MBA Admissions

At Harvard, where the author got her law degree, she shows up on the business-school campus and asks random students if they know any introverts.

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What should an applicant do when placed on the waitlist at his or her dream school?

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While the past few weeks have seen a number of admits and rejections handed down to Round One MBA applicants, the fate of many remains uncertain.

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As candidates tackle interviews and preparation for Round 2 applications, we would like to revisit an important aspect of the application: the resume.

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It's Tough Love Season* here Chez Ivey, and right around the holidays, it's time for my annual public service announcement to applicants, wherein I say some version of "STOP ACTING LIKE A CRAZY PERSON." (All-caps this year!)

Last year I wrote a whole blog post about how waiting is the hardest part, with a Tom Petty/Eddie Vedder video and everything!

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We often stress that, to present oneself effectively in one’s application essays, it is critical to think carefully about what a given question is asking and what this might indicate about a specific school’s admissions priorities.

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Say you receive an email from an admissions officer inviting you to an interview. Or you grabbed someone's business card at a school forum and want to email that admissions officer with a question. What's the appropriate way to address that person?

Here are some guidelines to help you communicate with admissions officers in a professional way:

• If the person's recent email or recent business card clearly identifies him (in the email signature, for example) as having a Dean title, you can address him as Dean So-and-So.

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I've written before that in your application essays, you must answer the question they're asking you, not the one you wish they had asked. Here's a related problem I often see: Rather than ignoring the question entirely, you might answer only part of the question and ignore the harder (and more interesting) bits.

Here are two examples, one from the MBA world, and one from the law school world:

• "What matters most to you, and why?" (Stanford GSB)

• "Say more about your interest in the University of Michigan Law School. What do you believe Michigan has to offer to you and you to Michigan?" (Michigan Law School)

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With applicants for the round one deadlines putting the finishing touches on their applications, the question of how strictly applicants need to adhere to word limits is perhaps more popular than ever.

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