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13 Sep 2015, 00:01
| FROM Naija MBA Gal: Swing for the fences. … |
I’ve been a Boothie for a while now, but I’ve actually been a student for a little under a week. I’ll be candid with you: its been a roller-coaster! And I did not expect anything different  I have never been so overwhelmed by the sheer number of smart people in one room! Also if […]
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21 Sep 2015, 17:02
| FROM The MBA Manual: The highest-paying MBA concentrations |
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As the article says, deciding on the right school isn’t the only big decision you’ll have to make. https://qz.com/503243/the-highest-paying-mba-concentrations/  
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27 Sep 2015, 02:01
| FROM GNPTH: I have been screwed up so many times in life. And it’s not gonna stop me!! |
Yes, I have been screwed up. Not the first time though. After a long preparation, I scored a 680(Q47, V34). I was literally shocked to see that score. I took a break for 2 days to completely forget about it. I have decided to give it one final shot, hoping to reach the elusive 740+ Score!!. Since I want to put a solid application, I will be retaking the GMAT and apply for Round-2 application cycle. I asked to bb(GMAT Club Founder), my fellow moderators @ GMAT Club & my family. They really motivated me. The words and encouragement from them gave me needed charge/boost to give it final shot. But this time, I’m gonna give it all and see what it takes to reach the elusive score. I have put a plan and no matter what, I’m going to stick to it. It’s an intense 40 days plan before my last & final GMAT(November 2nd week). Materials to prepare are hard to come by as i almost finished everything. Since, the basics are still fresh in my mind, i will be just concentrating on my weakness and practicing to improve them. I have got the ESR, and analyzed where I need to concentrate more. And I will be working towards to it in these 40 days. First of with the Quant, I need to increase the Q47 to Q50 and then maintain that level while I prepare to improve my verbal from V34 to V42 or V 44. I believe it will work, and I believe I can reach. This is my first post after a long time. There have been so many changes in life and work. Lot of work related foreign trips and Lot of fight within myself to pursue the dream and many more. I hope to see failure behind me; and I hope to see perseverance and success ahead of me!! Finally, I wish luck for all my fellow applicants who are applying for R1 and I wish luck for all those who are taking/retaking GMAT to get their target score and target schools. Until next time, GNPTH.  
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28 Sep 2015, 02:12
| FROM GNPTH: I have been screwed up so many times in life. And it’s not gonna stop me!! |
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Yes, I have been screwed up. Not the first time though. After a long preparation, I scored a 680(Q47, V34). I was literally shocked to see that score. I took a break for 2 days to completely forget about it. I have decided to give it one final shot, hoping to reach the elusive 740+ Score!!. Since I want to put a solid application, I will be retaking the GMAT and apply for Round-2 application cycle. I asked to bb(GMAT Club Founder), my fellow moderators Gmat Club & my family. They really motivated me. The words and encouragement from them gave me needed charge/boost to give it final shot. But this time, I’m gonna give it all and see what it takes to reach the elusive score. I have put a plan and no matter what, I’m going to stick to it. It’s an intense 40 days plan before my last & final GMAT(November 2nd week). Materials to prepare are hard to come by as i almost finished everything. Since, the basics are still fresh in my mind, i will be just concentrating on my weakness and practicing to improve them. I have got the ESR, and analyzed where I need to concentrate more. And I will be working towards to it in these 40 days. First of with the Quant, I need to increase the Q47 to Q50 and then maintain that level while I prepare to improve my verbal from V34 to V42 or V 44. I believe it will work, and I believe I can reach. This is my first post after a long time. There have been so many changes in life and work. Lot of work related foreign trips and Lot of fight within myself to pursue the dream and many more. I hope to see failure behind me; and I hope to see perseverance and success ahead of me!! Finally, I wish luck for all my fellow applicants who are applying for R1 and I wish luck for all those who are taking/retaking GMAT to get their target score and target schools. Until next time, GNPTH.
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28 Sep 2015, 02:14
| FROM GNPTH: I have been screwed up so many times in life. And it’s not gonna stop me!! |
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Yes, I have been screwed up. Not the first time though. After a long preparation, I scored a 680(Q47, V34). I was literally shocked to see that score. I took a break for 2 days to completely forget about it. I have decided to give it one final shot, hoping to reach the elusive 740+ Score!!. Since I want to put a solid application, I will be retaking the GMAT and apply for Round-2 application cycle. I asked to bb(GMAT Club Founder), my fellow moderators Gmat Club & my family. They really motivated me. The words and encouragement from them gave me needed charge/boost to give it final shot. But this time, I’m gonna give it all and see what it takes to reach the elusive score. I have put a plan and no matter what, I’m going to stick to it. It’s an intense 40 days plan before my last & final GMAT(November 2nd week). Materials to prepare are hard to come by as i almost finished everything. Since, the basics are still fresh in my mind, i will be just concentrating on my weakness and practicing to improve them. I have got the ESR, and analyzed where I need to concentrate more. And I will be working towards to it in these 40 days. First of with the Quant, I need to increase the Q47 to Q50 and then maintain that level while I prepare to improve my verbal from V34 to V42 or V 44. I believe it will work, and I believe I can reach. This is my first post after a long time. There have been so many changes in life and work. Lot of work related foreign trips and Lot of fight within myself to pursue the dream and many more. I hope to see failure behind me; and I hope to see perseverance and success ahead of me!! Finally, I wish luck for all my fellow applicants who are applying for R1 and I wish luck for all those who are taking/retaking GMAT to get their target score and target schools. Until next time, GNPTH.
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28 Sep 2015, 16:00
| FROM The MBA Journey of an African Doctor: Where is my Piccolo? |
 When I was growing up, I read a story about a piccolo player. A master orchestra conductor came to town and he decided to practice with the largest orchestra in town. There were about 50 different members in the team, which included only one piccolo player. Right in the middle of the second practice session, the piccolo player decided to stop playing. He simply left the tiny instrument in his mouth and pretended he was still playing. The piccolo was the smallest instrument in the orchestra, and the player felt he was insignificant in the middle of the big drums, trumpets, tuba, and violins. Three beats after he stopped playing, the master conductor brought the music to a halt and yelled, “Where is my piccolo!!?” The piccolo player raised his hand timidly and the conductor asked him, “Why did you stop playing?” The piccolo player answered, “I felt my instrument was small, and that I would not be missed.” The conductor replied, “You are the most important player in this team. That is why you are in the front row. You determine when the whole group is going to transpose to the next key. Without you, our music will be bland, and that is why your notes are an octave higher than everyone else’ notes.” You see, the piccolo player thought he was insignificant, but the master conductor who had being leading orchestra for over 50 years thought otherwise. What does this have to do with MBA? I know this is not a music blog. In the second week of September, 2015, I finally started the Executive MBA program at London Business School. We had our orientation at the London Campus where lectures started. One of the first lectures we had was Executive Leadership, which exposed us to the 360-degree feedback and the NEO personality inventory. My strengths and weaknesses were laid bare in front of me. It was an eye-opening, and scary moment when I saw my major weakness. This was something I had taken for granted for a long time. In the process of completing the assignment that followed, I truly had a long period of deep self reflection, and I saw clearly how I had led my life with this weakness. I saw how many opportunities I had let slip because of this weakness. I tried to imagine what my life could have been if I had tackled this weakness, at least, five years ago. I had written a lot of essays in my journey towards getting admission to business school, but this was something I never thought of, and this was something none of my referees told me. I came to understand that the little things we take for granted often shaped our lives in the long run. Nobody tells us and we keep living and thinking we are doing our best. Many of the people around me have often wondered what exactly I wanted to do with an MBA at this stage of my career. The driver who dropped me off at the airport even asked me if I was going for the degree because I wanted a promotion. My response to everyone who asked me was that I have a dream and I know there are things about me I am not aware of that may stop me, or slow me down, from achieving this dream. It became quite clear after the first week at school. I have spent only one week at school and I feel as if I have already received knowledge worth 25% of my tuition. I can only imagine how the remaining 19 weeks are going to be. Thank you so much London Business School. I have found my Piccolo.  
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02 Oct 2015, 12:00
| FROM The MBA Journey of an African Doctor: First Day at School |
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On September 6, 2015, I started my MBA journey at London Business School. I took some pictures on my way from the airport to school, and uploaded them on my Twitter timeline. The link below aggregated all the tweets in one place on Storify. https://storify.com/knightofdelta/firstdayatschool-emba Due to the workload at school, I have come to discover that my social media life has come to a virtual standstill. I guess this is the best way to keep up… through a set of tweet.  
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19 Oct 2015, 05:39
| FROM MBA For Tech: Kellogg interview |
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Ok, this is my post, but I have already updated About, Researchand Test Scores pages, I want to start by reflecting on my journey so far and bringing you up to date. So far my status is as follows:  So, Kellogg was my the first school to interview me, Location: Off-campus, Skype Interviewer: Adcom Duration: 45 minutes Questions: Why that undergrad school? Why Kellogg? Why MBA? Why now? Your most significant achievement at work? Why you changed your job? Is there anything else about yourself you want us to know? Overall impressions: The interviewer was very friendly and nice and allowed me to answer all the questions in full. This was my first interview and to be honest I wasn’t as prepared as I should’ve been, two major problems I’ve encountered: time limit, really 45 minutes is not enough and she had to intervene a few times, because I was taking way too much time; the other problem was the last question, for some reasong I couldn’t answer it perfectly and mumbled a bit. I hope my application as a whole gives a better impression, and it also includes video answers that I tackled fairly successful. Anyways, I am relieved and waiting for December to receive the results.  
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20 Oct 2015, 11:02
| FROM MBA For Tech: MIT Sloan first invites |
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Deadline for Round 1 MIT Sloan applications was on September 17, 2015 and today they started sending out invitations, seems like they are sticking to their last year approach of inviting most of U.S. based students in first wave and International students in the second wave. Most students were a bit discouraged by such a long wait, longest in last three years: Event 2015 2014 2013 R1 Deadline Sep 17, Thu Sep 23, Tue Sep 24, Tue First invites Oct 20, Tue Oct 20, Mon Oct 25, Fri Final invites ? Nov 7, Fri Nov 15, Fri It’s worth noting that invites are sent in 2-3 large batches, here’s a quote from GMAT club for 2014 and 2013 process: helloschool: Monday Oct 20, 2014: first invites Tue-Friday Oct 21-24, 2014: almost silence Monday 27, 2014: large # of invites sent out Tue-Friday Oct 28-31: some invites Wed Nov 5,2014: another large #of invites sent out (most international applicants got invites in this batch) Friday Nov 7, 2014: some invites and ding/waitlist notifications Friday Oct 25,2013: first invites Monday-Friday Oct 28- Nov 1 2013: large # of invites sent throughout the week Monday-Thursday Nov 4-7 2013: complete silence Friday Nov 8 2013: some invites Friday Nov 15 2013: some invites and ding/waitlist notifications So don’t panic, there is plenty of time to receive an invite and even if you don’t, remember that your world will not end without MBA: did you know that Jack Ma was rejected by Harvard 10 times? And also, remember that Sloan asks for another essay to be prepared by invited applicants, here it is: A second, short-answer question will be asked only of those invited to interview: The mission of the MIT Sloan School of Management is to develop principled, innovative leaders who improve the world and to generate ideas that advance management practice. Please share with us something about your past that aligns with this mission. (250 words or fewer). – See more here. Good luck and don’t lose your drive! If you want to keep updated or vent, join gmatclub’s MIT Sloan thread or chat.  
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21 Oct 2015, 14:01
| FROM MBA For Tech: Bloomberg Businessweek 2015 ranking analysis |
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Ok, a disclaimer: I really like it! Do I agree with it? No. Do I love the fact that they actually tried to address the problems they had? Yes. Before we start: Bloomberg BW 2015 ranking I’m really interested in rankings and the fact that I scored most popular MBA rankings on the first day of this blog should say a lot about that. As I have written just a few days ago their methodology was really bad, I assigned a score of 2/10 to it and recommended to stay away. No more! I think there is no point in discussing changes in rankings of schools, because no school in top-25 has the same rank they had last year and that’s not because the schools changed, but because of the methodology. Methodology Well, this is the source reason for all of other changes, the methodology is substantially different from the old one, which was as follows: Student survey (45%), Employer survey (45%), Research (10%) Quoting my main points against it: “Another ranking I don’t use, as I wrote before, research has nothing to do with the quality of Business school and 45% weight to graduating students? Seems like there might be some bias going on. Any school that invests more time and money to “experience” will get a higher place than rigorous programs, that might explain how Duke Fuqua came before M7 + Tuck. It’s important to remember that students that get into Fuqua are different from those in HBS in terms of expectations, hence it is easier to satisfy them, while HBS students might consider getting into MBB and not PE/VC a fail (many of them come from MBB already).” That didn’t even touch on every problem with the methodology, but overall correctly reflected my unwillingness to spend time using/discussing/thinking about Bloomberg BW ranking. New one is much better: it incorporated the best points from other methodologies, but stayed true to BW survey based nature: Employer Survey (35%), Alumni Survey (30%), Student Survey (15%), Job Placement Rate (10%), Starting Salary (10%). Employer Survey (35%) decreased from 50%, but seems the approach didn’t. What I think is missing is ’employers rating’! Probably, the employers themselves should be ranked as some are more demanding than others, an MBB has higher expectations than a regional advisory, in former you compete with the cream of the crop and the latter is more diverse in terms of ability of employees, hence it’s easier to shine there. Maybe the students should be asked to rank their employer among direct competitors? I mean, some thought should be given to this, there are a lot of opportunities for improvement. Student Survey went from 45% to 15% and, as expected, Duke fell down and HBS got higher, actually they swapped places, from 1th to 8th and vice versa. Funnily, these are the exact two schools I discussed in my blog a few days ago! They added Alumni survey and gave it a considerable weight, after 2 happy years at their school, people lose the euphoria and are better able to assess the role the school has played in their professional lives. Still, different people have different expectations, Chicago is placed 29th and I’d like to know why exactly to better understand how Alumni survey works. Introduction of Job Placement Rate. Ok, this one I don’t like much, they say that: “We define job placement rate as the percentage of graduates who secured full-time employment within three months of graduation, out of all graduates who sought it.” And that’s a great approach, but let’s use common sense test, let’s compare an ultra-elite HBS (ranked 35) with some 2-3 tier school from the same region, so BU Questrom (31). So, how comes? Well, I don’t know exactly, maybe HBS graduates, even the ones seeking a job, after not being able to find a high-level position they expected, just choose to continue they searches or try to start a business or just take some time off, because they can afford it? I don’t know, but it seems unlikely that HBS students are less employable than Questrom students (no offence meant), so direct comparison of two is wrong and some adjustments should be made. Probably similar to what I have proposed in Employer survey discussion above. Starting salary is another comparison point introduced this year and honestly it’s great, they have taken into account regional and industry variance and adjusted properly (at least they say so). Actually, now that I think about it, this in combination with Alumni survey can partially act as an ’employer’ rank that I proposed above! (see ‘Adjusted’ below). Research was dropped, a brilliant idea that doesn’t need any more discussion. Final ranking is calculated as weighted sum divided by top school, so the top school has 100% and every other school is compared to it. Interestingly I’ve recalculated and got different results, probably they went deeper than just top level rank analysis (and that’s great, but I wish they shared their calculations), but still I like mine better: School BW 2015 Recalculated Adjusted* Harvard 1 1 1 Chicago (Booth) 2 5 11** Northwestern (Kellogg) 3 2 3 MIT (Sloan) 4 4 5 Pennsylvania (Wharton) 5 7 7 Columbia 6 8 9 Stanford 7 3 2 Duke (Fuqua) 8 9 6 UC Berkeley (Haas) 9 6 4 Michigan (Ross) 10 14 16** Yale 11 12 10 Virginia (Darden) 12 10 14* UCLA (Anderson) 13 13 12 Dartmouth (Tuck) 14 11 8 Emory (Goizueta) 15 15 15 *using Alumni survey and Starting salary I have adjusted Employer surver report (higher the salary higher the expectations) and Job Placement report (higher the alumni survey and salary higher the prestige of jobs). **these schools placed lower due to low alumni survey rankings. But that’s just a fun exercise – don’t put much though into my recalculations, as I don’t have actual survey results they have used and seems like Alumni survey results need to be reassessed. Anything that has ‘survey’ in it should be evaluated very closely and I hope they will do just that. What I really like is that they actually update and improve their methodology and are not afraid of that. Anyways, I think that rankings are just that – rankings, consider them in your initial research, but never make the final decisions solely based on rankings. Useful links: Old methodology in detail: link New methodology in detail: link Tagged: rankings, thoughts  
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23 Oct 2015, 17:02
| FROM MBA For Tech: UCLA Anderson Interview |
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I have received the invitation almost immediately after they started sending them out, being an international student I was offered a Skype interview and a variety of dates, quite convenient to be honest. Unlike Kellogg, Anderson’s interviews are conducted by second-year students, who pass trainings before becoming a part of admissions team. My interviewer has added me on Skype one hour prior to our interview time, which was nice, because with Kellogg I was worried, as I had been added a few minutes before the thing, making me uncomfortable. Interview with a student feels different from an interview with an adcom member, I felt like it was more relaxed and not a ‘checklist’ we had discussed some of my points and he added his thoughts on them, which was great! The questions were quite traditional:
So, here’s the updated status of my applications:  Tagged: Interivew, Progress, UCLA Anderson  
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23 Oct 2015, 17:02
| FROM MBA For Tech: Thoughts on MBA Interviews |
After the second Skype interview I feel like I can give some advice:
About yourself > Resume > Why triplets > How will you contribute to the school > Behavioral > Wrap up. I want to comment on ‘Wrap up’, I am talking about the two following questions: “Is there anything else you want to share?” and “Any questions for me?”, while the second is quite trivial (yes, prepare your questions and use this one to make sure that interviewers knows that you did your research, his answer should build on knowledge you already have), the first one is a great tool to add stories / information you feel can improve your standing, it’s basically like an optional essay, but make sure your story ties in nicely into MBAnarrative and gives a reason to choose you, don’t try to brag. Really, I think of wrapping up with “I would like to add” from now on! And, I think one should never answer “I have nothing to add” or “I don’t have any questions for you”! Anyways, I created a cheat sheet for myself, feel free to use and contribute with ideas: Excel file on Dropbox (it looks much better after download, I promise!) Tagged: Interivew, thoughts  
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26 Oct 2015, 19:01
| FROM Naija MBA Gal: It happens |
We all get those days when nothing goes according to plan. And its normal, even expected but when you have three of such days; back-to-back, you get worried. Tuesday morning, I woke up happy – I had finally caught up with the unending class work, recruitment preparation and all the shenanigans of b-school. My calendar […]
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04 Nov 2015, 05:01
| FROM MBA Data Guru: MBA Interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT and GPA |
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MBA Interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT and GPA The interview is a crucial component of the MBA admission process. All top full-time MBA programs interview applicants before admitting them. Generally the MBA admissions committee is looking for two things during the interview, that you fit the culture of the school and that you have the emotional intelligence to succeed at business school. I have already looked at MBA Interview acceptance rate by itself. However, I always wondered when applying to business school if all applicants are considered equal after they have been invited to interview or does the rest of the application, like the GMAT and GPA, still matter. It turns out that it matters at some schools and not at others. MBA Interview Acceptance Rate: High vs. Low GMAT  The graph above shows the average acceptance rate for applicants who were invited to interview, separated into GMAT below 720 and GMAT 720 and higher. Two thirds of the schools have a higher acceptance rate for applicants with high GMATs. This suggests that being invited to interview does not put everyone on an even playing field, other components of the application still matter. Booth, UNC, Stanford and Columbia have the largest disadvantage for applicants with low GMAT during interviews. At the other end of the spectrum, MIT, Tepper, Emory and McCombs all have a higher acceptance rate for applicants who were invited to interview but have a lower GMAT score. I don’t think that a lower GMAT actually helped these candidates, but that these schools consider the interview to be more important than other schools, which gives low GMAT applicants the opportunity to stand out. MBA Interview Acceptance Rate: High vs. Low GPA  Unlike GMAT, half the schools seem to care about GPA after interviewing candidates while the other half do not. Similar to the GMAT table, MIT, Tepper and McCombs have a higher acceptance rate for applicants with lower GPAs. The only exception is Emory, which still doesn’t have that much of a disadvantage for low GPA. GPA does not seem to be as important as GMAT to admissions committees after interviews given that the average disadvantage for low GMAT is -10% and the average disadvantage for low GPA is -1%. Most of the schools cut applicants with low GPA and low GMAT before interviews. I excluded Tuck and Kellogg because they will interview all applicants who want to interview. So it is not fair to compare them to the other schools who have already cut applicants with low scores. I included their tables at the end of this article for reference. My take away from this analysis is that some schools place a lower weight on interviews while other schools place a higher weight on interviews. If you are applying to Booth with a high GMAT and GPA then you probably don’t need to stress the interview too much. On the other hand if you have a low GPA and GMAT and are applying to Sloan, you should prepare as much as possible for your MIT MBA interview because they take their interviews much more seriously than other schools. If you are preparing for business school interviews, check out my MBA interview preparation guide. Kellogg and Tuck MBA interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT  Kellogg and Tuck MBA interview Acceptance Rate by GPA  The data for this article came from GMAT Club, one of the best websites for GMAT preparation. MBA Data Guru - Business school admissions data and analysis |
14 Nov 2015, 05:02
| FROM MBA For Tech: Today we are all French |
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What a horrible day for the world. In a day like this it’s important to not back up and stand for the values terrorists try to attack. Together we are strong and will not let fear subdue our determination to make the world a better place. Stay strong France, stay strong humanity.  
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18 Nov 2015, 01:03
| FROM MBA For Tech: Chicago Booth Interview |
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My first in-person interview! I had an invite pretty early on, but the interview itself took a few weeks to arrange. Anyways, I met with a ‘0x alum, who joined MBB after graduation and recently left for another company. The meeting was held in a coffeshop downtown. Alumna was very positive, nice and friendly. Really, my best interview, it was very informal, but I still was asked all the traditional questions:
Actually when I was in Big4 and she in MBB, we worked for the same client, the one that she recently joined, so we shared some memories about some funny specifics working there. She shared her experience with the school, I asked a lot of questions and I think I really clicked with my interviewer. If that’s the type of people Chicago admits, then I’m sold. Well, now we wait. Fingers crossed.  
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23 Nov 2015, 01:02
| FROM MBA Data Guru: UNC MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis |
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UNC MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis Kenan-Flagler is University of North Carolina’s business school. UNC has five programs including a full-time MBA, various executive MBAs and an online MBA program. UNC’s MBA program is currently ranked 18th by US News and World Report. The UNC MBA class of 2017 has an average GMAT of 710 and GPA of 3.4. I built a logistic regression to predict an applicant’s chance of admission to UNC, here are the insights I gained from it. UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT  GMAT has a very high impact on acceptance rate at UNC. Increasing your GMAT by just 50 points from 650 to 700 increases your chance of being accepted by 56%. UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by GPA  Undergraduate GPA has little to no impact on UNC MBA acceptance rate. Surprisingly, applicants with a 4.0 actually had a lower acceptance rate than those with a GPA below 3.0. Applicants with a low GPA should certainly consider applying to Kenan-Flagler. UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by Application Round  I was very shocked to see that acceptance rate was so much higher for round 3 than for round 1 and 2. I looked at the GMAT and GPA to see if that explained the difference and it did not. Round 3 applicants had the lowest average GMAT and GPA. Round GMAT GPA Round 1 710 3.42 Round 2 710 3.38 Round 3 707 3.35 Other Factors Applicants that majored in science, math and computer science tended to have high acceptance rates. On the other hand applicants who worked in computer software tended to have a lower acceptance rate. Indian citizens have a much lower chance of admission. US applicants have a 50% acceptance rate, but Indian applicants have an 18% chance of getting admitted. MBA Data Guru - Business school admissions data and analysis |
23 Nov 2015, 23:00
| FROM MBA Data Guru: Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis |
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Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis Many applicants worry about applying to business school if they have a low GPA. I analyzed the low GPA MBA acceptance rate at the top 25 schools to see what are the realistic chances for applicants with a GPA below 3.0. In my data sample from GMAT Club, less than 3% of applicants had a low GPA, which I defined as below 3.0. Individual schools did not have enough data for me to analyze in depth, so I grouped schools into clusters for analysis. I was surprised to see that low GPA MBA acceptance rate is a lot higher than I expected. Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate by School Rank  For applicants who have a low GPA, school selection is extremely important. Only 8% of applicants with a GPA below 3.0 are accepted by top 10 schools. This is much lower than the 18% acceptance rate for applicants with a higher GPA. Acceptance rate is much closer at schools ranked 11 to 16 for low GPA applicants. Low GPA MBA acceptance rate is highest for schools ranked between 17 and 25 on US News’ top business school rankings. There is only a small disadvantage for low GPA applicants who apply to schools ranked 17 to 25. Next I looked at how GMAT impacted chance of admission for low GPA applicants. Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT and School Rank  As you can see in the graph above, GMAT is especially important for applicants with a low GPA. An applicant applying to a top 10 school with a GMAT below 700 has an extremely low chance of being admitted. Scoring a 750 or higher raises an applicants acceptance rate to 13% at top 10 schools. However, an applicant is much better off just applying to lower ranked schools. Low GPA applicants with a GMAT below 700 had a respectable 20% acceptance rate at schools ranked 11 to 16. An applicant with a GMAT of 750 or higher has double the chance of admission, with acceptance rate of over 40%. For MBA programs ranked 17 to 25, it seems that applicants with a GPA below 3.0 only need to score 700 or higher to have a 50% chance of admission. Although there is not enough data to analyze low GPA acceptance rate in depth at each school. I posted the acceptance rate for each school below. I included the sample size of so you can get an idea of how trustworthy the acceptance rate calculations are. For example, Foster and Mendoza have a sample size below 10, so you probably can’t trust the accuracy of these acceptance rates. On the other hand, Ross has a sample size of 45, so I trust the 40% acceptance rate for Michigan much more than Mendoza and Foster. MBA Acceptance Rate for Applicants with GPA Below 3.0 School Acceptance Rate Sample Size Tepper 57% 30 Foster 56% 9 Mendoza 50% 8 Cornell 49% 37 Georgetown 45% 29 Kelley 43% 21 Ross 40% 45 Kenan-Flagler 38% 29 McCombs 24% 33 Duke 23% 48 Kellogg 19% 59 Emory 18% 17 Booth 16% 38 Darden 15% 34 Olin 11% 9 Anderson 10% 31 Tuck 5% 40 Yale 4% 24 Haas 4% 25 NYU 3% 29 Sloan 3% 30 Stanford 3% 32 Wharton 3% 36 Columbia 0% 22 Harvard 0% 38 MBA Data Guru - Business school admissions data and analysis |
26 Nov 2015, 09:01
| FROM MBA For Tech: First Dings: Wharton and MIT |
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Yep, after all of the invites this was a bummer. First I got a ding from Wharton on Nov 3 and then from MIT. Well, with MIT I wasn’t really disappointed, because my app was really bad, I didn’t even plan applying, but their question was similar to one of my essays, and I thought: “Why not?”, I didn’t believe that I was going to apply in R2 anyways, so this was ‘now or never’. MIT’s application was quite easy, they didn’t require TOEFL/IELTS scores (neither did I have them), so I decided to give it a try. They have this system with 8-9 criteria based on which they review each app, and the better ones get to be in top-right corner of their coordinate system. Now, I understand that I have made some mistakes in my approach (because of the rush) as was expected. I don’t think that ‘optional’ essays were ‘mandatory’ as some say, as some people received invites without a single click on their videos/web-sites coming from MIT. Anyways, great school, probably a great fit for a geek like me, but an expected result. With Wharton the situation was somewhat similar in that I wasn’t planning to apply as I didn’t like a lot about the school and wanted to apply to only one of H/S/W, but the dates for Wharton were so convenient and I already had to skip H due to an early date and S as I didn’t like my essay. I had plenty of time, though looking back now I think that my essays were a bit too professional? It’s hard to tell, I really liked the work I did and I thought that I have a decent chance, so maybe they didn’t like LoR’s or my profile or something else, maybe my essays weren’t as good as I thought, maybe they didn’t like certain things that I said about my goals, I didn’t want to concentrate on Wharton being Finance school, maybe that was a mistake. Anyways, probably we will never know. Wharton’s ding came first, at a date they scheduled (great initiative!) and I was crushed a bit, unlike with MIT, I have no particular answer as to why I was dinged, so it makes you think you’re overall profile is not good enough, which is quite scary. Anyways, first decision date is soon, so my focus is on that. I want to thank MIT and Wharton alums who I reached out to and who provided me with a lot of great insights (after which Wharton got higher in my personal rating and MIT dropped a bit lower) and advice. Tagged: mit sloan, Progress, thoughts, Wharton  
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03 Dec 2015, 02:02
| FROM MBA For Tech: Duke Fuqua Interview and Dartmouth Tuck Invite |
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Got an invite to Tuck (November round)! Feels so great! Really love the school and the people there. I spoke with quite a few alums, they were really among the most responsive ones. I especially, appreciated the honesty with which they answered my questions and their patience, as I am someone who gets to the heart of things and don’t like to have unadressed concerns. I will write a separate post about my experience with alums/current students within the research stage of application. But now, a few words on my Duke interview: it was a few weeks ago, but I was quite busy, so my post is a bit late. I was paired with an alum, who workes in MBB, we met in a coffee house next to his office, actually the same chain of cafés, where I met with Booth alumna, seems to be popular among MBB’s. But unlike my interview with Booth alumna, this interview was more formal, he had a list of questions in mind and our interview was more like a Q&A session than a conversation, thought quite relaxed; what I didn’l like about this is that sometimes he would ask about topics that we discussed before, so we discussed topic A, then B, then C, then A, then C etc. a bit haphazard. The questions were as follows:
So, now the wait! Tagged: Fuqua, Interivew, invites, Tuck  
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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
Tuck at Dartmouth
AGSM at UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE
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