Ep 27 | Why MBA Applications Succeed or Fall Short

In this conversation, Harold Simansky and Rachel Beck discuss the complexities of the MBA application process, focusing on what can go right and wrong. They explore the competitive nature of admissions, the importance of academic metrics, the role of recommendations, and the art of storytelling in essays. They also provide insights on how applicants can move forward after facing rejection, emphasizing the need for self-reflection and strategic planning for future applications.

Takeaways

• The MBA application process is highly competitive with limited seats.
• Not standing out in a crowded field can lead to rejection.
• Luck plays a significant role in admissions decisions.
• Academic metrics like grades and test scores are crucial.
• Recommendations can significantly impact application outcomes.
• Crafting compelling stories in essays is essential for success.
• Engagement in activities outside of work enhances an application.
• Reapplying requires demonstrating new achievements or experiences.
• Self-reflection after rejection can guide future applications.
• There are many paths to achieving career goals through various MBA programs.

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Transcript

Harold Simansky (00:10)
Hi, everyone. This is Harold Simansky with the mbaMission Podcast. I'm here today with my colleague, Rachel Beck. Hi, Rachel.

Rachel (00:17)
Hello.

Harold Simansky (00:18)
So Rachel, let's just talk very broadly in terms of what will go right with an application and what sometimes goes wrong.

and what may be some of the underlying reasons why things went.

Rachel (00:28)
good, the bad, and the ugly, right? Listen, nothing is worse than when our clients spend so much time working on an application and through that process really believe in themselves and we believe in them. And then it just doesn't go as planned. And so where I'll begin in this conversation is there's thousands of applicants for many of these top MBA programs, and there's not a lot of seats.

Harold Simansky (00:30)
Yes.

Rachel (00:56)
So sometimes you actually haven't done anything wrong. You just might not stand out in this very, very crowded field. So you could give yourself a little bit of a break and not feel like I'm rejected because I suck, right? So that's something just to note. When people...

Harold Simansky (01:14)
Right. One thing, and Rachel, just to share numbers, and it's something that we hear a lot, HBS or GSB admissions committee will say things like, we could fill our class one, two, three times over. I've heard the analogy. It's like, pull back the wrapper on Oreos. You see three columns of Oreos. Choose one. So clearly, what they're saying is that luck is going to play a part of this. It just is. If somebody read your application before lunch or instead of after lunch, that may be the most impactful thing when it comes to your application.

Rachel (01:43)
Absolutely. Sometimes there's just no rhyme or reason why person A gets to move on to the interview stage or is accepted and person B is not. that's very hard to rationalize, right? In your head, you're like, but I don't understand. So when we're kind of in the thick of this, and we go through this as consultants every single year, right? We have...

We have individuals who are extremely happy with the results, and then we have some people who are not happy with the results, and we have to kind of manage that. So the way I often...

Harold Simansky (02:18)
And Rachel, very quickly, one of the services that we offer are ding reviews, where we look at people who are not our clients and see what happened there. So this also gives us another perspective on why things may not have worked out for some.

Rachel (02:28)
Exactly, exactly. So I often go through an exercise with clients who are disappointed with an outcome just to help them make sense of maybe what went wrong. And again, sometimes there's no making sense of what went wrong, but if there is a potential thing. So first of all, I'll say, let's look at your grades and your scores. If your grades and your scores are not close to the median of the school that you're targeting,

Harold Simansky (02:51)
Yes.

Rachel (02:57)
that could have been a disadvantage for you because what ultimately happens is if you have grades and scores that are lower than those medians, you're basically trying to make up for it in a lot of different ways. And for some schools, it doesn't work. And we used to have somebody who worked at mbaMission who was a former admissions officer. And she made a very valid point. If I'm going to take you with your 680.

what am I giving up with the person with the 740? And more often than not, that 740 person is getting it than the 680, right? And those scores don't exist anymore because we now have the GMAT focus, but in former times, that's basically what she said. And that could be the same thing with an executive assessment or GRE or GMAT focus. step.

Harold Simansky (03:32)
Right.

Right. So Rachel, I happen to like that question very much or that framework very much. And I sometimes look at it in reverse. People will say to me, but the range of acceptance is 80 % range goes like from 610, again, let's say 585 to, you know, whatever, 730. And I say to them, you know, quite honestly, think deeply about who is someone who gets into a Stanford with a 585. Just let your mind imagine who that person is.

And most likely, that's not you. An Olympic athlete, an astronaut, probably the person who was accepted looks more like that than like you. And you never want to be too hard on anybody, but you also have to be realistic.

Rachel (04:24)
Well, that question came up so much. It's probably been five years now. My colleague and I actually looked at everyone from mbaMission that had been accepted at Stanford and looked at their scores. And what we found was three quarters of our clients had scores that were at the median or higher. And those were more typical applicants. And those who got in with scores beneath the median tended to have special circumstances, meaning they were, again,

athletes, children of notable people, et cetera. and when I say athletes, like business schools tend to like professional athletes and high power division one athletes from undergrad. just know, even though they're not playing at the business schools, they still consider them kind of highly coveted. So that's something to note. So I also will say to my clients,

who might have not gotten in, like we talked a lot about your career goals. Like I find that sometimes there's a pattern with career goals that the client really wanted to have that maybe in the brainstorming process, I had raised some concerns about and are the career goals the right career goals for you? And to kind of take a good look at the career goals and make sure that they're believable, reasonable, and feasible right out of an MBA program.

because this is something that many of these programs really, really look at. They want you employed on the way out. So if you're reaching for something that is a little out of bounds, that might be a reason that you're not accepted. And I think that that's something very important. Additionally, I tell them, like, what have you done in your career? Like, maybe you've been promoted and that's great, but what is the, like, the star power? Like, what's your, what's your...

What's your game here? That's not just like, and I got a promotion exactly at two years when I was supposed to be promoted and like, what else have you done? That's beyond just I showed up for work and I did my work. So I think that that's something that a lot of people struggle with in their applications and they don't realize that's really important. I also always encourage people on these free consultations. And when I'm working with clients is

what else do you do for your organizations that you're working for outside of your direct line of work? And sometimes those stories are the ones like that I see clients all the time get interview questions about that. Like, I see you started this mentorship program. That's great. Like what else have you done? And if the answer is nothing that can hurt you. And then the last piece, like how are you connected to the communities you're part of? If you have nothing in that column, which by the way, I would say,

Harold Simansky (06:58)
Yes.

Right. Right.

Rachel (07:14)
30 to 40 % of the people I meet on free consultations have no nothing they do outside of work, but they still are striving for, you know, the top of the pile and MBA programs. That's going to be hard. So I'm constantly reinforcing the idea. You need to, make sure that you have these good activities outside of work where you're not just showing up, but you have a little more to it. So I'll have my clients do that assessment with me. So they might realize.

Harold Simansky (07:26)
Right, right.

Rachel (07:43)
It wasn't perfect, right? And some things you can't change, but at least you're recognizing where the weakness is. And that actually, obviously our hope is that people have places to go to school, right? Like maybe you got rejected at this school, but you get into these other programs. But if somebody gets to the point that they don't get in, then they really have a good base to then reapply knowing areas that they can improve.

Harold Simansky (07:55)
Yeah, right.

Absolutely. Let me just sort of say very quickly here, there are many people who reapply very successfully. 20%, it's my understanding, 20 % of the Harvard Business School class has applied twice if not more. At this point, I also tell people, if you're going to apply again, you have to have something new to say. Frequently that new is maybe you've gotten promoted at work. In fact, when I see particularly young people who got rejected, and if you look at their resume, they may be doing a great job, but they just haven't been there long

Rachel (08:15)
Yes. Yes.

crit.

Harold Simansky (08:38)
to either get that promotion or to actually accomplish something that is truly unique, or maybe they're not there long enough to get that great recommendation that you really do need.

Rachel (08:47)
Right. By the way, you bring up a very important point, which I also talk about with my clients. Like the recommendations are a huge part of the application. And I would say 50, 60, 70 % of applicants don't realize the power their recommenders have. So let's say somebody has everything perfect in the things I went over. Like there's nothing wrong there. They're very successful. Then.

Harold Simansky (09:04)
Yes.

Rachel (09:15)
there's a question you might ask yourself is like, what did the recommender say? And we have the benefit of getting to see a lot of recommendations. So we would hopefully be able to help guide recommenders to write strong recommendations. don't write recommendations, but we can help them understand the power of a recommendation. But that's an area that is kind of an unknown for a lot of applicants.

Harold Simansky (09:20)
Yes.

Rachel (09:42)
And that's why it's really important for them to prep their recommenders and really let them know this is such an important part of the application process. I'm gonna review with you how the process works. I'm gonna share with you some stories that I think are really strong about me. And that helps create stronger recommendations.

Harold Simansky (10:01)
No, I think that's right. And what I've always been surprised, particularly doing ding reviews, I will read recommendations. And what becomes clear really pretty quickly is if that person wrote the recommendation themselves. And the reason for that is because if you write the recommendation yourself, yes, not only is that unethical, yes, can the admissions committee also look at the language and realize what happened. But generally, if you write the recommendation yourselves, they are very flat recommendations. They don't show any enthusiasm. They really don't show a commitment from the recommender.

for the applicant and they just aren't very good. So I'd rather that you give a bunch of bullet points, again, unedited, a bunch of bullet points to a recommender and let them just sort of dig into it and let them say how great you are because that authenticity really does come.

Rachel (10:48)
Absolutely, absolutely. I would say that there are many people who blow up their chances of getting into schools because they wrote their own recommendations. by the way, now we live in an AI world where people then try to put it into chatGPT to make it sound better. And it just sounds like chatGPT.

Harold Simansky (11:07)
Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely. Absolutely. And let's talk a little bit about essays in terms of, I'm going to give a little commercial for mbaMission because we really do help people write great essays. We really do. If you have any curiosity about that, go to our website. You can see some of the essays we help people write for Harvard and Stanford, talk to some of our clients, talk to us. But from what you see sometimes, what makes for a good essay versus an essay that ends up with a rejection?

Rachel (11:36)
So I don't call us, I never say, we write essays because we don't write them. We help our clients tell their stories. We're storytellers. And what a lot of applicants struggle with is telling stories that are compelling and telling stories that, where there's different parts of their lives coming together. I call it layering.

where this experience, this experience, and this experience are put together in one essay and they tell this strong treat. And most applicants tell one dimensional stories and we want our clients to tell multi-dimensional stories. So the truth is, like, you don't have to have the best written stories, but you want your story within the essay to be really compelling. And I think that's beyond important.

You want the admissions reader. I was a journalist for two decades. So my goal as a journalist was to write stories. I worked for the Associated Press, whereby people who read newspapers, I did work in journalism before the internet, just date me on that, but who read newspapers and then eventually read their news online would not just read the opening paragraph, but would want to read all the way to the end of the story, to the end, right?

We used to call it the kicker, the last line of the story. And when I'm working with my clients, I always say to them, what's going to bring them in? What's going to, what, what gets them interested in you that they want to read all the way to the end of your essay. That's what I think is a challenge for many applicants. And when they don't get in, they don't realize like they only told this very one dimensional story that had no, they're writing a college essay, not a application essay.

Harold Simansky (13:31)
That's right. And I think it's very important to highlight that word you, which again, you just highlighted, is because I read too many essays. As part of Ding Reviews, I read too many of essays that could have been written by practically anybody. That I really read that essay, and I don't feel like I know you more than I know any other applicant. And I think that's also, they're boring essays. And if I'm an admissions committee member, I have to read 300 essays. It's like, I'm going to flip through yours. If it's boring, I'm flip through it very,

Rachel (13:59)
Well, and this is especially true from people coming from like overpopulated industries. If you're coming from consulting or investment banking, you've got to think like, what's my nugget in here that is going to make them say, wow, you know, Rachel, the McKinsey consultant sounds really dynamic more so than Harold, right? So that's what we want to do.

Harold Simansky (14:04)
Yes.

Yeah, yeah. We know that anyway. Right, right, right, of course. So Rachel, just as we close here, someone is sort of down about not getting into their school of choice, maybe not being particularly successful in this process. How should they think about it? What should next steps look like?

Rachel (14:22)
But of course, Harold.

First of all, don't beat yourself up. Take a few days and then take a hard look at your application. And also potentially think, OK, first of all, if it's round one, there's still round two. If it's round two, there's still round three. So you can pivot into other schools. And in fact, I tell clients all the time who apply in round one to still have schools that they're working on for round two and make November the most productive month ever so that

The worst case scenario is they don't have to use those applications, but they should make them productive, that month productive. But you have to be kind of honest with yourself. Was I reaching too far? And I think at mbaMission, we encourage people to reach because you reject yourself if you don't. So you were rejected, but you gave it your best shot. Now it's your job, if you really want to get this MBA, to think about what could be a better fit for me in an MBA program.

And the truth is, is if you spread your risk in your applications, which we encourage our clients to do all the time, even if you were rejected by your reach school, there might still be a lot of opportunity at these other schools that might be a little further down in the ranking, but still great programs. So keep that in mind.

Harold Simansky (15:58)
That's right. As well as get you to the same place. People, think, are always surprised when they pull employment reports for Harvard UCLA, let's say. And amazingly, the employment reports are very, very similar. People are going to the same firms. They're getting paid the same amount of money. So from that perspective, you can really get where you want to go from many, many different schools. And you really have to embrace that fact.

Rachel (16:19)
When I tell people that Kellogg, I don't know if it's still ranked, but was like the more students went to McKinsey than any other program, they're like, what are you talking about? And I'm like, yeah, so you should know that. Not that Kellogg isn't a fabulous MBA program, but my point is, is people would make an assumption that Harvard would own that.

Harold Simansky (16:30)
It's

Right, absolutely, absolutely. Listen, on that note, let me take a few minutes here to talk about the mbaMission services. First off, quite unfortunately you didn't quite get where you wanted to be, we can certainly take a look at your applications and that would be part of a service we offer called the Ding review. We'll put in some effort, we'll really look over and maybe give you some thoughts about how you can improve

And or if you want to talk to either me, Rachel, or one of our other 20 plus colleagues,

By all means, sign up for a free consultation, which is 30 minutes, where really we just talk about you, the MBA process, your profile, and really anything that's on your mind. Also, by all means, go to our website, mbaMission.com. Look at all sorts of free resources and start digging into our latest offering, OnTrack,

On that note, thank you very much, Rachel, for being here today. Okay. Okay, we'll speak to you again.

Rachel (17:24)
Great, thank you.