I will teach you how to bring your life stories to essays faster with F1GMAT's essay guides. Download below or subscribe to F1GMAT's Service and work with me - Atul Jose, Author/Editor/Founding Consultant, F1GMAT(16 Years of helping applicants gain admissions to M7 and Top 30 schools) Q) What are some of the parameters that an MBA Candidate has to evaluate before shortlisting their top 5 Business Schools?
Atul Jose (MBA Admissions Consultant, F1GMAT): Applying to a Business School and making a $100,000 to $200,000 investment is a life-altering decision regardless of your financial status. Unlike pivoting from a job by finding other opportunities, or a relationship, the cost to enter a business school is many – from 1 year in applying (preparing for the GMAT/GRE, essays, finding/allocating funds) to the opportunity cost (1-2 years without an income) and if moving from a city to another that doesn’t work out, a negative impact on your quality of life (relationships, time outside work, friends) in the next 3-5 years.
Here are five factors in no order that you should consider before shortlisting Business Schools:
1) Schools and Specialization: On the face of it, all top-ranked schools seem to offer the same value, but when you begin to explore the curriculum, the career path of the alumni, and the strengths of the faculty, inevitably, you will see strengths and weaknesses. Some schools become Finance schools when they learn that placement in the industry has the most influence on their ranking. Some marketing schools quickly expand to Consulting as they learn painfully that Marketing placement doesn’t give that coveted “Increase in Salary” stats that they desperately need to rank in the top 10. Some pivot to Consulting during a financial crisis and come back to Finance. Many Auto/Manufacturing Specialists move to Consulting as they soon realize that middle managers are becoming extinct.
Many Wine and Luxury specialists quickly pivot to Retail when companies combine all niches into one broad Retail bucket. Blame that retail behemoth who decided to acquire every niche brand. Schools are helpless. They are a representation of the job market.
No matter how the schools pivot, you should always remember one point:
Business Schools are the most efficient job fair.
They are bringing hundreds from all around the world with high earning potential, leadership, and academic prowess to work on the East and West Coast in cities known for certain industries. It is a factory line of talent chosen from the support of the best storytellers and branding experts (MBA Consultants).
Look beyond the ranking data. Explore F1GMAT’s MBA Research Guide.
Read: 14 Factors to Consider Before Choosing an MBA Program
2) Education: A surprisingly democratic part of the MBA admission process is that not all Stanford, Harvard, or MIT graduates are automatically considered for a top MBA program. Not all 750 GMAT are clear winners in MBA admissions.
Does that mean that brands have no value?
Brands have value when the applicant carries on the ethos of the brands and pursues excellence - professionally, through extracurricular engagements, and by volunteering for the community. If any of the three is missing, the values are diluted, and the person is not the best representation of the brand.
Many shed all the qualities that led them to an Ivy League school. The path of discipline and skill development was too tough to follow into a career.
The instance an applicant goes back 2-3 years to cite their moment of glory, they have already confirmed the MBA admission team’s suspicion.
The applicant doesn’t represent the ideals that led them to their career.
3) GMAT/GRE: How will the admission team separate two graduates with similar GPAs, the competitiveness of the degree, the scale of the evaluation factors for the university, and the year when the education board decided to be a little lenient towards the pupil.
Do universities have all these nuanced data points? No.
They have an overall understanding, or they can infer based on data from applicants from the same university graduating with the same degree.
The GMAT/GRE becomes an important data point to carve out the outliers and standardize the academic part of the application.
I get a lot of requests to create epic life stories from mediocre applicants. One applicant reached out to me through LinkedIn. The person had not mentioned their current employer in their LinkedIn profile. Only the college was mentioned. On reviewing the resume, I found that the person had switched 5 jobs in the first 5 years and, in the seventh year, after a year of searching for a job, found a job with a leading Consulting Company. Now the person’s past 5-year data looks like a classic MBA applicant's profile, but the person was 34. From 22 to 28, to say it mildly, he was lost. The past 5-year data shows that the employer had pigeonholed the candidate to one niche job function with the only saving grace – the person was managing a team of 20. Now can any consultant write dramatic stories only selling the leadership role, ignoring all the failures from 22 to 28 and the lack of confidence the employer has in offering the person another function?
Can a GMAT 760 save the person and help him get into NYU Stern, Columbia or Booth?
Sadly - No!
GMAT/GRE scores are adjustment tools when the competition is too close. Not to mitigate all the weaknesses in the application.
Read: Top MBA – GMAT and GPA Scores
Get in that range! If your GPA is below the class median, you must compensate for the score with an excellent GMAT score (20-30 points above the median)
3) Professional Achievement: When applicants reach out to me, this is the one area I obsess about. After all, you are not going to Business School to find a partner. Although when I wrote the Top MBA – Women Percentage, I never expected the article to be a guide for applicants to shortlist schools where their probability of mate selection is high. The evidence of this discussion citing my analysis was present in a popular discussion board. Maybe you are looking to find like-minded people, and why not partner through Business Schools? Regardless of your secondary motivations, the primary motivation is finding that role, a change in job function or industry, or a change in location that will spearhead you into superstardom in your professional career and hopefully to an entrepreneurial career by the time you turn 40.
Schools love that motivation. But they want evidence!
Evidence of your achievement supported by a supervisor through recommendation letters. I can help you create the most glorious tales of overcoming setbacks, addressing your weakness like a mature person or finding a problem in group dynamics that no one could find, or your nuanced understanding of Chinese, Belgian and American cultures.
None of them will work when the supervisor writes in the most impersonal terms – he was alright and did the job he was expected to do. The Supervisor must at least mimic the enthusiasm you have for the application.
4) Volunteering and Extracurricular: 10 years back, there was a consistent path to acquire volunteering experience – without any distraction.
Then Facebook became Popular.
Instagram became an addiction.
TikTok became an obsession.
The Apps to check on your old friends and girlfriends/boyfriends became an ego hustle for followers and reach.
Even kids started talking about views, demographic, and reach.
Influencers became a real profession.
Amidst the evolution of the job market, volunteering was the biggest casualty. Earlier volunteering had incentives. Like the travel boom triggered by the rise of Instagram, the App’s decline and rise of Tik Tok has paved a new distraction. Every volunteering and achievement are colored through the prism of views and reach, and not the genuine help that you offered to Li, Kareem or Janice.
Recently I had a conversation with an influencer who was blowing up in Tik Tok China with her succinct videos on Finance. It was inspiring that the next generation is leveraging the App for good. The discussion about the topics covered quickly pivoted to views and followers.
After 2-3 follow-up questions on the topics and how she presented them uniquely from what is available in academia, she felt I was asking the wrong questions.
“I have 8 million views.”
I knew it was a lost cause.
When you can’t quantify your impact in volunteering or how you leveraged your extracurricular skills, the resume and essays look like a brag sheet from a person who is so insecure that the views are the only validation. Not her genuine expertise on the subject.
Some schools will value ‘the secrets’ she possesses to acquire the audience, but the App is designed to create celebrities out of users. One algorithm update and many superstars of the App are thrown to obscurity. I have seen this happen again and again on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
But there are qualities that translate from being an influencer to roles in a Business School.
Marketing, Public Speaking, Writing, Editing, Fund Raising, and most importantly – the discipline to create content regularly.
Focus on these skills/traits when you are translating your role as an influencer to an MBA Application.
5) Return On Investment
The calculation of Return on Investment is simple. Just use an NPV calculator like how we did when we compared Stanford vs. MIT Sloan MBA
But the biggest challenge when we did the calculation was not including the risk appetite of an applicant.
Not all of you are willing to spend one year of the MBA application process for a $200,000 dollar investment if that puts you in 10 years of debt. Not all of you want to get into Harvard. Stanford Wharton or MIT. And that is alright.
Define what you value in an ROI calculation
The years it takes to gain a return on your $200,000 investment (Spoiler alert – 3 years post-MBA; on average for top 20 US schools)
The years it takes to change location, gain residency, and eventually citizenship – for International applicants (each country has its distinct visa rules, a path to citizenship, and post-MBA opportunities) (Read F1GMAT’s MBA Research Guide)
The years it takes to gain the leadership role (the path to leadership is different based on the company type and the industry) (Read F1GMAT’s MBA Research Guide)
Post Note: I have tried to bring back a personal touch to the blog. If you liked the tone or didn’t like the tone, let me know @atuljose (Twitter) or LinkedIn (Atul Jose)
About Me – Atul Jose
I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I assumed that the best path was an MBA. While staring at the admit letter of an Entrepreneurial MBA program, I decided – to give this entrepreneurial thing six months without an MBA. In 2009, not everyone was churning out content. I was writing about essays, school selection, industry trends, and GMAT preparation. Many of my readers at F1GMAT thanked me for the content. Many turned into clients and now occupy influential positions in Finance, Consulting, Technology, and Marketing,
Through each admission cycle, I learned to play with phrases, storylines and accentuate the applicant’s strengths. I learned to capture the client’s authentic voice. I learned to ask the right questions to help them find their true calling, strengths, and weaknesses. I encouraged applicants to target the right school. I prepared them to answer any questions confidently in interviews.
Over the past 13 years, I have helped MBA applicants gain admissions to Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, Chicago Booth, Kellogg, Columbia, Haas, Yale, NYU Stern, Ross, Duke Fuqua, Darden, Tuck, IMD, London Business School, INSEAD, IE, IESE, HEC Paris, McCombs, Tepper, ISB, and schools in the top 30 global MBA ranking.
From the many heartfelt thank you notes, I have framed this in my office. It captures who I am and the service that I offer:
"I must thank you for your kind support and encouragement all the time, even when I was down. Sorry for the delays in reply/ no replies, and thanks for following up, pushing me, and helping me out at the last minute, even past midnight, without ever getting angry. I couldn't have made it here without you! Truly grateful to you. . "
If you are an MBA applicant, the best way to start the conversation is to introduce yourself and share the target schools, the help you need, and your background information(professional achievements, extracurricular, GPA, and GMAT/GRE).
I will happily guide you.
Reach out to me here for 1 free MBA Admissions Consulting session
