What Is The Worst MBA Advice You Have Ever Heard?
The path to business school is paved with experts and know-nothing-know-it-alls alike—it’s just hard to tell the difference sometimes.
This is especially true when it comes to “dos” and “don’ts” of the trade. You’re bound to encounter confusing, conflicting, or just plain bad advice in any field but there’s something about business school that seems to attract meaningless jargon like flies to honey.
I spoke to Accepted’s Linda Abraham and North Star Admissions’ Karen Marks, two leading admissions counselors and bonafide MBA experts, about the eight worst pieces of advice most commonly doled out to MBAs-to-be.
“Tell them what they want to hear.”
“The admissions committee will see through it, the applicant will blend into the gray mass of applicants who are making the same mistake, and at competitive schools, will get dinged,” Abraham writes. “Telling schools what you think they want to hear means telling them what you don’t know, and it also means you’re not telling them what you want them to know.”
“If you are waitlisted, ignore the school’s directions and make a dramatic gesture to demonstrate your interest.”
According to Marks, “People … have been known to do everything from emailing the admissions office once a day (relatively benign, but inappropriate) to sending homemade gifts (creepy) to showing up in the admissions office and refusing to leave until they have spoken with the Dean. All of this backfires, it’s really important to listen to the school’s directions and express your interest in ways that underscore your ability to follow directions, and your understanding of the culture.”
“Change your career goals and personal story for each school.”
Marks explains, “Your goals and core narrative should remain constant, no matter what school you are applying to. Don’t tell Stanford that you want to work in micro-finance and Kellogg that you dream of marketing, just because you think it’s what they want to hear.”
Abraham recalls an interaction she had with “an applicant who came to us initially for Rejection Review.” This applicant was told by his consultant, a former Yale SOM adcom director, “she would have rejected him also because the applicant’s goal made no sense given his work experience, education and extra-curricular activities. He explained that his friends had told him to use the “hot” goal that year, so he used it in his application. Next year he applied with an authentic goal (and app) and was accepted to an M7 school.”
“You have no chance of getting into a top MBA program because you didn’t go to a top undergrad.”
Abraham couldn’t disagree more with this statement.
“If an applicant excelled at their local college, shows leadership, and has had an impactful career, and has a competitive test score, they have a chance at elite MBA programs,” she says.
“You have a 750-plus GMAT and a 3.9 GPA, you’re in anywhere.”
Both counselors call hogwash on this one.
“You can’t rest on academic laurels. Yes, those numbers are very attractive to top b-schools, but if they are combined with arrogance—forget it. Schools also want to see leadership and impact in their accepted students. So, if Super Student wasn’t a super employee or entrepreneur or campus community member, those stats do not guarantee acceptance at top MBA programs.”
“Your goals don’t really matter, because you’re likely to change them once at b-school.”
Abraham writes, “Yes, your goals are likely to change and schools know that, but they at least want you to start their program with direction and a goal they know they can help you achieve. Goals are a major component in fit at most top MBA programs. And if yours are vague or don’t match the strengths of your target schools, then you simply aren’t showing fit.”
“If you have a blind interview, you can wing it.”
“You can wing it. BUT you are unlikely to be as effective as the other applicants who prepare,” Abraham notes.
“They will have researched the school, know exactly why they want to attend this program, and mined their own experiences and achievements so they are ready to show they belong at the interviewing school and will contribute to the school’s student body and alumni network.”
“Oh, and they also have thoughtful questions to ask the interviewer.”
“You won’t get in if your numbers are below an arbitrary number, so don’t even bother applying.”
Abraham has worked with “multiple clients who had extremely low GMATs and GPAs, below 2.5 and below 600, who have been admitted to Wharton, Booth, HBS, etc. I also admitted applicants with weak numeric profiles to Tuck when I was the Associate Director of Admissions. (They had other stellar qualities).”
Abraham believes that “essays, personality, perspective and life experience are more important than numbers.” She adds, “Application reviews are comprehensive. One element is extremely unlikely to keep you out or carry you across the threshold of a dream MBA program.”
How to Deal with a Bad GMAT Score
You’ve been studying for months, possibly losing sleep as you go over the practice questions in your head and, as a result, getting some oh-so-enjoyable stress dreams. If any of this sounds familiar, you probably have had to—or currently are—preparing to take that Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT).
HBS Class of 2019 Profile Reveals Subtle Shifts, New GRE Details
The official Harvard Business School (HBS) Class of 2019 profile is now out—capturing in numbers and pie charts the real live students who started class for the first time yesterday. Not a lot has shifted since HBS released its preliminary class profile earlier this summer, although the Class of 2019 now includes 928 students, suggesting that 13 of those the school was expecting to enroll when it originally reported the class size at 941 made other plans. There are 942 students in the Class of 2018, by comparison.
The percentage of minority students also slipped slightly, from 26 percent reported in the preliminary profile to 25 percent in the actual class (last year’s actual percentage was 26 percent). Female students comprise 42 percent of the class, as earlier reported, again down one percentage point from last year.
In terms of median GMAT, 730 is still HBS’s reported score. That’s the same as last year—and as predicted earlier in the summer. The score range reported included a low of 580 and a high of 790, with the middle 80 percent of the class falling between 700 and 770. Last year, the middle 80 percent was a shade lower, coming in between 690 and 760.
HBS Joins Wharton, Yale in Posting GRE Scores
New in the actual profile posted today are stats on GRE scores, marking the first time HBS has published such data. Chad Losee, the Managing Director of Admissions and Financial Aid, also made a point of sharing this information in a recent blog post, revealing that 12 percent of the class submitted GRE scores and the remaining 88 percent submitted GMAT scores.
“The GRE and GMAT are different tests … and we are truly indifferent about which one you submit,” Losee writes. “Really. We are familiar with each test. Choose the one that allows you to best show your strengths, then move on to the other parts of the application.”
According to the recently posted profile, median GRE scores for both verbal and quantitative at HBS were 164. The score range for verbal was 147 to 170, and the range for quantitative was 151 to 170. HBS did not provide information about the average writing score.
The Wharton School, too, shared GRE data for the first time this year, although specific details about what percentage of the class opted for one test over the other were not made available. Wharton reported average scores, not median scores: 163 verbal, 162 quantitative, and a 4.7 average writing score. The Yale School of Management (SOM) also included GRE test scores in its Class of 2019 profile (median verbal, 166; median quantitative, 164; middle 80 percent verbal, 157 to 170; middle 80 percent quantitative, 160 to 169.)
If three makes a trend—then a trend we have of leading schools emphatically underscoring that they are indeed test agnostic by including GRE scores within their official class profiles.
“We Know You’re Much More Than a Test Score”
In his post, Losee also took pains to underscore that much more than scores go into determining who joins the HBS class each year.
“We know you are much more than a test score,” he writes. “The whole application and interview process are designed to help us get to know you. We’re trying to imagine what you would contribute in the HBS classroom and community. As I’ve written before, our learning model depends on a wide range of talent and perspectives in each class—and we know that not all that talent is measurable in a test.”
Obviously unchanged from the preliminary profile were the total number of applications HBS received this year—10,351—a 6 percent uptick over last year. The profiles posted today and earlier this summer both cited an 11 percent admission rate—which would indicate that 1,138 students made the cut—and a 91 percent yield.
This story has been edited and republished with permissions from Clear Admit.
