An MBA is one of the biggest investments, in time, effort and money, you are likely to make, so it’s essential to pick the program that is exactly right for you. Start by finding out about the overall business school experience, ideally by talking to people – friends, colleagues, school alumni – who have been through it. What were the pluses and minuses? How has it benefited their career? How will it fit with your personal circumstances? What do they wish they’d known before setting off along the path to an MBA? Next, you will need to decide on which location, which program and which school is going to be right for you. Use QS Scorecard, a personalized business school ranking tool based on your individual aims, abilities and circumstances found on www.topmba.com, to help you narrow down your choices.
All schools have websites packed with useful information. However there is no substitute for meeting admissions officers and alumni face-to-face. So, if your budget doesn’t stretch to visiting campuses around the globe, attend a major business school fair such as the QS World MBA Tour, which visits over forty countries every year.
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. Some schools use what they call a rolling admission process - receiving and reviewing dossiers throughout the academic year. They accept or reject the dossiers as they are reviewed and provide a response within four to six weeks of reception.
The majority of schools use ‘rounds’ of application, typically November, January and March for a September class start. At this stage they collect together all the interesting dossiers and decide whether you are in, out, or placed on a waiting list. These decisions are typically made by an Admissions Committee, made up of admissions officers, professors, and students. But before decisions are made, applications are checked, to make sure that they are complete. If any elements of your file are missing, you can expect the file to sit on a desk and start to collect dust. Being organized at this stage is crucial, to make sure that both you and your recommenders have provided the school with all they need to make a decision.
So which deadline should you aim for? 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 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 over5,000 applications a year for500 program places. For the first round deadline in November, all500 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 be300 or so places left (my figures are purely illustrative). Continue to the third round deadline in March, and you may be left with only80 to150 places still to be filled. Also, bear in mind that many schools receive huge numbers of applications in the last24 hours before the final deadline – at a time when there are only a handful of places left. It makes your chances of success very slim indeed.
So what exactly are you trying to pull together to complete the application?
For students used to a selection process based on competitive entrance exams in which 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 it is not an exam that guarantees being accepted by a business school 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. Schools try to get a better sense of the abilities and characteristics of a candidate by looking at three areas:
Pulling the different pieces of the dossier 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 still have an impact.
Source: www.topmba.com
