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May is upon us! You will never realize how the days pass just a few months away from the Round 1 MBA of September 2023. In the coming weeks, you will need to work hard on your application's story, theme, and direction before starting with the first draft of your essays, LORs, resume, and data forms.
The MBA application process may be time-consuming and demanding, but having a game plan early will help you give enough time to each aspect of your application (including the GMAT) and avoid the last-minute stress one goes through during Round 1 MBA.
Typically, the MBA round 1 will start from September 2022 onwards (and if you’re done with your GMAT, you can also think of Early-action rounds! They offer guaranteed interviews to all applicants and begin in June-July).
Learn more about Early action rounds and how you can apply for them!
Applying in these early rounds gives an advantage as B-schools are open to people from any background (naturally, as all the seats are open). Hence, applicants from over-represented backgrounds are strongly advised to apply by Round 1 to have the maximum chances of selection!
Learn how you can stand out in your applications if you come from an over-represent background.
However, make no mistake; you need to build up an overall stellar application to receive admission in these rounds.
This blog will provide you with a roadmap for your Round 1 MBA application, the critical elements of a successful profile, and what it takes to make an absolutely strong and successful MBA application. Finally, we will dive into some of the most asked questions to help you make your application game top-notch!
Here is a snapshot of the article:
How to build a strong MBA application for Round 1 MBA?
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Pre-MBA Application Phase-
Yes, the most successful applicants do not start with essays, resumes, or LOR. They begin with INTROSPECTION. Intense introspection helps identify your selling points and the narrative of your overall story. It helps you build your MBA pitch.
Let’s see the step-by-step journey of building your MBA pitch-
2. Post-MBA goals- Why do you want to go for an MBA? How will MBA help you achieve your short-term goals? What are your short-term goals? Does MBA make sense?
Having collinearity in your goals is the most important aspect of your application, and if you fail here, trust us, nothing else would matter! So make sure that you take your time and introspect on all these questions. They will help you create a narrative for your entire application.
Learn how to deep dive into your goals and bring collinearity to your story.
3. Identify your strengths and weaknesses- Dig deep down to who you are. Understand your strengths and weaknesses without self-bias. As part of our human nature, we overestimate our strengths and underestimate our weaknesses. And to remove this self-bias, you need to connect with your closest family and friends and take their perspectives on your strengths, weaknesses, and personality. Next, think of your most impactful achievements and failures. Next, try to gauge your personality and values. This will help you understand how you can establish the theme and narrative of your overall story and bring a strong personality to your applications later on.
How are we helping our applicants understand their strengths and weaknesses without self-biases?
4. Build your unique MBA pitch- From the Introspection you did on your profile, you need to identify your unique selling points, theme, and direction of your entire application. Start with making a brand statement for yourself by trying to write who you are in a one-line opinion. Then, identify your top 3 qualities and values from all the stories you could think of under your strengths, achievements, and learnings from failures. Next, and similarly, identify your major weaknesses.
This will become the Bible for all your applications.
5. School Selection- Based on the top 3 values you identified as a part of your branding above, start listing schools. The factors that must be considered for the right school selection will depend on person to person. The main things you can consider are your aspirations, goals (for this, look into career reports of your target schools), and the geography you want to work in post-MBA. Then, start distilling down to the values and community of the schools you are interested in. This itself will take at least one month of extensive networking to understand the best-fit schools for yourself.
You can learn how to choose the right schools for your profile here.
Moreover, always keep in mind that you must ideally target at least 4 to 5 schools spread across the dream, target, and safe categories to maximize your chances of securing at least one admit.
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Essays, LOR, Resume
1) Essays- B-school essays play a major role in helping adcoms truly understand who you are. And crafting top-notch essays involves extensive research into understanding yourself and the b-school and precision and clarity in how you are presentive your personality and narrative. The most crucial aspect of drafting good essays is to make your content unique among the hundred others. You are unique in terms of your aspirations and dreams, your life experiences, and how you can contribute to the school's community. Before you can bring this in your application, you need to believe this (and hence the rationale behind Introspection)!
When you are writing about your strengths or significant achievement, we follow an approach- S.T.A.R. STAR is an acronym for Situation-Task-Action-Result. It helps one bring the art of storytelling in the most impactful way, whether it’s a CV, an achievement essay, or questions at an interview. In addition, the STAR Writing format helps the adcom evaluate the skills, qualities, and experiences you have that would help you fit with the program. For more in-depth detail about the fundamental structure of the STAR approach, you could refer to our article given below for more insights.
Read more about the STAR Approach
2) LOR- Map out the content to be sent to your recommenders and make sure that it resonates with the USPs, theme, and narrative of your story identified in your branding. Also, make sure that you pre-plan LORs and don’t leave them to the end because you are dependent on someone else to complete this, and hence you need to plan it at least 30-45 days before your Round 1 MBA deadlines.
3) Resume- Candidates need to understand that they require a well-drafted resume with ECAs (extracurriculars), academic and professional accolades, full-time work experience, and mention volunteering or additional certifications earned. To build an overall robust profile with great ECAs, you must be able to align with the values of programs and connect dots between your professional experiences, ECAs, and skill-set to form a network-like structure in your resume. Also, make sure that it aligns with the MBA pitch you crafted yourself. The key is to be concise and impactful about your professional achievements.
We are determined to help you through every step of your application filing. We follow a unique application process to ensure your applications are 100% unique and strong. So start planning your applications and ASK QUESTIONS. We are here for you with whatever you need.
MBA applications can be very confusing and sometimes scary too. But with the right people and strategy, you can ace them with beautiful colors. If you'd like, we are happy to hop on a call with you sometime this week to discuss your profile in length and further help you with your strategy for linking your post-MBA goals, essays, and interviews regarding MBA programs; feel free to hop on a 1:1 45 minute Profile evaluation call with our team of experts.
All the best!
