You’ve written the perfect essay. You stayed up all night studying for the GMATs. You have a resume packed full with professional experience. And yet you were rejected from every top-tier MBA program you applied to.
Where do you go from here?
Although feeling frustrated and disappointed are understandable, it’s important to know that rejection doesn’t necessarily signal the end of your MBA career.
According to Graham Richmond, co-founder of Clear Admit/MetroMBA, some schools reject more than 90% of all applicants. “It is perfectly natural for one to feel the sting of rejection for a period of time. It can take time to accept the result and clear your head before immediately plotting a set of next steps.”
Graham Richmond is a co-founder of Clear Admit. He holds an MBA from Wharton.
Richmond, who graduated with his MBA from The Wharton School in 2001, was rejected from all of the top tier schools he applied to the first time around.
After graduation, he worked as an admissions counselor at Wharton and co-founded an admissions consulting firm, often working one-on-one with applicants and witnessing the process from a new perspective.
If you’ve been rejected from a top tier school, the first step Richmond recommends is to consider your options for this admissions cycle. If you have received offers from other schools, though not your top choice, it is worthwhile to weigh these options against reapplying to business school and even against abandoning the MBA pursuit entirely. If it still seems possible to achieve your career goals with a degree from one of these schools, it may be worth it not to wait.
If you do choose to wait for the next admissions cycle, it does seem that reapplicants have a high rate of success. Just one year after a slew of rejections from schools like Harvard, Wharton and Columbia, Richmond was admitted to every one. So what changed? According to Richmond, “[a]s a part of the reapplication process it is vital to take stock of your previous application(s) and really understand what may have gone wrong.”
Even if your essay was perfect and your resume jam-packed, there are still a number of mistakes even an incredibly qualified applicant can make. Whether you are starting the application process for an MBA, or you’ve been rejected from your top choice schools, below are some of the reasons why you might be getting rejected and ways to fix these issues the next time around.
Common MBA Application Mistakes
Get Your Story Straight
According to Richmond, one of the biggest reasons an applicant could be rejected from their top choice school is the lack of a clear professional narrative.
“I think that inconsistent messaging across the written application materials can often spell serious trouble. Applicants that fail to effectively or consistently demonstrate a coherent narrative to their past (or with regards to their future plans) will often raise red flags with the admissions reader,” he said. “On a related note, I should also mention that the last thing on earth an admissions officer wants to do is ‘play detective’ and try to piece together gaps in a story or holes in a resume.”
Not only can the lack of a clear narrative confuse admissions officers, but it can only create problems with other application materials across the board. No matter how well written your essay is, a lack of clarity and consistency in your personal narrative can make your writing sound confused and without direction.
Even if your resume seems jam-packed with experience, a lack of cohesion among that experience might be a reason you are still getting rejected.
As you prepare for the next round of admissions, consider your experience up to this point as well as future career goals. Understanding how your past experience contributes to your current goals could be key in creating a clear and cohesive professional narrative.
Leave the Past Behind
Some of the reasons behind rejections may be more obvious than others, such as a low undergraduate GPA or graduating with an unrelated major, and such issues can seem much more difficult to fix.
“While it’s true that some weaknesses (like a low GPA) are seemingly etched in stone, there are still things one can do to address them,” says Richmond. “For instance, someone with a low GPA might work hard to ensure that they score incredibly high on the GMAT exam – as a way to demonstrate to the admissions committee that they are indeed very bright and that perhaps something else was at play during their college years (an optional essay explaining those circumstances would also be in order).”
He also recommends seeking outside coursework which could help bolster a low GPA and make an unrelated undergraduate major less important.
Succeeding in MBA-relevant courses, such as statistics, calculus, accounting and economics can help prove the applicant’s commitment to the subject matter, and overshadow other weaknesses on their application.
Although a very low GPA can make admittance an uphill battle, Richmond says:
“I have seen many a student mitigate a weakness with a concerted effort….especially in instances where the weakness in their candidacy was the only shadow on an otherwise strong profile.”
Be a Leader
According to Richmond, some of the other reasons for MBA rejections might include negative or poorly written recommendations, a unsuccessful in-person interview, and issues with the personal essay. Mistakes such as these don’t just weaken an application for what they are, but they force the admissions officer to question the student’s leadership skills.
Admissions officers understand that you are early in your career and will not expect you to have years of proven leadership ability on your resume. They should, however, be able to see leadership potential in each applicant.
If your essay is poorly written or includes sloppy mistakes, your attention to detail will be called into question. If your interview is poor, it sends a signal to the admissions officer that you do not have the necessary communication skills to be an effective future manager. While such things might reflect small mistakes on the applicant’s part, they can send huge warning signs to those on the other side.
Before the next round of admissions after a rejection, consider where these small mistakes might have occurred and do what you can to prevent them happening again. Of course, mistakes happen. The best you can do is ensure that your leadership skills are well represented throughout your application so as not to magnify smaller weaknesses.
Rejection can be painful and while you may at times want to give up, a little hard work can make a world of difference from one year to the next.
If you haven’t yet started the application process, you have the opportunity to avoid these common MBA application mistakes before they happen.
“It always pays to seek out feedback from a knowledgeable source and this means going beyond your best friend (or mom or dad) in order to seek out someone who is very familiar with the MBA admissions process,” Richmond says. “ Reading key resource websites and talking with current MBA students and alumni should help you to gauge your candidacy and better understand potential pitfalls or weaknesses before you submit an application.”