gmangiacotti wrote:
Hi everyone,
Been reading these last few posts and seems like you guys are applying extremely early, especially re-applicants. Is this something you learned from applying your first time? I was planning on submitting my application 1 or 2 weeks prior to the deadline for ED. Any advice?
Thanks
All I gonna say below are from my own guess/research and not official:
It is really all about your background, or more importantly, the pool that represent your background. School usually has a good idea about the average background of each pool and only gives AD to a fix amount of people from each pool. That's why you always see a balanced background students for any given year.
Then it comes to three questions:
1. are you in any overly crowd pool? (indian/chinese engineer, american ibanker)
2. are you strong/unique/distinguishable compared to your pool?
3. does your pool have a high "forgiveness"?
I believe most people understand the first two and how it affect your application. The third one only applies to a smaller amount of applicants so I will explain here.
Assuming you are from over represented minority (think asian) with over represented experience (think big 4 audit), you can easily check how many student CBS admit every year from similar background. If that number is fairly large, say 30, you are in a high forgiveness pool, which means you may not get huge disadvantage by applying late. Why? think about when CBS adcom read your application, there are already 20 offers out to applicants with same pool, they may still offer you AD since 21 is not much different than 20 and they still have enough space for candidates later with stronger background.
But the number is low, let's say 5, then you may have big trouble by applying late. Because there maybe 3 or 4 AD extended to earlier applicants and your background may not be much stronger. Adcom may decide to withhold the AD for future candidate.
Therefore, if you are from over crowd pool, not much stronger than typical M7 candidates and your pool has a low forgiveness, apply as early as possible (of course your application must be ready). I don't think it worth delaying weeks just to improve some words/sentences to make essay looks better. However, due to the fact more than half applicants apply in the last few days (don't remember where I get this, maybe wrong), apply early Sep is probably not too difference than apply in Aug.