First month of school

Time really flies.

Barely three-four weeks ago I’d just started school, thinking that it’d be a relaxing month, offering lots of times for catching up with the NBA playoffs and also netflix a few movies while I’m at it. Boy, was I wrong!

How to get the most out of your b-school contacts

Thanks to “rwrangler” in the YoungMBA Forum for pointing this out:

Like rwrangler, I had also contacted admissions officers from various b-schools expecting to learn more about their programs; like him I also was not expecting an impromptu interview; and also like him, I was fortunate enough to have material to talk about anyway.

Since then, I’ve realized that schools use this point of contact (either your chat or your visit) as much to evaluate you as you evaluate them. Hence, here are some tips for younger applicants on how to maximize your school contacts:

Getting the most out of b-school: Work experience not required?

This post actually began as a reply to Kyle’s comment in his own post (just before this one). However it rapidly got too long so I decided to make a whole new post instead.

Kyle said this in passing: “Unfortunately, I think b-schools weigh work experience too heavily when what they should be weighing is just experiences.” Allow me to comment.

I don’t think all b-schools actually weigh work experience over experience. When they do weigh work experience more (or for that matter, “GPA or GMAT” over “academic ability”; “age of applicant” over “demonstrated maturity” and so on) I suspect it is fully because they want to boost their position in business school rankings. Take my case for instance. In my correspondence with the admission staff of two schools, I discovered that Yale SOM considers my 2.5 years of pre-college military service as “work experience”;

Insider interview tips

I just thought I’d scribble off a quick post on a couple of MBA interview tips that apply to college seniors.

1) I’m not sure about you, but I was scared stiff when I first started rehearsing for my interviews. I tried to act very serious and professional, and ended up coming across as all boring and uptight. After a few more practices I learned to relax, to smile, to joke, and most importantly, to treat the guy interviewing you, who may be 10-20 years older, as a friend just like you would any normal classmate. Some interviewers are current MBA students, hence they’d want to consider things like “Do I want to hang out with this guy?”, which might be an issue for an applicant straight out of college.

The “selling points” of a college senior

As a college senior I found that I had certain advantages with which I could sell myself to business schools. Maybe this will come in handy for others as well.

1) I could sell myself as an academic, someone who was very intellectually curious and eager to learn. A Chicago GSB admissions staff actually told me that they were interested in college seniors because of the academic seriousness that they brought to the table, as opposed to an older applicant who had not touched a textbook in years. Obviously having a high GPA, a challenging transcript and a good GMAT score will help you sell this point more convincingly.

The most important question for college seniors is…

…Why MBA, Why now?

I simply had to chime in on this topic, because I believe one’s answer to this question is the single factor that determines not only whether one can successfully gain admission into a business school straight out of undergrad, but more importantly whether one should even be thinking about going to business school as a college senior.