MIT Sloan Q&A with Rod Garcia and Jennifer Barba:

Nikhil (Aug 12, 2009 12:06:36 PM)
Jen: How important are Grad school GPAs if the major is the same as undergrad?

JenniferBarbaMIT (Aug 12, 2009 12:07:43 PM)
Nikhil, we are interested in seeing how well you've done in any academic setting, but we are looking at your undergraduate transcript as an indicator of academic success, because that is the one constant with all applicants.

Sonny (Aug 12, 2009 12:11:22 PM)
Rod: For the 2 recommendations, do they both have to be from supervisors or can one be from a peer?

RodGarciaMIT (Aug 12, 2009 12:12:03 PM)
Sonny: In my experience, recommendations from supervisors offer richer information than peers.

josetomas (Aug 12, 2009 12:12:18 PM)
Rod: Are there scholarships for international students? Are there no-co-signor loans?

RodGarciaMIT (Aug 12, 2009 12:13:55 PM)
Yes Josetomas, there are fellowships for everyone, but in limited quantities. We also have guaranteed loans for both US and non-US students. Additionally there are over 170 teaching and research assistantship positions available to our students and they pay anywhere from 33% to 55% of a semester's tuition if I recall correctly.

Min (Aug 12, 2009 12:15:58 PM)
Rod: I know that in my essays, I'm advised to address topics within the last three years. Do I have to apply that same time frame to the cover letter?

RodGarciaMIT (Aug 12, 2009 12:16:06 PM)
Min: No.

JenniferBarbaMIT (Aug 12, 2009 12:16:02 PM)
Over the summer, our MBA Admissions team has been busy setting up a special site for prospective applicants. It's called MIT SloanSpace. Here you can create a customized site that will allow for you to access the latest information on MIT Sloan. By completing your interest page, you'll be given access to this great tool.

2010 Wharton MBA Admissions Q&A with J.J. Cutler and Ankur Kumar

John (Aug 26, 2009 12:04:36 PM)
What are you looking for reapplicants to demonstrate in their application package?

AnkurKumarWHARTON (Aug 26, 2009 12:11:43 PM)
Hi John, regarding reapplicants, we are looking for them to help us understand how their candidacy has developed and grown over the time since they last applied. That is something one can demonstrate in all aspects of the application - from continued career progression, increased awareness and insights, new experiences, to retaking the GMAT.

Linda Abraham (Aug 26, 2009 12:09:29 PM)
JJ: To follow up on the last response, what makes an applicant a good fit with Wharton?

J.J.CutlerWHARTON (Aug 26, 2009 12:11:49 PM)
Linda, a good fit for Wharton would be as follows: We look for people who are intellectually curious, who ask "why" a lot, who want to make a positive change, who like to work with other people, who like tackling complex difficult problems, who see the current economic "crisis" as an opportunity, who wants to be "in the game" as opposed to "watching the game," who will make Wharton and their classmates better, and who ultimately will make the world better.

John (Aug 26, 2009 12:25:47 PM)
J.J.- Do you expect the upcoming applicant pool to be the same size as last year's applicant pool?

J.J.CutlerWHARTON (Aug 26, 2009 12:28:54 PM)
John, that seems to be one of the BIG questions this year! If I had to predict, I would say that the pool will continue to grow moderately. Now that the macro-economic news is brightening in Japan, Europe, Latin America, and the U.S., I think we will see strong numbers from those regions in addition to the strong numbers we continue to see in economies that were less hard-hit like India and China. The decision to apply to Wharton is not one that people take lightly, so people don't tend to apply on a whim regardless. And the ROI continues to be strong, especially for the high-quality top-tier schools.

Roshni (Aug 26, 2009 12:53:50 PM)
Ankur, the essay question on career goals is different from last year's question. So does it mean we should focus more on our goals than our current career progress in that essay?

AnkurKumarWHARTON (Aug 26, 2009 12:57:33 PM)
Roshni - this is another example of judgment being a key component of the application process. It's hard for me to say how much emphasis or focus you should place - to the extent that your current career progress is important for us to understand your goals, then you should tell us as much or as little as you think important to tell your story.

These are just snippets from the Q&As. If you are applying to Wharton or MIT, I encourage you to review the transcripts. You may just find the answer to that question you've been wondering about.

• BusinessWeek published this week a review of six GMAT test prep companies, including user feedback. The six companies are Kaplan, Princeton Review, Newton, Manhattan GMAT, Manhattan Review, and Veritas Prep
• Dartmouth announced this week that it will offer a streamlined MBA to its PhD students through the Tuck School of Business. It will be interesting to see if other schools follow Dartmouth's example.
• MIT Sloan announced at this morning's chat that it has developed a special section of its site for prospective applicants called MIT Sloan Space. Check it out.
• The MBA Roundtable just published the results of its 2009 MBA Curricular Innovation Study. If you want to know about the changes coming to MBA curricula, take a peek. 

• MIT Sloan Q&A. MIT Sloan launches this years series of chats for Accepted. We will host Jennifer Burke Barba, MIT Sloan's Assistant Director of MBA Admissions, and other members of the MIT team on Wednesday August 12 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/ 5:00 PM GMT. This is a great opportunity for you to interact with MIT Sloan and get answers to your questions.
  
• Tuck Alumni Generosity Tuck has been justifiably proud of its alumni's extraordinary level of giving. This month it announced that the recessions has not affected their loyalty or generosity.  Sixty-five percent of alumni participated in the recently ended Tuck Annual Giving campaign. That is the highest participation of any business school.  According to Tuck, "Recent media articles report no other business school above 50 percent participation in annual giving." Go Tuck!
• New PT program for Ross. Ross is expanding its part-time MBA offerings with a weekend program. Starting in May 2010, students in the Weekend Format will earn a Ross MBA by attending class two weekends a month for two years.
  
• Trends in MBA Admissions -- white paper from Veritas Prep. Veritas Prep has authored a white paper based on a survey it did of admissions officers at the top 30 (per BW) business schools. There are a number of fascinating results on trends in admissions (including increased use of consultants), common applicant mistakes, and important elements in application evaluation. Highly recommended. While I would have liked to know how many admissions officers actually responded to the survey, kudos to Veritas Prep for developing the survey, collecting the results, and publishing the paper.
• Chicago Connect. Chicago Booth has developed a "new portal that is driven by student interest" according to Rose Martinelli, Booth's Associate Dean, Student Recruitment & Admissions. Chicago Connect provides more advice on applying and opportunities for interaction. It just requires that you fill out a simple form. Check it out.

• Take 2 -- Accepted is hosting its first-ever MBA reapplicant webinar on Thursday Aug 6 at 1:00 PM ET. The webinar is free. Just register to obtain access information.
• MIT Sloan MBA Admissions Chat. MIT Sloan will launch our 2010 MBA admissions chats on Wednesday Aug 12 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET when Jennifer Burke Barba, MIT Sloan's Assistant Director of MBA Admissions, and other members of the MIT community will participate in this chat devoted to MIT's admissions policies, program, and student life.
• GRE vs the GMAT. Wharton recently joined Harvard, Stanford, and MIT in accepting the GRE in lieu of the GMAT. BW provides background on the competition between the GRE and the GMAT.
• NYU Stern gets new dean. NYU named Peter Blair Henry – the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Economics at Stanford University – as dean of NYU’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. He will assume the deanship effective January 15, 2010.
• The disappearing international student.  Alison Damast of Businessweek reports on declining international enrollment at MBA programs in the United States.

Application must be received by 12 noon pacific time.

*Reapplicants must submit their application by the Round I deadline. LFM reapplicants must submit their reapplication by the LFM deadline.
**Decisions will be released early for some candidates who will be denied admission without an interview.

MIT Sloan 2010 MBA Essay Questions

My comments below are in red.

Résumé
Please prepare a business résumé that includes your employment history in reverse chronological order, with titles, dates, and whether you worked part-time or full-time. Your educational record should also be in reverse chronological order and should indicate dates of attendance and degree(s) earned. Other information appropriate to a business résumé is welcomed and encouraged. The résumé should not be more than one page in length (up to 50 lines).

Go beyond mere job description to highlight achievement. If your title is "consultant." Saying that you "consulted on projects" is uninformative at best. Writing that you "Led a 6-member team working on a biotech outsourcing project to Slovakia with a budget of $X. It came in on time and under budget" conveys infinitely more.

Cover Letter
Prepare a cover letter (up to 500 words) seeking a place in the MIT Sloan MBA Program. Describe your accomplishments and include an example of how you had an impact on a group or organization. Your letter should conform to standard business correspondence and be addressed to Mr. Rod Garcia, Director of MBA Admissions.

Like all cover letters, this is a sales document. Make your case for admission using your accomplishments, specifically those where you "had an impact on a group or organization." How do the talents revealed in these examples demonstrate fit with the Sloan program, its tight-knit community, and its innovative culture?

Essays
We are interested in learning more about you and how you work, think, and act. For each essay, please provide a brief overview of the situation followed by a detailed description of your response. Please limit the experiences you discuss to those which have occurred in the past three years.

In each of the essays please describe in detail what you thought, felt, said, and did.

The devil is in the details, and Sloan wants them for each of these stories. Look for moments that stand out in your mind. You don't have room for anything but those stand-outs.

Win some. Lose some: Sloan is requesting fewer essays this year. Last year it asked for three 500-word essays in addition to the resume and cover letter. It also asked for a fourth 250-word essay, which was entirely open-ended and gave you the opportunity to present a different side of you. This year you don't have that opportunity, and you don't need to write a fourth essay.

All these questions are new for this year.

All Applicants:

Essay 1: Please describe a time when you went beyond what was defined, expected, established, or popular. (500 words or less, limited to one page)

The question on one hand provides direction and is clearly defined. On the other, it provides plenty of latitude for individuality. One of the more interesting and unusual options in this question is "beyond what was ... popular."

You need to write about an experience with an expectation of outcome or performance that you surpassed -- perhaps blew past. In writing your essay you could start with the expectation, i.e. what you went beyond. Or you could start with the achievement. You could start with the moment when you accepted the challenge or when you realized you were going in an unexpected direction.

Don't forget to include analysis in the answer. To what do you ascribe your success? What motivated you? What did you learn from the experience? Say what you felt and thought as well as what you said and did.

Essay 2: Please describe a time when you coached, trained, or mentored a person or group. (500 words or less, limited to one page)

Leadership is at the heart of this question. You can use a professional or a non-professional experience for this essay. Sports, community service, or even the arts can provide the context. The substance should show how you motivate, persuade, teach, and lead.

Essay 3: Please describe a time when you took responsibility for achieving an objective. (500 words or less, limited to one page)

A different aspect of leadership from that sought in Essay 2. Taking responsibility for an outcome before it happens is a critical element of leadership. As you approach this and the other questions, keep in mind MIT's very practical focus and motto: "mens et manus"or "mind and hand." When you accepted that responsibility, how did you go from concept (the objective) to reality (the outcome)?

Supplemental Information
You may use this section to address whatever else you want the Admissions Committee to know. (250 words or less, limited to one page)

If there is some facet of your experience, be it professional, academic or personal, that you have not discussed elsewhere and would like the adcom to know about, include it here. Give them another reason to admit you, but don't submit the grand summary, appeal, or closing statement. Keep it focused and cogent. Yes if necessary, you can use this question to address specific circumstances that may have affected your academic performance.

If you would like help with your MIT Sloan MBA application, please consider Accepted.com's MBA essay editing and admissions consulting or a MIT Sloan Comprehensive Package, which includes essay editing, interview coaching, consultation, and a resume edit for the MIT Sloan MBA application. Both the MIT Sloan package and essay editing are 15% off through July 31, 2009.

Business School Rankings and methodology

1. Harvard
2. Stanford
3. Northwestern Kellogg
3. Wharton
5. MIT Sloan
5. Univ. of Chicago
7. UC Berkeley Haas   
8. Dartmouth Tuck
9. Columbia
10. Yale

Law School Rankings and  Methodology
1. Yale
2. Harvard
2. Stanford
4. Columbia
5. NYU
6. UC Berkeley
6. Univ. of Chicago
8. Penn
9. Univ. of Michigan
10. Duke
10. Northwestern
10. University of Virginia

Medical School Rankings (Research) and Methodology
1. Harvard
2. Johns Hopkins
3. Penn
3. Washington U (St. Louis)
5. UCSF
6. Duke
6. Stanford
6. Univ. of Washington
6. Yale
10. Columbia

A few caveats: My strong recommendation is to use the rankings as a library of raw data conveniently compiled in one location and not as a tried and true guide of educational quality. They are not the latter. They are the former. To the extent you are going to use the rankings as a guide to school reputation and brand value, you must understand the methodology behind them and what they are measuring. Be cognizant of the differences between what is important to you and what is important to the rankings.

A few observations on the rankings themselves:

1. There are many ties in the rankings, which implies that the differences in reputation are almost imperceptible when talking about closely ranked programs. For example the difference between being "in the top ten" and out of the top ten (i.e. #11) for medical (research) programs is 1 point, for the top law and business schools it's  2 points. Don't get hung up on these differences.
2. The "top ten" changes little from year to year. In most cases, if you compare these rankings to the 2009 version, it looks as if US News just reshuffled the deck a tiny bit.

For more on rankings, please see:

• The Rankings (Part 1 of 5) A multi-part series that just concluded.
• Rankings: Controversy and MagazineSales
• Thoughtful Dean Looks at Rankings
• Law School Admissions: Study Says Rankings Influence DecisionMakers

You will find in the special report articles on:

• Applying while or after a layoff.
• The series "MBA in Finance: Forget It?"
• The disappearance and reappearance of financial aid options.
• The wisdom of applying during times of financial uncertainty.

Please feel free to download and share Applying to Business School in Times of Crisis.

Please also use the comments to share your thoughts on the topics discussed in this special report.

Maverick refers to a "waitlist appointment" in his post.  If you are lucky enough to be waitlisted at a school that provides feedback to waitlisted applicants, then by all means follow the advice he gives. Review your application for weaknesses, discuss how you can address them during your appointment, and follow the meeting with appropriate action.

However, many if not most, top schools do not provide such feedback.  They rely on you to do your own self-assessment and act on it.  In that case:

1. Follow the instructions provided by the school.
2. Review adcom blogs and chat transcripts for additional tips for waitlisted applicants. Accepted has 25 chat transcripts devoted to MBA waitlist topics going back to 2000, including several so far this year. In addition, you may find tips for waitlisted applicants in recent general MBA admissions transcripts.
3. If you believe there is a weakness in your application, let the school know what you have done to improve in that area. Have you raised your GMAT score? Have you taken a class in math or writing to prepare for b-school and address a weakness? Have you taken a leadership position in community service, which you had neglected since college?
4. Inform the school of recent positive developments like a promotion, new project, published article, community service initiative or success, etc. The schools want to admit dynamic, growing individuals.
5. Show fit and interest -- provided the school is interested in hearing from you.
6. Be considerate of the adcom's time. Send in relevant, meaningful, and succinct information. You are not paid by the word to write, and they aren't paid by the word to read. If you send in reams of garbage -- a cross between spam and junk mail -- you will earn yourself a ding. 

We are hosting several chats devoted to the MBA waitlist in the next several weeks:

• Accepted's MBA waitlist chat is this Thursday March 19 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/5:00 PM GMT. Natalie Grinblatt Epstein will join me in responding to questions. Natalie served previously as Director of Admissions at Michigan's Ross School of Business, Cornell's Johnson School of Business, and Arizona State's W. P. Carey School of Business.
• Cornell MBA Waitlist Chat with Randall Sawyer on March 25, 2009 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/5:00 PM GMT.
• Michigan Ross MBA Waitlist Chat with Soojin Kwon Koh on March 30, 2009 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/5:00 PM GMT .
• MIT Sloan MBA Waitlist Chat with Jennifer Burke Barba on April 7 at 10:00 AM PT/1:00 PM ET/5:00 PM GMT.

Please feel free to join us on Thursday if you are on an MBA waitlist and for the school-specific chats if you are waitlisted at any of these programs.

You can obtain more detailed advice in The Nine Mistakes You Don`t Want to Make on an MBA Waitlist, our bestselling ebook ever. And of course, Accepted's experienced staff is available to help you one-on-one with your MBA waitlist strategy and correspondence.

As a member of the Association of International Graduate Admissions Consultants (AIGAC), we are conducting a survey to help us better understand MBA applicants’ goals and needs.  If you are or will be an MBA applicant, we invite you to share your priorities and views on the MBA application process. 

This online survey should take just 10 minutes to complete.  We would love to receive as many responses as possible before the closing date of Friday, March 20, 2009 - and AIGAC will be giving away an iPod Touch and two iPod Shuffles as a token of our gratitude! 

Thanks in advance for your participation!

Simply click here to begin. 

Managing Magic points out in his posts that the schools frequently sound very much the same in their marketing materials and presentations. So how is an applicant wisely researching her options able to discern the points of difference?

A few suggestions and not in order of importance: 

• The employment profile. See where graduates find jobs. Which schools send the most grads to the companies, industries, and locations you are most interested in?
• The class profile. Do you want a large class or a small, close-knit class? Do you want an urban or rural setting? Do you really want to be in a class that draws over 70% of its students from engineering, business, and technical fields? Or would you prefer to be in a class where 46% came from the social sciences and humanities? Both MIT and Stanford provide outstanding MBA educations, but their class make-up is very different.  You may prefer one or the other.
• The curriculum. Would you chafe at Harvard's rigid first year where everyone takes the same classes?  Or would you be lost with all the options at Chicago, which prides itself on its flexibility? Is the ability to pass out of prerequisites important to you? Do you want a lot of teacher cooperation and integration of business functions such as is provided by Tuck or Yale.
• Methodology. Do you prefer a mix of methodologies? Check out Wharton. Do you seek an emphasis on projects and hands-on learning as at Ross? Do you want strict case method? Take a closer look at HBS and Darden.
• Clubs and extra-curriculars. Managing Magic correctly points out that many schools have imitated MIT Sloan's business plan competition. But not every one has a social enterprise competition (HBS does). If you are interested in social enterprise, that competition may be particularly appealing. What are some of the unusual clubs at the different schools that you might be interested in. For example almost every school will have a Marketing Club, but only some, like Columbia, will have a Luxury Goods Marketing Club. Again, if this is your interest, the existence and health of that club may be an important attraction for you.
• Professor research. If there is a prof or two researching the niche appealing to you, he may be the magnet pulling you to that program. Are there independent study opportunities? Does he teach MBA students? What classes?
• "Fit." Then there is that almost indefinable quality called "fit."   Visit the schools you are considering to determine fit. If visiting isn't feasible, talk to current students, read MBA student blogs, and follow the student body newspapers.

Understanding the differences among business schools isn't easy, but it is worthwhile. Grasping these points of difference will enable you to make more intelligent application and acceptance decisions.