Sloan 2013 (MIT) - Calling All Applicants

Thanks for the heads-up! The way I look at it, if I don't hear back by the end of the week, I'll get to enjoy the holidays and new year too not having to fret about it. Or as much as I can while slaving away with some other applications.

To give some credence to the comment about the rolling review for US applicants: my presentation was finally viewed this week according to the hosting site's stats. And it was reviewed twice, once this weekend and again in the middle of the week. Unless it was one of you guys, I think that means Sloan adcom just got to my app!

Crossing my fingers that an interview invite will follow. Btw I'm based in Boston.

For all of you who are fretting over whether or not you made the right call with your Supplemental essay (Did not submit, submitted PPT instead of video, submitted video instead of PPT, submitted a love letter instead of a ring, etc), here's something to (hopefully) help cheer you up:

MIT Sloan AdCom have a very (and I mean VERY) scientific way of grading applications based on certain attributes. Obviously, only AdCom know the full set of attributes, but the commonly quoted ones seem to be 'Intellectual Skills', 'Work Success', and 'Influencing'. This has been their tried-and-tested formula for years, and though they do make certain intuitive calls, those are more the exception than the rule. Once they grade every application, they invite the top 20% for interviews, and admit around 50% from that pool.

Now, the question on everyone's mind is - 'How are AdCom going to grade the supplemental essay, especially when it is format-independent?"
The answer is, they're not. Plain and simple. Check out the following excerpt from mbaMission's interview with Rod Garcia -

"mbaMission: MIT Sloan has introduced a multimedia option into the application. Can you tell us more about that?

RG: Yes, this was a response to this generation. It will give us a new opportunity to see something an applicant has done. Still, it is not scoreable. It might be interesting to see, and it might influence our gut, but it is not a factor in our metrics."

So there. You may have the most killer Supplemental essay, but that will only help swing their gut feel about you, and not influence your metric score in any way. Similarly, you may not have submitted a supplemental essay at all, but you may still feature in the top 20% of applicants. The bottom line is, the supplemental essay does not 'scoreably' influence your application. Of course, once you land the interview, it may influence whether or not you get the call - but that panic and mania is for another day.

Sit back, relax, spend time with family, and enjoy the holidays. Or if you're like me, shut yourself into a closet and cram out essays like there's no tomorrow. Wait, today IS the 21st of December.

Cheers,
MBAWanderlust

Thx lb2015! But hold on, I was in the same boat last week-2 reviews from MA, until I figured out that they were from YouTube search and google search.. How about your traffic source? How can we be sure its from adcom?

For those wondering, there are two open SF interview spots out of 39 total.

@haxx19 Thanks for the info. Can you also let us know which dates are the SF interviews?

For those wondering, there are two open SF interview spots out of 39 total.

Well of course we can't be absolutely sure that the views were adcom. However, I didn't use Youtube since I had a powerpoint, and the site I uploaded to is a little obscure. The only other time I had any views was the first day I put it up, so that's why the latest activity seems suspect.

Kudos for a very good analysis. The real question is this: has knowledge about MIT's admissions preferences made its way out the masses enough to significantly change applicants' behaviors? I hope not, but then again, I'm a R1 applicant.

Not sure if I'm the only one with this issue, but when I upload my resume to the Sloan site and then look at the PDF version, the alignments and spacing are totally messed up. So my resume in word is 10 point arial and one page, but on the PDF it spills out onto the second page. I had to spend like 30 minutes making adjustments to make sure that the PDF version looks right. Presumably, the PDF version is what adcom looks at.