5 Tips for Maximising your MBA application odds

Learn how you can hit schools with an offer they can’t refuse

1. Get your ‘Whys’ in order

To my mind, the most important and effective use of time in the early stages of your MBA application journey is to focus on the big questions that one has to answer if a sincere attempt at a top B-school is to be made. The big questions are also the most obvious ones – but that doesn’t make them any less significant.

Every business school worth its salt will have more or less the same concerns they’d want clarified. They wonder about your ability and competence when it comes to high-level quantitative and logical thinking, and so they will ask you to furnish proof of the same, through the GMAT/GRE, your academic records, and the like. Many essay questions will also revolve around demonstrations of your hard professional skills – by asking you to talk about your biggest accomplishments or challenges at work.

They would like to know that the candidates they take on are people who will be assets to their peers, their program, and the parent university more generally. Are you known to be kind and courteous? Do your colleagues see you as reliable and trustworthy? Can you handle the typical workplace pressures, or even the usual line-up of major or minor office injustices – less than thrilling performance bonuses, overlooked promotions, responsibility creep, unpaid overtime, etc. Your letters of recommendation (LORs), social work credentials, and certain behavioral essay questions are designed to help the B-school better understand these dimensions of your profile.

Even the question behind the questions – essentially a challenge for you to show the adcom how you are unique – is better answered once you take the time to dwell on your deep motivations. Take your time to really figure out your reasons behind wanting to do an MBA at this point in your career. Make sure you’ve thought long and hard about the various costs – tuition and living costs are the obvious ones but don’t forget the opportunity costs – two years out of work, and two years of lost salary. It’s clear there’s a lot at stake, so schools expect that you’ve invested heavily in articulating your ‘Whys’.   

2. Lean on the Employment Reports

I’m still surprised when I speak to MBA candidates who haven’t spent hours poring over what could well be the single-most significant source of comparable data when it comes to weighing business schools against each other. For anyone interested in looking at tangible, quantitative data about the questions you definitely have asked yourself: What do the career outcomes at X school look like? What does the incoming class profile look like? Is it harder for international students to get a job? What’s the average salary an MBA graduate can expect?

MBA Employment Reports offer data points covering all of these concerns, and more, and are often very credible – typically audited by third parties. MBA Employment Reports also subscribe to a uniform pattern of reporting this data, following guidelines set down by the MBA CSEA (MBA Career Services and Employment Alliance). Here, you can reliably find out about the timing (and nature) of job offers, what functions and industries your peers might be targeting, and what sorts of potential employers will come knocking down your door.

Going through these reports can yield interesting and actionable intelligence – knowing that a certain school sends 70%+ of its cohort to work in the Bay Area, with 35% going into the Technology sector, is a crucial factoid for an applicant keen on working with Facebook/Meta, Apple or Alphabet as a Product Manager. For someone who is interested in an analyst role in Finance but is hesitating due to concerns about ROI, it pays to know that the average paycheck at a top-10 Finance MBA runs north of USD 130000 per year, sans bonuses.

So next time you’re sitting down with your MBA Shortlist excel sheet (you do have an excel sheet, don’t you?) make sure you’re relying on the sweet, sweet insights that Employment Reports are packed with – Good Stuff!

3. Make sure to talk to Alumni

Living as we are in the golden age of LinkedIn, is there any reason not to? Reaching out to alumni of your dream and target schools has long been regarded as a best-practice when it comes to learning more about the salient features and opportunities on offer at the MBA program of your choice.

Reaching out to alumni can help you suss out the realities of studying at the alma mater in question. What are the stand-out features of the curriculum and of the pedagogy itself? Which professors have classrooms full to the rafters with students, and which professors are busy lecturing to empty rooms? What are the events outside of the classroom that pull the most students? What is the culture like? How hard is the job search? Or the great mulligan itself – if they got a do-over, would they choose the same school again?

There’s a huge difference in the depth of know-how and know-what of someone who has (relatively) recently graduated from a top B-school and has just gone through the grinder of the MBA job hunt. Alumni can help you understand the pitfalls to avoid as an MBA student, and launchpads you could leverage to get ahead of the curve. They can tell you where you’ll find the crispest lager for your post-class hang.

And, more than anything else, alumni can empathize with you on your MBA journey. They’ve been where you are. Many successful alumni didn’t get through to their dream school in their first attempt. Even the ones who did know well how difficult and demanding the MBA application process is. An alum is therefore someone you can reach out to for advice and mentorship who’ll be able to really get in the trenches with you, atleast mentally, and give you feedback that’ll actually make a real difference.

Lastly, alumni are, on the most part, deeply invested in making sure their school’s reputation and brand-value stays intact, if not improve by leaps and bounds. If you’re a solid candidate with a credible academic and professional history, who is likely to make significant contributions to the school’s standing, most alumni would be thrilled to help you along your path in any way they can. So don’t hesitate: come up with a short but sweet introduction of yourself, outlining your major goals and objectives, and then shoot your shot.  

4. Shortlist wisely

While some of the foregoing tips come into play in the later stages of the MBA application journey, this tip is one to consider in the early stages – let’s say once you’ve got your GMAT/GRE score, and have spent some time thinking about your filters (such as whether you’re going for a finance-focused MBA program or an MBA in the North East), that’s the right time to sit down and make your shortlist.

While you’ll hear from everyone how to weigh your odds, choosing from among your options schools that you’ll categorize as aspirational or stretch, target or safety, what doesn’t get said enough, however, is that choosing a good fit program is a two-way street.

What I mean is that certain schools pride themselves on being ‘feeders’ into specific organizations and roles. For example, Stanford probably gets some satisfaction from their global reputation as an entrepreneurial/start-up powerhouse, Wharton from their status in the world of high finance, and Harvard from their Business Leadership acumen. In fact, every business school directs its focus to a handful of specializations it wants to make its mark in, and which suit the school’s own limitations– finances, geography, employment trends, industry connections, among others.

Schools also have their own ambitions, which dictate what types of profiles they’ll be hungering for. A school looking to increase its average GMAT or GRE score will prefer the 750-bringer to the profile with a 650. Another school that wants to have a more well-represented and diverse classroom may jump at the ‘diversity’ candidate with a tear-jerker story and the same 650. Some MBA programs privilege international work experience (looking at you, INSEAD) while entrepreneurial experience (even failed or truncated experiences) might float your boat at others.

So do make sure, when you’re sitting down to prepare your MBA short-list, that you’re choosing programs where there is a strong and clear alignment between what your goals are, and what the school expects and wants. And, in case you’re wondering how you’re supposed to figure out which school is good for what, remember two tips from above – employment reports; and conversations with alumni.     

5. Don’t neglect Culture and Fit

My final point is to highlight the importance of culture or ‘fit’ when it comes to planning for and writing your MBA applications. It is indeed a tenuous concept to capture – after all, what is it, tangibly, to talk about culture. It can’t be quantified, and as such there are few metrics to capture or compare aspects of the culture at different schools. In a sense, culture is largely ineffable, but there are resources you can tap into that can give you a lead.

Nearly every business school has a page or two on their website where they talk about their stated values or their mission. This is always a great place to start. Let’s look at a quick sampling from popular MBA schools: Berkeley Haas talks about valuing the courage to ‘Question the Status Quo’; Emory Goizueta champions ‘Rigor’ and ‘Accountability’; Cornell Johnson focuses on ‘Excellence’, ‘Engagement’, and ‘Impact’. Taking time to dwell on these concepts is a great way to start thinking about culture and how you might contribute along those lines.

Finding ways in your essays to show how your personal code aligns with one or more of the stated values of the schools you’re targeting is an essential element of a great MBA application.

6. Bonus Tip – Show, Don’t Tell

Just a line to leave you with – remember the famous dictum from screenwriting: It’s always better to show than to tell. So, just don’t go about telling the adcoms about how you’re great, and that they should be elated to have you. Instead, you have to demonstrate your strengths and accomplishments through real, lived-in anecdotes and stories. Happy Hunting!

Related Articles