As you head into application season, what strategy do you have in mind? More than a few candidates, having likely read about the supposed advantages of applying in Round 1 on various Web sites and discussion boards, plan to submit all their applications in that first round, with the idea that if no acceptances are forthcoming, they’ll just submit another set of applications in Round 2. If this is your plan, we ask that you step away from your stack of applications for a moment while we explain why this is probably not your best course of action.
Most Round 1 deadlines are in October, and even though often applicants may receive a kind of “progress report” in the form of an interview invitation in November, this is no guarantee of eventual acceptance. Ultimately, then, applicants will not know for sure whether they have won a spot at any of their target schools until mid- to late December. So let’s imagine the worst-case scenario: You submit all your applications in Round 1 but are not accepted at any of your target schools. Now, feeling discouraged and unsure of your application strategy—not to mention dealing with the hustle and bustle of the holidays—you must quickly research and select new schools, rethink your approach and crank out still more applications in the space of just a few weeks to be able to submit in Round 2—to schools that you may not even be that enthusiastic about. And don’t forget that you will also need to pressure your recommenders during this busy time of year to produce more documents on your behalf on a very tight deadline!
Are you rethinking your strategy yet?
We recommend that instead, you change your mindset from “If I don’t get into schools in R1, I will apply in R2″ to “I am applying to some schools in R1 and some in R2, and hopefully I won’t have to finish my R2 applications.” With luck, you will not need to complete the applications you have slated for Round 2, but if you plan ahead, don’t overload yourself with too many applications in the first round and work steadily on your applications over several months, you will be in a much better place both mentally and with your required workload if you should have to move ahead with your Round 2 submissions. And if, in the end, you get accepted early or receive multiple offers of admissions from your first-round applications, you will have lost nothing more than a little time!
Harvard Business School (HBS) receives more than 9,000 applications each year. How will you ensure that your essays will grab the attention of an overworked HBS admissions officer? In one of our newest presentations, Writing Standout HBS Essays, we will help you conceptualize your essay ideas and understand how to execute, so that your experiences truly stand out. You don’t need to be actively working on a $5 billion deal or have won an Olympic gold medal to go to HBS. You just need to have done the everyday things remarkably well, and you must make sure that your essays reflect your actions.
mbaMission Founder/President Jeremy Shinewald will lead this session and will remain online to answer any additional questions about the HBS essays and other admissions issues of importance to you.
Date: Monday, June 6, 2011 Time: 9:30 -11:00 p.m. EST Location: Online Price: Free!
Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when choosing a business school, but the educational experience itself is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Each Wednesday, we profile a standout professor as identified by students. Today, we focus on Ralph Biggadike from Columbia Business School (CBS).
Ralph Biggadike’s “Top Management Process” (TMP) course competes in popularity with Michael Feiner’s “High Performance Leadership” class among CBS students, in terms of the number of bidding points needed to enroll. “Biggie”—as a recent alumna affectionately called him in a conversation with mbaMission—is not necessarily known for his charisma but instead, she explained, for the way he makes students analyze organizational challenges from every possible angle, including how such challenges would affect them in their future jobs. The alumna went on to describe Biggadike’s TMP class as a “living laboratory” that focuses on real learning rather than on homework and presentations, and lauded the professor’s availability outside the classroom.
For more information about CBS and 13 other top-ranked business schools, check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guides.
Given the date change of mbaMission’s “Constructing a Standout MBA Application” course in Chicago, we have extended the application deadline to Friday, June 3. This extension is for the Chicago dates only, which are now as follows:
Thursdays 6:30-9:30 p.m.
June 16, 23, 30
July 7, 14, 28
Those applicants who are chosen will be notified on Tuesday, June 7, and will have until Thursday, June 9, to pay the $275 deposit. To learn more about the “Constructing a Standout MBA Application” six-week course, please click here.
Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.
When applying to business school, leave your parents out of the process! Although this MBA admission tip may seem obvious to most candidates, those who are a part of “Gen Y” or “The Millennials” have parents who are likely accustomed to helping guide their children’s choices, having done so throughout the candidates’ high school and college years. These parents naturally want to be involved in the MBA admissions 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/working abroad and/or cannot make such a call him- or herself during work hours, is certainly not the same as having a parent call to ask why his/her son or daughter hasn’t gotten an interview invitation yet. Unless the matter at hand is an entirely practical one, candidates have nothing to gain by having their parents act as their agents. On the contrary, they have everything to lose. An aggressive parent can reflect badly on an applicant for a variety of reasons, the most obvious being that it suggests that the candidate lacks maturuity and perhaps the ability to make independent judgments as well.
Think very carefully before involving your parents in any aspect of the application process except sitting at home and waiting for great news—successful applicants do it all the time!
A first-of-its-kind, on-demand MBA application experience that delivers a personalized curriculum for you and leverages interactive tools to guide you through the entire MBA application process.
