ARCO
Master the GMAT
Application FAQs
|
|
|
|
|
ARCO |
||
|
Application FAQs |
The following questions and answers explore a number of issues that surround choosing the right business school, writing a successful application, timing your application, assessing your chances for acceptance, and more. Answer were provided by David P. Waldherr, CEO of Cambridge Educational Services, the leading company in campus-based test preparation and admissions counseling in the nation.
You can use the list of questions to link to answers on topics that are of interest to you, or you can scroll down the page to read the answers. The topics are arranged in a logical order so that the list, when read in its entirety, tells a more complete story.
- What exactly is an MBA?
- What are the advantages of getting an MBA?
- Is the MBA losing its value?
- Is it difficult to get into an MBA program?
- Which U.S. business schools are considered the best?
- How reliable are published rankings?
- When should my applications be submitted?
- How many schools should I apply to?
- How can I know in advance whether I'm likely to be successful at a particular school?
- If I have a GPA or a GMAT score that is below that typically accepted by a school, is it a waste of time and money to apply there?
- Who makes the admission decisions?
- What is the practice of "indexing" applications?
- Do admissions officers at the various business schools assign each application an index and just take the ones with the highest index?
- Do business schools have numerical cutoffs and reject applications that fall below those cutoffs?
- How important are the GPA/GMAT "numbers" in the admissions process?
- What factors other than the GPA and GMAT score go into the admission process?
- Why is the GPA not a complete measure of ability?
- How do admissions officers obtain additional personal information?
- What "other factors" should I mention on my application to best demonstrate ability and motivation?
- How does participation in a sport like basketball prove that a person will succeed in business school?
- Where in the application form can I mention these additional experiences and accomplishments?
- Do admissions officers also consider post-college employment?
- How much weight is given to the employment experience when compared to academic record?
- How important are personal interviews?
- What guidelines should I follow when answering essay or interview questions?
- How important are recommendations?
- What can I do in order to obtain the maximum GMAT score possible?
- Should I take the GMAT for practice?
The Master of Business Administration is the degree granted after a general course of graduate study in management. The term MBA is also used loosely to refer to a number of other higher education degrees that are awarded for study in particular areas, degrees such as the Master of Accounting, Master of Health Administration, Master of Public Health, and Master of Taxation. The terms "business school" and the even shorter "B-school" are used to refer to all such programs of graduate study in management in lieu of the phrase "graduate school of management." Earning an MBA usually requires two years of full-time study or three to four years of part-time study beyond the bachelor's degree.
2. What are the advantages of getting an MBA?
An MBA is the business manager's analog of the lawyer's JD or the doctor's MD. The MBA program focuses on administration: the curriculum aims to train professional managers rather than researchers or academics. Although an MBA is not a licensing requirement for business in general, employers in certain areas, such as investment banking, informally make the MBA a requirement by giving preferential hiring treatment to MBAs over JDs or MAs and over those who have no graduate degree at all. Furthermore, MBAs generally receive higher starting salaries than those who have only a bachelor's degree. Finally, as a rule MBAs are promoted faster and farther than people who have only a bachelor's degree.
3. Is the MBA losing its value?
That depends on your perspective. An MBA degree can still be an important asset, but the picture is a bit more complicated than it was 30 years ago. In the late 1970s, the MBA became a hot ticket. The degree came to be regarded as a pass key that could open any door, and so quite naturally more and more people wanted to go to business school. And also quite naturally, more and more universities either added a new MBA program or expanded an existing one in order to capture a share of the tuition dollars generated by the increase in demand for the degree. Economic theory predicts that the value of the degree would be lowered by this rapid growth simply because the degree is no longer as scarce as it would otherwise have been. Beyond that, however, not all MBA programs were created equal. And the degrees awarded by business schools with marginal programs are really much less valuable in objective terms than those offered by top business schools. On the other hand, since the degree is so wide-spread, it has almost become a prerequisite to certain career tracks.
4. Is it difficult to get into an MBA program?
It's difficult to gain admission to some schools, easy to get into others. In a typical year, about 200,000 people start the business school application process by taking the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), which most business schools require. At top schools, the ratio of admission offers to total applications may be as low as one to five or even one to six. On the other hand, there are several hundred business schools to choose from (about 900 worldwide use the GMAT), and some accept virtually everyone who applies. Thus, it is in a sense easy to get into business school, if you're willing to enter any MBA program. Of course, business school seats are not assigned by lottery, so your chance of getting into a certain school depends very much on your qualifications, undergraduate grade point average, or GPA, work experience, extracurricular activities, and score on the Graduate Management Admission Test. Admissions officers take all of those things into account.
5. Which U.S. business schools are considered the best?
School rankings depend on which factors are considered and how these factors are weighted. However, any list of top business schools would have to include Chicago, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, Michigan, Northwestern, Pennsylvania, and Stanford--not necessarily in that order.
6. How reliable are published rankings?
Each year U.S. News and World Report magazine publishes a ranking of top business schools based upon a survey that it conducts. And Business Week has created a book entitled The Best Business Schools. Those are useful guides so long as you don't put too much emphasis on small differences in rankings. That is, if a ranking puts Northwestern first, Harvard second, Chicago third, Pennsylvania fourth, and Dartmouth fifth, there is good reason to believe that those are top business schools, but not that they necessarily stack up against each other in exactly that order. A better use of a ranking is to think in terms of clusters of schools. The top eight or nine schools are the super-elite; the next eight or nine are the elite; and so on.
7. When should my applications be submitted?
Your applications should be submitted well in advance of the deadline for two reasons. First, Murphy's Law operates with full force in the area of business school admissions: If something can go wrong, it will. Make sure that you leave yourself plenty of time to correct any errors or omissions. If you learn in November that one of your recommenders has not yet submitted a recommendation to a school with a March 1 deadline, then you have plenty of time to correct the omission, but if you don't learn of the problem until March 15, then it is too late. Second, some business schools use a rolling admissions process under which applications are processed throughout the application season. As the season progresses and offers of admissions are made to successful applicants, fewer and fewer seats remain for those who apply later in the year. You will maximize your chances if you apply early.
8. How many schools should I apply to?
In terms of targeting schoo1s for applications, "the more the merrier." But, of course, most people do not have unlimited funds and must therefore choose a small number of schools. You may want to arrange the applications according to a pyramid that represents your competitiveness in the overall applicant pool. For example, if you have above-average but not superior credentials and plan to apply to a total of ten business schools, you can target one or perhaps two of the top ten schools. The chance of acceptance at those schools may be only one out of ten, but the potential gain justifies the risk. Then, you should select five or six "bread and butter" schools, schools where you fit the profile of a typical student. Finally, in order to guard against the unexpected, you should add one or two "safeties," schools for which you seem to be overqualified. Of course, this strategy has to be adjusted to your qualifications. If you have an outstanding academic background, a very high GMAT score, and considerable work experience, you can feel confident of being accepted at a top school but should still include one or two "safeties." If you have relatively weak credentials, it may not make any sense to apply to a top school. Instead, concentrate all your resources on schools that seem to provide the best opportunity for acceptance.
9. How can I know in advance whether I'm likely to be successful at a particular school?
You can't really know in advance. The admissions process is just too complex to permit that kind of certainty. But you'll surely want to consult the descriptive bulletins distributed by the schools. Most contain information about median or average GMAT score and GPA of students enrolled. That way, you can compare your own quantitative factors with the numerical profiles provided by the schools themselves.
Not necessarily. Remember that the GPA and the GMAT are simply evidence of the characteristics sought by admissions officers. A somewhat low GPA might be offset by a dazzling GMAT score, or a somewhat disappointing GMAT score might be balanced out by an excellent academic record. But if both numerical measures are below those typically accepted by the school, it will take some extraordinary employment experience or personal achievement to make your application competitive. And in the absence of some additional asset, it might be better to pass up the school.
11. Who makes the admission decisions?
The title "admissions officer" designates different people at different schools. Each business school has an admissions office that is responsible for reviewing and acting on applications for admissions to that school, and that admissions office designs its own procedures. The decision-making authority may be given to a committee of faculty members, or it may be given to a dean or to a professional admissions officer; it may be shared by faculty members and professional admissions officers; and some authority may even be given to selected students. "Admissions officer" can mean anyone who has the decision-making authority regarding applications for admission to an MBA program.
12. What is the practice of "indexing" applications?
Some business schools use a mathematical formula to combine an applicant's GPA and score on the GMAT in approximately equal weights to generate a single numerical value for the application. In fact, the scoring system of the GMAT was designed to make quantitative evaluations of candidates easy. Here is an example of a mathematical formula that produces an index that gives approximately equal weight to the GPA and the GMAT score. Since the GMAT is scored on a scale of 200 (the minimum) to 800 (the maximum), dividing by 200 generates a number on a scale from 1 to 4, a 4-point scale that is similar to the grading system used by most U.S. colleges and universities. And the reduced GMAT score and the GPA are simply averaged. Thus, if a candidate has a GPA of 3.5 and a GMAT score of 500, the application is assigned an index of 3.0:
Index = [(500/200) + 3.5]/2 = 3
A similar result can be achieved by using a formula that converts the GPA to the GMAT scoring scale by multiplying the GPA by 200:
Index = GMAT + (200 x GPA)
Using this system, our hypothetical application would he assigned an index of 1200:
Index = 500 + (200 x 3.5) = 1200
The 1200 is a number on an artificial scale, but it will have meaning for admissions officers.
Not at all. In the first place, not every business school uses an indexing system. In the second place, even among those that do, no school makes its decisions solely on the basis of an indexing formula.
Some do; some don't. No business school uses only the GMAT score and the GPA to make its decisions. Some set minimum numbers below which, applications are not accepted. The minimum may be a minimum GPA, or a minimum GMAT, or a minimum index combining both GPA and GMAT. Business schools that have set such minimums usually announce the fact in their catalogs and application forms.
15. How important are the GPA/GMAT "numbers" in the admissions process?
The GPA and GMAT scores are extremely important. If you look at the statistics that are released by the admissions offices of the various business schools, you will see clearly that applicants with higher GPAs and GMAT scores are more likely to be accepted than those with lower GPAs and GMAT scores.
16. What factors other than the GPA and GMAT Score go into the admission process?
Most business school admissions processes are designed to select for both ability and motivation. Business schools want students who will graduate with a strong academic record and who will then go on to successful careers. Such students and graduates are great salespeople for the school' s MBA program. No matter how intellectually gifted an applicant may be, many schools will reject an applicant who cannot demonstrate the motivation necessary to apply those gifts to academic and career success.
17. Why is the GPA not a complete measure of ability?
First, a Grade Point Average is just that, an average. And averages, while convenient, tend to obscure important details.. A simple GPA number will not tell, for example, about the difficulty of a candidate's curriculum, and there is a big difference between a 3.5 earned in "ballroom dancing" and a 3.5 earned in history or biology. Second, an average tells nothing about the individual circumstances of the candidate. A candidate who worked full-time while in school who earns a 3.5 has achieved something considerably more remarkable than a candidate who earned the same 3.5 but had the luxury of studying at leisure. Third, an average conceals any trends in a candidate' s academic performance. Some candidates may have a relatively low GPA but show improved performance later in their undergraduate careers. And this later, better performance may very well be a truer indicator of ability and motivation than the earlier disappointing performance. Finally, all schools are not equal: some consideration maybe given to the academic reputation of an undergraduate institution-even if it isn't possible to quantify the adjustment very precisely.
18. How do admissions officers obtain additional personal information?
From you. Applicants are required to submit transcripts or to arrange for them to be sent by the various schools that they have attended. The transcripts demonstrate a thorough record of what courses the student embarked upon, how well the student performed within those courses, as well as how the student's overall performance ranks. Further, the application includes questions such as "What jobs did you hold as a student?," "How many hours a week did you work?," and "What extracurricular activities did you participate in while in college?"
Active participation in extracurricular activities, or civic activities, or professional organizations could be evidence of both characteristics. So could individual accomplishments such as mastery of a second or third language, proficiency with a musical instrument, and participation in a group activity, whether competitive such as individual sports like golf and tennis or cooperative such as team sports like soccer and basketball. Admissions officers are looking for students who work and play well with one another, so "interesting accomplishments" would make a candidate more attractive. Such accomplishments by themselves are not likely to be sufficient reason to accept an applicant. Almost any significant experience or accomplishment can provide evidence of one of the three characteristics: ability , motivation, or interesting personality. It is very important to remember that, from the perspective of an admissions officer, it is not the fact of the experience or accomplishment that is important but the significance of that experience or accomplishment, that is, what it means in terms of ability and motivation, and perhaps what it can add to the diversity of the school's student body.
It doesn't prove that a person will succeed, but it does provide evidence of several characteristics. First, it demonstrates that the applicant is a team player and that may be important for projects both in business school and later in the business world. Second, it is evidence that the applicant has drive and ambition--aspects of motivation that, when properly harnessed, help to put intellectual energy to productive use. Third, people who have personal accomplishments are in general more interesting than those who have none.
21. Where in the application form can I mention these additional experiences and accomplishments?
Application forms include lines for you to list your activities and accomplishments. Many applications also require essay responses to questions such as "Identify your three most important accomplishments and explain why you consider them to be important" or "What is your biggest professional weakness and how do you think that a business school education will correct it?" The short-answer questions help admissions officers learn what you have done and the essay questions help them learn why those accomplishments are significant.
22. Do admissions officers also consider post-college employment?
Because the objective of the admissions process is to identify those candidates who have ability and motivation, admissions officers are indeed interested in a your professional background, including promotions, responsibilities, and so on.
23. How much weight is given to employment experience when compared to academic record?
The answer to that question will depend on the educational philosophy of the business school. Some business schools actually require that applicants have one or two years of work experience and simply will not consider candidates who do not. This requirement reflects a determination by the faculty that what it has to teach cannot be learned effectively until one has a certain amount of real-world experience. Other business schools have adopted such a requirement as a general rule but allow certain exceptions because they feel that some people can acquire the requisite experience in an academic setting or while working in college. Other schools do not have such a requirement; but even there, employment experience may be considered a valuable asset that adds weight to an application that shows good academic performance.
24. How important are personal interviews?
Personal interviews add another dimension to the evaluation process, but business schools have different policies on interviewing. Some business schools do not have sufficient administrative resources to conduct any interviews at all. Others do not make an interview part of the evaluation process but do encourage applicants to visit for informational purpose Still others grant interviews when applicants request them. At other business schools, interviews are not required but are strongly encouraged. Finally, some schools require interviews whether in person or by telephone.
25. What guidelines should I follow when answering essay or interview questions?
Your basic goal should be to create answers that are well-considered and thoughtful. Most essay or interview questions do not have right and wrong answers in the sense that they must have a certain content in order to please an admissions officer. But your answers should have a certain style. A well-considered and thoughtful response will express your general philosophy on some issue as illustrated by concrete examples; it will sound honest and sincere because it is a reflection of your true feelings; and it will be well presented, which means that written responses will be carefully edited and typed and oral responses given in an interview will be spontaneous, not rehearsed, because they articulate conclusions that you have arrived at through serious consideration.
26. How important are recommendations?
Recommendations can be extremely important. Many applicants mistakenly believe that a recommendation will be effective only if it comes from an important person whose name is likely to be familiar to an admissions officer, so they launch a "star search" for the biggest "name" that they can find who will submit a recommendation. The result, however, may be a recommendation without very much content. The most important criteria for choosing a recommender are (1) the recommender must know the purpose of an MBA program, (2) the recommender should know the applicant well, and (3) the recommender should specifically describe the connection between (1) and (2). If it happens that the recommender is also a prominent person, so much the better; but prominence alone does not qualify a personas a recommender.
27. What can I do in order to obtain the maximum GMAT score possible?
Make sure that you are prepared for the exam. A good preparation program has three components: a review of the substantive skills tested, strategies and techniques useful for the particular test in question, and practice
28. Should I take the GMAT for practice?
You can. The test administrators offer you that option--for a fee. But don't sit for your real test until you're ready. You can find plenty of material for practice at home--including a computer program that simulates closely the GMAT exam. Look for ARCO's Mastering the GMAT in the bookstore or order a copy from an on-line bookseller.
Editor's Note: For information about taking a GMAT preparation course at your school, go to www.cambridgeed.com.
Contact: webmaster@cyberprep.com
© 2000 by CyberPrep.com. All rights reserved.