Stanford Debunks Interview Myths

Straight from horse's mouth (or lets say Stanford GSB's Admission Blog) -

 

The GSB's Knight Management Center (www.stanford.edu)

MYTH 1: The interview has a lot of weight so if I blow the interview, I have blown my chances of being admitted.
THE TRUTH: There is no specific weight assigned to the interview; the interview is one part of a comprehensive process. A positive interview does not guarantee admission, while a less than favorable interview does not, by itself, preclude admission. The written application, including the essays and letters of reference, is a critical part of the evaluation process. The interview is a key source of supplemental information.

MYTH 2: I received my interview invitation early in the round so it must mean I have a better chance of getting admitted.

Making the most of a Business School visit

If you can visit the business school you are applying to, it is highly recommended to do so BEFORE submitting your applications. While school webpages, brochures and info sessions are good source for basic research, nothing can compare visiting and experiencing the business program in person. This visit can give you pointers that you can use in your essays and help craft authentic responses to interview questions. So how to make the most of your campus visit?

1. When you arrive, or later but before leaving the school, visit the admissions office and sign up. You'd like to be formally in the attendance roll sheet of the business school.

2. If you registered through adcom office, your name will already be there. If you are visiting on your own, make sure to show adcom officer that you really came.You may also be able to learn about the opportunities through the admissions office that are made specific for prospective students. Make sure your visit includes a stop here for this reason.

Columbia Business School's Fall 2012 Application Process - Deadlines and Essays

Here are Columbia Business School’s application deadlines and essays for the coming year:

Columbia Business School Admissions Deadlines

January 2013 Intake: October 3, 2012
Fall 2013 Intake (Early Decision): October 3, 2012
Fall 2013 Intake (Merit Fellowship Consideration): January 9, 2013
Fall 2013 Intake (Regular Decision): April 10, 2013

Do not forget that CBS works on a rolling admissions cycle and we recommend against applying at the last minute. Also “Early Decision” means that the applicant is committing to attend Columbia if he/she accepted.

Columbia Business School Admissions Essays


What is your immediate post-MBA professional goal? (200 characters maximum)

NYU Stern Releases Fall 2012 MBA Admissions Essays

 

NYU Stern is introducing a new Essay 2 to its full-time MBA application for Fall 2013 applicants, the first major change in the essays in six years. The question will assess an applicant's fit with the Stern mission and mindset about creating value in an environment of increased ambiguity. The School believes these qualities are essential to lead in today's global business environment.

"The central issues of our time--from fiscal and environmental sustainability to the rise of emerging markets and the coming wave of urbanization--cry out for disruptive leaders who can think across traditional intellectual boundaries and work collaboratively to harness the power of markets for the good of the world," said Peter Henry, Dean of NYU Stern. "We want students of the highest caliber who are eager to broaden their minds, develop their own unique professional identity, and use the assets of our School and University to figure out how to create value in whatever career they choose to pursue."

MBA Admissions, Background Checks and You!

With a lot of schools releasing their R1 and R2 decisions during the last few weeks, many admitted candidates might be having some questions about the background checks that are often reported to be conducted by the top MBA programs.

To help explain the process, here are some quick facts :

1) What is a background check?

Background check involves checking out and verifying the information that an applicant (and now an admitted student) provides to the school during his or her MBA applications. The process may differ a litl bit for different schools, it usually includes verifying that the applicant attended the schools (undergrad/grad/community, etc) that he or she claimed in the application to have attended, received the grades that are indicated in the application and worked in the organizations that is reported on the application. It also involves the checking the candidate’s job history, titles, starting and ending dates and salary information. Finally, background checks may even involve contacting applicant's recommenders to check about their support and confirming applicant's involvement in the extracurricular or community activities as she or he may have earlier claimed.

Stanford R2 Interview Invite Call

Our client's privacy is our top most concern and hence, some pieces of information from the interview invite have been blanked out.

Please find attached the interview invites received by one of our client for Stanford GSB's full time MBA Program -

(Click to zoom)

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Need help to get the best application out there for your dream Business School? Come to BizSchoolPrep Consulting. Whether you are a domestic applicant or an international one, our process is uniquely designed to understand your background, and then create a strategy whose sole aim is to get you to the business school of your dream. Know what makes us different.

Chicago Booth R2 Interview Invite Call

Our client's privacy is our top most concern and hence, some pieces of information from the interview invite have been blanked out.

Please find attached the interview invites received by one of our client for Chicago Booth's full time MBA Program -

(Click to zoom)

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Need help to get the best application out there for your dream Business School? Come to BizSchoolPrep Consulting. Whether you are a domestic applicant or an international one, our process is uniquely designed to understand your background, and then create a strategy whose sole aim is to get you to the business school of your dream. Know what makes us different.

Kellogg Round 2 Interview Invite Call

Our client's privacy is our top most concern and hence, some pieces of information from the interview invite have been blanked out.

Please find attached the interview invites received by one of our client for Kellogg full time MBA Program, after initially getting a waiver-

(Click to zoom)

Like this post? +1 us and share it with your friends using any of our sharing widgets below!

Need help to get the best application out there for your dream Business School? Come to BizSchoolPrep Consulting. Whether you are a domestic applicant or an international one, our process is uniquely designed to understand your background, and then create a strategy whose sole aim is to get you to the business school of your dream. Know what makes us different.

Cornell Johnson Interview Invite

Our client's privacy is our top most concern and hence, some information from the interview invite has been blanked out. Also, the dates of the invite emails have intentionally been changed to reflect today's date.

Please find attached the interview invites received by one of our client for Cornell Johnson's full time MBA Program-

(Click to zoom)

Like this post? +1 us and share it with your friends using any of our sharing widgets below!

Need help to get the best application out there for your dream Business School? Come to BizSchoolPrep Consulting. Whether you are a domestic applicant or an international one, our process is uniquely designed to understand your background, and then create a strategy whose sole aim is to get you to the business school of your dream. Know what makes us different.



Duke Interview Invite Call

Our client's privacy is our top most concern and hence, some information from the interview invite has been blanked out. Also, the dates of the invite emails have intentionally been changed to reflect today's date.

Please find attached the interview invites received by one of our clients for Duke's full time MBA Program-

(Click to zoom)

Like this post? +1 us and share it with your friends using any of our sharing widgets below!

Need help to get the best application out there for your dream Business School? Come to BizSchoolPrep Consulting. Whether you are a domestic applicant or an international one, our process is uniquely designed to understand your background, and then create a strategy whose sole aim is to get you to the business school of your dream. Know what makes us different.



Dartmouth Tuck Interview Invite Call

Our client's privacy is our top most concern and hence, some information from the interview invite has been blanked out. Also, the dates of the invite emails have intentionally been changed to reflect today's date.

Please find attached the interview invites received by one of our clients for Tuck's full time MBA Program-

(Click to zoom)

Like this post? +1 us and share it with your friends using any of our sharing widgets below!

Need help to get the best application out there for your dream Business School? Come to BizSchoolPrep Consulting. Whether you are a domestic applicant or an international one, our process is uniquely designed to understand your background, and then create a strategy whose sole aim is to get you to the business school of your dream. Know what makes us different.

Harvard Business School (HBS) Interview Invite Call

Our client's privacy is our top most concern and hence, some information from the interview invite has been blanked out. Also, the dates of the invite emails have intentionally been changed to reflect today's date.

Please find attached the interview invite received by one of our clients from Harvard Business School's (HBS) full time MBA Program for the second round -

(Click to zoom)

Like this post? +1 us and share it with your friends using any of our sharing widgets below!

Need help to get the best application out there for your dream Business School? Come to BizSchoolPrep Consulting. Whether you are a domestic applicant or an international one, our process is uniquely designed to understand your background, and then create a strategy whose sole aim is to get you to the business school of your dream. Know what makes us different.

Wharton R2 Interview Call

Our client's privacy is our top most concern and hence, some information from the interview invite has been blanked out. Also, the dates of the invite emails have intentionally been changed to reflect today's date.

Please find attached the interview invite received by one of our clients from the Wharton School's full time MBA Program for the second round -

(Click to zoom)

Like this post? +1 us and share it with your friends using any of our sharing widgets below!

Need help to get the best application out there for your dream Business School? Come to BizSchoolPrep Consulting. Whether you are a domestic applicant or an international one, our process is uniquely designed to understand your background, and then create a strategy whose sole aim is to get you to the business school of your dream. Know what makes us different.

UCLA Anderson Catches Plagiarism...

We, at BizSchoolPrep, strongly support UCLA's initiative in not only catching plagiarism in MBA Admissions but also making these numbers public to warn many others who are toying with the idea of lifting essays from other sources.

A dozen MBA applicants at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management have been rejected after the school discovered plagiarism in their admissions essays—including a passage lifted from businessweek.com.

As the Los Angeles Times reported on Jan. 29, the applicants’ undoing was a service called Turnitin for Admissions. As we’ve reported, the service scans admissions essays and compares them to a huge database containing billions of pages of web content, books and journals, as well as student work previously submitted to Turnitin for a plagiarism check. Turnitin looks for instances of matching text, but leaves it to the individual schools to determine whether the similarity is plagiarism or an innocent mistake.

Top MBA Admissions To-Dos for applicants from Asian region

This post is specifically targeted towards international applicants, in particular the ones from Asian region such as China, Korea, etc and who have not worked in the business environment of western economies.

1. Show not only how comfortable but also how successful you are in western business enviroment.

Mention experiences about your overseas, cross country or multi cultural projects. Showcase how well you understand and appreciate the differences between these different work cultures (of your home country and outside economies) and practices and how adaptable you are to those. Moreover, stress on what you learned from these experiences and how it developed your perspectives in understanding the way of doing business in a particular economy. The exposure need not be only in the professional setting but could be through a study abroad semester, volunteering during school, or anything similar. Learned any language? Tell them.

Dartmouth Tuck - How to stand out in its admissions process?

Straight from horse's mouth. Tuck Admissions Director Dawna Clarke answers questions from prospective students. In this installment of "Ask Dawna", she shares insight on how candidates can stand out in the applicant pool.

Like this post? +1 us and share it with your friends using any of our sharing widgets below!

Need help to get the best application out there for your dream Business School? Come to BizSchoolPrep Consulting. Whether you are a domestic applicant or an international one, our process is uniquely designed to understand your background, and then create a strategy whose sole aim is to get you to the business school of your dream. Know what makes us different.

Waitlisted at your target business school? Know what to do next.

Picture courtsey: Wisechoice.com

You are wailisted... damn ..Now what?

Getting waitlisted is not the end of the road for you. While it is not an admit for sure, it's also not an outright deny. Waitlisting process can definitely be pretty frustrating but this is not the time to give up. You still have a chance to get that coveted admission offer; you just need to make sure that when the admissions committee turn to the waitlisted candidates, it finds you in front of the line. So follow these tips to make the best of this long process -

1. Reply back and request a feedback - Unless you have an admission offer from another, and better, business school, you may want to keep your options open by staying on the waitlist. Reply promptly to the school mentioning your interest in staying on the waitlist. Also, this would be a great time to request for a feedback on your application. Most of the schools are too busy to provide individual feedback, however, there is hardly any downside for a polite request.

2. Follow the Instructions - Yes, this has to be the first tip. Some schools specifically ask the waitlisted candidates NOT to send any additional material. Do as they say or risk getting branded as someone who can not follow directions. (The additional material is anyways not going to be considered). Some schools may provide you with some kind of feedback and what you can do to address the weaknesses (retake the GMAT, take an English class). Take these feedbacks seriously.

Inside University of California Berkeley Haas's Admissions Office

This post is one in a series of posts trying to decipher what happens once you click that "submit" button in the application portal of the top business schools. As told by the admissions directors themselves! Follow us on twitter and facebook to keep yourself updated with the next set of schools.

 

What happens once applications are submitted?

Stephanie Fujii, Director of Admissions at Berkeley Haas, Excerpts - Once the applicants submit their applications on the online platform,they immediately get a confirmation and response from the school saying “Thank you for submitting your application.” Next, we put together the application to make sure that all the required pieces of the application are in order, including the application form itself, the essays, the letters of recommendations, resume and now the applicants can also submit the official transcripts while submitting the rest of the application.

After putting together all the components of an application together and verifying that the application is complete in all aspects, we send it for its first read. All of our applications from specific regions or country are assigned to readers based on the country of applicant. Moreover, every application is given atleast two reads by our admissions team, by different readers. Once the second reader completes the evaluation, the reader decides whether to send an interview invite to the applicant, deny or waitlist. In case of any disagreement between the two readers, the application will go for a third review. Also, some applications may go to a third reader's inputs even when there is an agreement, just to get an additional perspective.

Inside London Business School's Admissions Office

This post is one in a series of posts trying to decipher what happens once you click that "submit" button in the application portal of the top business schools. As told by the admissions directors themselves! Follow us on twitter and facebook to keep yourself updated with the next set of schools.

What happens once applications are submitted?

David Simpson, LBS associate director of marketing and admissions - Similar to many other business schools, we also follows a staged admissions application process, however, our process runs over a fairly long season. Our Round One deadline is in the month of October, and we made offers in December. Our final round deadline is towards the end of April, and these offers are made in July. Although we do expect applicants to do a lot of research about the school, which takes time  as well as effort (and often included a campus visit at some stage of this process), we also recognize that candidates' professional and personal circumstances can change quickly, thus affecting their application submission time. 

Once the applications are submitted through our online platform, they are downloaded after the admission deadline, printed out and additional documentations are added. They will go to admissions team members who will then read the application and decide if the applicant should be invited for an interview or not. Nobody joins the LBS MBA program without having been interviewed, face-to-face, with an alumnus. These alumni interviews offer us a consistently high standard of detailed feedback from the perspective of someone who has gone through the program themselves.  The admissions interviews also offer applicants we considered to be “borderline” for one or the other reason an opportunity to shine. After all, even from the perspective of attaining post-MBA employment, it is an applicant's all-round package of knowledge, experience, intellect, personality and charisma that will get them a job in this market. Because these admissions interviews are carried out in locations all over the world, usually wherever the candidates are based, these interviews add the benefit of local market/cultural knowledge.

Inside MIT Sloan's Admissions Office

This post is one in a series of posts trying to decipher what happens once you click that "submit" button in the application portal of the top business schools. As told by the admissions directors themselves! Follow us on twitter and facebook to keep yourself updated with the next set of schools.

 

What happens once applications are submitted?

Rod Garcia, Director of Admissions MIT Sloan - After the application deadline for a particular round is over,, the first thing we do with the submitted applications is to import the application data into our own database. And since we have a paperless application process, this year we’ve made our application evaluation process sustainable by downloading the applications to our  admissions readers’ iPads rather than printing them out. The first person to see the submitted application is me. I review each of these applications online and then distribute it to a member of the admissions committee for reading. By the way, applications are distributed randomly. The application reviewers are all our internal admissions staff along with some contract readers – controlled by us – and we don’t use students or alumni as application readers.

So initially the applications are downloaded to iPads in batchs of 20, 25, or 40  depending on how quickly our reviewers can read them. Then, a week later, we all meet to calibrate the scores and then upload these scores to our database.

Yes, that’s right. We score the applications. Although we don’t have a global rating, we score applicants on a set of attributes. There are about nine attributes that we broadly look at, ranging from GMAT to GPA to work success to all the other attributes, such as leadership attributes. Essentially there are two broad groups attributes – demonstrated success (as indicated by indicators such as GMAT, GPA, work success) and leadership attributes. We then sum up the two scores, and based on these two scores I will then decide the 18 percent applicants who we will send invite for interviews.