{"id":22809,"date":"2014-02-06T08:46:03","date_gmt":"2014-02-06T15:46:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/how-to-decide-on-safety-schools-for-mba\/"},"modified":"2014-02-06T08:46:03","modified_gmt":"2014-02-06T15:46:03","slug":"how-to-decide-on-safety-schools-for-mba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/how-to-decide-on-safety-schools-for-mba\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Decide on Safety Schools for MBA"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\"How<\/a>\n\t\t<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

For many business school candidates, Round 3 is a time to sit back, relax and wait for the MBA admissions committees to make their decisions. However, for others, the third round is a time to be conservative and apply to a safety school. But what constitutes safety schools?<\/p>\n

Although determining exactly what a safety school is can be difficult (given that many variables are involved, and the definition can shift depending on the candidate in question), a good place to start is with scores. If a candidate\u2019s GMAT score and GPA are significantly higher than the target school\u2019s averages, then the school is\u2014at first glance, at least\u2014a \u201csafe\u201d choice. So, for example, if you have a 750 GMAT and a 3.8 GPA and you are applying to Emory\u2019s Goizueta School (GMAT middle 80% range 620\u2013730\u00a0and GPA 3.4 for the Class of 2015), you are off to a promising start.<\/p>\n

Next, you might consider your work experience relative to the target program. For example, many Goldman Sachs investment banking \u201calums\u201d apply and are admitted to the so-called M7 schools (Stanford, Harvard, Wharton, Kellogg, Chicago, Columbia and MIT). If you happen to be such a candidate, choosing a school outside this tier would certainly make you more competitive (keeping in mind scores, community service and recommendations as well).<\/p>\n

Finally, you might consider the program\u2019s general selectivity. If you consider yourself a competitive candidate at Columbia Business School, which accepts approximately 18% of applicants, applying to Texas, which in recent years has accepted closer to 30%, may be a safe option.<\/p>\n

Before you start applying to any safety schools, however, ask yourself this relatively simple question: \u201cWould I go if I got in?\u201d Spending time applying to an MBA program that you would not be willing to actually attend is pointless. If you choose to apply to such a school (as some do), anyway, you will, rather ironically, find yourself with no \u201csafety\u201d net at all.<\/p>\n

To explore potential safety schools typically ranked outside the top 15, check out mbaMission's\u00a0Diamonds in the Rough<\/a>\u00a0blog series.<\/p>\n

The post How To Decide on Safety Schools for MBA<\/a> appeared first on Kaplan GMAT Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For many business school candidates, Round 3 is a time to sit back, relax and wait for the MBA admissions committees to make their decisions. However, for others, the third…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,558,243,940],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-kaplan-blog","category-blog","category-gmat-prep-gmat","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22809\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}