WorldCity Business Magazine

(3-a) MBA how-to: Demystifying the application process

by Hayden Estrada

A step-by-step guide to getting into the MBA program of your choice.

Applying to graduate school in your own country or abroad is an intimidating process. In it, you are required to account for your academic and professional life, your future goals and how you fit into the world. After you’ve bared your soul, a group of people decide whether or not you are right for their school.

In the end, the admission question is less an issue of being good enough to get in than it is a question of the fit for a particular school. Obviously Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) scores, undergraduate grade point averages, and work experience have a lot to do with how many options a particular candidate will have. But no one candidate is right for every MBA program and no one candidate lacks a fit for every school.

Understanding the goals and the elements of the process will provide greater insight into strategically making an application to schools that will provide you with the greatest amount of satisfaction and career progress. The following steps will help.

Know what you are selling to the admission committee

Applying to an MBA program is not solely about your academic potential. Academic excellence is expected. It is more important to promote your managerial and leadership potential when attempting to differentiate yourself. MBA admission committees are looking for candidates who can work with other people and who can make teams perform. Although these skills alone will not gain you admission to every MBA program, they provide the polish that sets great candidates apart from good ones.

Understand the school and what makes it distinctive

The first mistake candidates often make is thinking that MBA programs are interchangeable. In fact, there is more difference today among MBA programs in the United States than there has ever been in the history of graduate management education. International schools offer even more differentiation. These differences range from the behavioral versus quantitative to the strength of a school’s concentrations or specialty programs. You must determine the type of school you are applying to. The clues are provided in the school’s printed materials and web pages. Read the message from the dean, the overview of the school, talk to current students and recent alumni and be sure to visit the school, if possible, at an MBA fair or an information session. You need to walk away from this exercise knowing whether or not you would like
to attend each school.

Once you’ve done your “due diligence,” you will have a good idea of the type of candidate they want. Most admission professionals will say they are looking for a diverse collection of people. You need to learn more, so press them to give you examples of the type of candidates that will provide the best fit for their school. This information will give you direction when writing your essays, choosing recommenders and answering interview questions.

Apply a week or two before the deadline

Some schools have several deadlines. By applying a little early, you gain more visibility. You don’t want to find yourself caught in a mad crush of applications. Some schools literally receive hundreds of applications on a single day around their deadlines, so if your application arrives then, the amount of attention it will get will naturally be shorter than on a day when they receive 10 applications. One major exception is the application received after the deadline. In that case, you’ll leave yourself to the mercy of an admission office that already has plenty of candidates. Applying early might help to ensure that there are plenty of interview slots open, and will give the admission committee a bit more time to notice that you’ve done your homework.

Do your best to secure an interview

Interviews will help a good candidate 90 percent of the time. This is your opportunity to personally sell yourself and your potential to a member of the admission committee. He or she will want you to demonstrate that you understand why you are a good fit for the school, that you can be articulate and that you can sell your accomplishments. This is important for many reasons, including the fact that the admission professional wants to know you can sell your potential to an employer in two years.

Specifically answer the essay questions many candidates make the mistake of assuming that they can combine similar questions from a number of different schools. Semantics are important. Not answering the question is treated as a form of disrespect for the school because it appears as though you have spent time answering another school’s question, and you’ve just included a copy of the other school’s essay.

This is a point where your research on the school can pay off. If you know what the school is about, you might have an insight into why the school is asking particular questions. If the school asks about community service, for example, consider likely reasons. Is there a strong tradition in this area, or do they have a specialty program in this subject matter? Use your homework to
your advantage.

Carefully chose your recommenders

Recommenders should be chosen to provide insight into your ability to achieve great things. Think about your two most significant achievements or accomplishments, then select a person to tell the admission committee about each of them. These people should be objective observers of your work ethic. Avoid choosing family members, your lawyer, your clergyman and people who are under your employ. Picking any of them will raise questions about your judgment.

Selecting people with impressive titles can also be problematic if they don’t have a day-to-day knowledge of your accomplishments. These could include the CEO of your company, high-ranking politicians and important family references. Their use will not have the intended effect
because they will probably not be in touch with how you work every day.

Most important is to choose people who will say flattering things about you. If you have any doubt, do not use that recommender.

If you have a weakness, explain it head on

Very few candidates for admission will have strengths across the board. The vast majority of us have a balance of strengths and weaknesses. You will obviously want to expound on your strengths, but it is just as important to explain your weaknesses so the admission committee will know that you are self aware and have learned to succeed in spite of those shortcomings.

To determine whether you have a weakness that needs to be explained, look at the distribution of work experience, GMATs or grade point averages for each school and, if you are in the bottom 10-15 percent, consider how you might pitch yourself. For example, if you are short on work experience, you could talk about the quality of the experience you do have. If your GMAT is low, perhaps you don’t test well, so you can juxtapose low standardized test scores with high grades as an undergraduate to show you are a hard worker in the classroom. If your grades were low, perhaps you have mitigating circumstances, such as needing to work full-time to support yourself.

An admission committee will want to see that it can justify making a positive decision, and your job in the application process is to make that easy to do. Most MBA programs are not looking for reasons not to admit candidates until they have become full. On the contrary, they are looking for good candidates that really want to be at their school. The more you know about your target schools and the better you tailor your application for each school, the better your chances are to be admitted to your first choice.

Hayden Estrada is Assistant Dean of Graduate Admissions at Boston Universitys School of Management (www.management.bu.edu), one of 41 of business schools that will be participating in the World MBA Tour fair in Miami on September 12. See page 37 for more details on the fair.