What do you wish you had known before? Admitted Student Advice: Part 1

I always feel I could have done better during my interviews. Even though I did practice sufficiently, and did my research on the schools, I wasn't 100% happy with all my answers. I felt like I used a lot of "ums" and "ahs", which could have been avoided with more practice and confidence.

I would have known that GMAT prep is longer than expected. This could be useful in order to plan when to enroll business school.

This is my 2nd year to apply. I was rejected 3rd round from every school in 2018 and happy to be attending MIT Sloan now. What I would've wish to known are specific examples of how to culturally fit into a school. Culture has become such a buzzword that it has no meaning. Specific examples of what schools are looking for (For example I believe I was admitted to Sloan because I have an undergrad/pursuing a masters in engineering which that's their culture, and Duke because they're the only top 15 schools that has an oil and gas specialization, and I'm a petroleum engineer which fits). These kinds of things can be the difference in an admit or not. Also what the specific careers are. I had no idea or heard of a consultant before b school, what product management for tech is. I still had no clue after the first time applying and probably looked like a moron in my interviews when I didn't know how to answer specifics of what's your goals. I have a better idea today. Also some of it was a lack of confidence in myself. I've grown much more confident which has helped me reassure what my knowledge base is where as I'd blank and second doubt my first time interviews. Also, DO NOT listen to admissions consultants saying to only apply to 4 or 5 to put forth your best app. IT IS a numbers game. If I would've heeded their advice I probably wouldn't be attending school. Apply to every top school you think you have a shot at regardless of app fees. Possibly do zoom interviews if it's too expensive to travel. This is a life difference maker, so you absolutely want to send out as many apps as possible. I'd rather put out 12 decent apps than 4 great apps.

To have a clear idea of what you want to do post MBA and why, To understand that your story matters as much as your GMAT score and GPA. You can influence the outcome from more angles than just those data points.

I wish I'd known how much time I really needed to set aside for my essays. I believe it's best to set aside atleast a month and a half or two to introspective and write them.

Talk to as many current students/Alums/consultants to get an idea about the school and about your profile and where it stands relative to the crowd.

I wish I had known more current students and alumni. There would be more people to ask for help and insights. I actually had no one to proof-read my essays and zero mock interviews. I did reach out to a number of current students and alumni at the business schools I applied too, and received some great pieces of advice.

I can't think of anything that I would've wanted to know more about in the hindsight. I was prepared well in terms of my b school research and had more than clear target b schools in mind well before application process had started, and thankfully I got admit from my no.1 target B school.

1- When I decided that I want to attend the B school I had no clue there is a Round 1! That could have helped. 2- I was very skeptical about whether I can get a scholarship so I crossed out many universities and did not apply to them. As it turns out, at least in my case those who admitted me were pretty generous. 3- most bschools offer an application fee waiver which I did not know of, and will definitely help many people. Although not sure if you should make the methods to get application fee waivers public so that everyone can just get it. kind of unethical. 4- There arent any standard mock interviews on youtube, or anywhere else. the written format and the question list helps but the video is something else. I wish there were a couple of mock interviews so that I could get a sense of how it is going to look like. There is a series from Poets and Quants but it is almost completely irrelevant, the man "HBS Guru" is super-unhelpful and annoying! It caused me to get the idea that the interview is a random chat with someone who wants to find your weak points, and the real interviews were neither a random chat ( completely structured ) nor skeptical ( they were nice people asking questions to find out some more details) 5- I come from a US sanctioned country. this comes with so many complications, the most important being the visa process which I am struggling with now. However I understand that since there arent many people like me, it is not worth dedicating forum threads for these topics. Maybe when there is nothing left to do in GMATClub you can work on this topic. 6- Grammarly!!! I learned about it right after submitting my applications and scanned my essays and many mistakes popped out!

1- The language, always room to grow, especially during the interviews and speaking. I say you should put live interview sessions on GMAT Club for those who want to practice.
2- GMAT, I did a 680 in 2 months, 3hrs after work during evenings.
3- I could have done better interviews if I had access to more useful material (videos mentioned above).

I wish I had known that not everyone who gets in to H/S/W are superheroes with Nobel Prizes. The majority of my intake are very normal people, who have some cool accomplishments and have worked for some interesting employers, but what makes them different is that they all are incredibly driven, focused on what they want to achieve and what their future could look like, and have done work or extracurriculars prior to business school that make that future journey one that is plausible. I think if I had known that, I would have been less intimidated by the whole process, and a lot more relaxed overall!

In my case I had most of the information I needed for the target B-Schools I applied to. This was because I engaged with those schools quite early on, even prior to taking the GMAT. What I would have definitely liked to know was each school's perception on candidates with extensive work experience - beyond 10 years, but its a bit difficult because none of the B-School's provide a definite answer or in some cases provide vague answers. Ultimately I had to apply to find out.

Research your fit with the school well to save precious time down the road. If you know which schools are the best for you, you can focus your efforts on building your story the right way without being overwhelmed.

How much extacurriculars would factor into a good application. I would have started charity work much sooner than I did, and maybe did more activities outside work.

(1)That my application and profile were a lot better than I believed them to be. (2) How scientific and logical (almost dry) one has to be while listing "Why MBA/ school"

Do. Not. Overthink things. I nearly talked myself out of applying to my dream schools so many times for different reasons — the applicant pool was too competitive, my GMAT score was below the average, I went to an unranked state school, etc. I had to do a real, no-BS self-evaluation, and once I did, I gained confidence that I was a competitive applicant. From there, I stopped comparing myself to others and focused all of my energy on making sure that I was the best applicant that I could be.

One can actually negotiate scholarships based on having offers from different institute.

I wish I did not pay an MBAmission consultant since it was a horrible experience that is not worth thousands of dollars.

Every school talks about the unique nature of their "culture and people" and I had started to roll my eyes every time a school brought it up. However, in the end that actually proved to be the most important thing for me in choosing a school. Not its ranking, or location, or job placement rates, but how quickly I connected with the students when I visited. So I wish I had know how important visiting the school and meeting its people was going to be.

If all schools were required to publish an employment report (a report which indicates the employability of their students) along with where all their students have employed in, that would've really helped narrow down on colleges. I didn't get the greatest GMAT score, so had to look out for mid tier schools, and post the top 5 colleges in each country, it's hard to distinguish the other schools; stacking them up by ranking isn't the greatest indicator.

1. Average processing time each school takes - This was something I wish I had known earlier. I had applied for 2 colleges and was in process for applying to other colleges in my list (~7). But before I could apply to other colleges, I received an admit and had to either accept or reject (and pay the enrollment fee) for the first college I had applied. I felt compelled to accept and the first college because (a) I did not want to pass the opportunity (b) I was not sure of other colleges. In retrospect, I question if I should have applied to all colleges at the same time to have more offer options and at the same time save money by not paying enrollment fees. 2. Student life and culture in tier 2 and 3 colleges. There is very little info on colleges that are not in the top 30 list. I would have loved to more info on both GMAT Club and the net. 3. How important it is to talk to the admissions team before applying to get the feel of the college and their profile evaluation. 4.Importance of attending local networking events (coffee chats with colleges, etc.)

To be honest nothing much, since I did good research before applying and GMATclub played a major role in finding the required info.

- I wish I had been a little more aggressive and targeted some higher rankings schools that fit in with my post-MBA goals.
- Interactions with adcom/ admissions reps might be monitored and it’s best to keep them professional and to the point.

That GMAT is not even job half done. The next process is very time-intensive and one needs to begin his application strategy timely (irrespective of actual GMAT score).

I wish I had visited the schools in person before applying. There's a big difference between attending online info sessions and experiencing the culture in person.

Just how long it takes to draft a good essay and the number of revisions it needs to go through before it actually becomes good enough to be submitted.

I wish I had known the significance of a great GMAT score for indian nationals while applying to T15 schools.

I wish that I knew how to progressively build a profile naturally atleast 1 year before applying so that my application could stand out more.

That as you spend more time and skill writing essays, the essay for the 2nd college you apply to will significantly be better than that of the 1st college, and the essay of the 3rd college will be better than the 2nd; so on and so forth. In retrospection, I feel that had I given more time to perfecting essays, all my essays would be of a much higher level. If you spend 6 months preparing for GMAT, it is advisable to spend at least 4 months perfecting your essays. (2/3rds of GMAT prep time). GMAT score is only a mechanical filter for applications, the real deal breaker lies in your essays and interview.

I wish I had known that I would be at no disadvantage applying with a GRE score for IB or MMB (which have historically used a GMAT score as a filtering tool). It would have been great to have a better plan when it came to studying for the GRE or GMAT.

How much time it takes to get your story together and then write essays! I underestimated the time it would take and how much effort it goes in to the application process, especially when working full-time. Also, you will share it with your friends and family to get their opinion and people take time to review so time is required there as well. I managed to put everything together in time but this would def be something I hoped I knew when starting the process

I wish I had known that covid19 would turn into a pandemic. I could have applied and secured admits from Top 25, maybe Tepper. But no regrets for getting into BU, Questrom.

I think I underestimated the importance (and how time-consuming it is) of actually researching about schools. I would advise all applicants to actually do some research on the values of each school, to understand how you can add value to them, and how they can add value to your personal progress. I'm sure that, had I began my research sooner, I might've sent my GMAT scores to different schools and I would've been able to apply in R1.

I wanted to study in Europe/UK but I didn't know the ground realities of MBAs in different countries and how they could impact my future goals. Example: I ended up applying the good schools in the UK but I received feedback that post-study visa and work visa sponsorship could be a problem to a lot of students (at least that time). I had fortunately also applied one school in Germany that had a lower rank than UK schools but was very helpful to me and Germany has a much-sorted post-study visa process that gave me confidence. I ended up selecting that school leaving the top schools of the UK. Financing also played a major role in my decision and I wish I had known earlier that Prodigy Finance is a miracle solution.

- That it's a game of patience since it takes multiple steps spread out over the course of many months. So one has to maintain motivation.
- That it is ok, even preferable, to come across as unique. Your personality matters as much as your stats.
- How important it is to reach out to the target school admissions team and the current students there.

A lot of information is already available on individual school websites and GMATclub blogs, etc. - alumni can be particularly helpful as well. But what I think I should have anticipated better was that in some cases - alumni of schools may not be particularly responsive. Going through the current student route can be more beneficial - they're more empathetic!

Soms schools around T20 range, invite you to interview without reviewing your application. For internationals you've a very good to get an interview if you have a higher gmat than there avg. So be prepared for the interview and don't think that you've time to prepare for it.

How important and time consuming the non-GMAT part of the application is. Things like proper research of the school and essay preparations should take as much time as the GMAT.

Knowing how much each part of the application requirements "values" to them. Eg., in terms of the GMAT, how important is a high score to them and how high is the average?

1) I wish I had known that schools expected a response from admits within a certain period of time and that timeline doesn't easily line up for all schools/application rounds. So you may not hear back from your top school before your second choice school expects a deposit. This is more true for non-traditional 2 year full-time MBAs. 2) I wish there was more data available on scholarships available and percentage of students that receive funding as well as award amounts.

Since the GMAT score for each of the universities vacillate a lot every year depending on the intake, there were certain schools one of them being "Manchester Business School" which I thought would be a safe option for me but in turn I got rejected from there due to small batch size and more importantly due to reason that they believed that I was a good fit for other schools that I was applying to. At first I felt strange that this could also be a reason for rejection but I had to accept. This experience taught me that we need to know more ins and outs of the universities that I am applying to and on what criteria do they look in aspirants.

There are a lot of things I wish I knew more about before applying to schools. For instance, in Canada undergrad GPA is far more important in 2 year programs than your GMAT if you are a Canadian citizen. (especially at Rotman)
I did not know much about each of the business schools strength before starting my application. I started learning about pros/cons of each Canadian school once I networked with the students at Ivey/Queen's/Rotman/Schulich.

1. Schools may appear similar to you, but they NEVER are! Look for information beyond websites. Engage alumni, current students and admissions team on road and measure their enthusiasm regarding the school. That can give you an unparalleled view and give you the vibes of the school.
2. Applying to Business Schools is a very demanding activity. You will have to plan out the entire exercise at least 5-8 months in advance. It is better to be early than wait until the deadlines. Also, be realistic with the number of schools you target. It is better to focus on 4-5 schools (Marksman Approach) than make half-hearted attempts at applying to 10-12 schools (Shotgun Approach).
3. Be on the lookout for any admissions events, or MBA fairs in your city or virtually. They can get you application fee waivers. Even if 2-3 schools you plan to apply to give you waivers, you stand to save about $600 (Average application fee of $200). Money saved is money earned!
4. Be confident about your profile - But be realistic about your chances too!
5. Geography and Recruiting Companies will play a big role in your career! DO CONSIDER them when making your decision.
6. Rankings are a rough guide - Not set in stone. Develop your own rankings. For me, as I am from Life Sciences/ Healthcare background, rankings are drastically different then USNews Rankings.
7. Interviews will play a major role in your admissions. Do prepare for interviews seriously.
8. GMAT is just ONE part of the application. Get it over with as soon as possible
9. There is NO upper age to apply for an MBA.

I wish I had realised sooner that MBA rankings are just a starting point for application but there's a lot to a college beyond rankings. A prospective student can lose out on unique aspects of a school by focusing on rankings alone. I understood this much later in my journey but nevertheless it helped me identify some great MBA programs.

There is substantial information about the colleges, but some of the key points are still missing. Maybe, some insights can be provided by existing candidates, but they may not want to be named, and as such, we can have anonymous posts.
Also, about financing your education. Although, many have provided broad overview of the same, but it becomes really difficult one enters into the race. I was not getting loan from a leading bank, and I was almost on the verge of giving up.
Also, based on work ex, and the quality of work done, the acceptance level may change.

I really wish I had known my target schools, my career goals and how important it is to interact with current students. I was too focused on GMAT and missed/prepared bad applications for certain schools. This wouldnt have happened had I known how important it is to know your B.school

Essays need to be personal. Not regurgitated nonsense from the web. But you don't need a perfect essay. Your essay will keep improving indefinitely if you keep working on it. Give yourself a hard deadline and work your best until then.

1.) GMAT score is not everything, I have seen on multiple profile evaluation forums consultants are giving advice regarding improving the GMAT score without understanding the applicant kindly avoid all of them, because every applicant is different and no consultant can tell you what B-school is looking in a candidate, in my case my score my was very less but still i have managed some decent admits.

2.) Apply as early as possible, always target Round 1.

3.)Getting into a B-school is the easiest thing, real pain/journey starts after that.

4.)don't invest too much time in getting an MBA in my case it took me 10 years to get into my choice of B-school which I feel is just too much for anyone there is nothing like a perfect B-school. In the end, everything comes down to the applicant what he or she can make of the MBA. I have seen people doing great without an MBA.

The admission takes much more than a GMAT Score.

I wish I had known how school cultures mattered. One story doesn't fit all and I really had to talk about difference experiences with different schools.

--> GMAT is important, but do not waste too much time on it. --> Why is a more important question to answer than what. The schools don't just want to know what you want, the why is more appealing. Don't stay superficial, give depth, explain your experience and how you thought not just what happened. --> Don't be scared to express how you feel/what you feel genuinely. --> A better framework to choose schools. It's not just the rank of the school that matters.

I wish I would have known how crappy rejection felt and to expect it! The reality is that a very slim number of people get into every program they apply to. While I coached myself into the "just get into one school" mindset, I didn't really take it to heart. I ended up getting into 3/6 of the schools I applied to and yet, all I could focus on for awhile were the rejections. I think expectation-setting is critical before the process begins!

Something that really stands out in the applications is the weightage that the colleges give to applications and how desperately do you need an MBA from this college. If they manage to make you think that there are other alternatives that can help your cause, your chances are gone. I was bombarded with questions like why don’t you do a PMP certification etc .You need to be very sure on this part. Secondly, I thought I should try to take my GMAT score to a 750+ level . But the GMAT scores are only a way to knock the college’s door. If you have a 670-720 range score. You should waste no further time on GMAT. The application part is where the crux of the matter lies.

Apart from B school stats, I would like to know about the college in terms of the various events that take place in the college, the alumni, the subjects taught, the notable professors in college, and whether it is aligned to my POST MBA career goals

I wish I had put all my efforts into getting the ideal test score before everything else. Also, I wish I tries the GRE before. The GMAT format was not helping me at all. I took the GMAT 6 times and never even hit 600. I ended up getting a 90% GRE score right after my last GMAT attempt.
I took a GMAT prep course later in the game, I wish I had taken it before, it was worth the investment.

- us schools offer much bigger scholarship, i didnt consider us schools mainly because i dont feel like to go/ diversity blabla; also because they are expensive. but putting post mba salary and bigger scholarship together, i wish i could had considered more seriously

I wish I knew more about what examples of your authentic self look like. This is a big topic for essays, but hard to really capture until the moment it clicks for you. Thankfully for me, it happened 2 days before the Booth app was due. I wrote about feeling somewhat estranged from my Indian background as an American growing up during 9/11 but then reconnecting with it as I became an adult and was more mature. I am pretty sure only I could have written this essay because it is true this is how I reflected on my cultural upbringing. Then I inserted examples of my transition that show how I have evolved in this understanding of myself.

I think there is a serious lack of information in regards to Canadian schools compared to American schools. I was limited to Canadian schools because of personal circumstances and it's very difficult to tell which school is ideal from outside sources. The rankings are all mixed up for Canadian school, so according to one ranking you're going to a top-2 school in Canada and according to another it's barely ranked. Aside from the rankings, knowing which schools have the best companies recruiting from them for different categories would have been amazing. I have been going on different consulting firm websites to see if they recruit from McGill and firms like ATKearney and Bain don't but do from Ivey and Queen's. On the other hand, it seems like McGill has a better international presence than other schools which I didn't know when applying. I don't regret my choice but the information would have been valuable.

However, would have been better to know average GMAT scores (I will speak for GMAT since I did not appear for GRE) of admitted candidates by profile, categorized by nationality and profession. eg. Average GMAT score of admitted candidates from Nationality A and Profession 1. Not aware of any resource that officially publishes this, but, I believe this is a much more accurate metric in helping you determine whether you should be comfortable applying with your current GMAT score.

Knowing that I eventually was going to get an MBA, I wish I would have gotten after the GMAT prep sooner so I wasn't scrambling to take it. A 5-year window to take the GMAT means there there is a lot of room for maneuvering when you will actually go to business school. I think most folks would be hard-pressed to argue they'd go outside of a +/- 2 year window form their target so the idea would be to get after the GMAT early. If I had that out of the way, it would have made the application process much easier. Having to prep applications while also getting after the GMAT was just rough.

1) I wish I would have known the limited scholarship opportunities offered to grad students. While I knew the high cost of tuition expenses, I did not realize that scholarships and state and federal grants are not as generous when comparing it to the aid provided as an undergrad. Knowing this, I would have applied to different third-party organizations during the applicant stage, rather than applying when already admitted as a student.

2) I wish I had know that I wasn't going to apply to every school on my list. I first started off with 12(!) schools and narrowed it down to seven. I ended up only applying to 1. While that's going from one extreme to another, I would recommend anyone narrow their list to top 3-4 based on 1 stretch school, 1-2 attainable schools, and 1 fall back school.

I wish I had interacted more with students at different schools and attended the welcome weekend. I had been accepted to two great programs in M7/T10 and taken months to decide which program I should matriculate. As both schools matched my criteria in term of ranking, location, post-MBA career path, and financial aid, I realized that culture fit and a program that supports my long-term goal would become vital. And one of the great ways to get a school's culture is to connect with its students and reach out to its alumni.

The differences between the different MBA programs (FT, EMBA, Part-time) and the pros/cons to each, as well as doing more research on the mutual fit for myself/the various schools. Above all, really understanding the purpose of the MBA and what it actually means besides it being the "thing" people pursued after a few years of working and how the FT rankings affected an MBA journey.

As an African, I wish I knew that financing could limit your ability to attend some schools even if you have 100% tuition. The stories of Prodigy and MPower are not detailed enough to let applicants know the factors affecting their ability to have loans. In reality I became limited to the T15s due to financing.

I wish I had known how important it is to hire a consultant. I did two applications (Stanford, Wharton) before I hired a consultant, and in hindsight, both of them were terrible. I then applied to Columbia with help from a consultant, and got an interview. Again, I went to the interview overly confident, without help from a consultant, and was butchered. At a basic level, MBA schools look for clear, articulate goals, enthusiasm for the school, ability to contribute, and hireability. My earlier applications were missing some of these elements.

One thing I would have liked to know is that school rankings and results don't go hand-in-hand. I applied to five schools; four were schools I thought I was a fit for rankings wise, and one was a reach. I was denied by two of the low schools, including my "safety" school, received a full-scholarship from one, a 75% scholarship from the second-highest ranked of the bunch, and a 50% scholarship at the "reach" school. Everything worked out for me, but I very nearly didn't apply to the "reach school" that I now plan on attending.

Aside from COVID-19 impact, I wish I had known how intense studying for the gmat is. To get the score you need for these top 20-30 schools, it requires so much work. If I could do it again, I would have taken it three plus years out from applying for business school to give my self lots of leeway for retakes.

Not much that i didn’t know before, but I’d like to reiterate the importance of preparing the application: put concrete examples in your CV, Give relevant context, make a CV appropriate for the country/region where you are applying (example european cvs are very different than canadian), ask someone knowledgeable to review, prepare the interview with a question bank from business schools. In your motivation letter make referent to your professional context from your cv. Give reasons in the short/medium term and also long term of what you want to do with the knowledge from your mba.

When applying to business school, I wish I would have known the time commitment associated with having a complete, and competitive, application for my programs of choice. Each resume, essay, etc. needed to be tailored specifically for that school which meant I had to revise my resume and essays numerous times in an effort to stand out to each school.

- Put a lot of efforts on school research is important. You won't want to put unnecessary efforts to a school that you won't go even if you received the offer.
- Before deciding which school to apply, one should figure out the financial plan for the next two years. Including tuition and cost. For example, you are an international student, if you will have financial trouble to attend a school which didn't offer non-cosigner student loan, then don't apply it. (of course you can take the possible amount of scholarship into consideration base on the past applicants pool.)