GMAT Club Legend
Joined: 04 Jun 2007
Status:Um... what do you want to know?
Posts: 5456
Given Kudos: 14
Location: SF, CA, USA
Concentration: Technology, Entrepreneurship, Digital Media & Entertainment
Schools:UC Berkeley Haas School of Business MBA 2010
Q51 V41
GPA: 3.9 - undergrad 3.6 - grad-EE
WE 1: Social Gaming
[#permalink]
30 Oct 2007, 15:01
I will repeat this for the thread hopefully named "Advice to 2009ers from the class of 2010", but just to put it here.
Within Round 1, complete the application to the school with the latest deadline FIRST. Then use what you learned on the other applications with earlier deadlines. After you submit the earlier schools, GO BACK to your first application and incorporate what you learned into your essays/application before you submit. This will give you a win-win situation where you get to practice on an application, therefore getting better at it for the later ones, yet not have to "throw away" that first application because of the quality.
For example, Haas' deadline is 11/5, Stanford and UCLA is 10/22-24. I did Haas first, back in early August, completed all the essays and went through 1-2 rounds of reviews with people. Then used what I learned to do UCLA next, and finally Stanford. After submitting UCLA and Stanford, I went back to Haas, realized how crappy it was, and incorporated all the new "methods" I learned from the other two applications. Now I think Haas is at least equal, if not better, than Stanford/UCLA. In a sense, I do NOT have any "first application" issues.
This does require you to start VERY EARLY in the application process though. At least 2 months in advance for 3 schools. Unfortunately I was not able to do Kellogg in R1 because of this method. If I started in July, I would have been able to.