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Last Minute Applicants: How to Successfully Navigate Round III & Beyond
Guests include:
Jedd Gold, alumni of UCLA’s Anderson School of Business
Kofi Kankam, Co-founder & Director, Admit Advantage
Soojin Kwon Koh, Director of Admissions for the Ross School at the University of Michigan
Graham Richmond, Co-founder and Director, Clear Admit
Alex Sevilla, Assistant Dean & Director, Hough Graduate School of Business and Warrington College of Business Administration at the University of Florida
Robert Wagner, Interim Director Graduate Admissions Babson College, F.W. Olin School of Business
Transcription:
Welcome to MBA Podcaster, the only broadcast source for cutting edge information and advice on the MBA application process.
I’m Heidi Pickman.
Maybe you’ve been busy at work. Maybe you’ve been busy at home. For whatever reason, you’ve missed the round one and two deadlines at the business schools that you’ve been considering. You’re trying to decide whether you should apply in round three or wait until next year.
In this podcast - “Last Minute Applicants: How to Succeed in Round Three” - you’ll find information to help you make your decision on whether to go for it now or wait another year and advice on how to navigate the waters and complete your application on time. We’ll also explore some of the different attitudes schools have toward round three.
First, should you or shouldn’t you?
Let’s lay all the negativity on the table so we can dispense with it.
You’ve heard time and again that round three applications are problematic.
The school might wonder why you are going to business school - maybe you’re unemployed, maybe you don’t like your job and you want out, maybe you want to be a part of the lucrative financial industry. The schools are going to wonder if you’ve got your act together. They’re going to wonder why it took you so long to get your application together. They’re going to wonder if you can multi-task and survive business school with obligations to classes, clubs, recruiting and networking. Or they might wonder if they’re your number one choice. None of these questions are good questions for schools to be asking.
Graham Richmond is the Co-founder and Director of Clear Admit. He is somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to giving advice about applying in round three.
“First piece of advice is apply early. The second piece of advice is if you’re at the point where all that’s left is the last round for the school, I think you should seriously consider about applying early the next cycle. Literally wait a year, wait six months to apply but wait a year to start your education essentially, because again, your odds of getting in are so slim if we’re dealing with top programs that often it makes sense to really reassess that a round three or round four application is what you really want to do.”
Kofi Kankam is the Co-founder and Director of Admit Advantage, an admissions consulting firm. He says Round 3 is tough.
“It’s really a question of supply and demand. If schools are potentially not getting high demand, then they’re typically much more likely to overlook some rules here and there to let a good candidate come in 10:38 but to be honest the schools have a lot of leverage especially in this economy, where a lot of people are going back to school and there’s a lot of demand, such that they’ll often tell a candidate, ‘no, sorry, just apply next year.”
Given steep odds and the advice that people give against applying late, both consultants -not to mention most schools - recognize that there are legitimate reasons for applying late.
Richmond says that you need to consider the perspective of the admissions directors.
“They’re assembling a class and they probably have people from different backgrounds already in that class and so you need to show them how you’re going to meet some unmet need. What is it about your candidacy that will help them complete the puzzle which is their class?”
Kankam says that if you are going to apply late, the first thing that you should do regarding your application is a bit counter-intuitive.
“Somewhat acknowledge your late application and focus on the positive attributes.”
Jedd Gold is a late applicant who after an epiphany at work was successfully admitted to (and graduated) UCLA’s Anderson School of Business.
Gold did as Kankam says and subscribed to the honesty is the best policy when first approaching about being late, whether in Round 3 or just plain late.
“When I called the admissions office that afternoon knowing that the applications were due the next morning and I hadn’t started it, I took a really sort of candid, humorous approach to it, figuring there was going to be no way to really justify the fact that I was applying so late and hadn’t even started the admissions process. So I introduced myself and said that I was probably going to make one of the more stranger requests they’d heard in a while, but that I was interested in attended UCLA, I recognized that the applications were due the next day, but there was no way that I would be able to get my application in because I had just decided that afternoon to actually apply. I sort of waited for the pause-slash-laugh on the other end.”
And you have to convince them that you are serious about attending the program.
“There was sort of a befuddled silence on the other end actually until I commented on the fact that I recognize that this is not coming off as the most responsible candidate in the world. Then all of a sudden I got a very sympathetic approach from them which was ‘Don’t worry about it. We understand.’ They inquired immediately as to what I was doing for work and what I was hoping to get out of the program and just a couple of cursory questions. Clearly they wanted to get a sense how serious I was and if I was going to actually bring something to the program because at the end of the day these schools are very much looking to put together a diverse group of people who bring different things to their programs.”
Richmond says that finding a way to stand out is crucial if you’re applying late.
“In some peoples’ cases it will be easy – like maybe they’re coming from the peace corps where they’d have a great excuse. They could say, ‘Gosh, I was in Zambia for the last six months, couldn’t apply in the early rounds, but I’m now back and ready to start an MBA program in the fall. Here’s my application.’ They have two great things. One, they have a unique background; two, they have a good excuse for being late to the game. But if you’re a banker or consultant you need to find another angle; maybe it’s that you have a unique set of career goals or your activities outside of the office have been somewhat unique in terms of volunteer work you’re doing or outside activities that you’ve pursued.”
He says another crucial element for a late applicant is that you need to go into the process with no weaknesses.
“Meaning it’s already kind of a weakness that you’re applying late. So you wouldn’t want any other area – academic profile, your results on the GMAT, the quality of the essays you write - to come across as below average. The candidates that get in, in the final round are not only someone unique, they certainly don’t have any questions marks when it comes to their GMAT results or their underground GPA’s, etc.”
For example, a low GMAT score is a red flag. Here’s Robert Wagner, Interim Director Graduate Admissions Babson College, F.W. Olin School of Business
“If we get an application in round 3 and the GMAT score is 9 months to a year old and it’s not really a strong score, sometimes we’ll wonder why ‘you’ve take extra time to submit your application and you haven’t taken the GMAT.’ So that can factor in.”
Kofi Kankam has a lot of additional advice on how to approach the application and use the optional essay.
“Try to focus on highlighting the parts of the school – whether it’s courses, students, club, etc...- that might really resonate with you. You really have to emphasize fit in this instance. You can use reasons such as saying ‘you want to take the time to submit your best application because you know the school is highly selective and potentially that would include a re-take of the GMAT.’ So a candidate could say that they could have rushed an application for Round 2, but they wanted to make sure it was their best product. They wanted to take time to make sure they were ready to apply. It’s a huge decision and process to go through the applications sequence as it is. Every school is going to ask why you want to get an MBA but also why you want to get it now. A student indicating that her/she took that question seriously that will potentially resonate with admissions officers. Candidates can also indicate that they needed to focus job project which precluded them from doing enough heavy research to submit a strong application.”
So what is the first thing you should do when faced with standing out and presenting a strong application – at the 11th hour.
Gold says it was ‘hurry up and go.’
“I literally hung up the phone and immediately set out my plan of attack as to what needed to get done and who was going to need the most time and sort of what pieces would need the most time - so for instance, getting my referrals taken care of. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to give somebody a day or two to do that. So I immediately contacted the few people that I was going to have submit for me, told them of my plan and asked them if they’d willing to get that going for me. That was part I, part II was the essays. It literally was over the next couple of days which was a weekend, I knocked out the first couple drafts of my essays and started to think about what those needed to say.“
And remember what Kofi Kankam said before – use the optional essay to craft your convincing story of why you want to go to business school, why this business school and why now.
So you have a strong application, you stand out, what are your chances of getting in? Probably close to what they would have been if you applied in Round 1 or 2.
In Round Three, a greater percentage of applications seem to have been thrown together at the last minute or that are from people who don’t seem to understand the admissions process.If you take these people out of the numbers, the admission statistics for round three look similar to round 1 and 2.
But of course those admissions numbers are relative to the school.The common element between schools is that they all accept applicants in round three.
But every school is different in their approach to round three applications. The spectrum runs the gamut from rolling admissions which is no deadline to very competitive as in very few spaces are available to round three applicants.
Starting with the competitive schools…Here’s consultant Graham Richmond.
“I think you’ll find the top of the MBA programs which are full time MBA programs, where there’s no shortage of applicants that the flexibility is less in fact there’s really no incentive for a school like Stanford or Harvard, because they have 8 to 10 candidates for every spot so they don’t really need to make exceptions or bend the rules.”
Soojin Kwon Koh is the Director of Admissions for the Ross School at the University of Michigan. She warns that at Ross, round three is very competitive.
“Round three is a really small round and it is for those people who realize at the last minute ‘you know maybe I do want to go to school this fall’ and so it’s a really small percentage of applications that come in that round. We don’t reserve a certain number or percentage of slots for round three applicants, but by the time we’re reviewing round three apps, our class is pretty much, um, substantially full.”
She explains why round three is so competitive and echoes our other guests about successful round 3 applicants.
“You really have to turn in a good app. Make sure your essays are well written, your GMAT score is strong, your rec letters are in on time and very supportive. They really have to get it together because what we do in round three is compare those applications to all the ones we’ve waitlisted in rounds 1 and 2 who got their applications in much earlier and we’re looking at a bigger pool rather than just the round three pool.”
At the University of Florida’s full-time MBA programs, it’s always a good time to apply. Alex Sevilla, is the Assistant Dean & Director say they never close out a class as it relates to size.
“What that means for us is that deadlines are important, they are especially important as it relates to scholarship consideration. The earlier somebody applies, it is far more likely they will be considered for some type of scholarship funding, but our philosophy is we’re looking for the absolute best candidates and when those candidates apply, if they meet all of those criteria, then we’re willing to look at them. If very highly qualified candidates apply late, then it’s in our best interest and it certainly makes sense for the rest of the cohort to bring in the individuals and we have the space to do that.”
And it’s not a stigma to apply in round three, especially in this economy. Again, Sevilla.
“ We’ve seen in the last two years, either things are not looking favorably in their work situation or perhaps they have been laid off through no fault of their own and just the timing. If that happens in April or May as opposed to October or November, the concept of waiting for them what would be 18 full months to move forward with an MBA a lot of times is not conducive to helping them on the job search front when trying to articulate such a large gap between employment and starting an MBA program.”
It is worth to note that full-time programs are different from Executive MBA programs or part-time programs. Robert Wagner of Babson, says it is very common for working professionals to apply late.
“It’s certainly a lot different than the full-time application process. We work with candidates almost as close as we can get to the enrollment stage. Sometimes they’re applying late because they have so many things going on in their lives. Again, if they’re a good quality candidate, that’s not going to be an issue. We do want to make sure that the timing is right so they are going to get off on the right foot and hit the ground running when the program starts.”
To apply now or not to apply now, that is the question. Most people will try to persuade you to apply later, but if you’re a strong candidate with a strong application, then maybe you want to think about what Jedd Gold, our successful late applicant, has to say.
“There’s always a spot. There’s always an exception to be made and that goes across everything. I don’t believe that hotels are ever sold out that restaurants are ever booked or business schools are ever full. For the right person at the right time, there’s an opportunity to get into school. If you’re committed and you have the right offerings and you are willing to go through that process and put yourself out there, you have a shot of getting in. There are very few situations in life, in general, where opportunity just purely doesn’t exist.”
On that optimistic note, I’d like to thank my guests and thank you for listening.
For more information, a transcript of this show or to register for your bi-weekly MBA podcast visit MBAPodcaster.com.
Join us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to get the latest news and insight in the world of business school.
This is MBA Podcaster, I am Heidi Pickman.
Thanks for listening and be sure to tune in next time when we explore another topic of interest in your quest for an MBA. |
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发表于 2010-3-23 18:50:22
R3 and Beyond...
