Welcome to MBA Podcaster—the only source for cutting-edge information and advice on the MBA application process. I’m Janet Nakano. It’s August and you still have just enough time to put together a great business school application. So, if you haven’t already gotten started, it’s now or next year.

“It’s not, by any means, too late to apply. But a person has to sort of get cracking.”

We’ll help you plan out the next few months from studying for the GMAT; tackling the essays, and submitting your application in the best round possible. Two MBA admissions consultants will give you a run down of their best advice, and a soon-to-be first-year MBA student has a few tricks up his sleeve on getting into the school of your choice.

Let’s take that overwhelming application process and break it down piece by piece. Tackling one component at a time is a good way to start says Stacy Blackman of Stacy Blackman Consulting. “I always think that the GMAT is a really good first step. And this is because it’s really difficult to work full-time, study for the GMAT, and be working on your applications in parallel. And since you take the test and it’s finished, it’s a nice thing to get out of the way in advance. Your GMAT score can also impact what schools you end up applying to. So, it’s nice to take the GMAT; have your final scores; sort of have the full set of information, and then be able to move ahead and select your schools and sort of know where you stand in the process. And then, of course, part of taking the GMAT is the prep. So, if you haven’t already prepared, the prep is a good place to start. I think it takes about two months to really, effectively prepare for the GMAT. That’s the length of time that most of the courses are. And because the GMAT is taken on a computer; it’s a different format; there are sort of interesting formats of questions, you really need to practice. And two months is a good amount of time to do the homework, and prepare, and practice, and just become familiar with the test so that on test day you’re really ready. I recommend taking a class or hiring a tutor because they sort of help provide the framework for homework, and practice tests and studying. They help you really structure your schedule with disciplined study. The other thing to keep in mind is that although two months is a good amount of time to study for that first test, it really doesn’t hurt you to re-take since the schools take into account your highest score. So, a lot of people end up re-taking. And if you’re going to allow time for a re-take, it could actually take three or four months because you’ll study, take the test, and then sort of prep some more, and then take it again.”

Because a GMAT is all-consuming, Blackman suggests that you don’t scatter your energy on the other elements of the application until you’ve completed the test. However, says Blackman, there is one process you can start on. “In parallel with the GMAT, I always suggest that you do a lot of research before you apply, and make sure that you really understand the schools, and know what schools you’re excited about. So, I would suggest starting with a really broad list of schools; go and pull out some rankings and write down the schools that sort of peak your interest and the programs that sound interesting, and then just start researching—calling the schools, visiting, talking to students and alumni, visiting campus, if you can—and starting to narrow down that list so that you know which schools you’re most excited about and where you will eventually start your application process with.”

Choosing which schools you want to apply is a good next step. Brandon Royal is author of “88 Great Application Tips and Strategies to Get You into a Top Business School”. He says, aside from looking at school rankings, select programs you see yourself matching or fitting into. And, he says, make sure you apply to enough schools. “I would recommend a number of about eight schools. Probably a common mistake is that people are applying to too few schools. They believe that if they apply to two or three schools, they conserve their energy; they’ll do a better job. But, with the acceptance rates being around 20%, and assuming that you’re an average-informed applicant, you can sort of see you have to apply to five schools to hold at a single school. So, eight is sort of a good number because you’re going to pick up two schools for sure and, hopefully, get lucky and pick up more.”

Think your best bet is to prepare for the first-round deadline or wait for the second? Stacy Blackman says the short answer to that question is that you should submit when you’re ready. The long answer: “Some admissions committee members will say there’s a slightly higher admit rate in round one. But this could be because stronger applicants tend to apply in round one. Other admission committee members say that there’s actually a stronger burden of proof on you when you apply in round one because if you’re not really, really strong, they may deny you and wait to see what comes up in round two, or at best, sort of waitlist you. In general, across most of these schools, there’s very little, if any, difference between rounds one and two. And you need to submit when you’re ready. So, while there’s no clear advantage to applying in round one, there’s definitely an advantage to submitting your very, very strongest application. So, you need to submit when the time is right for you, and most people end up kind of staggering. If they’re very well-organized, and prepared, and ready to apply in round one—great! Go ahead—submit a couple in round one and then a few more in round two. I do think that round three is more competitive and, generally, steer people away from round three.”

Getting strong letters of recommendation is key to a strong application. Brandon Royal says make sure to give your recommenders a sufficient amount of time. “You should probably give them about the same amount of time you’re going to study for the GMAT which is about a two-month period—because people are busy and it takes them a while. And it also helps if they get you involved in the process. If you think the person is not familiar with the business school application process and they need to be coached a little bit about the detail they need to put into it and the kinds of things that would make a good recommendation letter, and you think that’s going to be a problem; you should probably send them a letter of two pages summarizing your background, but also tell them the kinds of things that do appear in some of the good recommendations to business school.”

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You still have time to approach any holes in your application. Your GMAT score, for example, says Royal can compensate for a low GPA. If your GPA is considerably lower than the average accepted GPA of an entering class of the school you’re applying to then, of course, your GMAT can offset it if you do score higher on the GMAT. They’re sort of considered a trade-off between the GMAT and GPA pendulum—so to speak. I guess the way you should look at it is this: One of the two—the GMAT or GPA—should approximate the average accepted GMAT or GPA of that school you’re applying to.”

Stacy Blackman says while it might be difficult to get involved now in some community service project to address a lack of extracurricular activities, you can take steps for other weaknesses in your application. “Certainly, taking a Calculus class, or at least, signing up for a Calculus class and letting the schools know that you are going to take it is doable. When it comes to weaknesses, addressing the weaknesses is also about how you incorporate those weaknesses and talk about those weaknesses in the context of your essays. And I really feel that it is important to address the weaknesses head on. You shouldn’t believe that the admission committee is just kind of going to glaze over them and not notice them if everything else is very strong. You need to know that they will see these weaknesses. And if you don’t sort of provide a context, they may think the very worst. So, if you have a legitimate reason—for instance, maybe you worked full-time during school or you had a family crisis. If there’s a reason for a low GPA, you should present that reason. At the same time, you definitely don’t want to appear whiney or sort of make excuses. You need to be able to juggle a lot of different things and handle stress. So, be very careful with the context that you provide when you’re talking about your weaknesses. The other thing is that you don’t want to dwell on these things too much. You don’t want your whole application to be about a low GPA. You want to just discuss it and then move on. I do think that a little bit of humility is key. So, if the reason for a low GPA is just that you were disorganized and immature during your first year of college, it’s okay to sort of fess up to that. Show that you’re someone who is very self-aware and demonstrate how you’ve matured since then and that you really value academics and then you can move on. The other thing that you can do with a weakness in your application is kind of turn a weakness into a strength. For instance, I had a client a couple of years ago who was laid off a number of times during the course of his career and had a number of holes in his resume. And instead of covering it up or making excuses, he discussed it and then explained how he landed on his feet, and started a company on his own and re-directed his career. And it really showed that he was very resilient, and focused, and able to get up after falling down. And, actually, I think the holes in his resume became less important and what became more important were some of the personal strengths that he was able to bring forward.”

For many of the schools, the essay questions have already been published. So, once you’re ready to take on this next step, Stacy Blackman says here are some tips on getting started. “It is very important to approach the process of writing the essays correctly because I think rushing into it and feeling like you need to quickly churn out drafts can actually end up causing you more time in the end. Upfront, you should plan on spending probably around 60 hours in front of your computer, if you’re working on a set of four to six applications. And you really want to budget the time upfront so that you have time for a lot of internal reflection, and iterating on your ideas, and also gathering external feedback. So, if you’re working with a consultant, or just informally gathering feedback from friends or colleagues, you want to make sure that it’s legitimate feedback and not someone who’s just sort of telling you you’re doing a great job, and then you give yourself time to actually incorporate the feedback. Before you even read the questions there’s a lot of prep work you can do to kind of define your own brand and really determine what key characteristics make up that brand. You’ll also want to nail down your story with regards to how your career has progressed so far, and where you want to take it, and how business school fits in as the logical link in between points A and B. So, you do a lot of thinking and once you’ve solidified a lot of these ideas—your own branding and your career story—you’ve almost come up with a lot of the content for these essays without even reading the essay questions. Once you’ve read the questions, you may want to sit on them for a few days; kind of mull over how you’re going to approach the questions and really come up with strong micro-examples for absolutely every statement that you’re going to make. So, if you’re going to claim to be a great leader and a great team member, you want to make sure you have very strong micro-examples that you can talk about in your essays, and they’ll also be backed up in your interview and recommendations. So, once you’ve done a lot of this thinking, you can start drafting outlines and from there you should be able to pretty easily write your essays. And I recommend that you allot about two to three hours each time you sit down in front of the computer, so you’re not trying to grab 15-minute chunks of time. You’ll end up with a very disjointed essay. So, doing very long, eight-hour marathon sessions can lead to burn out and the material is not going to be as strong. So, you want to make sure that your sitting down in two to three hour chunks after work or on a weekend and cranking out the essays once you’ve done all the prep work.”

Brandon Royals says he’s found that this particular tip can help applicants on their essays. “I think that a lot of applicants believe when they ask you why you want your MBA and why you want to come to our school that the why-an-MBA question is more important. It’s more important for you to explain why you want to do an MBA. But I found from experience that where people really could gain a lot of points in their application is if they concentrated on doing a much better job of explaining why they want to go to a particular school—the why-xyz-school question—because schools, at the end of the day, are very brand conscious. And they really want to know why you fit with them. Most of the reasons why you want an MBA, on the other hand, are things that can be predicted. A lot of them you couldn’t say. For example, I want more money or I want a hedge against job uncertainty. These kinds of things you couldn’t say. And the reasons for legitimately wanting an MBA that you can say are things like: ‘I want to be recognized for promotional purposes, and I want to learn other skills. I’m in marketing and I want to learn more finance. I’m in finance and I want to learn more marketing.’ But these are all things that most people can predict that those would be the reasons for going to business school. But the thing that they can’t predict nearly as much is why you want their particular school. What are the things that you particularly like about their particular school? How does your background match who they are? And how do you also stand out? So, I think that that is a place where you can get a lot of points.”

Royal says all applicants, but international ones especially, should try to be as precise and detailed as possible when writing the essays. “One really good tip is to try to be very specific on your career-goals essay when they ask you what you want to do with your career. If you say things like, ‘My career goal is to obtain a national position with a multinational company,’ or ‘My goal is to do something entrepreneurial and some day own my own company,’ that would be considered career goals that are too general. You want to be specific. You want to say something like my goal is to become a leading executive in the fast-moving consumer goods area in Asia. And my mid-range goal is to obtain my MBA and then join a leading consulting firm and gain a specialty in intensive marketing of goods. Then you’re starting to sound like a person who has a much more well-thought-out career goal. So, I think that that is the key essay to start off with. Be specific about your career goals in your career goals essay.”

Tim Darling will be a first-year student at the Tepper School at Carnegie Mellon University. He calls himself a regular guy—an engineer for six years who didn’t go to an Ivy League school for undergrad. Last year, he applied to five schools; ranked in the top 15 and was accepted to all but one. Darling says he tackled the application process without any prep courses or MBA consultants. He says while finding his way through the process, there was one method in which he approached the essays that might work for you. “I kind of went about the essays in a unique way and I started thinking about them over the summer. I don’t think the essays for most of the schools are published until the end of August. I was thinking about them probably at the end of July and the beginning of August. So, I wasn’t really thinking about answering particular questions. I’d actually just thought about the interesting experiences and anecdotes about my own life and wrote those out in kind of a loose and fun way. I was just kind of having fun with it and putting some ideas down, and then when the essay questions were posted—and even for a while I didn’t even know what schools I was going to end up applying to—I just sort of looked through those essay questions, and I had all these sheets of paper in front of me of my own stories and tried to see if there were any creative interesting matches. My personal belief is that if you sit down in front of your typewriter with a clean sheet of paper, and crack your knuckles, and just type out an answer to the question—for example, tell us about a time you ran into an ethical dilemma—your response is going to be quite dry. It’s not going to have a lot of spark and creativity. But if you look at that question and you can look over some stories about yourself that you’ve already put down on paper that are sitting right in front of you, you might think: ‘Yes, there was that stereotypical time when my boss wanted me to adjust some numbers.’ But what about this other piece of paper here? What about this time when I was in Venice and my traveling companion wanted to steal a gondola? I think you can come up with more interesting and unique responses to these dry essay questions when you’ve done more of a matching than sitting down with a blank sheet of paper.”

Tim Darling stumbled upon yet another trick that helped him gain perspective and feedback on his application. “You’re going to spend 50-100 hours perhaps writing your essays. One thing that you can do is find a school—perhaps one near you—that let’s you interview early before even sending in an application. It might even be a school that you want to go and apply to. Go in for an interview and tell your stories—the stories that you’re thinking about bragging about in your essays in the interview. And you get that instant feedback from that admissions committee member about what you’re saying to them. And for me, I went into the interview early for some schools, and I was amazed because I thought, ‘I’ll go into the interview. I’ll talk about my day job. I’ll talk about my travels to Europe, for example, and the band that I play in. And I told those stories and the person who was interviewing me was sort of drifting in and out of consciousness. I think they had heard these stories a thousand times before that I thought were really exciting. And I just couldn’t make them really be interested in it, and then I started talking about this necktie company that I actually started about 18 months ago. And I started talking about that, and it wasn’t really something that I had started to beef up my MBA application. It wasn’t really anything that I had started focusing much on. When I started talking about it in my interviews, I really just got a great reaction from the person who was interviewing me every time. And I said, ‘I’m actually wearing a tie today that I made in my company.’ I think that kind of story woke them up and they were suddenly really interested in me. And I went back before I sent in my essays and I thought, ‘I really have to change some of my essays to focus more on this because this is a really a way to differentiate myself from a lot of the other applicants.’”

While the next few months will require dedication and perseverance, Stacy Blackman says remember, the best applicants are the ones that best reflect who you are. “I think that the biggest mistakes applicants make is relying on second-hand information and a lot of misinformation that’s out there and trying to fit into some specific business-school mold rather than being true to themselves. So, they’ll hear that a certain type of person exists at business school and they’ll try to be that person in their application. Or they’ll read a friend’s application and they’ll try to sort of model their application after that when their friend may have been admitted in spite of something that they wrote rather than because of it. So, I really think it’s important to be true to yourself and figure out what’s different about yourself; how you can contribute to the diversity in a class; how you can benefit a school as a student and as an alumni; how you can really benefit your classmates and show that. So, talk about how you’re unique. And it’s not just being different for the sake of being different but how what’s different about you can really contribute to that class.”

For more information, advice, and to register for your weekly MBA Podcast visit mbapodcaster.com. I’m Janet Nakano and this is MBA Podcaster. Thanks for listening. And next time, we’re going in depth on how to tackle this year’s essa

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