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.
  

I checked my email this morning and found several informative MBA interview reports that had arrived over the weekend from applicants interviewing at HBS, Wharton, Columbia, London Business School, INSEAD, and other programs. Consequently, I decided it would be timely to post a mini-round up of MBA admissions interview news and resources.

•  The HBS blog announced last week that HBS has issued most of its round 2 interview invitations. In Dee Leopold's words, "While interview invitations will continue to be issued up until notification date, it is fair to say that the vast majority have been sent."
  
• Wharton has completed posting its round 2 interview invitations. Those round 2 applicants who did not receive an interview invitation are denied.  Those who have received the precious invitation can jump in the air, dance for joy, and then check out the resources provided later in this post.
• The Darden Student Blog has a post outlining Darden's reasons for going to an "invitation only" interview policy. According to Bill Gray, the student author,  Darden previously required all domestic applicants to interview in Charlottesville, and just this year switched to invitation-only because the previous policy increased costs to  the school and the applicant, and  meant that domestic and international admissions processes differed. He also pointed at global warming, which I found a little disingenuous, but the other reasons make complete sense. A member of the Class of '09 who applied under the old policy,  Bill also wrote " I personally found it helpful to visit Darden before writing my essays.
• Haas presents a great series of tips for MBA interviews in its monthly admissions newsletter. Check out "How to Ace the Admissions Interview", by Peter Johnson, Director of Admissions, Full-time MBA Program
  

Now for the resources:

• MBA Mock Interviews and Coaching.
  
• MBA I.V.: Mainline to Top MBA Programs MBA Interview Questions and Tips.  We can barely keep this ebook in stock, ;-), and we have received fantastic feedback on it, which we haven't even posted yet. Here is a sampling:

• MBA Interview Feedback Database. The perfect source for the preparation Peter Johnson recommends in his tip article, the searchable database contains hundreds of interview reports from MBA interviews organized by school. Free.
  
• MBA Interview Prep. A five-day email mini course. Free.
  

Take advantage of the resources your wallet, sense of confidence, and general interview preparedness dictate.

 And finally, a couple requests:

1. After you interview, please share your MBA interview experience so the database will continue to grow and provide value.  Doing so automatically enrolls you in Accepted's It's a 10! contest . Winners received an Amazon gift certificate of up to $20.
2. When visiting b-school campuses, take a few pictures of any school (or its environs) listed in the Accepted B-school Zones page and send them in to Accepted's Beautiful B-School Photo contest . In addition, we will soon add pages for UNC, Notre Dame, Emory, and Georgetown so feel free to send in pictures for those schools too.  All honorable mentions receive a gift, and the three winners will take home up to a $200 gift certificate from Amazon. Right now, we only have one submission, so your chances of winning are outstanding. The contest ends April 30.

We have two large chats planned for this week and are adding a couple of excellent new transcripts from recent chats.

First the upcoming chats:

• The Consortium has put together an impressive group of career services professionals to answer your questions tomorrow December 11 at 5:00 PM PT/8:00 PM ET during an online chat in the Accepted chat room. Representatives from the Consortium, Carnegie Mellon, Emory University, Indiana University, New York University, Univ. of Michigan, Univ. of North Carolina, Univ. of Rochester, Univ. of Southern California, Univ. of Virginia, Univ. of Wisconsin will be available. Please join us to pose your questions about career change, career management, and the MBA. Our guests will have the answers.
• On Wednesday December 12 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/6:00 PM GMT London Business School will assemble an equally impressive group of admissions, marketing, and student representatives to answer your questions about its MBA program. They will be ably led by Tamsin Shillitoe, MBA Marketing and Admissions Manager at LBS. Please join us to learn more about this leading international business school.
  

Now that you know about our upcoming chats this week, let me fill you in on recently posted transcripts.

• The 2008 Haas chat with Peter Johnson and Stephanie Fujii is now online. Excerpts:

 thapar (Nov 20, 2007 1:36:23 PM)
Hi Stephanie ... it is said that IT applicants need to apply in first round to increase their chances ...otherwise the competition in second round is very high ..

StephanieFujiiHAAS (Nov 20, 2007 1:36:48 PM)
Thapar, there are always so many rumors and theories out there...

StephanieFujiiHAAS (Nov 20, 2007 1:39:57 PM)
But, Thapar, to answer your question, the most important thing is to present the strongest application possible. And your chances always depend on the strength of the pool and how your experiences compare. We do see a good number of applicants from the IT sector but we're still looking for the same criteria -- academic ability, richness of work experience (so in your career, have you progressed over time, demonstrated leadership, impacted your organization/team, etc.) and personal qualities. Competition is high for everyone since we only have 240 students per class! So remember, a strong application is a strong application.

Classof2011 (Nov 20, 2007 1:44:10 PM)
Pete: How is recruiting shaping up this year? Are the banks still hiring?

PeterJohnsonHAAS (Nov 20, 2007 1:45:18 PM)
Class of 2011, yes-- at least at this point. We've been watching this closely, of course, and some banks have indicated that they will likely hire fewer candidates, but as far as I know, none have indicated that they won't be hiring.

• The 2008 INSEAD chat on December 3 is availabe now.  Here are the excerpts:

Linda Abraham (Dec 3, 2007 12:57:26 PM)
What is new at INSEAD?

MarkNorburyINSEAD (Dec 3, 2007 12:58:53 PM)
We're seeing a striking increase in applications with Singapore as busy as France; we are still increasing entrepreneurship modules all the time; we have innovative experiential learning in Africa and many other exciting courses.

Linda Abraham (Dec 3, 2007 1:06:43 PM)
Mark, what percentage of students study at more than one campus?

MarkNorburyINSEAD (Dec 3, 2007 1:07:06 PM)
Hi Linda, 73% of MBAs study at more than one campus.

Linda Abraham (Dec 3, 2007 1:07:13 PM)
Wow!

MarkNorburyINSEAD (Dec 3, 2007 1:08:12 PM)
Linda - for the triple campus experience (Wharton as well as both INSEAD campuses) is about 15% or 120 a year.

MBA2010 (Dec 3, 2007 1:17:26 PM)
Mark: Were applications up this year? If yes, by how many percent?

MarkNorburyINSEAD (Dec 3, 2007 1:18:25 PM)
MBA2010 - applications have been growing strongly, but we do not release percentages (suffice to say easily double digit).