The floodgates really opened today

Question

For the past few weeks, we've had a few perspective applicants per week sitting in on class. Today, we had 7+ people in each of three classes (over 20 people just for our section). Looks like people are starting to get serious. Boy am I glad all that is behind me.

aviroop · Answer

Lucky you....a few more weeks and the flood gates of butterfly stomachs, and nervous wrecks will invade GMATclub

rhyme · Answer

Same here.....

gmatclb · Answer

Oh noes!

They've already started visiting schools!!!

kidderek · Answer

As a first year, I would kind of find that annoying. You barely have your feet wet and they're filling your classes with potential clients.

I suppose you can't do that with 2nd years b/c most 2nd year courses are electives, but . . .

dosa_don · Answer

I think Darden had an "open day" today- that could be the reason why you saw the increase in number of prospectives

lepium · Answer

I haven't seen many prospects yet. Only a handful of people who knew people in the section, overall less than 1/day.

L.

jjanders · Answer

I hope to be visiting soon. I will be up there this Saturday just to walk around campus and get some Ethiopian food (I only live 1.5 hours away), but I hope to come back up for a class in the next few weeks.

ncp · Answer

grad_mba and I had a horrible experience when we went to HBS couple of weeks ago. Eventhough we visited unofficially, one would expect the admissions office to be a little more friendly. We asked "is there anything we can do to make our visit productive" and they practically kicked us out. They could have atleast directed us to a couple of student hang-outs.

I hope others have a better experience.

aaudetat · Answer

Duke's official visit period also opened today. Woohoo!

jjanders · Answer

That sucks, my visit will most likely be somewhat unofficial.

dabots · Answer

i visited wharton today. probably 8 students in the admissions office visiting classes as well.

mNeo · Answer

My visits at H and W were both unofficial .. but thankfully I didn't have as bad an experience as prasad and grad_mba did. In fact I really enjoyed my time at W and got to talk to a lot of people. The adcom people at both the places were pretty friendly too. Although you can tell that "superiority" kinda oozes from everything at H.

So maybe experiences vary from day to day and from adcom person to person.

kryzak · Answer

well, I'm doing my official visit runs in the next 2 weeks for Stanford/Haas/UCLA. Looking forward to the classes!

lepium · Answer

The thing is that the system is not really put in place yet, so if you visit unofficially it's up to the person you know to show you around. By the system not being in place, what I mean is:

a) We will only have a formal section admissions rep this Wednesday.
b) The admissions rep will be in charge of meeting people in the admissions office, taking them to class and setting up lunches for applicants with students.
c) The campus visits are not scheduled yet, so there are no guided tours available yet.

The rest of what you can do on campus is:

1) Attend a class or two (which you had already done).
2) Look at the facilities (for which the campus visits are).
3) Hang out with students after-hours (which happens mainly if you know someone in the section and your visit takes place either on Weds, Thurs or the weekend).

L.

nervousgmat · Answer

Pelihu,

I visited on October 1st for the Open House event and LOVED it!
I set in a class during which students discussed the "Bacon" case... I was kinda looking for you at the morning coffee gathering but I don't event know your last name, so that was useless

I actually got to talk to Dean Bruner and the Director of Admissions!

I actually got to talk to Dean Bruner and the Director of Admissions!

pelihu · Answer

That's awesome. I really had the same reaction when I met with Darden reps and visited the school. The classes really are run like that every day. There was just a whole mess of people around during first coffee that day, but it's great that you were able to talk with the Dean and with someone from admissions. They really do make an effort to get to know each applicant as an individual.

Good luck.

kwam · Answer

Lucky you. BTW If you think that competition is fierce, imagine for the Emerging Markets people... In my case, my competitors are from South America and especially Brazil. The brazilian currency has this year apreciated against the USD around 15%. Everybody is telling that it will be one of the most dramatic years for us. I'm kind of :scared

Schools usually do not say that they have fixed spots (or percentage of spots) regarding nationalities, but I see that the spots do not change too much during time. Let me take advantage of this thread to aks somethign: is it REALLY important to visit the school or would it be the same to attend the info sessions?

dabots · Answer

i would definitely visit if it wasnt cost prohibitive. you dont get nearly as much out of infosessions as you do visiting classes.

pelihu · Answer

If you are really far away, they won't count it against you if you don't visit. You could help yourself quite a bit if you do visit though.

Being from Brazil would be considered (I believe) a strong positive factor. Latin America representation is still really low. I'm quite sure that it's not a negative factor. I also believe that competition is generally less intense than among other, oft-discussed, competitive demographics.

The floodgates really opened today

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