What You Can do Now to Help Get Accepted Next Year!
Now that you have made up you mind about applying to business school, I would suggest that you start building your strong application now. Your application can go from good to better to getting an acceptance letter by a little knowledge and some fine-tuning. It starts with a clear action plan—not a check list of things to do, but a strategy to maximize your chances. Meanwhile, you need to ask yourself some questions.
- What do you want to do after your MBA?
- Which school(s) can you get in with your qualification?
- Where do you want to be?
- Do you have educational preferences in terms of whether you want a case study school?
After you have been able provide answers to these questions, you may have come up with maybe ten business schools initially. You will have to narrow your choices down to about three to six. I eventually applied to only 3 schools. I would recommend that you visit the school(s). But if you can’t do that, get in touch with each school’s ambassadors. They will enable you to have access to useful information about the school’s MBA program.
It’s never too soon to start studying for the GMAT exam. Leaving yourself a sufficient amount of time is key, even if it means that you hold off applying to school for another year. Re-taking the exam will not be a bad idea if you believe you did not get the score you wanted.
One word of advice, it would do you a lot of good if you are involved in community service. If you have not been involved in one yet, it is not too late to start. Just remain committed to it. The whole point of the application is to show the admissions committee who you are. Don’t hurry up and sign up for just any kind of Community service strictly because you feel like you need to check the boxes. If you don’t have passion for it, it’ll absolutely come through in your essays. The admissions committee will see right through it and this will not help your application.
What can make or break your chances is really very simple. But, unfortunately, it’s what most applicants miss. The goal is to get the admissions committee to know who you are. And if that doesn’t come through in the application, then you’ve missed the whole point. The other thing that many schools are very explicit about is they want to know how you’re going to bring something to the class.
The final point to consider in your strategy is timing. Some schools have a rolling-admissions process. But most schools typically work with three rounds of deadlines—October, December, November, January and March for fall admission. It is always nice to have your target set on the first round. That way, you start to get behind the ball, and you can still apply in the second round and there’s no real loss. But waiting until the third round is a pretty common mistake that happens—putting things off for too long. And most schools recommend against applying in the third round because, at that point, a majority of the students have already been taken.”
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