I would like to invite all 2009 MBA applicants to sign up for the second 2009 MBA Admissions Telethon on Tuesday, May 13th between 10:00 AM and 12:00 PM PT (1:30 PM ET - 3:30 PM ET; 6:00 PM GMT - 8:00 PM GMT). What is the MBA Admissions Telethon?

Two hours when 6 MBA admissions experts will be available to answer your individual questions via telephone. Prior to calling in, you will receive a brief, 6-question questionnaire and submit it along with your resume to a designated email address. (No essays, please.) When you call in, your consultant will review the information you provide, and you will have 15 minutes to discuss with him or her your most pressing MBA admissions questions.

Oh, by the way, the 2009 MBA Admission Telethon is free.

You can learn more details and sign up at 2009 MBA Admissions Telethon.

A potpourri :

• London Business School Chat on Monday, April 7 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/5:00 PM GMT when Zoë McLoughlin, MBA Marketing Events Manager & Peter Johnson, Admissions Officer - Masters in Finance, will be available to answer your questions. This will be a combined chat for those interested in both the Full-time MBA Program as well as the Masters in Finance.
  
• Senior Editor Paul Bodine’s book, Great Application Essays for Business School , continues to jump off the bookshelves. It has been ranked no. 2 in Amazon.com’s Business Reference books category for some time. A new Chinese-language edition has been published by McGraw-Hill Taiwan and a Korean edition will be published soon. Finally, McGraw-Hill India is providing Indian readers with a way to order the book in India rather than from the U.S.:  contact McGraw-Hill Education India Pvt Ltd. at UK_Prasad@mcgraw-hill.com or Phone: 091- 044 – 24769557 – 62 (6 Lines), Mobile: 99400 64903.
• Waitlist Chat transcripts. We have hosted several waitlist chats with different program over the last several months. You can review waitlist policies at different schools in the following transcripts:
• Michigan Ross Waitlist Chat with Soojin Kwon Koh
• INSEAD Waitlist with Virginie Fougea
• USC Marshall Waitlist with Kellee Scott
• Cornell Waitlist with Randall Sawyer
• MIT Sloan Waitlist with Jen Burke Barba

Wharton's waitlist chat transcript from today's chat should be posted next week.

• Yale SOM has posted an excellent article on its waitlist policies.
  
• BusinessWeek has published a special report on European programs.

Yesterday I met with a LAMP client who is shrewdly starting now to prepare for his fall application. We went over his profile, and I made several suggestions as to what he can do between now and this fall to improve his chances of acceptance next year. He found the session very valuable. And again, I commend him for starting early to work on his application. I want to be able to commend and mentor and help prepare more of you.

For years I have encouraged MBA applicants to lay the foundation for their MBA application in the months before applications come out. That's why I wrote Best Practices for MBA Admissions, a featured ebook this month. That's why Accepted has hosted MBA Admissions Telethons and teleseminars. And that's why Accepted is introducing a new subscription form of MBA Admissions Consulting: Start Smart ™.

With Start Smart, you can meet up to one hour per month with your adviser, an experienced Accepted consultant and editor who for years has seen what works and what doesn't. Our experienced staff shares my frustration when talented but flawed clients come to us in September wanting to apply in Round 1 and hoping that a magic wand will make them competitive. We don't have that wand. We do have decades of collective experience that we would like to share with you on an individual basis through Start Smart.

With Start Smart, you can have a mentor guide you in:

• Identifying the core stories for your application.
• Focusing on specific schools.
  
• Strengthening your application and ameliorating weaknesses.
• Choosing recommenders.

We can even help you work out an application time table.

In addition, Start Smart is something that rewards your early-bird-gets-the-worm approach to your applications:

• You will pay less per month when you sign up for more months.
• Your credit card is billed on a monthly basis for the exact number of months you want. You do not pay for the entire service up front so it is more affordable.
  

BusinessWeek released its rankings of undergrad business schools this week.  And the winners are...

1. Wharton
2. University of Virginia
   
3.  Notre Dame
4. Cornell
5. Emory
   
6. Michigan
7. Brigham Young
8. NYU
   
9. MIT
10. University of Texas

More important than the raw rankings provided above are the data and insight provided by BW in developing the ranking. BW combines 9 measures which includes surveys of students and recruiters, salaries of graduates, and a measure for academic quality gleaned from a number of statistical sources like SAT scores, student-teacher ratio, etc. It prides itself on being a consumer-oriented ranking since the ultimate "consumers" of a business education are the students and their employers. To the extent that the ranking has value, you need to have a thorough understanding of the methodology behind the rankings to extract it.

Also, directed at  applicants to business school, but valid for most undergrad applicants are the suggestions contained in "Extracurriculars that Count." Surprise, surprise. No specific extra-curricular activity will guarantee admission, and quality of commitment trumps quantity of activities any time and across the board.  I recommend this article. You may also be interested in "What is 'Passion' in Admissions?"

We have two great chats scheduled for this week:

• USC Marshall with Kellee Scott, Senior Associate Director of MBA Admissions,  and two Marshall MBA students today November 5 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/6:00 PM GMT.
  
• Michigan's Ross School of Business with Soojin Kwan Koh, Director of MBA Admissions; Doug Thomas, Assistant Director of Admissions, and a Ross student on Wednesday November 7 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/6:00 PM GMT.
  

Both chats will take place in the Accepted chat room.

We also posted several chat transcripts last week, and I am providing brief excerpts:

• CMU Tepper with Laurie Stewart
  

PR (Oct 16, 2007 1:07:34 PM)
Laurie: Could you talk a little about the application review process. Do current students read the application? How many reviews does the application go through before a decision is made?

LaurieStewartCMU (Oct 16, 2007 1:09:32 PM)
PR--all of our reviews are conducted by members of the admissions staff members and we do 3 reviews; 2 by admissions committee members and one by me before a decision is made.

Linda Abraham (Oct 16, 2007 1:09:55 PM)
Jeremy, why did you choose Tepper?

JeremyHastingsCMU (Oct 16, 2007 1:10:25 PM)
I chose Tepper for a few reasons: 1 - a small program: I wanted to make sure I had a group of friends I would know when I left, not just be 1 of 600.
2 - pushing my own skill set: I had very non-quant work experience, and I wanted to challenge myself to learn how to analyze data and make decisions based on it. 3 - change the trajectory of my career: going to Tepper meant no one was ever going to ask me if I could do the work. It's a given. You go to Tepper, you can run and interpret regressions, you can do data analysis, you can build models. That is a statement only a few schools can make, Carnegie Mellon is one of those schools.

LLU (Oct 16, 2007 1:12:05 PM)
Laurie: The optional essay is a great way to feed in bits and pieces about one's profile that may not have been represented in it's entirety in the other essays. It is likely that one may want to dwell on 2 or 3 rather disconnected areas in the optional essay - a kind of "catch all". Is such a thing frowned upon- i.e: would you rather want all applicants to focus on just one aspect in the optional essay or is it OK if one covers a 2 or 3 disconnected areas as well?

 LaurieStewartCMU (Oct 16, 2007 1:14:47 PM)
LLU--great question--we really look for the optional essay to do one of two things (or both): highlight areas that candidates think are strengths that they didn't have a chance to address elsewhere in the application and also to address anything they are concerned might be perceived as a weakness in their application--as such, it isn't uncommon to have the optional essay cover more than one topic, although you do want to make sure to make decisions about what is really important to cover.

Cornell Johnson MBA with Randall Sawyer

MP (Oct 24, 2007 1:29:41 PM)
Randall: I won't be able to visit campus because I have to be at work on weekdays (when classes and info-sessions are held). Are applicants who have not visited campus at any disadvantage as far as admissions decisions are concerned?

RandallSawyerCornell (Oct 24, 2007 1:32:52 PM)
Hi MP--I don't think applicants who have not visited campus are at a disadvantage. However, all admissions directors care about your choosing the right place to go and many times "fit and feel" of the school and campus are vital to making the right decision. I would urge you to visit all schools you apply to or are accepted at before you attend. We would hate to see you head to a school for your MBA that you feel uncomfortable at--it will be a long two years for you if that is the case.

INSEAD MBA with Carolilne Diarte Edwards

jerex (Oct 29, 2007 1:29:00 PM)
Do you have any numbers on the number of applicants in the January vs September intakes at INSEAD?

CarolineDiarteEdwardsINSEAD (Oct 29, 2007 1:29:19 PM)
The level of competition is the same for both intakes, but we don't give out application figures. We are seeing an increase in application volume, but we don't give out the statistics.

goenka (Oct 29, 2007 1:30:36 PM)
Guess, you missed my question....How good would INSEAD be for someone who wants to make a career change into Finance; Consulting being the strength of INSEAD.

CarolineDiarteEdwardsINSEAD (Oct 29, 2007 1:31:28 PM)
It's a misperception that we prepare our class for consulting more than finance. We have rougly 1/3 of the class going into consulting and 1/3 going into finance.