What are business schools really looking for?

Assessing fit within MBA schools

Should you take the GMAT or the GRE for MBA applications?

Every applicant who needs to write a personal statement for their high school, college, or graduate admissions struggles with structuring their personal statement.  It is hard enough to muster the courage to brainstorm your most salient life experiences on paper; now, the most important part is structuring your personal statement with your thesis and topic sentences.

This past weekend, I ventured back to Philadelphia. A lot was going on: the Wharton MBA reunion; the Wharton Class of 2017 graduation; and a much needed trip back to the Penn Museum. Walking through campus, seeing the familiar and iconic pit stops - Claes Oldenburg’s button, the Benjamin Franklin statue nearby, and our beloved Huntsman Hall (where Business school students take all of their classes) - I couldn’t help but remember the wonderful and incredibly chaotic experience my MBA had been.

You’ve spent months preparing for the GMAT and writing countless essay drafts. The interviews were stressful - but only another step in a series of MBA application obstacles. At work, you check your email and phone constantly, hoping that an acceptance (and not a rejection) will arrive at any moment. It comes. You’ve been accepted to Wharton. A few days after, Sloan. And almost a week later, INSEAD.

If you want to ace the GMAT to crown your MBA applications, you'll need to put in some serious time and preparation.  In this blog post, read about ways Weike--one of our Master tutors and admissions coaches--prepares her students to slam the exam.

Makes ya wanna proofread, huh?

 Taken your GMAT and gotten a score you like? Great. Picked the schools where you want to apply and maybe planned a campus visit or two? Awesome. Asked some people who know you well and whom you trust to write on your behalf? Brilliant. Now for the big to-do: writing the essays.

You might be feeling a little anxious—this is your future

we’re talking about here. Your mind may be flitting about wondering how to squeeze all your professional accomplishments into 100 characters or how to fill the page with 750 words about your post-MBA hopes and dreams. Now pause, close your eyes, and take a deep breath. Breathe it out. You can do this.

[Image source]

If you are reading this, you likely just received an invitation to interview for the the MIT Sloan MBA program.  If so, congratulations!  Being offered an interview means that you should be confident that the admissions committee thinks you can truly excel academically at MIT Sloan and now it just comes down to fit.  At this point, your chances of getting in are almost 50-50.  

After your initial excitement, you might be starting to feel a little panicked.  Don’t!  We at Cambridge Coaching have some tips to help you prepare for your upcoming interview.

Go ahead, ask him for a letter! [Image source: The Office} 

Letters of recommendation, those sneaky devils. Despite being a critical component of the application, a lot of prospective MBAs pay little mind to obtaining their letters of recommendation. As a b-school hopeful, you might be more concerned with taking the GMAT or crafting the perfect application essay. Totally understandable, but I’m here to tell you that your letters of recommendation deserve a bit more attention than you might be giving them.