So, waitlist is like a chaos. You can throw anything and everything at it and you never know what’s going to work. We do have a series of post about waitlist and how to get off a waitlist from this exact time a year ago and we have interviewed a former admissions Director in the top 15 university, and she basically said that there’s not much you can do to get off the waitlist. Your course and trajectory have already been set and getting off the list is not likely to be determined by any updates you can provide. Quite dark and futile I have to say and I have to think it has to be brighter than that… 🥴

Getting a marginally higher score makes no sense. You need 695 in focus to make an impact and the difference.

Writing an essay about Plan B, I cannot see how it would hurt but all you will do is just write an essay and anyone else can do that as well. Basically, any low effort will result into low impact.

In terms of your goals impacting your chances, that is a real consideration. Imagine you put a lofty goal that’s going to be hard to achieve and admissions perceives that you have a high chance of failure. If you fail, you will be unhappy, you will be unthankful to the program, and you will not be a very good alumni they couldn’t blame you for that but they can find someone with a better fit. Similarly, if you have a lofty goal, it may mean you haven’t quite done enough research to know what’s real and again your expectation may be too high and they don’t want to Disappoint you. Admissions love very safe candidates. They want to consultant getting an MBA and going back to consulting. We have had people apply multiple years in a row and get much better results after changing their goals and demonstrating much better fit for the MBA degree into their career path and trajectory, and getting much better admission results.