His first two tips—he promises more in the next few weeks, so stay tuned—focus on the importance of interview research and on the benefits of emphasizing fit.

I could not agree more, but I would like to offer a few additional tips now and steer you towards a slightly more in-depth treatment of the topic, Accepted.com’s free MBA interview prep course. There I discuss my own additional tips, for example the importance of understanding the implications of different interview types. This understanding will help you establish the material (by way of experiences, stories, or application data) you’ll want to bring up in your interview.

If it’s a “blind” interview (that is, your interviewer hasn’t reviewed your application), then the interview will be more general and conversational. If it’s a non-blind interview (or “informed”), then the meeting will be more probing and focused. In the latter case, you’ll need to prepare more new material, stories, and experiences that are not discussed in your application. You will also need to be ready to address any weaknesses or gaps in your application.

In either case (blind or informed), you should use the interview to discuss achievements and news that has occurred since you submitted your application.

Final point: As Jeremy writes, schools will admit qualified applicants who prove that they really want to be at that particular program and will thrive in that specific environment. Solid pre-interview introspection about how you will benefit from that program will help you express your unique fit with that program on the big day.

Thanks, Jeremy, and keep those tips coming! 

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ESSAYS

JOB DESCRIPTION: Describe the unit for which you are responsible and relate it to the total organization in terms of size, scope, and autonomy of responsibility. What human resources, budget, and capital investment are you responsible for? Please describe your position.

A straightforward question – it contains several components, so be sure to answer all of them.  Try to work in an anecdote or two somewhere, for example, if part of your role is to troubleshoot issues with global clients, give a brief example.

1. Why have you elected to apply to the Kellogg School Executive MBA Program?

This essay should discuss your interest in the Kellogg program as a means to acquire the learning you seek in light of your goals.  Clarify why you are pursuing the executive program specifically.  You can also discuss other benefits that relate to personal preferences such as environment and the program’s schedule, structure, and location.  Be specific and add thoughtful discussion, don’t just reiterate points from the website.  If possible, cite conversations with students or alumni, including relevant insights you’ve gained from them.

2. What are your goals and objectives and how will a Kellogg Executive MBA help you achieve these? Please feel free to discuss both personal and professional goals.

Discuss your goals in specific terms: industry, likely positions, which company or companies, possibly where, what you expect to do, possibly challenges you anticipate.  Also discuss what you want to accomplish short- and long-term.   To make the essay truly compelling, also show how your goals are rooted in your experience, what motivates your goals, and your vision for your goals.  Finally, discuss the learning needs these goals engender and summarize how the Kellogg MBA meets them, saving the greater detail for essay 1.

3. Discuss a professional situation that did not end successfully. Why did you or your peers consider the situation to have negative results? How did you resolve the situation? Did it change your management style? If so, how?

In selecting the story to discuss, use something relatively recent (even though unsuccessful, it can still show you at work in an engaging context and at a decision making level with high accountability), and something substantive.  Be frank about your role as it may have contributed to the lack of success.  For structure, keep it simple: first tell the story, and then address the remaining questions.  The last part, about how it may have changed your management style, is a good opportunity to show you’ve not only learned from the experience but applied the learning, by briefly citing a specific example of your improved management style.

4. What do you consider to be your greatest skills and talents? How will you use these to contribute to an Executive MBA class as well as to a study group?

First, what not to do: strain to find some unique skill or talent that no one else possesses in an effort to differentiate yourself.  It doesn’t exist.  Rather, look inward – whether it’s creativity, initiative, leadership, strategic thinker, interpersonal astuteness, analytic capability, mentoring/coaching – it’s the details and stories of how you manifest it that will make the essay exciting and let the essay strategically support and enhance the other essays.  Select 2-3 skills/talents that differ from each other (i.e., don’t do quant skills and analytic skills, or communication skills and interpersonal skills) and tell a quick story or anecdote illustrating each.  Finally, for each, comment on how it will help you contribute by giving an example – these comments can be short, as they story itself will really convey how the skill or talent will let you contribute.

5. Describe how your relevant global experiences have influenced you professionally. (Optional)

This is a great essay for most people to answer – if you’ve had any global experience, it can only have influenced you professionally.  If you’ve had a lot of global experiences, don’t just do a survey of them and don’t feel you must write about all of them.  Select the most meaningful experiences and tell the stories, and then explaining the influence on you.

6. Is there anything else that you would like to add to help us in evaluating your candidacy? (Optional)

This question invites you to present new material that you think will enhance your application, as well as to explain anything that needs explaining (e.g., gap in employment).  As far as non-necessary points, keep in mind that if you are making the adcom read more, there should be a clear value to the information. Finally, considering the many essays, keep it short.

7. Describe any major reports, instructional materials, or manuals that you have prepared or any research, inventions, or other creative work. (Optional)

Note, “major.”  Do not wrack your brain for every report or training material you’ve contributed to.  If you have numerous patents, ditto.  Focus on the most important ones of whatever type of material you are describing.  A nice format is an annotated bullet list.

8. Please list the business/professional/community organizations in which you are active. (Optional)

Note “are active.”  Not “were active.”

Rolling admission.

By Cindy Tokumitsu, co-author of The EMBA Edge, and author of the free, email mini-course, “Ace the EMBA.”

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Top 30 U.S. Business Schools of 2010 (2008 rankings are parenthetical.)

1. Chicago Booth (1)
2. Harvard Business School (2)
3. Wharton (4)
4. Northwestern Kellogg (3)
5. Stanford GSB (6)
6. Duke Fuqua (8)
7. Michigan Ross (5)
8. UC Berkeley Haas (10)
9. Columbia (7)
10. MIT Sloan (9)
11. UVA Darden (16)
12. Southern Methodist Cox (18)
13. Cornell Johnson (11)
14. Dartmouth Tuck (12)
15. CMU Tepper (19)
16. UNC Kenan-Flagler (17)
17. UCLA Anderson (14)
18. NYU Stern (13)
19. Indiana Kelley (15)
20. Michigan State Broad (2T)
21. Yale SOM (24)
22. Emory Goizueta (23)
23. Georgia Tech (29)
24. Notre Dame Mendoza (20)
25. Texas-Austin McCombs (21)
26. USC Marshall (25)
27. Brigham Young Marriott (22)
28. Minnesota Carlson (2T)
29. Rice Jones (NR)
30. Texas A&M Mays (NR)

Top International Business Schools

1. INSEAD (3)
2. Queen’s (1)
3. IE Business School (2)
4. ESADE (6)
5. London Business School (5)
6. Western Ontario Ivey (4)
7. IMD (7)
8. Toronto Rotman (8)
9. York Schulich (2T)
10. Cambridge Judge (2T)
11. McGill Desautels (2T)
12. IESE (9)
13. Cranfield (NR)
14. HEC Paris (2T)
15. HEC Montreal (HR)
16. Oxford Said (10)
17. Manchester (2T)
18. SDA Bocconi (NR)

BW bases its rankings on employer and student surveys, as well as what they call “intellectual capital,” or school research output. For more information on how the rankings are determined, read BW‘s “How We Rank Business Schools.”

Other articles in the report that may interest you include:

• “The Best U.S. Business Schools 2010” – This article highlights ways that business schools are dealing with the sour job market—putting a new emphasis on job placement, reaching out to alumni for job leads, using technology to connect with recruiters, and bolstering career services departments.
• “Top Global Business Schools” – Read about how the Great Recession has affected the international MBA scene, why new schools have popped up on the top 10, why students are being drawn to emerging markets, and more.

Related Accepted.com Resources:

• The Rankings, a free special report on how you should interpret the rankings in your own b-school quest.
• Internationalizing the MBA, a free special report that will help you determine whether an international MBA program is right for you.

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Let’s start with the actual rankings.

Top 15 International EMBA Programs

1.   Kellogg / Hong Kong UST Business School – China

2.   Columbia / London Business School – USA / UK

3.   Trium HEC Paris / LSE / NYU Stern – France / UK / USA

4.   INSEAD – France / Singapore / UAE

5.   University of Chicago, Booth – USA / UK / Singapore

6.   London Business School – UK

7.   IE Business School – Spain

8.   University of Pennsylvania, Wharton – USA

9.   Duke University, Fuqua – USA

10.  Chinese University of Hong Kong – China

10.  City University Cass – UK

12.  IMD – Switzerland

13.  UC Berkeley Haas / Columbia – USA

14.  Kellogg / WHU-Otto Belsheim School – Germany

15.  Columbia Business School – USA

15.  ESCP Europe – France / UK / Germany / Spain / Italy

You can tell simply by looking above where the EMBA “hot spots” are—the USA, UK, China, Singapore, Paris, France, and Spain—or you can take a look at the FT‘s interactive map: Hot spots: the most popular cities in the world for Executive MBAs.

For an analysis on how the rankings were determined, check out “The ranking decoded.”

For an explanation on the challenges business schools face with this executive degree, see the lead article in the report, “Business schools face EMBA challenge.” (Just to give you clue—it has something to do with the economy and companies becoming less than willing to shell out $100,000+ in sponsorship funds. Surprise, surprise.)

Yet challenges aside, many EMBA programs (especially those in countries that have been, until recently, underserved by business schools) are seeing an increase in enrollment. For more on EMBA success, read “Rising demand: executive MBA sector shows healthy growth.”

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Of course, each school will attribute its recent drop in selectivity to different causes. Michigan Ross, for example, opened a new building which allows for a larger class, thus allowing the adcoms to accept more students this year than in the past.

University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business, the school that reported the greatest selectivity decrease among the top 30, attributes its drop to “better marketing.” The school also increased its class size by 22% this year.

Randall Sawyer, assistant dean of admissions, financial aid, and inclusion at Cornell’s Johnson School, states that the program’s decrease in selectivity is due to the increase in the quality of applicants. “Candidates are getting smarter about where they apply,” he says, “giving admissions committees fewer but better choices.”

Some programs, on the other hand, are bucking the drop-in-selectivity trend. While some schools are expanding their class size, some are decreasing it. Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Management is one such example of a program that decreased its class size; 38% of applicants were admitted in 2005, but only 20% in 2010.

Other schools that have reported higher selectivity or no changes include Chicago Booth, Harvard Business School, Notre Dame Mendoza, and Northwestern Kellogg.

And of course this article reflects last year’s application stats. This year both Cornell and Ross happily report that their first round application volume has headed north in comparison to last year’s round 1.

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One advantage of such a move, at least according to Wes Swank, a 29-year-old who completed his MBA at age 24, is that “going directly from college to business school [can help one] avoid jarring transitions.” The benefit of not yet having a job means that you don’t need to leave a job and put your life on hold for two years, he says.

The WSJ article cites the Graduate Management Admissions Council (GMAC) as stating that the under-24 contingency is the fastest growing group among people who take the GMAT. In fact, in 2010, about 40% of full-time MBA applicants had less than three years of work experience.

Some business schools, like the Loyola University’s Sellinger School of Business and Management, are even going so far as to create special MBA programs for these young students. Sellinger’s part-time program offers part-time learning with part-time working, so students get the classroom and hands-on work experiences simultaneously. Karyl Leggio, Sellinger’s dean, explains, “We provide real-world experience to help accelerate their careers….It’s sort of internships on steroids.”

Harvard Business School‘s 2+2 program is another option for younger applicants. This program offers accepted college juniors a spot in a future HBS class, just so long as they first graduate college and then work for two years.

Similarly, Stanford GSB offers a deferment program where students can apply to the business school while seniors in college, and then defer for one to three years after graduation.

According to Dipak Jain, former dean of Northwestern Kellogg, “younger MBA graduates in many cases may be more appealing to employers, and younger students could help diversify business schools’ student bodies.” Young women, Jain continues, are also more likely to attend business school before they have families.

While this trend does seem to be on the rise, many are skeptical, especially in today’s economy, that top companies will be willing to hire less experienced MBAs.

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If you’re considering applying to any of these schools (or any schools in our forthcoming chats), then these sessions are must-attend events. Of course, if you do miss out on a live Q&A session, or if you simply wish to review what you’ve heard, then these Q&A transcripts and audio clips will become your new go-to guides. Each one provides indispensible information that will help you get better acquainted with your target programs, and ultimately demonstrate fit with them.

Here’s a sampling of what’s been going on so far:

UC Berkeley Haas Q&A with Sephanie Fujii

Linda Abraham: Okay. Stephanie, Scott asks, “How does the admissions team view layoffs in regards to a candidate’s application? Is it something that needs to be addressed or is it understood that layoffs are often out of the hands of the candidate?

Stephanie Fujii: Oh, certainly. I think especially given the past couple of years, we’ve definitely seen that. You know, it’s something that if it happens, certainly tell us. I think as a general rule for our application — don’t leave any questions unanswered because we will make up answers and we can be quite creative in it and it won’t always be in the applicant’s favor. So just make sure that you are answering any questions that we might have.

With layoffs, we understand — especially in certain sectors who’ve been hit really hard. What we’re interested in is what you have been doing with your time since that layoff. I think especially for people who are thinking about switching careers, are you involved in activities? Have you done things that will really help you move in that direction? But I think honesty, and being upfront about anything that we might have questions about — that’s very important.

Chicago Booth Q&A with Kurt Ahlm and Julie Morton

Linda Abraham:: What is the difference between applying round one versus round two from the admissions committee perspective? I know the answer is apply when you’re ready but what does the round that someone applies in signal to you?

Kurt Ahlm: Sure, to be candid, I mean, our hope is you’re applying, again, when you feel that you’re most ready. So we don’t really extrapolate anything else from it and honestly those rounds are equally competitive. So if you try to put yourself in our shoes to think about what we might be thinking if you apply round one and round two, we’re just trying to pull the best people we possibly can from the entire process and in order to do that, in order to be one of those people you really want to put in your best possible application. So I would say, again, take the time that you need to put your best foot forward and hopefully you’re successful and that’s really the only way I would look at it.

Northwestern Kellogg Q&A with Beth Flye and Carla Edelston

Linda Abraham: When you are evaluating applications, what puts one applicant in the admit pile and others in the rejected or wait-listed pile?

Beth Flye: Wow, big question. You know, honestly, it really comes back to quality. And our approach is very holistic, meaning we’re not anchoring on a certain GMAT score, a certain GPA. We’re not anchoring on a specific number of years of work experience. Really it comes back to looking at all of the criteria, collectively. And you know, the other thing is taking into account what the quality of the overall applicant pool is at that particular point in time. How does round one look? And then we get into round two. What is that pool looking like in comparison to round one? I would say that when we, philosophically speaking, when we do give a decision, one of these three decisions is usually for more than one particular reason. You know, when we admit somebody, it’s for a broad number of reasons, that we think that person is a very high quality candidate. Just as when we typically deny someone, there’s usually more than one thing that was not as up to par on their application as we would have liked to have seen. And then lastly I would say with the wait list in particular, we wait-list for different reasons. Sometimes, we may want to just hold off making a decision because we want to see more of the applicant pool. There may not be anything in particular about that application that is weak. But we may decide that we just need to see more candidates to help us make a final decision. Oftentimes, we will also wait-list someone because we were wanting additional information, whether it’s a new test score, or a grade from a class that they indicated that they were taking. But the one thing I would like to comment about Kellogg’s wait-list is, to be wait-listed is not a negative thing at all, you are still in the running for admission.

UCLA Anderson Q&A with Mae Jennifer Shores and Jessica Luchenta

Linda Abraham: The next question is from Riya. She asked, “What do employers like most about UCLA Anderson graduates?”

Jessica Luchenta: What I would say goes back to your earlier point Linda, that you made about Anderson students known for collegiality. And so I think that Anderson grads are known for being extremely sharp, very well prepared and well educated during their time here. We have a very challenging and rigorous curriculum that prepares them for all the different issues that they face in a business environment. Our students are also incredibly broad in terms of their experience. Because our program is so diverse, all of our students are coming from various academic and professional backgrounds, they really learned well how to work with an incredibly diverse group of people during their two years here. And that translates well into the business and workplace environment after the MBA. So much of what we do here at Anderson is team based, that our graduates fit right in when it comes to team based office environments. And they are known for knowing how to martial resources and get the job done and be successful. But at the same time, maintaining that sense of community and support and working together that is really the hallmark of our student culture.

Mae Jennifer Shores: To add to Jessica’s comment, we see a broader diversity of people coming into the student body each year than you see in a lot of schools. There is not as much of this herd mentality of people coming primarily from a couple of key industries. Because of that, our students were exposed to a huge set of diverse disciplines among their classmates. And the fact is that all of you may tell us that you know what you want to do, coming into an MBA, but very few of you actually know what you want to do. So this exposure actually prepares you for a variety of careers. So when you do shift gears, maybe change careers or focus during the program, you are a little more nimble and able to adapt to some new areas and have exposure to it, rather than having a change that seems quite so radical to the employer.

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Top 10 Schools for Consulting:

1. Northwestern Kellogg
2. Harvard Business School
3. Chicago Booth
4. Wharton
5. Michigan Ross
6. Columbia
7. Duke Fuqua
8. MIT Sloan
9. Stanford
10. NYU Stern

Top 3 B-Schools for Consulting in New York

1. HBS
2. Columbia
3. NYU Stern

Top 3 B-Schools for Consulting in Boston

1. HBS
2. MIT Sloan
3. Dartmouth Tuck

Top 3 B-Schools for Consulting in Washington, D.C.

1. UVA Darden
2. Wharton
3. Northwestern Kellogg

Top 3 B-Schools for Consulting in Atlanta

1. Emory Goizueta
2. HBS
3. Duke Fuqua

Top 3 B-Schools for Consulting in Silicon Valley

1. UC Berkeley Haas
2. MIT Sloan
3. Michigan Ross

Note the role of geography in determining top schools in specific regions. Something to keep in mind if you know where you want to live.

Related Accepted.com Resources:

• The Rankings: An Accepted.com Special Report
• The Consultant’s Guide to MBA Admission, an instantly downloadable ebook



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