10 Best Practices for Re-Applying Successfully
If you've been dinged this application season, there's still hope for next year! Dr. Shel Watts, founder and CEO ofMBAAdmit.com, is back with some more great advice for all you re-applicants out there. Dr. Watts is a Harvard College (A.B.) and Oxford University (Masters/Ph.D) graduate with a background in banking and consulting. She was also a faculty member at Harvard for 4 years.
Check out the first 5 high-impact actions below and find them all by going to theArchived Chat Eventsof MBA Watch OR clicking on this specific Archived Chat!
Best Practice #1: Complete a diagnostic. Determine what the obstacles were to your admission.
This is absolutely a crucial first step. You cannot fix the problem if you dont know what the problem is. Sometimes you will need a pair of external eyes to give you objective feedback about what the greatest problems were in your application.
The list of things that could have been a problem for an applicant is extremely varied. For some candidates, there might have been a problem with their academic credentials, by which I mean their GPA, GMAT score or TOEFL.
For some candidates, the problem might have been timing: the Round in which they applied, or the week in which they applied if the admission was a rolling admission. For candidate with extremely competitive profiles particularly candidates who are foreign national East Asian or South Asian men applications can be very affected by the Round at some schools. You need to know what schools those are and make sure you apply in Round 1 at those schools. Applying too late in a rolling admission cycle can also be a problem for some applicants.
For some candidates, the essays they wrote did not aid them in their quest for admission and they need to re-write the essays with much better content.
For some candidates, the recommendations were weak and this alone can close the door to admission.
Too little work experience or too much work experience can be problems.
Your first step is to determine what the weaknesses of your application were and to put together a plan to strengthen those weaknesses so that you put forward a stronger application when you reapply.
As I present other best practices, I am going to break down what you should do as you assess the key aspects of your application.
Best Practice #2: Make sure to comb through your qualifications and strengthen as much as you can before you reapply.
A first area to assess at a deeper level is the academic area. Were your GMAT, GPA and TOEFL sufficient for the school you were applying to?
Please note, to answer this question, you cannot necessarily just look at the average GPA and GMAT score for the school to which you applied, because where your particular GPA and GMAT score need to be is impacted by your profile. In general, women can be a little lower on the GMAT and GPA than the average for matriculating students of a particular school; East Asian and South Asian foreign national men sometimes need to be higher than the average for matriculating students of a particular school.
How important is the GMAT in particular?
The GMAT provides MBA admissions officers with a standard metric by which to compare candidates from all over the world and offers an indication of whether a candidate will be able to excel in a rigorous MBA program. Because of this, a GMAT score plays an important role in admissions outcomes. If you find your GMAT score is really low relative to where it needs to be for admission to a particular school, you should consider taking a formal GMAT prep course. I have seen candidates improve their scores from 640 to 720 after taking a course. This can transform your entire profile, so it is worth the effort.
Is it still possible to get into a top school with a low GMAT score?
I have worked with candidates with GMAT scores in the 620-680 range and they have gained access to top-10 MBA programs. In general, though, you want to maximize your odds of success, so this would mean that you should aim to go into the admissions process with a high GMAT score.
What of the AWA?
A low TOEFL or AWA can have a negative impact. The admissions committee may become concerned that you will not be able to communicate adequately with your peers. If you cannot communicate your experiences and best practices to your peers, you wont be a productive MBA student. As I have said before, it wont matter if you have outstanding insights and innovative ideas if you are unable to communicate those insights and ideas to your peers. Your ability to be a leader among your peers will also be restricted. So overall you may be a less attractive candidate. In many cases, to maximize your odds of admission you should try to improve low TOEFL and AWA scores.
What of the GPA? If it is low, what can you do?
We can have a fuller discussion about the GPA later in this chat if people want a longer answer. But in sum, if you have a low GPA, you need to try to override it through different means such as securing a high GMAT score, securing other indicators of your strong analytical skills like certifications or a CFA credential, building an alternative transcript (take courses at a reputable school in business-relevant areas and get As), and earning awards in the workplace and promotions. Time is also a useful factor: the more time you put between the low GPA and applying, the less important the GPA will be. If you apply only two years after college and you had a low GPA, the low GPA will likely factor much more strongly in your admissions outcome than if you put four years in between college and applying.
Best Practice #3: Determine if there is room for improvement in your recommendations.
This is a very key step! It is a rare day when I review a rejected application and find that the recommendations did not play a role. Usually, candidates who have rejected applications could have greatly improved both the recommendations and the essays.
Many candidates do not realize how important the recommendations are in determining admissions success. You can have a wonderful application in all other ways (essays, GMAT score, GPA, resume, app form), but if the recommendations are lukewarm about you, this alone can sometimes close the door for an interview to the top MBA programs. The admissions committees want to hear that you are the best among your peers and that you are heading toward success in your professional world. If any one of your recommendation writers indicates that you are just second best, the admissions committee may tilt toward other candidates with much stronger recommendations.
What specific problems can there be with the recommendation?
Sometimes a recommendation can simply be too dull in its toneit indicates no enthusiasm for the candidate, and this can be a big problem.
Sometimes a recommendation can be too short, which can be interpreted (rightly or wrongly) as if the recommendation writer did not want to be bothered to take the time to back you strongly or they did not have much to say about you.
Sometimes the recommendations do not stress leadership. If the candidate is from an engineering background, the recommendations may also fail to highlight business-relevant skills.
Sometimes when the recommendation asks the writer for a weakness the writer goes on way too long and puts information that is truly damaging to the candidate.
Correcting these aspects of the recommendations comments, as well as any other problems that might be in the recommendations, can help you strengthen your application tremendously and indeed can make the difference between acceptance and rejection.
Best Practice #4: Take a hard look at the long-term goal you presented.
I have reviewed many applications from candidates who found themselves rejected from top business schools when applying on their own, and a key contributing factor to a rejection is often the long-term goal that the candidate presented. When assessing whether your long-term goal worked for or against you, consider at least three things.
First, was the goal clear. Some candidates make the mistake of stating two alternative long-term goals, and many admissions committees do not like that. It is often best to choose to present only one of the two goals you might have in mind so you do not look as if you need more work experience in order to clarify your direction.
Second, given your work experience and training, do your long-term goals look realistic. I once had a candidate come to me, having been rejected from a top-5 business school, and she had made the mistake of indicating that she wanted to start a retail clothing chain. The problem was that she had succeeded up until that point as a top engineer in a computer company. She was just one example of many candidates can find themselves rejected if their past experience on the surface shows no relationship to their stated long-term goal.
Personally, I believe people can make big transitions successfully, but business schools dont necessarily want to admit a candidate who does not show that they can connect the dots. The most conservative approach is not to indicate you want to make such a massive change in career direction, but if you do indicate you will be making a big change, you need to spell out how you will get from point C to point F. What are steps D and E?
Third, does your career goal distinguish you. For example, if you are a foreign national male engineer and you have indicated that you want to start you own manufacturing company, you can only imagine the number of candidates with similar backgrounds who are indicating the same thing. Without providing more definition about your goal, you will look very generic and indistinguishable from other candidates with similar backgrounds. Make sure to define your long-term goals in ways that help you to stand out and become more attractive as a candidate.
Best Practice #5: Take an overall look at your essays both in terms of strategic content and presentation.
Your MBA essays are absolutely critical for admission to business school. It is hard to underscore this enough. Nearly every time I review the application of a candidate who failed to gain admission to their desired business school after applying on their own, I see a great deal of room for improvement in their MBA essaysboth in terms of their strategic content and the specific wording they used to talk about their achievements and credentials.Happily, once we worked with the candidate to revise or completely re-craft the essays, these candidates usually have great outcomes.
What do you mean by strategic content?
Business schools are looking for excellence in key areas as they assess whether to admit a student. If you have excellence in those key areas, you should be highlighting that by talking about those credentials and experiences in the essays. This is like shining a light on the credentials and experiences that are most likely to get you admitted.
You should skillfully weave references to leadership experiences into your essays.
You should also determine what personal experiences make you stand out from applicants with similar backgrounds. You should weave references to those experiences also in your essays, which will help you stand out and make you memorable to the admissions committee.
If you have a weakness to be addressed, you should also skillfully address that weakness in the application sometimes in the essays. Whether you address the weakness directly or indirectly should be determined based on how notable the weakness is and how recent.
So you have seen many cases when, after re-writing essays with better strategic content and more business-relevant information, a candidate has gained admission to schools to which they might have been rejected previously?
Yes, absolutely. For example, I worked with one candidate who had a pretty mediocre performance at a state school in the United States and was an accountant. He had applied to Harvard, Wharton and Columbia four years before and had been rejected from all of those schools. After reviewing his background, he had a wealth of amazing information he had not included in his essays or on the application form. After working with him to improve his strategic content and also providing guidance to his recommendation writers, he gained admission to Harvard, Wharton and Columbia.
As I mentioned in another chat, there was a case when a young man who had been rejected when applying on his own from Columbias regular full-time program (August-start) gained admission just a few months later to Columbias full-time January start-program with newly crafted essays that focused on business-relevant information and qualifications. Likewise, I guided a young man on the waitlist at a top-5 business school to re-write his entire long-term goal essay and he resubmitted it to the admissions committee while he was still on the waitlisteven though they had not asked him to do this. (He was highly qualified, but the first version of his essay that he had submitted on his own was so awful that I did not think the admissions committee would move him off of the waitlist.) Shortly after we submitted the new long-term goal essay, this top-5 business school took the candidate off of the waitlist and granted him admission.