Please help...6 dings w/o i/v this season

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Please help...6 dings w/o i/v this season

by utsav19 » Wed Dec 28, 2011 11:51 pm
Hi,

I have been completely shattered by a series of dings this season. And all of them were without interview calls. I am completely clueless about what should I do next, what should I retrospect and what colleges should I apply to in R2. Please help me.

My profile:
GMAT - 720/6.0
Work Ex - 3.5 years in leading IT MNCs as a Software Developer and team lead
Nationality - Indian
Extra curricular - decent with sports and NGO work

Colleges applied to in R1 and dinged:
Harvard
Kellogg
Booth
ISB
Tepper
NUS

:cry:
Source: — The Application Process |

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by tariqal » Thu Dec 29, 2011 3:20 pm
ustav19, my first advice would be to not panic and don't despair. You've still got some time with the remaining rounds, but you'll have to be shrewd. The schools that you applied to are known to be quite tough to get into, so don't be too hard on yourself.

Also, it's hard to tell from here what your essays/apps looked like, but what I found to be very helpful in putting in a strong application to ANY school is to customize each of your apps very specifically and very strategically to the schools that you are applying to. It's not enough to simply create your profile on a school's website, fill in your details, ask the same references to resubmit basically the same recommendation letters, copy-paste the majority of your essays, etc. all in the space of a week or two. I'm not going to say it's impossible to get away with that, but it's exponentially harder. You really need to know why you're applying to a school (simply because it's in an Ivy League school doesn't cut it) and you need to convince the respective school's adcom that you know, too. The process of getting to know the school, its offerings, program structure, and then aligning your own goals and ambitions with the school can take a long time, possibly even involving more than a year's worth of rapport with the adcom! (Trust me, campus visits, Q&A sessions, email conversations, conference calls and online forum discussions with the adcom and, if you're lucky, alumni can really take months but are an excellent way to stand out from a large pool of candidates).

So my advice to you in the next upcoming weeks/months is to really dig deep into the curricula and offerings of two or, max, three schools that you'd like to apply to, absolutely convince yourself that you belong in that school's program, and concentrate on putting together the best darn app you can so that you can convince them of it. As cheesy as it may be, ask yourself: if this school were a love interest, would I marry it and why? Also, be honest with yourself and don't be afraid to try in schools that may not fall into the usual prestigious top-tier school category, i.e. just because you got into Georgetown and not Colombia doesn't mean you're not going to get an awesome education/experience - it really depends on how you align with the school.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

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by money9111 » Sat Dec 31, 2011 2:51 am
I could not have said that any better myself Tariqal! It's very interesting being on the other side of things now in b-school and seeing the breadth of experiences - GPAs - GMAT scores that comprise a class at a top school. The one thing that is evident is that your GMAT score is not what kept you out of any of those schools. So that says that it had to have come down to your recommendation letters and your essays and work experience of course.

I don't know much about ISB or NUS but with regards to the other schools you applied too you need to basically ask yourself what makes yourself different? You can assume that everyone applying has a relatively high gmat score as per those schools' averages, so that takes GMAT out of the equation. How well do you think you conveyed your relevant work experience in your essays? How well do you think you conveyed your long-short term goals? Did you convey what value you would add to each university? Did you sit with your recommenders and coach them through the process and make them understand what your goals for b-school were?

Those are all things that need to be taken into account. It's definitely tough though getting a ding from any school and is NEVER fun. I can speak from experience but thankfully it worked out. The only thing you can do now is figure out how to move forward.
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