Candidates are often skeptical about whether or not MBA Admissions Committees will believe their stories. After all, is there really someone available to corroborate that you were the difference – that you had that innovative idea? The response to this concern is pretty simple: if it actually happened, you do not need to worry about your credibility. You just need to write about your experience with sincerity. If you can offer the details surrounding the events as part of a narrative, the story will unfold logically and truthfully and will have its desired impact. Conversely, if your story is basic and vague, it will not come across as compelling (regardless of its veracity). 

An equally important point is that you are innocent until proven guilty. The MBA Admissions Committee is not assuming that you are a liar and reading your applications seeking proof of facts that are in doubt. They are taking stories at face value, recognizing that truth is stranger than fiction and that strong candidates will standout on the strength of their experiences.   

Additionally, if you accomplished something truly remarkable, you can always ask your recommender to emphasize this in his/her letter. This does not mean that the committee is seeking proof and that if something is not highlighted in a reference that it will not be believed. Still, your recommender can play an important role in legitimizing certain accomplishments.

Because the pool of MBA candidates is so anonymous, we find that many perceive any minimal difference between themselves and others as a huge disadvantage. One anxiety that frequently surfaces is that a candidate may have no alumni connection to the school and may feel that he/she is behind at the starting line. We can assure you that if you are a strong candidate, you will not be “dinged” by a school if you don’t know any alumni. In fact, the vast majority of candidates will not have direct connections to alumni.  

The bottom line is that in some cases, if you know a powerful alumnus, he or she can help you. However, generally, the standout candidate without the alumni connection will still succeed and the weak candidate with the alumni connection will still fail. So, focus on defining your candidacy and not worrying about minor perceived weaknesses. You can succeed on your own, regardless of who you know.

You have taken a course, studied hard and finally “nailed” the GMAT. However, you soon learn that your score on the Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA), the essay portion of the GMAT, is low. Is it time to panic?

In short, the answer is… no! While we always encouraged candidates to try as hard as they can on the AWA, the truth of the matter is that we have never been told by an admissions officer, nor has a candidate been told in a feedback session, that the AWA score was a factor in an admit/reject decision. Generally, the AWA is not used to evaluate candidates, but to detect fraud.

If, hypothetically, you had tremendous difficulty expressing yourself via the AWA essays, but wrote like a Pulitzer Prize winning writer in your application essays, the school would get suspicious and begin to compare the two. Not to worry — the schools are not punitive and are not acting as fraud squads. It is expected that your AWA essays will be unpolished, so no one will be seeking out your file if you did your best in both areas. However, in cases of enormous discrepancies between the two, the AWA serves a purpose.

So, if you did well on the GMAT and have a low AWA, it is a shame, but it is not going to be THE difference. Rest easy….as long as you wrote both!

As you no doubt know, we at MBA Mission are strong believers in students helping students go beyond the websites in order to truly experiencing MBA programs, thereby ensuring “fit.” Far too many students rely on rankings, which are arbitrary and fluctuate wildly, and do not really take the time to get to know the character of their target programs. A priori experience is truly invaluable as you seek to identify your ideal match – to that end, the MBA Tour presents a tremendous opportunity for you to meet with many MBA Admissions Officers from MBA programs around the world, by bringing them all to one location.  At Tour events, you will have the opportunity to interact with Admissions Officers, and often students and alumni from top-schools as well, and ask each of them the questions that you need answered — all in a risk free environment.  

We have attached a calendar of North American events below. Visit the MBA Tour website for more information on each event:

Sep 2, 08  Chicago
Sep 4, 08  Houston
Sep 6, 08  New York City
Sep 7, 08  Washington DC
Sep 9, 08  Atlanta
Sep 11, 08  Boston
Sep 13, 08  San Francisco
Sep 14, 08  Los Angeles

“I am self-employed.” “I am a Vice-President in a family business.” “I am a freelancer.” “I am a contract consultant.” If you can make a statement like this about your own professional position, you may follow it with an exasperated, “I have no supervisor. So, where am I going to get my recommendations?!”

Before we even discuss the problem at hand, remember, MBA admissions committees have indeed seen it all. It is highly unlikely that your situation is unlike anyone else’s. So, you need not fret about your circumstances. Let’s consider the fictitious case of the VP above and add a detail – that the family business is in manufacturing. This hypothetical MBA candidate may contact a longstanding client or a supplier, both of whom may be able to write about the candidate’s integrity, growth, sense of humor, determination and more, all in relation to other comparable individuals. If these two constituents were not able to offer adequate feedback, the MBA candidate might ask the head of a trade association or possibly even a respected competitor to write on his behalf. If the candidate really had to get creative, he might consider a service provider of his own; for example, getting a letter of reference from an architectural firm that collaborated with the candidate to build a new manufacturing facility could be an interesting solution.

In short, most MBA candidates have more opportunities for recommenders than they realize. There is someone out there who knows you well and can write objectively.        

These days, many in the financial industry take the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) study program in order to bolster their credentials and become more attractive to employers. Some MBA candidates with the CFA designation subsequently worry that it undermines their need for an MBA and that the MBA Admissions Committee will question their candidacies. Well, worry not.

One thing to keep in mind is that the CFA is a narrowly focused program. It teaches finance, accounting and economics, but it does not teach marketing, strategy, entrepreneurship and more. So, your need for a broad general management education should still be evident if you were to move outside of the financial field. Further, even if you were to return to finance, you could still benefit from specialized academic courses that the CFA does not offer (for example, a class in “Emerging market Private Equity”). Additionally, the CFA does not offer experiential opportunities that add value – speakers, internships and more. So, in short, the MBA Admissions Committees understand that candidates with the CFA have more to learn and experience, after completing the progam.

In fact, far from being a negative, the CFA is actually a positive – the designation suggests that you are independently motivated and dedicated to learning and that you have core competencies that will allow you to manage the MBA curriculum. Further, especially during an economic downturn, your CFA designation shows that you have achieved a certain standard, one that gives you an edge with many employers. So, is the CFA a help or a hindrance? It definitely helps…

It is somewhat ironic that after HBS made a career goals essay optional, Stanford broadened the wording of its second essay question to include “aspirations” (removing the words “short and long term career goals”) and Chicago mentioned that they were not too concerned about short and long term goals in their first essay (but would defer to their interview) that we are the ones harping on employability. We still think that asking MBA candidates about their goals is plainly absurd, because so many students change their goals while in school. Further, isn’t an MBA supposed to be about career development and exploration?

Well, regardless of how we feel, in a year when the economy is down and many firms will be cutting back on their MBA hiring, it is important that you ensure that (if a school asks via its essays or interview) you have a clear and compelling story for where your MBA will take you. Two years ago, it might have been compelling for you to get that banking job. Are you really capable of making that transition today? There are certainly fewer jobs in the real estate world. Is this a likely next step for you during a prolonged real estate drought? VC and PE jobs are challenging to land during the best of times – are you able to compete with the elite during a downturn?

These are just a few examples of questions that you might honestly ask yourself. It is important to keep in mind that MBA Admissions Committees are not only examining your story to make sure that you add something unique to the class, but, this year, they will likely send any borderline cases to the career services offices to confirm that your goals are realistic and that you won’t be difficult to place post-MBA (that you won’t hinder the school’s employment stats and thusly affect their rankings). So, pay special attention to your goal statements and ensure that you can credibly stand behind them.

When candidates ask us whether they should take the GMAT again, our instinct is always to reply with a question, “Do you think you can do better?” Assuming that a candidate does indeed believe that he/she can improve, the candidate’s next question inevitably becomes, “What do the MBA programs think of multiple scores?”

Fortunately, MBA programs do not frown on students taking the test more than once. Many candidates feel that they have to be “perfect” the first time and that any subsequent test, particularly they recieve a lower score, might be damaging. That is not the case. In fact, Tuck anticipates that candidates will take the test more than once, openly stating their willingness to accept and then “fuse” candidates’ highest verbal and quantitative scores, if they occur on separate tests. Meanwhile, other programs have been known to call students and tell them that if they can increase their GMAT scores, then they will be admitted.

From an admissions perspective, it is in an MBA program’s interest to accept a candidate’s highest score, because this will increase the school’s GMAT average, which is then reported to rankings bodies (BusinessWeek, etc.) So, don’t be afraid to take the test two or three times. It can’t really hurt you. It can only help you. 

One of the most common questions that we hear from applicants is: “What type of candidate is (HBS, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago, etc.) looking for?” Of course, the answer to that question is that schools do not want one type of applicant. In fact, each school wants a remarkably diverse class and thus wants to be able to identify distinct qualities in each candidate.
 
While it can be appealing to try to simplify a school’s approach to admissions, (”Kellogg wants team players!”) you should avoid trying to fit some perceived mold, as it will compromise your distinct qualities. Instead of pandering to a stereotype in terms of your personal/professional experiences or changing goals to match an imagined bias of an MBA Admissions Committee, you should spend a great deal of time brainstorming in order to understand how you can showcase your unique traits. By showing that you offer something different than other candidates, you have the greatest chance of succeeding.

“A common trap is [when they] present themselves in a manner in which they think we want to see them, vs. being their true selves. I cannot stress enough: What’s most important to us…is to know who you truly are.”

- Beth Flye, Director of Admissions, Kellogg, Businessweek Interview

These days, many MBA applicants are fretting about their futures, because of the ongoing investigation into users of the Scoretop.com website, a site designed to provide those studying for the GMAT with actual questions. In 2005, one-hundred and nineteen applicants were rejected by HBS for trying to access their admissions decisions online prior to the release date.  In 2003, Darden rejected an applicant for making statements on the BusinessWeek message boards which were not consistent with the school’s Honor Code. In short, people have a tendency to think that the web is an anonymous place, where their actions won’t follow them. Of course, as the scandals above show, they are wrong. Whether you are publicly displaying your private life on your Facebook or MySpace page or you are surfing the web without identifying yourself, you should certainly be careful not to violate any principles of good practice. Such violations can follow you and adversely affect your fate.