MBA Reddit (r/mba) – Is it a Gift for Applicants or Misinformation?

As an applicant to Business School, you may stumble across the MBA Admissions Reddit r/mba.  Within this subreddit, there are folks from all parts of the MBA Universe, including applicants, current students, alumni, admissions consultants, test prep tutors and of course the random internet stranger.  You may be wondering, is the MBA Admissions Reddit page safe to use?  Is it truly anonymous?  Can you trust the advice from the randomized avatars that you come across?  In this article, we give you our best advice for understanding how you can use Reddit to your advantage and what things you may want to look out for.

What is Reddit?

As the company describes itself, “Reddit is a network of communities where people can dive into their interests, hobbies and passions.”  This is the number one thing that makes Reddit appealing to many folks whether you are researching what brand of television to buy or looking to find other folks who watch the same television shows as you or even simply just looking for another social media site to scroll to kill time.  Reddit, by design, allows for anyone to create a free account and begin to navigate through the different communities or ‘subreddits’.  Within the subreddits are where you will find each topic organized in a discussion board format, in which any user can submit a ‘post’ and/or comment on posts and continue the conversation.  Each subreddit needs to have at least one ‘moderator’ and that moderator will typically set up some rules/regulations for what topics will be discussed in that particular subreddit.

Skip to the MBA part…

Right.  So, there are thousands of subreddits across the platform, but there are a handful of these communities that are directly related to the MBA Universe – r/mba, r/gmat, r/gre, r/internationalmba, r/gradschool and plenty more.  There are thousands of users who navigate the pages of these communities daily to keep up with the conversation and either post a new topic about something they need help with – or – comment on topics to provide their advice/experience to help the OP (original poster).  In a single day, the r/mba subreddit might have anywhere from 30-50 new posts and hundreds of new comments from the 140k+ members of the community.  These posts consist of application questions, MBA news, profile evaluations, decision advice on which school to select and also some fun meme posts from time to time because well, we did mention it’s reddit right?

That sounds wonderful!  I’m going to post everything about myself.

Well hold on…  There is where we come to our pros and cons of this subreddit and why we thought this article could be helpful.
To start, just because your username is anonymous, doesn’t mean that a keen admissions committee member can’t figure out who you are.  All of your posts on reddit are collected on your profile and if someone wanted to compare your profile evaluation to your resume, they might not need to try too hard to figure out exactly who is behind the avatar.  This is not to say that profile reviews are not helpful or that you shouldn’t do one on r/mba, but you should definitely leave some key details out strategically so that you don’t leave anything up to chance.  Additionally, you may want to check out our sister site, Clear Admit, where you can post your Profile Review to MBA ApplyWire without having your data linked to a public profile.

Additionally, while there are plenty of legitimate former adcom members and current students on r/mba sharing their expertise and advice, there are just as many people who have received one offer of admission to a T20 school and believe they are also an expert.  They will respond to your profile reviews with ‘what worked for me’ and unfortunately, while their advice may have worked for them, it doesn’t mean it will work for you!  The admissions process is definitely more of an art than a science, so taking advice from anyone with a free account may not be in your best interest.

TL:DR Takeaway

The MBA Admissions Reddit resources are great – they provide applicants with a place to celebrate each other and with a community where they can network with one another as they navigate the admissions process.  Just keep in mind that not everything on the r/mba page should be taken as fact and that you should do your research on your own to fact-check.  Clear Admit and other resources like it will provide you with a community as well, but also have verified experts who can help clear up any misinformation.  Finally, be mindful of what you do and what you share on the internet as it can be difficult to be 100% anonymous.

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