770 (Q49, V47) -- Sunday, Dec 8th!

First of congrats on the score its a great one.

However, your post brings up some glaring concerns, and I am sure there are more than a few people who will agree with me. Its very late in the game to be starting R2 apps from scratch. You mention the top 3 schools in the world in difficulty to get into, two of which will be in the single digit acceptance rates range this year. I don't know your profile or how much you have researched MBAs but that is shooting very high in a month. I suggest you go to the ask accepted.com area and post your profile and get some feed back. Read some profiles and get an idea what to post. Trust me the more info you provide the better off you are...Paul will tell you point blank if you have a shot or are dreaming.

The salaries you are showing are high. They include bonuses and at the top schools a lot of people go into finance and previous bankers drive those up due to being far above career switchers and everyone outside of IB. Go to the schools websites and research the averages for the industry you are planning on going into. If you are going into Marketing you wont see 200K a year, if you go into gen management unless you are some superstar that someone really wants you aren't going to see 200K. Even the top consulting firms 200K is going to be rare.

Also the rankings you should really look at are Businessweek and USnews (especially USNews)...they are pretty much the only rankings worth anything to most people.

Something else to think about, MIT sloan, doesn't have a R3 at all. You did not say if you are an international applicant but if you are, make sure the schools you want allow internationals to apply in R3. A lot tend not to because of visa concerns.

A lot of people applying to R2 schools have been working on those for a month plus now and had tons of materials to use from the R1 applications. B-school applications are very time intensive. Most schools are not very re-applicant friendly unless you do something drastic to improve your profile. So you dont want to put out a junk application in a rush this year only to get dinged and ruin your chances in the future.

I like your enthusiasm )
I plan on doing one application per week also. Actually, I want to do one essay per night and use the rest of the days in the week for revision.
I am only applying to 2 schools so it is not like I don't have more time to spend on the essays, but I want to do an essay per night because I believe I can write best essays if my thoughts flow. From past experience I think that I write the best if I focus on a topic and let my thoughts flow and write from 'the heart' ) I have never done well when I write and re-write essays.
I did my undergraduate college application in 1 night! and I ended up with a 70K scholaship !!!! from a deacent school with like 20 something acceptance rate
whenever I have edited essays too much, I never got what I wanted with these essays.
So... my strategy:
-go to the gym
- come home all energised from the exercise
- have a glass of wine
- start the essays and let your heart flow on the 'paper' (or computer screen)
- finish 500 essays in 3 hours

good luck man!

How on earth did you rank Wharton #15? Behind Columbia!!!??? Worst case it's #3 in the world, IMO it's #2 behind HBS.

Anyways, great score. Care to share tips/strategy for RC and CR?

What were your scores on practice tests? GMATprep and Manhattan tests (if you took them)? Any other tests? Did you do better or worse on the real thing?

Sounds like I won't be able to finish all my applications this afternoon? Damn.

Seriously, thanks for the feedback... Maybe I am over-reaching. I've walked through a couple applications and filled in the non-essay material, but I definitely was holding off on serious work until post-GMAT.

I guess it kind of comes down to how efficiently I can write essays. My goal is to knock out one application per week, which will give me an extra week to make sure everything's polished. I feel like there's a diminishing return on how much time you invest in introspective essays. A 500 word essay is probably only 27 sentences or so. How long can you obsess about something like that and still feel like you're spending your time well?

I misspoke on the salaries listed above. Those are "5 year averages" from the Forbes Ranking. (So, the average salary taken 5 years post-MBA). In my opinion, that's probably the most accurate measure by which to rank business schools. Market forces and the price system kind of distill actual value out of subjective ranking lists. (Although, the rankings do lag by 7 years. And it would be better if it were measured as a median to avoid distortion from outliers.)

Nice catch on MIT -- I'll have to figure out if that's worth an R2 app or not.

-edit-

And this post is ~250 words. Half an essay in 5 minutes! There's some productivity for you... If I actually followed the "Know Thyself" maxim, maybe it would be possible to knock out all the apps this afternoon...

Congrats on the score!

I had the same breakdown and got a 760, though