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28 Jul 2015, 10:01
| FROM The MBA Manual: My Interview with Stanford |
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The Stanford interview is an alumni-run interview. You give Stanford your current address and they reach out to alumni in your area to find one that can interview you. Stanford introduces you to the alumnus/alumna that will interview you by means of an email, and the two of you coordinate a date/time to meet up that works best for the both of you. Unfortunately for me, there were no alumni in Buffalo, and so I was required to head over to Toronto for my interview. Since my interview was early in the morning at the office of my alumnus interviewer, I opted to drive to Toronto the night before. The morning of, I drove over to his office, parked out front, and headed in. The office was very much centered around an open floor plan, and reminded me of a Silicon Valley startup. I was offered a water and instructed to sit on a plush leather sofa in the waiting area until my interviewer was ready. After a few minutes, my interviewer came to grab me, we shook hands, exchanged “nice-to-meet-yous,” and headed over to a meeting room. The room featured a large table that seated just the two of us, as well as glass walls, so everyone passing by was able to steal a curious peek at our exchange. Though the environment was a bit foreboding, my interviewer was not. He was dressed down and told me that, in my suit, I was probably the most dressed up person in the building. He quickly put me at ease and we talked for a bit about him and what he’s done since Stanford, as well as the ins-and-outs of his current company. When it finally came time to interview, he pulled out a sheet filled with questions he was allowed to choose from, complete with a scoring guide (both provided by Stanford). He began with the basics, “What are you career goals? Tell me about yourself” (definitely have your “tell me about yourself” response memorized–no more than 1.5 minutes and wrap it up with why an MBA is necessary for you), before moving into the more substantial part of the interviewer. He had a quota of questions that he had to hit (I believe it was five), and they were HEAVILY, HEAVILY, HEAVILY behavioral. If you are unfamiliar with behavioral interview questions, you really should read up on answering them by means of the STAR method. Almost all of his questions began with a “tell me about a time when…” or a “give me an example of you showing…”. Some specific questions that I recall being asked (though, not verbatim) were:
Towards the end of the interview, it was my turn to ask questions and he was more than happy to provide me with a wealth of information about Stanford, the school’s resources, his career path afterwards, life in Palo Alto, current business world happenings etc. He was candid and dedicated to the interview, and we talked for well over an hour. Overall, it was a fairly easy interview with a very laid back dialogue. As I stated at the beginning of this post, the alumni-run interviews vary a considerable amount. I cannot guarantee that your interview will run like mine did. Your interview will, however, most certainly feature an alumnus/alumna holding that same question packet and scoring rubric. Therefore, if you are interviewing for Stanford, I recommend practicing sample behavioral interview questions online, having five or six “power stories” ready to draw from, knowing the basics (“Tell me about yourself” “What are your career goals?” etc.), and knowing the answer to “Why Stanford?” For more general tips on business school interviewing, check out my How to Prepare for B-school Interviews post or read about My Interview with Yale.  
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29 Jul 2015, 16:01
| FROM The MBA Journey of an African Doctor: London Business School Scholarship |
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They say lightening does not strike twice in one place. In my case, it did. I won a scholarship to London Business School last year, but I had to defer and also let go of the scholarship in the process. I re-applied again this year so that I could at least say, I tried. And then I won it again. It was such a blast when I got the email. The first thing that flashed crossed my mind was the fact that when I got the first ding ever, from Harvard Business School, I was sitting right in front of the same computer, on the same chair and in the same position as I did when I got the scholarship alert. The experience of the sinking feeling and despondence was in the extreme and opposite spectrum of what I felt 17 months after. To top off the whole thing, I also landed a student loan from Prodigy Finance to complete the tuition. It was like a dream. I mean I am in far away Nigeria, and I thought I was fooling myself applying for a student loan. I had read about these loans and how you need to have a co-signer and stuff like that. Applying to business school is indeed a roller coaster ride of emotions, and it feels really good to be on the high end of the roller coaster. Despite taking a long break from business school and scholarship applications, the emotions never really leaves. It’s been months since I updated my blog. Seven months, to be precise, and I am a year older, a year wiser and a year more experienced. Finally, it looks like I am even more prepared for business school than I was last year. While my stats still seem a little bit short of the class average, the extra year wait has moved me a tad closer. Now, I am looking forward the next phase of my life as the adventure in London Business School begins in exactly thirty nine days from today.  
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29 Jul 2015, 18:01
| FROM Coffee Beans And Tea Leaves: First Day of Transformation |
I have worked to get to this day, today, for so many years now. Some days I took the straight path and on many days, I was probably moving in a direction that I never thought could lead me here. But here I am. And in those few, quiet moments through the day, I have […]
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30 Jul 2015, 03:01
| FROM Pulling That MBA Trigger: Let’s get the party started. |
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I’m here. I’m alive. I’m still on the waitlist at UCLA Anderson. I don’t expect to get off it this late in the game, but I’m moving on! I started a new job. I am now a Product Manager at one of the fastest growing travel startups in the country. I can’t tell you how intense it has been. I’m loving my job right now and it’s keeping me insanely busy. Hence the hiatus from blogging. To anyone who still cares, yes, I will be reapplying this year. I’m still figuring out the details. I probably won’t be able to blog as much as I’d like to thanks to work, but I’m still going to be around. Hello to old friends and new! Let’s get this party started.  
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04 Aug 2015, 15:02
| FROM The MBA Manual: My Interview with Cornell (Johnson) |
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My last interview took place at the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University. Since it was my final interview, I had my answers to the general interview questions (“Tell me about yourself” “Why an MBA?” “Why now?” etc.) down cold, and only had to focus on answering the more specific questions regarding Johnson. The interview was on the Cornell campus, which is obviously very beautiful, but also a bit intimidating. A nice feature of the Johnson interview process is that they offer you the chance to sit in on a live MBA class and/or take a walking tour of the campus while there. I opted for the class, which was very informative in terms of showing me what a typical class session would be like at the school. If you interview at Cornell, I highly recommend taking advantage of this opportunity. Anyway, let’s take a step back to my interview, which was actually before I sat in on the class. The interview was one-on-one with an admissions officer, a friendly older woman, in a small, windowless breakout room. The interview started out fairly easy, as I fielded the typical “Tell me about yourself” and “What are your career goals?” This was followed by several behavioral interview questions, which, again, if you’re unfamiliar with, please follow this link and read up on. It was at about this time that the woman started firing a few curveballs at me, including this question: “What is a weakness in your application?” I referenced the obvious, my age and lack of full-time work experience, but made sure I showed how these factors also work in my favor, too. For the rest of the interview, it seemed as if the woman kind of clung to that weakness response and factored it into other questions, which made answering them rather difficult for me. For example, after she asked, “How can you contribute to Johnson?” and I answered, she followed up with, “…and how will you do that given your lack of experience?” Despite the fact that I had already explained why I feel that I am prepared for and can benefit from business school at my age, she still kept coming back to that. At one point, she told me that it might be better for me to rethink business school so early, even if I was admitted. Obviously, this is a rather disheartening thing to hear mid-interview, as if it wasn’t stressful enough. She also asked, “What have you done to explore possible career paths?” After I told her about the research I’d done into jobs and companies and the internships I’d held, she asked if I had any dream company to work for. I did and informed her of the company and my desired role, to which she responded with, “Have you reached out to anyone in that company to ask them if an MBA is necessary for that role?” Admittedly, I had not, but I also already knew that an MBA was, in fact, necessary for the role. I informed her of this but she did not seem pleased with the answer. She then asked, “What other schools are you interviewing with?” I told her I had already had interviews with Stanford and Yale and that seemed to make the rest of our exchange feel a bit awkward. In retrospect, I understand why the interviewer was so focused on my age and seeing if I was truly ready for business school at Johnson, because the program does not have a special sub-program for students entering directly from undergrad. I would be treated just the same as every other student, with no extra mentoring or opportunity for work during the program. I definitely get why she decided to take the interview where she took it. However, that doesn’t change the fact that it was definitely the hardest interview of the three schools I interviewed with. I felt slightly on the defensive, always having to parry the blows of my interviewer’s questions and respond with an appropriate countermove. All that aside, if you are interviewing for Cornell Johnson, I recommend practicing sample behavioral interview questions online, identifying a weakness in your application and assessing how you would properly (and positively) address it, reflecting on why you need and MBA NOW and how that fits into your career goals, and thinking about what you can contribute to Johnson. EDIT: For those asking, I was admitted to the Johnson School of Management at Cornell. For more general tips on business school interviewing, check out my How to Prepare for B-school Interviews post or read about my interviews with Stanford and Yale.  
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04 Aug 2015, 21:01
| FROM Pulling That MBA Trigger: Normal people vs MBAs |
Could this be any more accurate?   
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07 Aug 2015, 16:00
| FROM MBA Data Guru: Yale MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis |
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Yale MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis Yale School of Management, also known as YSOM, is a prestigious school located in New Haven, Connecticut. It is difficult to gain admission to Yale’s MBA program, similar to their undergraduate school. The YSOM class of 2016 has impressive statistics, with a median GMAT of 720 and median GPA of 3.56. Only 22% of applicants who apply to Yale will be accepted. Yale MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT  Similar to all other schools, a high GMAT score will increase your chance of being admitted to Yale. Although the average GMAT score for the class of 2016 is 720, the average score for applicants is 7 points lower at 713. The GMAT range of the middle 80% of Yale MBA students is 680 to 760. However, the difference in acceptance rate for the bottom of that range is substantially lower than the top. An applicant with a 760 is more than three times more likely to be admitted than an applicant with a 680. Yale MBA Acceptance Rate by GPA  A high GPA also raises the acceptance rate at Yale. The middle 80% students in the class of 2016 have a GPA between 3.17 and 3.87. An applicants with 3.87 is surprisingly only 50% more likely to be admitted than one with a 3.17. Even a perfect 4.0 only raises Yale MBA acceptance rate to 32%. Yale MBA Acceptance Rate: GMAT vs. GPA  The chart above shows that GMAT is more important for admission to Yale than GPA. A high GPA will only increase acceptance rate by 4%, while a high GMAT results in a 10% higher chance of being admitted.* If you have a low GPA and a high GMAT, Yale is a great school to consider. For example, an applicant with a 3.0 and a 770 has a 34% chance of admission. Yale MBA Acceptance Rate by Application Round  When applying to Yale, it does not matter whether you apply during the first or second round. However, applying in the third round is a huge disadvantage. Your chance of admission is less than half as likely compared to the first two rounds, so be proactive and submit your app early. Other Admissions Factors Indian applicants are at a significant disadvantage at Yale, with only a 6% acceptance rate. On the other hand, Yale seems to really like applicants with experience working for consumer packaged goods companies. Their acceptance rate is shockingly high, almost three times higher than average. *A high score is defined as one standard deviation higher than average. MBA Data Guru - MBA admissions data and analytics critical for business school applications |
12 Aug 2015, 16:01
| FROM The MBA Manual: Motivation |
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During your run of the business school application gamut, you will probably at some point wonder why you’re putting yourself through all of it. You’re going to study for 6 months or more, write and rewrite countless essays, and bust your butt day in and day out in order to perfect your application, and for what? For a shot at getting into the business school that you want to attend? What if it doesn’t work out? What if it’s all for nothing? Thoughts like these definitely plagued my mind throughout the whole application process, and they are very much normal. However, the key is to not succumb to these thoughts, and sometimes that means employing some outside sources for motivation. Here are some of the things that helped me. Videos: How Bad Do You Want It (Success)? This video is my all-time favorite motivational video. Everybody wants to succeed, but some want it more than others. In order to succeed, you need to make some sacrifices. How badly do you want it? [youtube2]div> Shi[/youtube2] Songs: First, I feel the need to mention that I am a huge hip-hop/rap fan, so if that’s not really your style, perhaps you should skip ahead, because this list is very hip-hop/rap heavy. With that being said, here are some songs that kept me going during the applications process.
Other Sources of Motivation:
The whole MBA process is daunting. It’s time-intensive, mentally draining, and sometimes frustrating. However, speaking as someone who got into their dream business school, I can assure you that it is all worth it in the end. So, watch one of those videos, play one of the songs, or think one of those thoughts and keep chugging.  
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13 Aug 2015, 06:01
| FROM Naija MBA Gal: Financing my MBA… |
I promised to write this a long time ago and I have been meaning to. But you know what they say about the best laid plans of men and mice. Anyway, here it is – at long last  When I got my offer from Booth, it didn’t come with any fellowship. Which meant that […]
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16 Aug 2015, 02:01
| FROM Naija MBA Gal: Updates and Headaches |
Its been a while In the period since my last post (sans the financing my MBA post), I have resigned my job, obtained my visa, booked my flight home (I’ve got some free time to spend with the family) booked my flight to Chicago and finalized my living arrangements. I’m going to give a brief […]
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18 Aug 2015, 21:01
| FROM My Journey to Business School: Discovering the many faces of innovation |
An interesting blog by Ahalya Vijay (a fellow MMM) summarizing a recent class trip to Doblin. I couldn’t attend the event because of a twisted ankle!  Read on about the awesomeness you get to experience as a MMM student at Kellogg – Discovering the many faces of innovation.  
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19 Aug 2015, 20:01
| FROM TopDogMBA - A Reapplicant's Tail: Ticket to ride |
It’s been a while since I updated my blog. Sorry for that but I’ve been kinda busy packing up ready for this whole MBA thing I’ve been getting a lot of inquiries from folks starting out on their application journey (or thinking about it) and I hope I’ve given some food for thought to the […]
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19 Aug 2015, 20:01
| FROM The MBA Manual: Choosing Where to Apply to Business School |
 rh801:Here is a great post by my friend David, who is now at HBS, about how to choose where to apply to b-school.  Originally posted on HBS Accept: There are two separate decisions you will need to make during your application process. Where should you apply? Where do you want to go? You will struggle to differentiate between these two questions at some point. Just trying to get into “somewhere” and confirmation bias could influence you. Use this simple rule to separate these two questions: where you want to go is agnostic of your chances of getting in, where you should apply is not. If you are not sure you want to go to business school, are willing to wait a year if you do not get into your top choice(s), or are unwilling to go to a runner-up choice, your list of schools can be the same for both questions (“Flexible Applicant”). If you are sure you want to business school next year, you definitely need to consider your chances of getting in when deciding where to… View original 683 more words  
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19 Aug 2015, 21:02
| FROM The MBA Manual: Choosing Where to Apply to Business School (By HBS Accept) |
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rh801: Here is a great post by my friend David, who is now at HBS, about how to choose where to apply to b-school. Originally posted on HBS Accept: There are two separate decisions you will need to make during your application process. Where should you apply? Where do you want to go? You will struggle to differentiate between these two questions at some point. Just trying to get into “somewhere” and confirmation bias could influence you. Use this simple rule to separate these two questions: where you want to go is agnostic of your chances of getting in, where you should apply is not. If you are not sure you want to go to business school, are willing to wait a year if you do not get into your top choice(s), or are unwilling to go to a runner-up choice, your list of schools can be the same for both questions (“Flexible Applicant”). If you are sure you want to business school next year, you definitely need to consider your chances of getting in when deciding where to… View original 683 more words
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21 Aug 2015, 10:01
| FROM MBA Data Guru: Kellogg Interview Questions |
Kellogg Interview Questions Kellogg is somewhat unique in that it allows anyone who applies to interview. Kellogg MBA interviews are typically off-campus with an alumnus, although it is also possible to interview with an admissions committee member on campus or over Skype. Interviews with Kellogg tend to vary greatly based on who interviews you. You can expect anywhere from 6 to 14 Kellogg interview questions. Kellogg interviews are on the longer side, sometimes lasting an hour to an hour and a half. If you are interviewed by an alumni, typically they will have already read your resume but not your whole application. Below are the most common Kellogg interview questions, ranked from most to least common. Your chance of being asked each questions is in parenthesis. Most Common Kellogg Interview Questions
MBA Data Guru - Business school admissions data and analysis |
25 Aug 2015, 19:02
| FROM The MBA Manual: Meet the MBA class of 2017: More diverse, and competitive, than ever |
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Since this week marks the beginning of my semester at Yale SOM, my personal posts will probably begin to be a bit more sporadic. When I do post, I will aim to provide insights into the MBA first-year experience, as well as admissions advice. Until then, I will post helpful things I find. Here is a very informative article from Fortune about the class of 2017: Meet the MBA class of 2017: More diverse, and competitive, than ever.  
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26 Aug 2015, 07:01
| FROM MBA Data Guru: McCombs Acceptance Rate Analysis |
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McCombs Acceptance Rate Analysis McCombs School of Business is a top MBA program and part of University of Texas Austin. The full-time program is small; the class of 2017 is 267 students. McCombs average GMAT is 694 and average GPA 3.40. The acceptance rate is at the higher end of the spectrum at 35%. UT Austin also has an evening business school with more relaxed admissions criteria. For the evening MBA, GMAT is 640 and GPA is 3.34. McCombs MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT  GMAT has a strong impact on acceptance rate at McCombs. If you raise your GMAT by 100 points, from 650 to 750, your chance of admission increases by 120%. Even with a relatively low GMAT of 650, an applicant still has a respectable 1 in 4 chance of admission. McCombs MBA Acceptance Rate by GPA  Although GMAT is critical when applying to University of Texas Austin, GPA does not appear to be important as long as it is above 3.0. When I built the acceptance model for McCombs, GPA was one of the first variable eliminated. As you can see in the graph above, GPA seems to have no impact on acceptance rate. Data is sparse below 3.0, so I cannot be confident how low an applicants GPA can be before it hurts them. However, if you have a low GPA and want to go to a top 20 MBA program, then McCombs is a great place for you to apply. McCombs MBA Acceptance Rate by Application Round  When applying to McCombs, the round you apply during matters. Round 2 acceptance rate is not statistically different than round 1, but there is a penalty for applying round 3. Round 3 applicants are 25% less likely to by admitted than applicants from the first two rounds. Other Factors that Impact McCombs MBA Acceptance Rate Although a quarter of applicants studied engineering for their undergraduate degree, McCombs does not seem to love engineers. The acceptance rate for engineers is two thirds that of non-engineers. On the other hand, McCombs loves economics majors. Applicants who majored in economics are 70% more likely to be accepted to McCombs than other majors. Data for this article was collected from GMAT Club, one of the best websites for preparing for the GMAT. MBA Data Guru - Business school admissions data and analysis |
27 Aug 2015, 12:01
| FROM MBA Data Guru: MBA Acceptance Rate by Country |
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MBA Acceptance Rate by Country Most top American business schools brag about how internationally diverse they are. Although American business schools try to make sure they have students from all over the world, the reality is that there are winners and losers. Applicants from some countries have an easier time than others. In this analysis I calculated the MBA acceptance rate by country and region for American MBA programs. MBA Acceptance Rate by Region  Since there is limited data for many of the countries, first I grouped the countries to look at MBA acceptance rates at a high level. Not all regions apply to the schools in the same proportion. In fact European applicants tend to apply to the higher ranked schools with lower acceptance rates. On the other hand applicants from India are more likely to apply to lower ranked school with higher acceptance rates. I calculated the expected acceptance rate for each region based on the school application distribution. The regions that have the highest acceptance rates are the Middle East, Europe and Latin America. If you limit Europe to the large western countries such as England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, then the acceptance rate for Europe jumps to 31%. The USA has a slightly higher acceptance rate than average. On the other hand, Asia, Australia and India are all at a significant disadvantage when applying to business school in the United States.  Next I looked to see if the difference in acceptance rates could be explained by GMAT. GPA isn’t a good indicator because different regions have different average GPAs based on how much grade inflation there is in the area. Most regions are clustered around the average GMAT of 722 with two exceptions. Latin America has an average GMAT 16 points lower than average and still has an acceptance rate 6% higher than expected. Africa has an average GMAT that is 34 points lower than average but it only hurts them a small amount. Asian applicants have the highest average GMAT, however Asian MBA acceptance rate is 6% lower than average. MBA Acceptance Rate by Country  Next I looked at MBA acceptance rate by country for those countries with high enough application volume. I excluded all countries with lower than 20 applications. It is not surprising to see United Arab Emirates and Israel at the top given that the Middle East has a high acceptance rate. Chile, Mexico and Brazil all helped to pull up Latin America’s acceptance rate. The United Kingdom and Russia are the European countries with the highest acceptance rates. Viet Nam, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea all have acceptance rates that are below average. The only Asian country with a high acceptance rate is Japan. Given that Asian acceptance rates are so low, I would recommend using the help of an admissions consultant if you are applying from one of these countries. The data for this analysis came from the GMAT Club forum. If you are looking to increase your GMAT, check it out. MBA Data Guru - Business school admissions data and analysis |
31 Aug 2015, 17:01
| FROM The MBA Manual: Who gets into Yale SOM? |
Hey, everyone. After a hectic orientation and a weeklong course, Managing Groups and Teams, I have finally settled into the core curriculum for Fall 1, and have thus found some time to write a quick post. Since I’ve spent the past two weeks interacting with all of my new classmates, I thought it would be fun to write about the types of people who make up the Yale SOM student body, so people thinking of attending the school can get a feel for the peers they’d be learning and working with. Though there are a few statistics, most of the features mentioned are just observations, so take them with a grain of salt.
 
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07 Sep 2015, 19:01
| FROM The MBA Manual: Meet Yale’s MBA Class of 2017 – Poets and Quants |
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Continuing with the Yale SOM class of 2017 theme, here’s a cool article from P&Q that highlights a few of my classmates. Enjoy! https://poetsandquants.com/2015/09/07/meet-yales-mba-class-of-2017/  
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Hi Generic [Bot],
Here are updates for you:
ANNOUNCEMENTS
 Wednesday, Apr 24, 2024 11:30am NY / 3:30pm London / 9pm Mumbai Watch earlier episodes of DI series below EP1: 6 Hardest Two-Part Analysis Questions EP2: 5 Hardest Graphical Interpretation Questions  ➡️ Sayali narrates her experience of succeeding on the GMAT after 4 attempts & 2 years of preparations with 32 percentile improvement on GMAT verbal.
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