The process of successfully getting an invitation to attend your first-choice Business School requires a variety of intermediate ‘steps’ along the way. As that process requires a significant investment of your time, money and energy, it’s important to stay organized and plan a reasonable timeline so that you can accomplish all of the necessary tasks that are a part of crafting a strong Business School application. At this time of year, many applicants are planning for the upcoming Round 1 application deadlines. Thankfully, for those people, there’s still plenty of time to study for the GMAT and work on their applications. However, as the deadlines near, some of those applicants will lose sight of their ‘big picture’ goals and rush a less-than-perfect application out to their first-choice Business Schools. As a result, they WON’T get accepted to those Schools. Before you allow THAT situation to happen to you, you have to remember that your ultimate goals are MORE important than your immediate timeline and application deadlines.

If you don’t have a first-choice Business School, then you SHOULD have one. You will end up putting so much effort into this overall process that if you’re not applying to a Business School that is best-suited to YOUR goals and needs, then you’re acting in an unprofessional fashion (and likely wasting what your MBA could mean for your future). Defining what you want to do with your career, and how an MBA would help, is an essential part of making sure that you’re going after the proper degree (and from the proper School). Your process should include far more than just ‘name recognition’ though. If your first-choice School is Harvard because “it’s Harvard”, then you have NOT put the necessary thought into this process (and it’s likely that Harvard will figure that out about you and NOT choose you because of it). There IS a School (or perhaps several) that will be a perfect match for your needs – once you define what those specific needs are. Getting into THAT School is the ultimate goal. Whether that happens in Round 1, Round 2 or later on (even perhaps next year), you cannot allow yourself to lose sight of that goal. 

An applicant’s GMAT score is arguably the first piece of the application that most Admissions Officers look at. The numbers are already defined, and have a ‘meaning’ that the Officers can quickly assess. Rushing to take the GMAT, with the goal of making an admissions deadline, is one of the WORST mistakes that you can make as part of the overall process. If you’re not scoring near your goal score during your studies, then you’re likely NOT going to “luck out” on Test Day and score much higher. In that same way, if you’re not practicing in a realistic fashion (meaning that you’re taking your practice CATs in a way that doesn’t ‘line up’ with what you’ll face on Test Day), then you shouldn’t be surprised when you end up suddenly scoring lower on the Official Test. Remember that the real GMAT will always give you the score that you EARN. You CAN properly train to score at a high level, but if you didn’t put in the necessary time, use the proper resources, learn the proper Tactics and put in the necessary effort , then you’re likely to end up with an Official Score that keeps you from getting into your first-choice School. And WHY did you end up with a lower score than you needed? Because you were rushing to make an admissions deadline? That is a CRAZY reason for not achieving your big picture goals.

Assuming that you have all of the necessary ‘pieces’ to your application (including a strong GMAT score, well-written essays, etc.), the final piece of the application puzzle could end up being one of the most important – and one that you have not even thought about. Admissions Experts can sometimes play a vital role in the application submissions process. While the services that they offer can be expensive, and (unfortunately) no Admissions Expert can guarantee you a positive result, those Experts can help you to craft an overall application that will properly impress Business School Admissions Officers. In that way, those Experts can help you to properly ‘market yourself’ AND avoid any potential errors or ‘hiccups’ in your application. Imagine if you made an avoidable error in an essay or during an interview… You wouldn’t even necessarily know that you made the error; you just wouldn’t end up receiving an invite (and you’d be left to wonder WHY you were rejected). As smart as you might be, you’re almost certainly NOT an expert when it comes to knowing what Admissions Committee Members think – and you probably will never become an expert in that subject. If you’re planning to apply to a highly-competitive Program, then you have to give serious consideration to hiring an Admissions Expert to help you. Whether you actually make that investment or not, you should consider the alternative… Would spending that money to increase your chances at getting in be worth your ultimate goals? Would saving that money be as important to you in the long run as having that MBA from your first-choice Business School?

There’s a great deal that goes into this overall process and it might be tough coming up with all of the answers on your own. To that end though, we’re here to help.

GMAT assassins aren’t born, they’re made,

Rich