Manhattan Review InFocus BLOG

Recommendations

Recommenders should be individuals able to comment on your preparedness for business school, your past experiences, and your personal and professional attributes. A recommender need not be a big name at your company or elsewhere, but most importantly someone who knows you well.

Sometimes this aspect of the process is frustrating. Your recommender is pressed for time, forgets they promised you a recommendation. But you can make it easier on yourself and your recommender by making sure you:

·  Provide them with a copy of your resume, even essay draft.

·  Meet with them (whether by phone or in person).

·  Give them a clear understanding of deadlines.

On the recommendations themselves, if you feel appropriate doing so request that your recommender address how they know you, your accomplishments, you vs. others in similar roles, your strengths, and your weaknesses.  As a rule, the more specific a recommendation is, the better the recommendation is.

Resume

Your resume is also an important selling point to the admissions committee. It should be flawless and in a style the admissions committees find suitable. Some schools, for example, insist that the resume be one-page, so you should adapt, cut, and edit to their expectations. Some guiding principles to follow include the following.

·  Do not include high school experiences in your business school resume.

·  List your work experiences first, before your education.

·  Do not state your objectives.

OTHER TIPS ON KEY APPLICATION COMPONENTS

GMAT

Do the best you can and give yourself adequate time to prepare. Take a review class or seek out private tutoring to ensure that your score is as good as it can be.

Undergraduate GPA

It can not be changed. For some it will be a strength, for others a weakness. Consider explaining in an optional essay, for example, a low GPA, but do not make excuses.  Professional or academic successes post-college do say a great deal already. 

Extracurricular Activities

Do not simply list these activities. Make sure that you also explain them and their importance to you as well as your particular accomplishments. If you do not have at least 4 extracurricular activities, consider explaining why: Were you working? Were you fulfilling other personal or professional roles? What in the future would you like to do outside the professional sphere? How will you ensure that you are able to do so?

Piecing together a full application may at first seem daunting, but applicants from a variety of backgrounds with a variety of personal and professional obligations continue to do so from year to year, in ever increasing numbers. So there is no need to feel discouraged from the outset by particular application components. Instead, begin by figuring out what you will both offer and get out of an MBA program.

 Overall Advice:

 There are a few guiding principles to follow in the application process.

· Match yourself to programs. Through research, going to campuses, and talking to students and/or alumni, you can begin the process of understanding what MBA programs can offer you and whether your background experiences are suited to a program. Consider the strengths of particular programs and whether these complement your interests.

· Remember also that schools want diversity. Do not assume that simply because your professional experiences are out of the ordinary for a school that it should be automatically eliminated.  Your application gives you many opportunities to connect yourself to the school (and, uniqueness is a plus).

· Schools do not frown upon candidates that come from less known or small companies or less represented professions. Make your function and the function of your organization or company clear, and it will likely be a strength in your application.

· Apply in the early application rounds. B-school applications are not something to rush through.

· Send in your applications once you’ve completed them. Sometimes server problems arise at the last minute as many applicants are trying to get applications in.

· After submitting applications, take a couple of days to rest and then start preparing for interviews.

October has arrived. If you are considering applying for an MBA program in the fall of 2009, now is a good time to begin the process. It’s certainly not too late. You’ll still be likely to be ready to apply in rounds 1 or 2, which offer a pretty good chance of acceptance. 

 Order of Attack

 1. GMAT PREPARATION

Preparation can last anywhere from 1-6 months, but 2 months usually is an adequate prep period. Though study can be done individually, taking a course or seeking out private tutoring provides disciplined structure and guidance for your study.

 2. GMAT

Take the GMAT as soon as you feel ready. If you take it by end of October, you should have the needed time to retake the GMAT (including an additional 1 month prep) if your score is not what you desired.

 3. RESEARCH SCHOOLS

During preparation, look into different MBA programs. Look at them from as many angles as possible, including ranking, conversations with current students and alumni, correspondence with admissions officers and visits to campuses. Ultimately, select a range of schools you’d like to apply to. The most important criteria to use in determining where to apply is: What places are best suited to your personality, professional and academic history and goals? There are a variety of recommendations as to how many schools to apply to. Some say as few as 3, others as many as 8 or 10. Ultimately, you want to have some options, so lean toward more rather than less, and be sure to include safety schools. You may consider seeking advise from an admissions consultant to determine where it might be best to apply.

 4. RECOMMENDATIONS

Ask for recommendations as early as possible, giving each recommender ample time to complete the forms on time.

 5. APPROACH APPLICATIONS

The entire process and especially the application involve a great deal of self-evaluation. In this stage it will be most important that you recognize your strengths and weaknesses, and determine how you will express these in your applications. This will also be important in your interview.  It is generally recommended that the application show your true self. There is no need to conceal mistakes; the incorporation of constructive explanations for faults, mistakes, or minuses will allow the admissions committee to develop a clear perception of who you really are. Admissions officers especially dislike fakeness and falsehood in applications.

 Essays too require evaluation and most importantly they require time, time not only to write, but time to think as well. It is recommended that you spend between 50 and 100 hours on your essays, depending on the number of schools you apply to. Admissions advisors recommend that you devote your energy in particular to making sure each application explains why you want to attend particular programs.

 6. INTERVIEW (Should occur as early as possible)

Interviews require preparation. Reviewing your application and practicing interviewing skills with a friend or co-worker is useful. Also, some individuals try to interview as early as possible at a local school and use this interview to test their skills, as well as to inform themselves of answers or approaches that seem to work, and those that do not. And, as your parents or friends have said to you time and again, be yourself and relax.  

EMBA programs tend to be more flexible than MBA programs in terms of their GMAT requirement.  Executive MBA programs tend to draw applicants with a large amount of professional experience. EMBA applicants generally occupy leadership roles in corporations both prior to and following their degrees, thus a different skill set than that tested by the GMAT is seen as applicable. These other skills, some EMBA programs find, are best measured not on the basis of GMAT scores, but on the basis of professional and academic experience.

Only a few EMBA programs have opted to eliminate the requirement completely. Among those are the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler program One MBA, the EMBA program at the University of Michigan, and the EMBA program at the University of Chicago’s GSB. Michigan, for example, offers an optional refresher course for the EMBA students who need quantitative review.

Other EMBA programs have chosen to waive the requirement in certain circumstances. At Duke University’s Fuqua EMBA program, it is not so easy to get a waiver. Waivers are granted in circumstances where a candidate has proven quantitative skills and attained a highly technical MA or PhD. NYU Stern and the Goosewetta Business School at Emery University accept waivers in certain cases.

Other schools like USC tell applicants that the GMAT is highly recommended, but not required. If a candidate’s experience and/or prior training or study do not prove an applicant’s quantitative capacity, the admissions committee might be concerned about their quantitative skill level without the GMAT to attest otherwise.

The main concern expressed among schools that continue to maintain their GMAT requirement is ensuring a standard of quantitative ability. Some EMBA programs that continue to require the GMAT in all cases include the University of Texas McCombs and the University of Pennsylvania Wharton.

Though requirements do seem to be changing, at the moment it’s clear that a good GMAT score is helpful in EMBA programs admissions decisions, especially when there is any concern about a candidate’s quantitative skills.

Like many business schools, London Business School (LBS) is receiving an increasing number of applications for the 2008-2009 school year. Applicants to LBS recognize the advantages of studying in London, a center of world finance and business, and many are interested in not only learning from a highly knowledgeable faculty, but also surrounding themselves with students who have significant professional experience. The LBS program lasts between 15 and 21 months, during which time the school offers a broad range of academic and professional opportunities.

For applicants to LBS, it is important to consider that LBS places a great deal of weight on work experience. Getting in to LBS without any significant work experience, e.g. straight from college, is quite unlikely. It seems from a recent chat on Business Week with David Simpson of the Admissions team at LBS that 2 years is almost a minimum for admitted students. One reason for this is that LBS is interested in business people who have not only worked for companies, but also led teams or managed projects. These students then have their own valuable experiences to share in the classroom so that they can learn from each other’s past successes and stumbles. Since gaining such insights takes time, LBS generally admits students with around five years of work experience. When they evaluate applicants, their number one interest is to develop an understanding of what the applicant has done professionally beyond academics and extracurricular activities. Therefore, those applying to LBS should have a solid base of professional experiences to drawn on and to delineate in their application.

However, work alone is not the only key to LBS admission. The school also seeks high GMAT scores, a median of 690, and strives for diverse international representation in each class.