Calling All UCLA 2011 Applicants!

GMAT is just a hygiene test. He most likely got waitlisted because there's too many applicants in the same profile pool.

Hi guys,

I would like to know what are the profiles of all those of you who got waitlisted and those who got in. Maybe we can figure something out.

Any idea about R2 invites?

Dude, I am sorry. I wanted to comment on your reply and ended up reporting / flagging it with the comment "Any idea about R2 invites?". Moderators, please consider that my mistake. There is nothing wrong with the post above.

Please add me to the roster - Round 2 applicant.

I got offered from both UCLA and Cornell.
In fact, I haven't decided yet which school I should go to.
I'm interested in general management of financial service company.
Is there anyone who can give an advide to me?

In my opinion UCLA is a slightly better business school overall while Cornell has the stronger brand power because of the parent institution. I think, you have to decide, whether you want to be on the East Coast or the West Coast post-graduation. Cornell has the stronger network in the northeast while UCLA rules the west (relative to Cornell). Also, do you prefer living in a big city (LA) or in rural Ithaca? I presume, you would want to get recruited for a rotational program in a financial services company. I have not researched Cornell extensively but I have read that UCLA is not particularly strong in that type of career placement.

I second that question. When and how does UCLA send out its invites? Thanks

By email--mine came about 4 weeks after the application deadline. You go back into your online application and indicate whether you want on or off campus. If you request off campus you get the name, email, and number of a local alum within a few days. If it's on campus you just sign up for a date and time and get matched up with a 2nd year student or adcom member.

a month never felt longer.

Agree!

Posted from my mobile device

For Round 1, the first interview invite was reported on this Forum on November 11th.
Round 1 deadline: Oct 20
First Invite Report: Nov 11 = approximately 3 weeks

However, it seems that the invites were released continuously over a longer period, as opposed to on one day (as Duke does).

In Round 2, the deadline was Jan 5, so I would expect interview invites to be sent starting the last week of January.

Few more days to go. Good luck to everyone.

waitlisted here as well - question, did anyone email them and tell them you're still interested? doing so kind of breaks their waitlist guidelines but i'm tempted to do so. advice?

I feel like if a school specifically tells you not to do something and you do it, it's in poor form and comes off badly on you. I would advice against it

Sorry if I am getting a little bit of a bore here with regards to my decision-making process of retaking the GMAT to get off the waitlist. Again, given my balanced GMAT [710: 85th (Q), 89th (V); 93rd (Overall)] and in the light of the adcom's last year post (attached below), I am not sure if I will get any bang for the buck if I retake the GMAT. I don't know if I am getting crippled by too much analysis, but I have been researching a lot and getting multiple feedbacks prior to making a decision, as improving the score any higher within a short period of time is going to take a lot of time commitment and effort (stating the obvious).

Folks: your two cents please?

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April 01, 2009

Reasons UCLA Anderson MBA Applicants are Placed on the Waitlist

Each year the UCLA Anderson MBA Program places a small percent of its applicants on the waitlist. (For instructions on how to handle the waitlist process, please view our blog posting on waitlist guidelines). Typically applicants are waitlisted for the following reasons:

1. Capacity Constraints

The majority of waitlisted candidates are individuals who would be fine admits and successful contributors to the program, but there are simply more qualified applicants than there are spaces in the class in any given year.

2. Competitiveness of the pool

Other waitlisted individuals would also be fine admits, but are relatively less competitive across areas of their application, especially in a very strong applicant pool:

o full-time professional work experience
o leadership / management experience or potential
o readiness for an MBA based on written presentation and / or interview
o record of contributions to community, school, and / or work
o demonstrated ability to successful work on or lead teams
o fit for a highly collaborative student and school culture

For these individuals, there is no need to submit additional materials to enhance their candidacy. Since decisions are made across multiple criteria, the addition of a letter of recommendation or job promotion would not change an admissions decision. And, in the spirit of fairness and equity to individuals applying in later rounds, without the same opportunity to augment their application, we are unable to accept new materials.

3. Lower Demonstrated Academic Skills

A small group of waitlisted persons are potentially exceptional admits, but have limited or no demonstration of skills required for success in the MBA program, including:

Preparation for the rigorous quantitative coursework in the MBA curriculum

o low percentile on the quantitative section of the GMAT,
o no undergraduate quantitative courses (e.g., calculus, statistics), and/or
o low grades in quantitative coursework in undergraduate or baccalaureate work

English proficiency

o low verbal percentile and/or AWA on the GMAT
o low TOEFL score (total or in 1 or more areas)

Individuals with this latter profile are typically aware of their developmental needs and may submit updated test scores (e.g., TOEFL or IELTS, GMAT) during the application review process. For more information, please view the Admissions Criteria and FAQ sections of our website.
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85th percentile on quant is 10 better than I did and I still got accepted with a scholarship offer, and your total score is right near Anderson's mean. I would look at the rest of your application and determine what weaknesses you might have rather than worrying about another GMAT. What does your overall quant background look like? I think in my case I was able to mitigate my relatively low quant score by pointing out all the high-level quant courses I took in undergrad, and convince them that my math was rusty because I haven't used it for 6 years but that I was capable of handling the work. If you think your undergrad background is a little weak you could always take some additional courses, whether online or community college or whatever.

Unless you're convinced a 710 was a bad day for you, you'd have to put a significant amount of time into improving it, time that you could spend otherwise strengthening your profile...unless you're dead set on getting off the waitlist so you can start school this fall.

First of all, thanks for your input, emont. With all modesty, I would not worry about my quant background, as I am an engineering consultant and I deal with two entities on an hourly basis - clients and numbers. Moreover, I got a BS (top school in India) and MS (top 25 in US) in Engineering.

In the first place, I considered retaking the GMAT for two reasons. 1) That's the only "do something" option available in my case to get off the waitlist. 2) Some folks suggested that I fall under the over-represented category [Indian, M, Engineer (although I do more consulting than engineering and nothing related to IT] and that the GMAT average for this category is about 20 or 30 points higher than the school average at the top schools).

But then I read this adcom's post with regards to waitlist reasons which states that GMAT score is more to do with the academic preparedness and success in the program as opposed to picking up the best GMATs from an over-represented group, and I am back on the fence.

I surely want to enroll this year, and I am going to take a break from this Catch 22 situation and maybe decide after I hear back from USC on Feb 1st.

Last but not the least, I love gmatclub, as folks are genuinely interested in having a dialogue and helping each other out.

kelea, agreed, thanks for confirming my suspicions, i will go with plan C in any course of action analysis: just wait longer. my gmat score has a marginal quant (79%) but an overall 730 due to verbal skills. i plan on doing nothing, although I could probably go back to the drawing board with gmat just to prove that I care about UCLA (which I do). My take on UCLA waitlist is that retaking gmat is not useful unless you know that's why (ie, you scored somewhere below like 680 (just a ballpark)) and you know from practice tests you could get yourself up into the 700 + range. thoughts?