This goes to show, once again, that this place can have people get into good schools and not be uptight. Great that the "calling.... " threads exist, better that the venting thread did, but - really -through this process you should let rip on here. Some of you will be really funny, really expressive folk and some great writers. Keep yourself sane, your compatriots entertained and run things like this.

ah, the golden generation. Not as good as it used to be (even if folk get in harvard more now)....
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Hello guys

Here's what I want to tell you

I've never been good at writing tests, neither at school not at university, therefore I wasn't receiving high scores..
Although I haven't taken the GMAT exam yet I can predict that I'm not going to brake any records there..

But I can do some other things very successfully, for example to communicate with people for me is as easy as eating a cake and thanks to this I've been able to establish my own company..

Currently I must pay some Russian guys almost half a million dollar if I don't do so, they can easily come to my country, it will take them several hours, and will hang me upside-down..
I'm really going to pay them but after 3 weeks and deadline is just after 4 days..

If any of you, who scored 700+, can talk with them and postpone the deadline I offer you my chair and I'm not joking! You will get salary that you can just dream about..

I personally can call them and postpone the deadline, moreover they will continue doing business with me and will invest even more money in own business..

For this I don't need any GMAT score, neither do I need the TOEFL what I say is more than understandable..

So I do believe that GMAT has to be the least in evaluating people who are going to become CEOs and future business leaders although it's very good source to evaluate ones academic abilities..

Would like to here your point of view.

Thanks,
Pavle

@ Hazay! Amazing write-up
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In a Normal Distribution, only the Average 'Stand Out'

real feelings!

Yes, I agree but it kinda goes against the whole concept of we take consider all the components of your application while deciding. They should just come out and say that we filter applications based on x, y and z. Also if they do not go through the complete application, I wonder where my 250$ go!
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GMAT 720(94%) (Q 49(87%) V 39(87%))

That's probably true that they stop reading some applications early on. What is unknown is whether that point is after your basic stats (Age, GMAT, GPA, etc.), or after reading a couple of your high profile essays (ie. career goals essay). I tend to think that the statistics definitely give them a basic understanding of which pile they just place you in, but then you can still blow them away with that first essay. I'll give the example of what a Columbia adcom told us during an information session. I'm paraphrasing here but it was something like:

"I was looking through this applicant who had a terrible GMAT score. I was flipping through the pages, and noticed that the person made over $1 Million last year. This grabbed my attention, then I read his goals essay and found out that the person was an ex-NFL player who later became an entrepreneur. I wanted him in my class. Plus he had a very high GPA."

This sounds like the application was on its way to the "reject" pile until the adcom saw something unusual (applicant's salary in this case). He then proceeded to read the goals essay, and made up his mind to admit the person. He was looking for the "wow" factor and found it early on in the application. In my honest opinion, the wow could have come in the first essay too. But it's a gamble when you leave the wow to the third essay. You need to showcase yourself enough to grab the attention of the adcom way before that so the third essay can be the icing on the top.

One exception to this would be if you submit a third essay that is completely out of the ordinary, and delivered to the office. If you send them a beautiful painting (or whatever unique) that you made, I'm sure that you'll catch their attention. If all you bring to the table is a link to youtube, you need to make them want to click that link in the first place.
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YES!! That would be a fantastic recruiting tool, "Even if you get dinged, you'll get some sort of prize so you won't think of us as a-hole adcoms. We want to show our thanks for your valiant attempt to enter our ivory tower."

Here is some interesting maths for you guys

Assumptions

Applications received - 4500

Application Fee: 250$

Application Fee paid by 90% of the applicants

Total Applicatioin Fee collected ~ 1 million dollars

No of Admissions staff

Level 1 staff: 4; Salary: 30000 $ per year

Level 2 staff: 3; Salary: 60000 $ per year

Level 3 Staff: 3; Salary: 200000 $ per year

Time Spent by the admissions staff in the application process

Level 1 staff: 6 months

Level 2 staff: 4 months

Level 3 staff: 3 months

Therefore total expenditure on the admissions team: 0.27 million dollars

Further analysis would yield that with the above org structure the admissions team should be able to read 100% of the applications with a three stage filtering.

Stage 1: 30% of application rejected by Level 1 staff reading ~9 applications in a day

Stage 2: Another 50% out of the remaining applications being rejected by Level 2 staff ~ 12 applicatioins in a day

Step 3: Another 50% out of the remaining applicatioins being rejected by Level 3 staff ~ 11 applications in a day

As you can see that the argument that schools do not have the time to read all the applications kinda falls flat after going through the data. I don't think most schools even employ even 10 people in their admissions team.
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GMAT 720(94%) (Q 49(87%) V 39(87%))

When I was filling out Haas’ application I about puked in my mouth.

Other than Haas I actually started enjoying the apps after a while. It was a great learning process.