Showing posts with label mbaapp.r1 process. Show all posts

It looks like the applicants applying in Fall '09 are already sniffing around, doing research. Following my previous rant, here are 5 more things that I think prospective applicants should think about.

(1) The schools will say that you should apply when you are ready. In reality, some points in time are better than others. The schools want to fill the class with a certain number of students from each age group. I would suggest thinking about how to optimize your profile. HBS published a distribution for graduation years for the class of 2010 here (search for the "Class of 2010 Graduation Years" post here).

(2) Think about your profile.The schools make money on every application they get. It is in their interests to let you think that you'll be admitted. The profiles on the schools website do not really reflect the makeup of the students admitted. On the website they are more diverse than they really are. Get advice from someone who has lots of experiences in seeing applicants admitted and rejected by each of the schools, e.g. an admissions consultant with lots of experience or an ex-student who reviewed applications for the school. They should be able to give a good view of your chances.

(3) Your background. As well as filling the class with a certain number of people from each age group, certain numbers from each career background and various other characteristics will also be sought. If you have an opportunity to work in an area from where there are lots of people going into MBA (e.g. your company's strategy department), I suggest they are being recruited from that department for a reason and that it would be worth doing a stint there. It might even be better to work at a company from where there are many people going into MBAs, e.g. McKinsey.

(4) What do you eat, breathe and shit? I know a guy who was admitted to all the top US schools. He described himself as someone who "eats, breathes and shits biotech". If he made as distinct an impression in his essays, I'm sure he would have come across as someone who is both convincing and could also become a world class biotech person of the future. Once the school has read your application, will you leave as such a distinct impression? Montauk refers to this as positioning (in the marketing sense), but I doubt many people market themselves well. (I don't think I did). Your positioning should be so blatant and distinct that your recommenders will shout about it in unison: e.g. "this guy is one of our foremost biotech evangelists".

(5) Do something amazing in the year leading to you applying. Make it real, easy for a layman to understand and something that the school can shout about. Remember, as soon as you are admitted, the schools do shout extracts back at the class describing the impressive feats of their admits. I mentioned some in my DAK debrief and Tieny mentioned some his Columbia open house debrief. Some of the things I've heard shouted about are "x person won x athletic award", "y person won the national stand up comedy awards" and "z person started a charity". I suspect the trick is to not come across as bragging.

These are just my opinions. Please complement them with the views of others who have gone through the experience or who help applicants through the process.

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My experience of applying for business school was one hell of a long haul. I think I first started thinking about doing an MBA in the Fall of 2006. It took me a long time to get myself moving; it took me until early 2008 to get my GMAT done. Then it was a whirlwind season of essays, interviews and everything else. Orlando has posted some excellent advice on shaping up an MBA application. Apart from what he has written, if I were to go through it again, there are some specific things that would have been useful for me to have known upfront. This advice may not be for everyone. What a relief that I don't have to take heed of it.

(1) The GMAT: Do the GMAT Prep software practice tests over and over again, reinstalling and installing the software to squeeze out as many new questions as possible. Particularly in the math section of the GMAT, the questions on the real exam are the same as those in the Prep software except with different numbers substituted in. You will eventually start to recognize the question types, from which you can start developing methods to tackle each type. The Manhattan GMAT forums were great for learning the theory behind the questions. I started copying the questions from the forums and grouping them into similar types. The Manhattan GMAT books are great for understanding the concepts.

(2) Get an "inside" contact. Can you find a recommender who is an alum of the school, yet who is still appropriate to do your recommendation? I know a girl who was denied by all 8 schools she applied to, except the one for which a recommender was an alumnus. I'm sure there are other factors to her applications, but I'm also sure the alumnus appeal is a strong influencer on some schools' adcoms. I know a guy who has gone a step further - he has started developing friendships with current and former student MBA application readers. Will they put in a good word for him when he applies? Perhaps most ambitious would be to impress faculty from the school. If you impressed them, would they make a note? ... Some people might ask "Am I gaining an unfair advantage"? I'm sure the adcoms are already wise to these antics. Among several thousand applicants, you might just be gaining a "fair shot".

(3) Take care of the little things. If you are applying to several schools, your applications will start to look similar - even when you try to make sure they are not. The subtle instructions in the applications are what matter. For example, the Kellogg asks about your "career plan". Harvard asks about your "career vision". Stanford asks about your "career aspiration". Wharton asks about your "career goal". I would suggest mixing up these terms will send alarm bells to the reader.

(4) The hunt for financial scholarships starts now. Applying in R1, I thought I would have plenty of time to look at scholarships and grants after I was admitted. I was wrong. Deadlines for some opportunities are before even the R1 deadlines, such as those for the Rotary Club. If there is one thing harder than getting into B School, it is finding someone that will give you free money to go.

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At the place I currently work, we've just had the third restructure in the space of two years. Senior managers come and go every year or so – changing the focus and direction of the workplace each time. It all makes for a work environment with a hell of a lot of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. People literally get stuck, unable to figure out what to do with their work and their lives. Demotivation and anxiety is rife. However, a previous boss said something to me once that has stuck and always helped me get through:
For me, it has been sterling advice - sweeping away clutter and letting me focus on the right things.

In a similar way, the MBA application process certainly produces a lot of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. I've tried to keep applying the same mantra, but it has been quite hard. Thankfully, it's all over. I've been rejected by Harvard and Stanford. I'm free at last. :-)

For anyone in a similar situation and seeking consolation, here is some inspiration:

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We're moving into the second week of December. Kellogg is rumored to have already started releasing admit decisions. MIT is expected to start sending interview invites from later today (Monday). Wharton is due to release admit decisions in two weeks time. So the run up to Christmas is crucial for my applications.

Foremost on my mind is the Seth Godin thing. It does seem like a really great opportunity. Marketing and sales are where I have least experience and exposure. These skills are key to starting any business. Seth Godin is perhaps a king of this area. Seth organised an information session conference call on Thu 5th. I tired to get on it, but it was full. I think there was capacity for 140 people. From this alone, my hunch is that well over 1000 people will apply. I expect he will take on at most 10 people. With the deadline on Sunday14th, I'd need to put together one hell of a stellar application. Even then, the odds say it'd be easier to get admitted to the school with the lowest admit percentage, Stanford.

Second-most on my mind is R2 applications. How should I approach my recommenders about R2 schools, having already given them a big thanks and a bottle of wine each for all their hard work on five R1 school applications? One of my recommenders spent 3 days on them all five R1 recommendations, while another other took an entire day off work to do it. They're going to be a little bit disappointed if they think that I might not get a place from my first five applications. I'll feel uncomfortable if I don't mitigate against the absolute worst case scenario. Secondly, schools such as Chicago are looking quite appealing. I think I will wait until Monday 15th to make any approaches to my recommenders for R2.

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Wow, what a week last week was. It felt like the B-Schools were printing out 'dings' faster than the Zimbabwean government prints money. I would dare even say it was like an axe murderer had run rampant on all the applicants' dreams. With the thump of HBS making R1 admission only a vague possibility for the many, Wharton sliced and diced many of the blogosphere's finest. For one applicant, even her job was axed. Perhaps it is like this every year, but for me it was a shocking week.

Things started well for the blogosphere - Tieny and Max celebrated early admission to Columbia. Pretty soon afterwards, my first whiff that something odd was in the air occurred when HappyBunny's blog vanished into thin air. We soon heard that Columbia had started to send out a slew of denials. It sounded bad, but how bad could it be? After a few weeks of silence, last week hit us.

So what is going on? Are the bankers now applying in their droves to business schools? My brother works at one of the two remaining old time US investment banks. A few weeks back he told me that they've only axed the people with negative Proft/Loss in their net trading for the year (which is most of the people, but thankfully not him). I'd rather think the ones taking our places were the ones in profit, but I'm sure even those ones face the cut! I suggested to my brother that he should consider applying for B Schools. He said he doesn't have time - he is too busy practically running the desk. In hindsight, I'm all too glad to have one less competitor.

Maybe it is not all bankers rushing in... Perhaps the credit crunch has filtered into consulting? Perhaps there are now people applying in their droves from all parts of the economy? Whatever the case, I can see this crunch going on for a while. I'm glad I'm not applying next year.

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The R1 admissions process is well and truly entering the interview stages. My bet is that most of the B schools have maybe 20 or 70 or maybe more student readers right now giving the applications a first pass. This number will vary by the size of the school. Each student reader probably has 50 applications to read. Each application probably takes an hour of reading time. The student readers will also have been given a deadline to get their application reading done by. Some of the student readers will have done all their readings early. However, since student readers are first and foremost students, I reckon most of the kids will be getting their readings in at or near the deadline. Hence, if the school's interview invite policy is determined by early readings of an application, an early interview invite is probably just indicative of how proactive your application's student reader has been.

So I reckon the real worry is not that the your application is already read and rejected. Oh, no. Rather, I think the real worry is whether your application gets read at all. I mean, think of the deadline for the student readers... and all those 80 applications they have to get through (Yes, I've just given them another 30 on top of the 50). On top of these applications, they have school work, partying, clubs and recruitment to fit in. Plus, how many applications can a person read without getting bored and falling asleep. The questions we should be asking ourselves should not be about the quality of our applications. Instead, I think they should be along the lines of, is that career goals essay going to hold up to being skim read on the morning of the readers' deadline by someone completely hung over (and possibly still drunk) ?

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When you are sitting around, bored and waiting for responses from your R1 applications... you can not help but let your mind wonder about what the other options are. Particularly when you look around and the applicant blog-pool from last year seems to be filled with with sorrow such as this and this.

The plan behind pushing five apps for R1 was so I would not have to dip into R2. Hopefully that will still be the case. If I do need to dip into R2, these are the schools I have been thinking about...

INSEAD - I like the continental European feel of the school. I've always wanted to learn Spanish as another language; their requirement to know a second language in some depth appeals to me for this reason. Perhaps the only true world class international school, with options to utilise their great links to Wharton in the US and the INSEAD Singapore campus.

Chicago Booth (GSB) - Probably the most flexible curriculum there is. You get what you want from this MBA. The facilities have great style and class. Would be a great place to study I think.

Columbia - A rising school in my opinion (yes Tieny, you heard that right), and set in New York, New York. What more is there to say?

LBS - A top business school in my back yard. The only deterrent is that I have been in London most of my life. I don't think I will gain as many new experiences here as at other schools.

Tuck- A strong sense of community. For some reason or other, I've met quite a few of alum from this school in various places. They have all been likable and the network seems very, very strong.

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I attended a few presentations for business schools during October. In each, I repeatedly came across some of the same people over and over again. You'd think everyone was applying to the same schools. I have got to know a few of these applicants since. I thought I would bemuse over some of their antics.

I was speaking to one such applicant applying for '09 admission just last night. We were talking about waiting for interviews. In his thickest French accent he said:
He says all of the above like he has applied to only three schools and has yet to hear from any of them. In reality, he has applied to six and already has an offer from Columbia. He has also received his Wharton interview invite. In my book - that puts him in a better place than most!

Then there is the Chinese girl. She has only applied to three schools, but she is utterly calm about it. It might be because she has CIMA accountancy exams in a few weeks and wants to get past those first. We've quizzed each other lots on each others' applications. Every time I rave about a bit of my application, she says:
       "There are lots of people that have done X.
        Why would they pick you?
        What's you X-Factor, man. What's your X-Factor!"
Speaking to her can be depressing.

Depressing, until I speak to a particular banker girl who starts every conversation with...
And then often continues with something like:
She is one of these people who has jumped on the MBA bandwagon out of the financial crisis. She is applying to eight schools in R1 (at the last count). It's funny when you meet them. They are as flustered as I thought they would be. I hear that they are in particularly high numbers at the presentations for the New York schools.

Then there is the Reapplicant. He is serious about doing it properly next time around - so much so that he is not applying for '09 admission, but '10. He turns up for the presentations to do research on the schools. He applied for '08 and was interviewed by a couple of the schools, including Tuck, Chicago GSB and Wharton. In the end, they all denied him admission. Worse, he says he got on great with the interviewers and he is still in touch with some of them! Funnier still, he says that last year Wharton offered to provide feedback to some applicants. You had to apply for the feedback, but he was denied for that too!

The variety of people applying to business school, and their varying attitudes towards the process, is amazing.

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People talk about what an awful time it is to graduate from an MBA degree. For an international applicant, it is surely an awful time to start one too!

Firstly, the price of my MBA education has skyrocketed over 20%. This means a bigger amount to pay off and, in this credit crunch, a bigger headache.

Secondly, in many an MBA application it asks for your salary in US dollars, but does not ask you to state the exchange rate. Given the drastic exchange rate changes over the last few months, even people applying from the same country are going to give wildly differing accounts of what their salary is in US dollar terms. I wonder if the adcoms realize that they just won’t be able to compare applicants’ salaries!

Thirdly, what if the dollar strengthens further over the next two years? Will I be able to get a high enough paying job to pay off this headache? How long will the coming recession last? Will I be able to get a job? This has to one of the worse years to apply to business school.

It looks like the hey days are over.

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In the midst of Max and Tieny's admissions adventure rewarding them early victories, my small personal victory pails in comparison: I have now got all my Round 1 applications in. Better still, my recommenders have all done their bit too!

I'm feeling like I'm in a state of bliss. It is a big weight off my shoulders. Nevertheless, it feels like it's going to take an age until I hear the outcome of my applications. I'm just going to have to play the waiting game. Will they like me? Will I get interviewed? Maybe I should have used an admissions consultant after all... Oh well.

What is most amazing about this whole process is that each of the schools has managed to get something different out of me. Although I've drawn on the same set of stories across the schools, the flavor and essence is slightly different for each one. With most of the schools' essays, the stories have just gotten better with each retelling; I have then reworked the improved stories back across the schools. The exception to this is MIT. For MIT, I've had to write completely new essays. Because these essays are so different, there has not been much of that refinement. This worries me slightly, since this is one of my favorite schools. In all, I think Stanford has got the best out of me. In the end, the questions just seemed to perfectly tie in with my stories.

In the meanwhile, following their R1 deadline, Wharton sent a prompt email detailing their schedule of interview invites and decision points. I am impressed with how specific their dates are. Though there are still deadlines left, I think R1 application processing is beginning in earnest. Let's see what the dice rolls.

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I've had a horror story this week. I went to submit my HBS application last night. It was late, and I was tired. I was physically tired, but also tired of this whole arduous process. I checked everything on my application and was was about to bid it farewell. But then I got a phone call and got distracted. In the end, I did not submit. I got into work today and decided to print the application out and read it through during lunch hour. You'll not believe it, but I had uploaded the same essay for two different questions. AAARGH! What would they have thought if they had got that?! Needless to say, the shock has set me back and I will be taking a few more days to fret over this one.

As a 2001 graduate, based on their stats, I'm not sure I will get into HBS. I wonder if it is my mind unconsciously wreaking my application. It is telling that MIT ask for number of years of work experience on matriculation, whereas HBS ask for number of months.

BTW, in London things don't turn red in Autumn. They just turn cold, wither away and die.

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Some of the US business schools have been in town. I managed to get on to the presentation sessions of some of them. The bulk of the talks were nothing new to anyone looking at the schools. The following tidbits on Rounds do however stand out in my mind...

In HBS's presentation they mentioned that they had 8660 applicants last year. They characterised the applicants in each round as follows:

• Round 1: The 'A' types just waiting to hit the submit button. Not necessarily the highest volume, but the round wiht the highest quality applicants. About 450 are admitted from this round.
• Round 2: The highest volume round. Quality of applicants tends to be 'normal'. About 450 admitted from this round.
• Round 3: Sometimes the school ponders getting rid of this round, but it always produces eccentrics that the school wants to have. About 100 admitted from this round.
  

At MIT Sloan's presentation, again the round information stuck out. They had 4000 applicants last year for ~350 places.

• In Round 1, the volume of applicants was 1/3 of the total. Half the class was admitted in this round.
• In Round 2, the volume of applicants was 2/3 of the total. Again, half the class was admitted in this round.

 Sloan does not have a Round 3. So doing the math, they admit 175 places for the 1333 applicants in Round 1 and 175 places for 2666 applicants in Round 2. i.e. 13% acceptance rate for admission in Round 1 and 6.5% in Round 2. 8.8% acceptance overall. And that's before the credit crunch...

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Right now I’m really concentrating on getting some of my applications in before the end of the month. In fact, I’d love to have submitted all my applications by the end of the month. I originally thought that I would submit them a week or two before the deadlines, but I keep getting caught up in analysis paralysis. How many times should I review the application form information? I think I’m going insane revising these character-limit constrained boxes over and over.

I now have drafts of essays for HBS, Wharton, MIT and Kellogg. The time taken to do these has really shrunk. The first ones I did, for HBS, took almost 6 weeks. Kellogg  was the last set and it took about 6 days! What is even more incredible is that a friend who reviewed the Kellogg drafts reckons they are the best ones I’ve written yet! I guess I now have a really fine tuned story.

With these banks popping like popcorn, I think applying in R1 is a must.

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As a red blooded male, I must say that I'd love for more women to attend business school! But, it seems like everyone from that hyperactive admission consultant to BusinessWeek and WalletPop are all saying one thing: perhaps girls should not be admitted. Sure, they don't say it that blatantly, but look at headlines such as this one:


Surely this headline is only insinuating one thing, i.e. what good are they doing with their valuable MBAs while being at home?

WalletPop has some theory about woman heeding their biological call, and BusinessWeek says the business work environment is not structured to be as family-friendly as the fields of medicine and law. Perhaps these MBA Moms are the cleverest of them all, heeding to this cracker of a paragraph from the same BusinessWeek article:


I wish I could marry a rich girl!

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Four years ago I was working in a Customer Support department. We had a TV screen that ought to be showing stats of customer queries. Instead, it was showing the Olympic women’s beach volleyball. When I changed companies, I thought those hey days were gone. I should have known different. I now work in an open plan office and all yesterday, just from where I was sitting, I could see three screens showing the women’s beach volleyball. One of these was a large projector beaming against the wall of the Director’s open plan office area. Just what is it about this sport that has captured so many hearts? I just don’t see the attraction...

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I have my application materials in so many places, it is unreal. I have copies of stuff on my home laptop, on my work laptop, on Google docs and even copies on a backup storage drive. I thought it would all be oh so easy to just use Google docs for everything. The only problem is...Google docs does not support some features on Word. So then it just becomes easier to have some things in Word format. They suddenly there are copies of the things everywhere.

Today I started writing a new essay for the Kellogg application. As I started to write it... I suddenly felt a deja-vu. This all seems so familiar! I did a search here and there... nothing. Then I had a look at my Google docs account. Ah ha! I have written this essay before! Has all this been going on so long that I've forgotten what I have and haven't done :-/ ...

I need some program to sync my documents in various places. Windows of ten years ago (i.e. Windows 98) used to come with a 'briefcase' feature to do this. I wonder what happened to that.

In other news, yes - I too noticed the Silence of the Applicants. But it seems like it was more to do with holidays than anything else. It's good to start seeing some of their posts again.

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As HappyBunny notes, athletes of varying type gathered in Beijing on 08/08/08 for the start of one type of games. In the meanwhile, Wharton and Kellogg opened their applications over the weekend to let another set of games ramp up to full speed.

I feel like the application process has now really got into full swing. Applications are now open for all my target schools. At the moment I seem to be spending more time talking to my recommenders and discussing ideas than anything else. This is both a little frustrating, because I am not working much on my essays, but I also want them to get going on writing their part of the application. With five schools, I really feel they have a lot of work ahead of them.

In the meanwhile, the Dollar has strengthened over the last two weeks, slightly increasing the cost of any US MBA education to foreigners. Interesting times lie ahead!

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I started creating my online accounts today for my MBA applications. They all seem to use ApplyYourself these days. I created the first account, then the second one... but when I got to the third, it said I already had an account and whether I wanted a reminder?! I opt for yes and hey presto - it turns out the logins I created before can be used for any school. So I only need one account?

Interestingly, Kellogg seem to have a new website (the old one looked more like this) and there is an initial suggestion that they don't / won't be using ApplyYourself, as evidenced by the login screen. and the EMBA application.

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There is a lot of excitement about the early release of essay questions. However, I can't help but feel that the most time consuming part of all this will be the recommendation questions. When are they going to be rubber stamped by the schools and ready for consumption? I am certain that I'll manage to get my essays in, whatever it takes. However, getting my recommenders to do whatever it takes is not easy for anyone, I'm sure. Just today one of my recommenders said, "I hope I haven't signed up for a lot of work!"

I suspect that we'll have to wait for the applications to open proper to get the final version of the recommendation questions to distribute to our recommenders. Because August is the month of summer holidays, some of my recommenders will be off. I'm thinking that my recommenders will really only have the month of September to get their writing done and ready. Thus far I have told them that I reckon they will need to write about three pages and then slice and dice what they come up with to the specific questions that each school asks. Are there any better approaches than this?

For those of you seeking that recommender from your extracuricular space, I've found the picture here for you.

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