news is there are great software packages and online templates that have these elements in the plans and walk you through each step. Basically you just fill in the blanks. (Maybe not quite that easy, but pretty close.) The one I recommend is http://businessplanpro.com. However, there are many plans on line with different templates and examples that you can use. I do admit I look at the effort and professionalism put into the plan. It does represent you to investors or lenders and helps you to put your best foot forward.I hope this has been helpful?