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Making your business school application work
An MBA is one of the biggest investments in terms of time, effort and money you are ever likely to make, so it’s essential to pick the programme and the school that are exactly right for you.
The ideal time to apply
Once you have completed your research, attended MBA Fairs, spoken to recruiters, and visited the campuses, you may now have a shortlist of schools. So, when should you apply to business school? We’ve seen thousands of candidates go through this process, and very often, the proper timing makes or breaks their quest. Once you have taken the decision to do an MBA, and drawn up your shortlist, you are then confronted with the deadlines used by the schools in the application process. Despite the claims from certain schools that there is no ideal time to apply, the majority of schools admit that timing can play an important role in the admissions process. Some schools use what they call a rolling admission process. This means, quite simply, that they are constantly receiving and reviewing dossiers throughout the academic year. They accept or reject the dossiers as they are reviewed (including a waiting list option for borderline applications), and provide a response within four to six weeks of reception.
Preparing your dossier
The majority of schools use rounds of application, whereby they determine three rounds of deadlines, typically in November, January and March for a September class start. At this stage, they collect together all the dossiers that are of interest to them and start to decide whether you are in, out, or placed on a waiting list. These decisions are typically decided by an Admissions Committee, which can be made up of admissions officers, professors, and students. But before the Admissions Committee gets to decide between the Swedish furniture designer, the Brazilian financier and the French engineer, applications are checked over to make sure that they are complete (GPA, test scores, essays, letters of recommendation etc.).
If any elements of your file are missing, you can expect the file to sit on a desk and start to collect dust – or, at least, get overlooked. Being organised at this stage is crucial, to make sure that both you and your recommenders have provided the school with all that they need to make a decision.
So which deadline should you aim for? And what goes in that Express Pack that you hand to Mr Fedex? The bottom line has to be to apply to a school when you have a great dossier ready. If meeting the November deadline means a poorly prepared GMAT test, with hurried essays that lack definition and impact, you’d be better off waiting for the next round. If, however, you are preparing well ahead of the game and feel that your dossier is as strong as it could be, apply early.
The explanation lies in the numbers game. A top school may receive over 5,000 applications in a year for the 500 places in the programme. For the first round deadline in mid- November all 500 places are typically available (perhaps a small handful of places have already been filled by students with deferrals or exceptional circumstances). The Admissions Committee then starts to offer places to the best candidates, and by the time you reach the second round deadline in January there may be 300 or so places left (my figures are purely illustrative). Continue to the third round deadline in March and you may be left with only 80 to 150 places still to be filled. Also, bear in mind that many schools receive huge numbers of applications in the last 24 hours before the final deadline – at a time when there are only a handful of places left. It’s great business for UPS, DHL and the rest, but makes your chances of success very slim indeed.
The three key areas
For students used to a selection process based on competitive entrance exams, where the top percentage is guaranteed a place, the admissions process for MBAs presents a very different model. Sure you have tests like the GMAT to evaluate basic quantitative and verbal skills, but the GMAT is not an exam that guarantees acceptance for those with the highest scores. Throughout the process, there may be common threads of leadership, or high-potential, but there is no magic formula for getting into a school. To get a better sense of the abilities and characteristics of a candidate, schools look at three areas:
