Applying to Business School:The Best Time

Matt Symonds helps you figure out the best time to apply to business school. If you have done your research, attended the MBA Fairs, spoken to your employer to ensure company support, and visited the campuses, you may now have a shortlist of Executive MBA programs. 

The ideal time to apply to school

Once you have taken the decision to do an Executive MBA, and drawn up your shortlist of preferred business schools, you are then confronted with your first EMBA deadline – the application process. Many Executive MBA programs use what they call a rolling admission process. This means 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.

Schools recognize that the need for company support often adds a lengthy component to the application process and final deadlines can run as little as two months before the program is due to start. This compares to five or six months for a full time program. Before the Admissions Committee gets to decide between the Swedish furniture designer, the Brazilian financier and the Austrian engineer, applications are checked over to make sure 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. The explanation lies in the numbers game - a school may typically receive applications from two or three times the number of places available in the program, so don’t give them an excuse to ignore you.

What do you need to complete the application?

The emphasis for admissions to an Executive MBA is about a candidate's experience and achievements. Schools are looking for high achievers with significant managerial responsibility who have been identified by their companies as having very high potential. They should be highly motivated to build on their rich professional experience and strong analytical skills, and have a desire to further their career in an international context, learning how to manage a wide range of people and processes. Sure they use tests like the GMAT to evaluate basic quantitative and verbal skills, but the GMAT is the reassurance for schools that you have the basic quantitative and verbal skills to handle the academic rigour of the course. Throughout the process, there are these 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:

Professional Experience

The majority of EMBA programs require a minimum of five to eight years professional experience, of which at least three years with managerial responsibilities.

You need to provide:

- a CV of your career to date

- essays that provide examples of professional achievements

- letters of recommendation

- interviews to share goals and objectives.

Academic Ability

The M in MBA is for Masters. Do you have the academic aptitude to get you through school?

You need to provide:

- transcript of grades (GPA from bachelors), degrees and diplomas GMAT score (and TOEFL score for international students)

Personal

All those mountains you have climbed, pianos you have played, winning goals you have scored.

You need to provide:

- essays that provide examples of personal achievements, interviews to convey your values and sense of self.

Pulling the different pieces of your application together requires you to be on top of things from the beginning. However long the initial process of selecting schools, certain candidates spend months, sometimes even years, nurturing and refining their profile and subsequent application, whilst others complete the entire process in a frenzy of essay writing and test taking. Whether you are applying to one school or several, you will need to devote time and energy to produce a polished marketing document that features you as the product. As you prepare your application to business school, pay particular attention to the elements of the dossier on which you can have an impact.