MBA Reapplication: Why were you dinged? Now what?

(This is an updated and expanded version of a post from 2008)

Was your admissions game plan for Fall 2009 a failure?

For those, who have yet to apply, do you want to understand some of the common pitfalls you should avoid?

Below are the typical reasons for rejection(stated as questions) and some of my suggestions for developing a new strategy for future applications (mostly stated as questions). I base the following on my experience helping reapplicants successfully obtain admission at such schools as Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Chicago GSB, Kellogg, LBS, and MIT.

1. Were you realistic? If there was one overall reason for failure that I would point to, it would be lack of realism about the process. Usually this involves ignoring one or more important factors:
-Specifically ignoring the rate of admission, average GMAT and/or iBT TOEFL / IELTS test scores, and GPA required of those admitted are all highly likely to result in applying to schools that an applicant has very little chance to enter. See below for more about this.
-Age. I don't blame applicants for this one entirely because B-schools often have an all inclusive message about who they admit that is not quite the real case. This is especially true in regards to age where it is very clear that programs can't say they will not let in older applicants, but actually they usually don't. For example, applying to Stanford GSB or HBS after the age of 30 might be worth trying, but your chances for admission (compared to the average rate of admission) are not great. HBS is fairly direct about the age issue (see my earlier post on the subject), but Stanford does not choose to deal with this issue in an honest and forthright manner. For those over 30, look at average age and age range when considering where to apply. Try to ask admissions privately about this issue, you might get a straight answer or not. (See my interview with Kirt Wood from RSM who gave a very clear answer on this issue.) Applying to most top programs once you are in your mid-thirties may very well be a complete exercise in frustration and once you are past 35, the chances for admission at many top programs appears to be slim. For those in and/or approaching their mid-thirties or older who want a full-time MBA experience, I think programs such as the Sloan programs at LBS, MIT, and Stanford as well as USC IBEAR are all very suitable. An EMBA is always an option.
-Last minute applications: Developing great applications takes time, doing them at the last minute is one of the easiest ways to increase your chances for rejection because it is highly likely that your essays were not well written, sufficiently strategic in the way they marketed you, and, possibly, not even proofread.
-Lack of substantial research into/networking for the programs being applied to. If you did not make full use of each schools' web-based information, did not attend admissions events, did not visit campus, and/or did not communicate with alumni or current students, you probably did not know enough about the schools you applied to make an effective case for why you fit at them.
-Did not obtain sufficient and/or effective advice on your applications and application strategy from mentors and/or admissions experts (see below).
One thing I have found about successful reapplicants is that are highly realistic. Reality is a harsh teacher, but one you cannot afford to avoid.

2. Did you really know about the programs you applied to? How was that reflected in your essays? Did you merely restate obvious information about the school or did you show exactly what aspects of it will meet your academic and professional goals? Did you demonstrate a clear connection to the program? Did you even think about fit? Stating unremarkable things based simply on reading the website or brochure is not enough, you need to show why a specific program really fits your personality and goals. If you had an interview, how effective were you at establishing fit?

3. Was there a problem with the way you expressed your desire for an MBA or your goals?Actually almost every re-applicant I have worked with had a serious problem clearly articulating their goals. If you think your goals might be the problem, read this and complete the table you can find there. Were your goals based on any research? Were they interesting? Finally, reflecting my recent post on trends for Fall 2009 admission, did you take the financial crisis into account? If you were trying to get into finance with no prior experience and making second round applications, your goals were likely to have been a serious problem.

4. Did your essays fully demonstrate your potential as a student and a professional? Did you come across as a unique applicant? The way you write about who you are and what you have done is a major way that admissions evaluates this. More specifically: Could you clearly express selling points about yourself in your essays? Did you provide sufficient details about what you did combined with a sufficient explanation for why? Are your essays about you or just about what you have done? Are your essays mere extensions of bullet points on your resume or do they tell effective stories about you? Do you really understand the essay questions? How effective were in writing about such common topics as contributions, leadership, and/or failure?

As is usual for Chicago GSB admissions, they have provided some great advice, this time on the topic of reapplication. If you plan to reapply to Chicago GSB or are just looking for general reapplication advice, I suggest reading GSB's "Making a Fresh Start." I especially liked the following very useful advice that is really applicable for any applicant:

Show us why you're different. Each year thousands of students apply to business school and yet many qualified candidates are not offered admission. With MBA admissions growing more and more competitive each year, it's really important to stand out in the crowd by attempting to differentiate yourself from those of a similar profile. Tell us about your challenges, interesting achievements, unique perspectives and stories.

Showing admissions why you are unique is something that all applicants should really focus on. For more about, please see my earlier post on being unique

5. Did you put a sufficient amount of time into writing your essays? Writing great essays usually takes time and multiple drafts. Did you write multiple drafts of your essays? Were your essays quickly written? Did a significant amount of thought go into them?


6. Did your resume (CV) present your professional, academic, and extracurricular experience effectively? A great MBA resume requires effective presentation of your past experience so that an admissions committee can gain insight into your potential to succeed in the MBA program and in your future career. A great resume is also an effective agenda setting device for an interview. Did your resume contain clear statements about your accomplishments? Did your resume honestly and effectively represent the full range of your experience? Did your resume showcase your potential as a manager, businessperson, and/or leader?

7. Did you really address any potential concerns that an admissions committee may have about your suitability as a candidate? Even though there is always an optional question available for this purpose, did you make use of it? If there was something you wanted to avoid discussing, maybe you should consider doing so.

8. How were your interviews? If you did interview, were you well-prepared? How do you judge your own performance? Did you practice enough? Are you good at interviewing? For non-native speakers: Are you good at interviewing in your own language? I believe that the only effective way to prepare for interviews is to be over-prepared: You need to appear relaxed and comfortable talking with the interviewer, to be ready to address the hardest questions, to be comfortable with your own selling points and the stories that support them, and have to have enough knowledge about the school to show a passion for it. If you were dinged from one or more schools that offered you an invitation to interview, chances are great that you really need to work on your interview skills. If you know that you are particularly weak interviewing, consider applying to at least some schools were the interviews are not considered very hard.

9. How were your recommendations? Did your recommendations honestly and effectively endorse you? Did they contain sufficient detail to help an admissions committee understand your selling points? Did your recommendations really evaluate both your strengths and weaknesses? Were your recommendations authentic or is there any possibility that an admissions officer would be concerned about their authorship? For more about recommendations, see here (Note: I have not posted an MBA specific recommendation post).

10. How good was the advice you received from other people about your application(s)? In addition to yourself, who read and advised you on your essays, resume, interview(s), and/or other aspects of your application process? Alums, mentors, admissions consultants or counselors, editors, and/or ghostwriters? While I would not suggest blaming those who advised you, you may want to seek out new or additional advisers. Of course if they told you that your essays, resume, or some other aspect of your application were weak and you did not address it, they were providing good advice. Additionally if they expressed concerns about your likelihood for admission, their advice might be good (beware of those who always hedge their bets).

If you relied extensively on an editor or paid a ghostwriter and seem to be getting dinged quickly, you have discovered the pitfalls of those highly dubious strategies. Consider writing your own stuff, getting an ethical and professional admissions consultant to advise you, and/or discovering the potential of your voice.

If you used an admissions counselor or consultant and did not get any good results and they told you that your applications were good, find someone else. If your counselor had limited experience, this is pretty much an indicator that you should have gone with someone experienced. If your counselor seemed exhausted or rushed, you also have a problem because this person is unlikely to be able to be devoted to helping you enough. If you purchased a counseling service and not the services of a particular counselor, I would not be surprised if you encountered someone overworked. After all, one critical difference between consultants who work for themselves and those that work for someone else is the amount they make for the work performed. Those that work for someone else make considerably less per hour and often have to work more and under higher pressure than those that work for themselves. Regardless of whether you use an individual consultant or a service, the issue will always come down to the specific advice you are being given, which means the particular person you are working with. In addition to contacting me, one good resource for finding a new counselor is through the Association of International Admissions Consultants where you can find a directory of my colleagues (including my guest blogger, Steve Green) around the world who are committed to providing high level service to their clients.

11. Was your GMAT within the school's 80% range? Was your GMAT below average? Obviously if your score was below the 80% range, you should assume your chances for admissions were less than the stated admissions rate. If it was was within the range, but significantly below the average score, you should assume that it was a contributing factor to your results. I am not saying to apply only to schools where you are within the range (see my earlier post on this issue), but I would suggest taking account of the risk in terms of (1) school selection, (2) the number of programs you need to apply to, and (3) expectations for success. As far as reapplication goes, studying GMAT is almost always necessary for those with less than a 700 GMAT. If your GMAT was 700 or higher and you were rejected, GMAT was almost certainly not your main problem.

12. Was your GPA equal to, above, or below the average reported GPA for the school? If it was below, this may have been a factor against you. If you GPA is significantly below the average GPA and your GMAT is equal to or above the average score, did you write an optional essay? Did you highlight your academic potential in some way to counter the issue of your GPA?

13. Did your TOEFL meet the school's minimum stated requirement? If your score was below the minimum, did you discuss this in the optional or some other essay to make the case for your English abilities? At this stage, you need to improve your score for Fall 2010 admission. If your score on TOEFL is really weak, have you considered taking IELTS? Some applicants actually will do better on this test than on ibt TOEFL. It is not easy to prepare for a new test, you might really want to try it out and see which test is better for you.

14. Were you realistic about school selection? I think you need to look at the portfolio of schools you applied to and ask yourself the following questions:
-Did I apply to programs with low rates of admission?
-Did I apply to enough programs?
-Did I apply to a wide enough range of programs?
See my posts on ranking such as "The 99" for some strategies for selecting schools.

15. Were you honest about the way you presented yourself in your whole application? As a strong advocate for honesty, I have a bias for this particular approach to the process. If you are getting dinged after misrepresenting one or more aspects of your experience, you might want to consider that it is the job of admissions officers to eliminate liars. Liars get through anyway, but not all of them. If you have over-marketed yourself, you may also have come across as less than authentic.

I know that getting rejected is no fun, but if you are committed to the process, I think you can make your next round of applications a success.

NEED MBA ADMISSIONS CONSULTING?
If you are looking for a highly experienced admissions consultant who is passionate about helping his clients succeed, please feel free to contact me at adammarkus@gmail.com to arrange an initial consultation. To learn more about my services, see here. Initial consultations are conducted by Skype or telephone. For clients in Tokyo, a free face-to-face consultation is possible after an initial Skype or telephone consultation. I only work with a limited number of clients per year and believe that an initial consultation is the best way to determine whether there is a good fit. Whether you use my service or another, I suggest making certain that the fit feels right to you.

-Adam Markus
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Columbia J-Term Application up on 4/20

For those considering or planning to apply to the Columbia Business School January Term 2010 Program, the application will be up on the web on April 20. I intend to analyze it immediately once available. In the meantime, you can find my previous posts on Columbia January 2009 Term, Early Decision, September 2009 Term, and interviews. It will be interesting to see what questions they ask for January 2010 term.

I expect that the number of January Term applications will be huge, so getting one in early would be a very good idea.


NEED MBA ADMISSIONS CONSULTING?
If you are looking for a highly experienced admissions consultant who is passionate about helping his clients succeed, please feel free to contact me at adammarkus@gmail.com to arrange an initial consultation. Initial consultations are conducted by Skype or telephone. For clients in Tokyo, a free face-to-face consultation is possible after an initial Skype or telephone consultation. I only work with a limited number of clients per year and believe that an initial consultation is the best way to determine whether there is a good fit. Whether you use my service or another, I suggest making certain that the fit feels right to you.

-Adam Markus
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TO FALL 2009 ADMITTED BLOG READERS

Congratulations!

If I don't have the opportunity to congratulate you in person, at least I can give you a virtual toast.


If the advice on my blog helped you get admitted to an MBA, LL.M., Public Policy, or other type of graduate program, I would love to hear about it. Please feel free to leave comments or email me at adammarkus@gmail.com.

Cheers,
Adam
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Steve Green: Graduate School Blues

In this post, Steve looks at one of the darker sides of graduate school.
-Adam

GRADUATE SCHOOL BLUES

This post addresses a potential and serious bad side-effect of being a graduate student but offers some pointers for applicants to help avoid or minimize it.

Graduate school can make you unhappy. If you already prone to feeling unhappy, then grad school can make you even more unhappy. That’s the main point of an article by Piper Fogg, “Grad School Blues,” in the February 20, 2009 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (available online to subscribers or buyers of a short-term pass.) The author notes that:

Graduate school is gaining a reputation as an incubator for anxiety and depression.

Honestly, having been to grad school I am surprised only at the statement’s implication that it had not already earned this reputation. Happily, the issue raised by this article does not apply to everyone, but I firmly believe that everyone should be aware of the potential impact of grad school on their emotional well-being.

Applying to graduate school? You are probably thinking about the financial costs (i.e. tuition, books, costs of living) and opportunity costs (i.e. the income you would be earning if you were not in graduate school). You should also consider the potential emotional costs. Obviously, these are impossible to quantify and calculate and will vary greatly according to your own emotional resources as well as to the type of students and faculty in any given grad program.

Everyone I knew in graduate school, beginning with myself, felt intimidated, frustrated, lonely, and, in some cases, simply depressed at one time or another.

Fogg notes:

Social isolation, financial burdens, lack of structure, and the pressure to produce groundbreaking work can wear heavily on graduate students, especially those already vulnerable to mental-health disorders.

Graduate students face threats to their self-confidence and basic happiness on multiple fronts including a heavy intellectual workload, having to subject written and verbal analytical skills to the scrutiny of peers and professors several times every week (one of my grad school friends spoke for many of us when she lamented that she felt like she was constantly having to prove she was “smart enough”), the solitary nature of the process (are you prepared to spend almost all of your waking hours outside of class reading and writing?) and probably living on the same shoestring budget that barely kept your head above water as an undergraduate (which is no fun, of course, but especially frustrating when your working professional friends are earning decent salaries and you constantly have to decline their offers to vacation together or even to meet for a nice dinner.) In addition:

"Grad students are in a remarkable position of powerlessness," says Thomas B. Jankowski, an adjunct assistant professor of political science and gerontology at Wayne State University who runs PhinisheD, an online support group to help graduate students finish their dissertations. Often a single thesis adviser seems to control a student's destiny, he notes…

And to make matters worse:

it can take years to finish a dissertation. And even if a student finishes, success on the job market is far from guaranteed; today's poor economy has only worsened job prospects.

In a nutshell, graduate school can challenge even the most confident of personalities.

What can you do now as an applicant? As noted above, determining the potential emotional costs of earning a grad degree is not nearly as clear-cut as figuring out the financial and opportunity costs, but you can minimize them by doing the following:

1. Take the Socratic adage to heart: KNOW THYSELF! Be honest about how happy and self-confident you are in general and, in light of the conditions of grad school described above, assess whether or not you’ll risk deep unhappiness by going to grad school now. Furthermore, ask yourself over and over again if you really want to go to graduate school or are applying because it “seems” like the right thing to do or because you are avoiding something else. These kinds of reasons can put you on the fast track to unhappiness once grad school starts.

2. KNOW THE GRAD STUDENTS: As you gather information about grad programs, contact student representatives of those programs and ask them frank questions about the quality of life in the department and the city or town. Try to find out how cooperative and congenial current students are with each other. Graduate-school work is solitary work, but that does not mean each student is an island unto himself. In the graduate program at the Dept. of Politics of the University of Virginia (UVa.) I was really pleased by how friendly and supportive students were with each other. We formed study groups to meet outside class and often socialized. In grad school I met some of current best friends, people I will be close to for the rest of my life.

3. KNOW THE FACULTY: When you contact grad students you should also try to learn their opinion of faculty. Ask them about the availability of professors for grad students outside of class hours, and about whether and to what degree faculty support grad students in finding internships, funding, and publishing opportunities. Find out if they like most of their professors. On this point I was also highly satisfied with my own grad program. The professors in my department were extremely friendly, supportive and available, even as they were highly demanding and challenging. I have known people at other programs and in various fields who could not say the same thing and they envy the collegial atmosphere of my department.

4. KNOW ACADEMIA: In addition to reading up on academic work in your field of interest, I encourage you to read publications such as The Chronicle of Higher Education and Insider Higher Ed, both of which provide excellent in-depth coverage of news related to higher education from the perspectives of students, professors and administrators. If you read these regularly you will gain a valuable perspective on the business- in both a literal and metaphorical sense of the word- of higher education and graduate school, which can only help you to assess your fit for any grad program in particular and for graduate school in general.

As always, good luck! Please don’t hesitate to make comments on this post if you have any questions, I am always happy to try to answer them.

To learn more about my graduate admissions consulting services, please click here.
- H. Steven ("Steve") Green, グリーン・ハロルド・スティーブン

大学院留学 カリフォルニア大学バークレー校

Steve Green: Start Early! Start Now!

In this post, Steve discusses the importance of starting early for those planning on Fall 2010 admission.

-Adam

START EARLY. START NOW!

Applying to graduate school disproves the old adage that “Good things come to those who wait.” Wait too long to prepare your graduate school application and you risk having a bad thing come to you- failure to enter a school of your choice.

This post presents a list of to-dos for the period between now and when you can actually access schools’ application forms.

It’s only April but I’ve already acquired new clients who are applying for graduate school programs for 2010. Online and paper application forms will not be available until late in the summer so: Isn’t it too early to begin preparing your graduate school application? No!

You should prepare as far ahead of program deadlines as possible. Most US grad school applications are not available until the end of August or beginning of September and most deadlines are somewhere between mid-December and mid-January.

If you wait until you can download them you will have a narrow window of time in which to complete all of your applications. Many people do, in fact, wait until fall to take any action on their application. They seem to treat the actual release of the forms as an official starting line for the application process and become stressed as they race to accomplish so much in so little time.

As an admission consultant it is frustrating to watch highly successful, intelligent people risk handicapping their chances by writing essays in an agitated, worried frame of mind as they struggle mightily to accomplish many things in November and December that they could have done earlier.

If you are a full-time student or professional you will need to budget your time carefully. A great way to do so is to have less to do when application season “formally” commences.

Here are four things to start doing now. I summarize them first and say more about each below.

• Get the test monkey off your back before you start writing essay drafts!

Prepare for any tests required as part of the application. Learn what the test requires, what the minimum accepted scores for each school are, and then aim to reach your highest possible score before this fall, if possible.

• Start researching graduate programs. I provide a useful link below. Plan to know which programs you will apply to by August.

• Decide whom to request as your recommendation letter writers and contact them now.

• Brainstorm and outline possible essay topics.

Let’s look at each of these in more detail.

1. Prepare for the GRE, LSAT, MCAT, GMAT and any other test you may have to take as part of an application Non-native English speaking applicants to North American universities will almost certainly have to take the TOEFL. For more about test preparation, see Adam's earlier posts on the subject.

• First, find out which test you have to take. Applying to graduate school in the arts and sciences? You’ll probably need to take the GRE. Law school? The LSAT. Medical school? The MCAT. Business school? The GMAT (and/or for some schools, the GRE).

• Next, if you are unfamiliar with the contents of the test you will have to take, then visit the website of the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which is the sole creator and administrator of most university, graduate- and professional school aptitude exams. For GMAT, which is administered by GMAC, see here. (Disclosure: I am an annual reader for ETS Advanced Placement exams in Comparative Politics. These exams are administered to high school students. My clients do not include high school student applicants to universities. The content of this blog does not in any way, shape or form represent the views of ETS.)

• Go to your favorite bookstore (ADAM'S ONLINE BOOKSTORE IS A GREAT PLACE TO START) or library and get a practice book for the test you will take. These usually contain multiple practice exams and you should simulate actual exam conditions a few times before you take the test “for real.” In addition to official guides published by GMAC and ETS, popular test-prep book publishers include Barron’s, Kaplan, Peterson’s, and The Princeton Review. PLEASE DON'T ASK EITHER ADAM OR I FOR ADVICE ON WHICH OF THESE BOOKS TO USE, WE ARE NOT TEST PREP GURUS! That said, some combination of an official guide and test prep books is the way many applicants start to prepare.
  

• Find out if your local university or community college offers test-prep courses. Many do and enrollment is typically open to anyone.

• Think about taking test-prep class. At the best schoools, the teachers usually are hired only after obtaining a score in the top 1-2 percentile and can introduce you to time saving strategies for answering questions. Way, way back in the pre-Internet age I took the GRE without studying for it. Armed with high self-confidence and the notion that the test would be a glorified version of the ACT(an undergraduate entrance exam) - on which I earned a high score without any preparation - I entered the examination hall sure I’d ace it. I did not. As a Christmas present, my family purchased a space for me in a test prep class, and I earned the score I needed for my target schools. (This was so long ago that I do not remember the actual name of the business. The teachers were good, though.)

• Also consider online courses as they may offer the same value to you as a live course depending on your needs.
  

• If you are taking the time to read this blog, you probably do not possess that fatal combination of ignorance and arrogance that I had. Perhaps you are disciplined enough to study on your own. Perhaps you need the structure of a classroom setting. Do what works best for your own habits and learning style and aim to get the highest possible score. For more about learning style, see Adam's earlier post.
  

A note on why test scores matter: Admissions committees rely on these a) as indicators for potential success and b) as a factor for awarding limited graduate scholarships and awards to incoming students. The higher your score, the more valuable your application becomes on these two points. Furthermore, many schools set a minimum expected test score and will not review essays and recommendation letters from applicants whose test scores do not meet the threshold.

2. If you've chosen your field, then begin researching programs.

• A good combination of databases from which you can start a search are GradSchools.com and US News & World Report’s annual guide to America’s Best Graduate Schools. The former can help you find most any program within a particular field and link you to that program’s homepage. The USN&WR guide tells you which programs in a given field are ranked the highest and why.

• My MPA/MPP posts have links to great databases for finding schools and the details about them. You can fine the first post here.

• Talk to people you know in your chosen field and find out where they went to graduate school and why they entered a particular program.

• Find out where the scholars and experts whose work has most influenced your thinking attended graduate school.

3. Choose whom you will ask to be your recommenders and contact them as soon as you know which field you wish to pursue. It is too soon to obtain the recommendation forms for most schools, but you can never let potential recommenders know early enough that you seek their help. Think about sending them a polite note requesting their recommendation, letting them know your plans and promising to send them the necessary links/forms as soon as you obtain them yourself.

4. Start brainstorming for your resume and Statement of Purpose. Begin thinking about what your different strengths are and which of your accomplishments best illustrate them.

• First, determine your specific career goals. For a fantastic way to identify your career goals see Adam's advice and methods here. I always send this particular post to my clients and they have all found it extremely helpful.

• Prepare your resume or CV. My guide to producing a resume is here,

The following points are copied and condensed from the first of my two posts on writing a statement of purpose (SOP) essay for most graduate school programs (outside of business schools.) For a complete, detailed summary of how to write an SOP I hope you will look both of my posts.

• Choose several accomplishments from your resume/CV to write about in your SOP. Choose accomplishments that illustrate the strengths that will help you to succeed in graduate school. Highlight different skills, i.e. do not use different accomplishments that illustrate the same strength.

• Decide how you can distinguish yourself. Assume that everyone applying to the same programs is as qualified as you. (After all, everyone who is accepted will, as will be many who are not accepted.)

• What makes you unique? Think about this in terms of marketing yourself: Figure out how to stand out in a field of qualified applicants.

SUMMARY & CONCLUSION

Ideally you should have only two things to do this fall: Write essays and complete application forms, including collecting recommendation letters and/or confirming they have been sent directly to schools when necessary. By August you should have obtained a strong test score, selected your target graduate programs, secured commitments for letters of recommendation. Between late summer and mid-December or January you should focus on writing the best possible graduate application essays, free of other application-related worries.

You probably don't need to do work on these things every day between now and this fall, but if you keep them in the back of your mind now then they'll get to the front of your mind, and onto your notebook or computer screen sooner rather than later.

GOOD LUCK!

- H. Steven Green

For questions regarding this post, please contact me at h.steven.green@gmail.com. To learn more about my graduate admissions consulting services, please click here.
- H. Steven ("Steve") Green, グリーン・ハロルド・スティーブン

大学院留学 カリフォルニア大学バークレー校 マクスウェルスクール シラキューズ大学 ハーバード大学ケネディスクール コロンビア大学の国際関係・公共政策大学院（通称SIPA)