Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.
When you are applying to business school, leave your parents out of the process! Although we hope this tip is an obvious one for most candidates, applicants who are a part of “Gen Y” or “The Millennials” may have parents who are accustomed to helping guide their children’s choices, having done so throughout the candidates’ high school and college years. These parents may naturally want to be involved in the MBA application process as well and are now leaving many admissions officers across the country shaking their heads.
Of course, having a parent call to confirm whether an important document was received when an applicant is perhaps traveling or working abroad and/or cannot personally make such a call him- or herself is certainly not the same as having a parent call to ask why his/her child has not yet received an interview invitation. Unless the matter at hand is an entirely practical one, candidates have nothing to gain by having their parents act as their agents—in fact, quite the contrary. An aggressive parent can reflect badly on an applicant for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being that the parent’s interference suggests that the candidate lacks maturity and perhaps even the ability to make independent judgments and decisions.
Think very carefully before you involve your parents in any aspect of the application process—except sitting at home and waiting to celebrate your great news!