Older Applicants Friendly Schools

So what do you consider older? 30s 40s?

I'm an older applicant too so I was looking at the class profile at various schools. Most schools have an average applicant age between 26-28. Browsing through the consultants "profile request" answers we need to have a good answers to why do you want to do MBA now and have more leadership roles and professional achievements than a typical candidate. Thing that worries me is extracurricular activities. Not making excuses but I barely get time to manage my professional and family life. I have no volunteer activities in past 3-4 years. How are you guys planning to handle this part of the application?

From 30 at registration. That's when you start to get old...

Older people have the opposite issue of young applicants and both are going to have a hard time at schools that are "friendly" towards their age range. Young people are seen as not having experience and accomplishments, they want the stars who show great potential. Older applicants have to show they need the MBA but you also dont want to seem like a slow riser in your career...however, if you far exceed your peers why are you going after an MBA at 30+ since you should be well on your way. While a young applicant needs to show why they aren't better off waiting three years, the older applicant has to show why now is the right time and that they didnt miss the boat so to speak.

Remember that schools that have a rep for being friendly to older applicants also tend to attract a lot applying since its thought thats where your chances are the best. This means more competition, its like applying to MIT or Tepper as an engineer, sure engineers make up 2/3rds of their class but they probably make up 80% of their applicant pool.

I know when I went to MIT it definitely had more older students that at any other school I went to. Tuck did have some much older students that had families. One guy was older than the professor in the class I sat in on.

Duke has a pretty broad range. Lots of military folks tend to be older, and we have plenty of those. Our average age is 29.

I believe that Haas is one of the older-applicant friendly schools. The average age is around 28-29, and I've met quite a few people who are 29-30 there. I for one am turning 31 soon...

Older applicants face a squeeze in admissions criteria. Schools love to admit people who have excelled in their careers. Of course, people that have excelled in their careers probably need an MBA sooner rather than later. A question for older applicants that have excelled in their careers is why not an EMBA or something like that.

I think it's a real challenge for people who have been working for 8-10+ years since college (age 30-32+) to show that they have excelled professionally and also that they need a full-time MBA. I'd say most of the older students around here are either ex-military or have other advanced degrees - effectively shortening the amount of time they have been in the workforce. Someone who has been in the workforce for 10 years has a tougher sell when presenting their case for an MBA.

Going back to the original question, I'm an older candidate and based I what I remember from last year I think Darden, Duke, Tuck and Columbia tend to be more receptive to older applicants.

I think the military guys are an exception to the age group anyways. Many of the guys from the services who I have met during this process come from areas that require longer commitments. Pilots, navy nuc guys, higher up commander levels. Many have 8-10 years in the service and some I know are going back. My K-bud is actually returning back to the navy post MBA. There are Sloan and Darden grads at my work that I know of. Schools love to have a few military people and their age is much less of a factor since career progression to start in the military is very much based on time in service. Its more of the experiences and specialization they have. Where they a grunt in the motor pool or running flight ops on a carrier.

Kryzak, I'm a year older than you!

With respect to older-applicant-friendly schools... Wharton, Sloan, and Kellogg were the programs suggested to me when I started to look into an MBA. I've run into several 30+ students when I've visited each of these places, and they seemed pretty happy.

If you've got your heart set on HBS or Stanford, though, why not give it a shot? As River mentioned, you'll have to position yourself especially well, but you never know what might happen...

Take note, Terry12 got into stanford but is an doctor. Pelihu goes to Darden but was a lawyer. Kryzak got into Haas but he has a masters. Interesting to note every single one has an advanced degree.

Just to add some data: I got into HBS at 30 and turned 31 during my 1st Semester there. There's about 5% people in my class who are 31+. If you increase the range to those 29+ then I think the % climbs up to about 30ish%.

L.

do you have an advanced degree, lepium?

I`m even older

34 this year :p. I didn`t target schools based on age friendliness. Based it around what i was after. However the only USA school i`ve gained entry to so far is a 1-year course (I`ve since rejected the offer)

In case you haven`t considered it, European schools value older applicants more because work experience is considered more important. However most European courses are only 1 year. It`s a key culture difference between the USA schools and Euro schools. I`m in at Manchester and have access to the list of students who have been accepted and there are a couple of 30+ Americans who have been accepted.

At my age, the key driver for an MBA which clearly justifies it is fa unction switch. IMO, Professionally, I can say i`m very accomplished at what I do because my role involves me consulting for my company (top 10 brand in the world) internally in my area of expertise. This means i have to travel a fair bit to teach/coach and solve other sites issues. i.e. I can be considered a `guru` in my specialist area, and that`s where i justified my need for an MBA. Being a specialist is like an actor being typecast to play certain roles. Having clear short and long term goals are essential. Particularly if you can identify the specific skills needed for the roles, how your current skill set complements it, and how the MBA plugs in the gaps. It`s important to be realistic.

Extra-curriculars are always going to be based on your own time management. For me, it was an easy area to cover because of my passion with music and sports to the extent where I was highly involved ata young age and just managed to maintain it through my networks over time. I spend less time on it as family has come in, but still manage to fit some in. I didn`t realise extra-curriculars were important when i started looking at MBA`s so I was fortunate in this aspect that I already has some.

Sort of, but not. The way the education system works in my country is that most careers (at least in Engineering) span for 5 years, and you graduate as an Engineer. The first 4 years are the equivalent of a BS and the last one is arguably comparable to an MS.

L.

Same thing in the Carnival land...

I under graduated at 22, and I was one of the the youngest of my class, I got into college with only 17.

I have a friend who graduate at Sloan this year at 34 with a master degree, it's becoming more and more common from what I've researched.

And BTW, I'm turning 30 next month, so GSB and Sloan are, at least in my perspective, Older Applicants Friendly Schools...

Ahh, the 5-year masters (or equivalent). Many engineering schools in the US are offering the 5-year masters now.

Downloaded data set for applicants age >29 and class of 09 from admissions411. Just looked at data for decisions for selected schools. Initial reaction is very sparse data and any conclusion is hard to reach especially with self reporting and unknown decision count in the data. Anyways it shows its hard for >33 folks. Cornell, Northwestern, MIT, Michigan are friendly and Columbia and Harvard are least friendly.
Dataset contains age, country, industry, gender and GMAT scores. If you want the complete data set let me know.