The mbaMission Podcast

Ep 49 | Top Tips From MBA Admissions Insiders

• mbaMission • Season 2 • Episode 49

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The team at mbaMission has helped thousands of MBA applicants gain admission to the business schools of their dreams over the last twenty years. In today's episode of the mbaMission podcast, Harold Simansky, Jeremy Shinewald, and Susan McInerny discuss the most important things applicants need to know as they begin -- or plan ahead for -- the MBA application process. From strategically planning your timeline to building your professional profile the RIGHT way, we're sharing our top tips for MBA hopefuls who are considering applying to business school in the next 1-2 years.

00:00 Welcome to the mbaMission podcast
00:49 Understanding the MBA application process
03:11 Your MBA application timeline
05:31 The importance of in-depth school research
10:20 The role of introspection
12:44 What you have done vs. what you have learned
13:24 Allowing time to mitigate weakness in your application (and build strengths)
18:06 Demonstrating leadership through community impact
20:15 Firm sponsorship
21:44 Enhancing your professional profile 1-2 years before applying
24:16 Selecting your target MBA programs
25:31 How long does it take to execute MBA applications?
27:51 Applying in Round 1 vs. applying in Round 2
28:46 The challenges of narrative writing

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it sounds like if I asked you why Apple and you went well you know Steve Jobs is a great visionary that doesn't cut it that doesn't show knowledge of the institution you come into this process it's extremely selective you want to prove that you're the most qualified young professional to go to a great business school and it's easy to tell people the what you did right the stats the basics of the resume where the thinking comes in is the so what behind what you did and the lessons learned behind what you did here's where I am in my career here's where I want to go or at least here's a sense of where I want to go it might not be totally totally fixed but I've got a good sense where I want to go and I know that the MBA can get me

there so Susan and Jeremy someone is at the very beginning of the process and for them that that may mean a couple weeks before the deadline for others it may be a couple of years before the deadline so what do you say to them some of the first pieces of advice you'd give them well so let's give a caveat to this conversation and say that ideally they are not 3 weeks before the process right ideally they've left a lot more room and time to develop the inventory of things that they're going to use in the application three weeks i'm saying don't panic so I'm saying in a way that causes panic we're talking to ourselves regardless of where they are there there needs to be an understanding of the basic pieces of the application that you're about to develop right and of what you can do to improve each of those pieces so if you think about it as you have a resume you have essays you have the rest of the application you have recommendations and we're trying to tell a really compelling story about you your strengths and where you're going so if we can get in earlier we can nurture the relationships with people that going to write recommendations yeah I was just going to say when when do you ideally want to start this process ideally I'd be a year out I think there's an argument to be made for being really strategic and starting earlier than that and allowing yourself to develop even better uh stories development of your leadership all of those things but I think a year out puts you in a good position yeah like I don't want I don't want someone living their life to get into an NBA program but if it's really something that is truly truly on your horizon you really want to be doing this then you could just be assiduously building your profile forever i mean you could like like it's it's not that every day you need to be thinking about it but if you're in college you're like "Yeah I'm going to in four years from now I'm going to get that MBA." There's a lot that you can do to make yourself your best applicant right starting at that point like like the GMAT is good for 5 years so many people stress 3 weeks 3 months before they don't have the GMAT they're trying to apply knowing your score well before an application process truly launches much stress out of it huge yeah huge stress rel and if you're a year out I tell people testing is going to take you 3 to 5 months on average is that about what you would say yeah yeah yeah except if you're me cuz mine took about a year there we go it varies right you may have to do a bunch of retakes ideally you're doing that before you get into the essay writing process maybe we should delineate like the essay writing process so the first round applications are in September second round applications are in December essay writing process kind of begins May June the year before you apply so that's kind of where you're working backwards from if you're a really wellprepared applicant so if you're taking 3 to 5 months you're probably trying to start that like the the latest point you're trying to start taking a doing test prep is December like January is the latest if you're like maybe 3 4 months and people don't think about that so this time of year we're we're shooting this in February people are calling us and they're like "Am I late?" We're like "Well you're not late but you kind of have to jump in now right?" That's right do you have a test do you have a test okay you have test score you're not late okay oh you don't have test score i don't want to cause a panic there's lots of time to get this done properly but it's time to commit to something now exactly you you now start parallel processing so there's absolutely one road that is sequential and another road that's parallel and you sort of have to understand what your own life will allow and and at the end of the day it's for many people at their stage of their career they are working a lot so at the end of the day they have to say to themselves okay two years yeah that's sort of when if I want to continue doing a good job you know then I really got to start this thing pretty early that's interesting what you're saying like like the typical applicant who's going to get into a top school is going to be a successful person that means they're going to be working quite hard right so they're going to have less time to prep than than they would like and by and large these are people that have a pretty high bar for themselves and if you want to make sure that you're submitting an application that hits that bar that is the very that you feel like you've turned over every stone and it's absolutely the highest quality you could present that doesn't happen as easily in 3 weeks it happens occasionally in 3 weeks but it's much harder to do if you want to be one of our success stories sign up for a free consultation with a member of our full-time MBA admissions team since we've worked with tens of thousands of applicants over the past two decades we can give you our honest opinion on your chances and help you put together your very best application that is not a sales call but rather your first session with one of us for free we can give you a profile evaluation answer specific questions about the process review your resume talk about your school choices and so much more sign up at mbammission.com/cconult we look forward to working with you so early in the process you're looking at test prep one to two years out what else are you thinking about i think one thing that people totally totally overlook in this process each school has its own language or vernacular there are there are there are specific programs and specific curricula and and you know if you're applying to four or five programs which I would say a conservative applicant is probably applying to five programs maybe six the most after that you might be pushing it although people do apply to more but nonetheless let's go with five you you need to become conversant in the language of five different schools and that does not happen by checking the website the night before the application is due and in your personal statement throwing in a little bit about Chicago it just doesn't happen and so you have team whatever for that school it's not just so that your application is as nuanced to that program as it can be it's so that you end up at the school that's right for you because so Many applicants don't do that homework then they get in their process and they're like "Hey you know what tuck is really where I belong you know I thought it was Harvard i thought you know I always say to applicants when I when I'm doing mock interview I'm a pretty pretty nice guy but I I still try to give like some feedback that will shake people up a little bit every once in a while." And I say to them like the way you answered that question to me about you know why Wharton or why Chicago whatever school we're we're we're doing a question of for in that moment it sounds like if I asked you you know why Apple and you went well you know Steve Jobs is a great visionary right that doesn't that doesn't cut it that doesn't show knowledge of the institution it doesn't show you you dug in on the group that you're going to be joining theoretically at Apple and that and the way you know it doesn't show you have any knowledge of the way things actually are transpiring and so you have to get beyond that like easily googable level and we we've talked about this on other other shows that we've done sometimes that like real sincerity that really sincere thoughtful connection to a school and its resources and the way in which you've conducted that that research will allow you to forge connections and it's not that you're you're doing this research to forge connections but fortuitously they will come to know about you because your interest is sincere and you will both sort of inadvertently fortuitously create a little bit of a network at this program you become a known entity also doing what you're exactly what Susan is saying which is you'll also be educating yourself and discover that you might actually find a good fit and you'll be helping to persuade them in your essays that you really belong it's like it's a it's a really if you do it properly but it takes time you can't just send five emails people in your network that you found on LinkedIn and say "Hey can we talk on Monday?" It's like you want to It's like learning a language you can't do a weekend of Duolingo and and be there you kind of got to work at I don't know how Dualingo works but you know what I'm saying work at it over time and really learn the language so that you sound intelligent about it as opposed to like sound like you're nervously trying to speak a new language as well as this notion here of if you want to visit schools if you want to sit on on classes you really have to start thinking about that very early at the end of the day you can sit in generally for most business school classes like there's four days over the semester right right it's really well they won't let you sit in in September and they're not going to let you sit in December too early too late so you're looking at October and November and November has Thanksgiving and and suddenly people start looking at the calendar and it's like two or three days actually work for them so that's why another reason to start up very early in this process and to think about it i mean there's there's so many other benefits of of starting early i I think I mean to kind of to your point of purpose like actually not just taking as an article of faith that you need this MBA but really doing some like some some self-reflection some some career evaluation and saying hey is this the right path for me like one of the one of the things that I say to applicants who are applying to deferred programs so programs that they can apply to in their senior year of college is are you I just want to make sure like are you really is this really what you want to do because if you get into the deferred program at Harvard you will probably go and then is it the tail wagging the dog is is the acceptance leading you to go because when I was that age if someone would have pre-mitted me to Harvard Law School where I thought I wanted to I thought I wanted to go to law school I would have gone and I wasn't meant to be a lawyer absolutely and so I think it's the same thing like I think there needs to be a process along the way and that doesn't happen if you're like "Okay I got to get this done right now i got to get the GMAT done to the GRE i got to get moving." Right you you should be it's it's a huge investment of time and money is to do it well right absolutely is this really what you need like here's where I am in my career here's where I want to go or at least here's a sense of where I want to go it might not be totally totally fixed but I've got a good sense of where I want to go and I know that the MBA can get me there that's right and and here's and here's why yeah and here's the reasons why but Susan you and I had a conversation earlier about introspection and how long that takes and sort of what's involved with that yeah i mean there's it's such a process of peeling back the onion and the and the best insights are not in the first layer of that onion right and you may not know what those insights are that are in the third and fourth and fifth layer of the onion but you have to go through the process to get to them and I think you know I always tell clients that you come into this process it's extremely selective you want to prove that you're the most qualified young professional to go to a great business school but when you develop the application in my mind authenticity trumps perfection every time agree right there's there's an absolute need you know we we say this to people all the time you are looking for what is most unique and compelling about you to stand out in this process and that requires that deep introspection brainstorming peeling back the onion to get to the really unique and interesting things ex exactly in fact in a chat GPT world and Jeremy and I have talked about it on another podcast this notion here of authenticity trumps perfection is even more important now because the reality is and we've talked about it is chat GBT will bring you to mediocre and if the schools that you're looking to go to they won't settle for mediocre so what's not mediocre in a chat GBT world it's authenticity it's something real it's actually sharing with uh the schools what motivates you and why you're doing what you want to do and I think where applicants go wrong with this is they start saying to themselves like well what's my brand what's my story right and it's like your brand and your story is you like there's no like okay how do I manipulate these events and these experiences in my life to try to create a brand like you're not brand human beings are complex right so that's where you you got to get beyond peeling back you got to get beyond that first layer of the onion and you got to say to yourself like really like who fundamentally who am I like do I have an awareness of who I am i need to think about that for a while and I need to think about moments where I shine or moments where I struggled or um you know any any moments where I took you know took a risk or whatever I was a great team player I was a great support player whatever it might be I have to stop and say okay I understand what it is about this that might be not a story but be re be reflective of who I actually am right this is like the essence of who I am why I did well or why I learned in this moment is true to this experience it is connected it's not just some you know veneer that I'm that I'm creating for an admissions committee right and it's easy to tell people the what you did right the stats the basics of the resume where the thinking comes in is the so what behind what what you did and the lessons learned behind what you did and I always tell people you know the thing to remember is that they're obviously looking for outstanding young professionals but they're also looking for good human beings every one of these schools is trying to put together a community it's a human process it's a human process no question community of people that other people want to be a part of so I want to understand the dimensionalized you i want to know what your values are i want to know what it's going to be like to sit next to Harold in a classroom or be in a dorm with most people really excited about it no I think that's right what I also think about being early in the process is you actually the process itself becomes much more forgiving in the sense at that point we're early in the process something that can be very scary a bad GPA for example you know it becomes far less scary if you start planning for it a year a year a year year and a half out so bad GPA let me take the time to take an online course let me improve my academics and the reality is something like that you can only do if you have plenty of time what's important about what you're saying is not only that you can plan and mitigate a weakness like that you know that certainly that certainly is important but what I say to a lot of applicants and again this speaks to our point about 3 weeks before if you don't manage your timeline well imagine that you are trying to manage your job which is number one right and maybe have you know relationships romantic friendly whatever it might be you want to keep up with those and you've got and you don't know what surprise is going to come up at work the deal that's going to start that's going to take all your time right yeah and test prep you have you have maybe some community activities and now you're trying to layer on an additional course like like okay I'm going to quickly study for HBS core this is challenging and so this is why you have to be listening to this podcast because among yeah right among among other things what I I just want to highlight one thing which is Susan you've worked in private equity and you absolutely know sort of the variability in work and I've had too many private equity clients are like Harold I'm going to do it I'm going to going to do it then they don't do it for a month they're sort of gone for a month so and the work has to take priority at that point right like you need to keep your job and I think to your point earlier about you need that time to sort of mitigate weaknesses it's also an incredible opportunity to embolden strengths oh that's right so you you find another opportunity to take unique leadership within your job you find a way to go deeper in a community activity that will really stand out and demonstrate your leadership even more strongly you'll understand the cadence of your life better and what I mean by that is if you're two years out and you've started working and you after a year you sort of get a sense of what works and what doesn't and you know you always have Sunday mornings off so you go to the soup kitchen and you do that for a year or you know that god bless uh the office closes from Thanksgiving to January 1st i don't know such a business but you can imagine okay I'm going to go do a um it's a trip to feed children and wherever it might be so the reality is is if you have plenty of time and you can start working around the actual obstacles you may see in your life and that allows you to do many other things let's say you have a podcast because you have one you can serve the same purpose in in setting a message like hey I am motivated i am driven i am interesting i am pushing myself hard every day i don't just the the clock doesn't stop at let's say like a normal young person 7:00 or 8:00 afterwards compared to Jeremy who goes home and naps or watches something on Netflix i go out and I start my podcast and it's interesting and it shows that I'm always kind of in growth mode and that's the kind of person you want to be the CEO of your company not the kind of person who on a relative basis is napping and so I think that starting those personal those personal endeavors the same way that you would look at your community endeavors sure it's something it's a longtail thing it's not something you start three weeks oh I'm applying to business school in a month i better start a podcast i I'll tell you i've sort of I think you're absolutely right though have some mixed feelings and I'll tell you what those mixed feelings are sometimes the thing that is a that you're saying is a podcast so someone's engaged they have their podcast wonderful i have too many people saying to me that well what I did you know to really develop myself is either run a marathon or a mafoody very personal and at the end of the day if I can tell you how many folks that write those things so I think you also have to be somewhat sophisticated and recognizing sort of what's important and and what does it actually show about you right like but what I'll say to someone like that is don't don't choose not to run the marathon if it's something you actually want to do it's fine it's still it still says something about you but it's very unlikely to be your primary story unless something really dramatic happens you know someone fell near the finish line you carried them over whatever it might be right and and the same thing with like being a foodie it's like okay if you're a foodie like anyone else it's it's it's probably not going to matter it might it might be two interesting lines and they ask you about your extracurriculars or it might be something you can reference in an interview it's not a bad thing it's not like you but if you if you have gone out and you have tried all 300 you know coffee shops in within I don't know e x x miles in your city and you have itemized them and you have your favorites and you're you're truly showing it as like an inordinate passion and curiosity of yours then it can work and so it's it all just depends it all depends but but the point is that's not the type of thing you can do the week before that's right that's absolutely right i think the other thing on this point is that when people start to think about how do I build out that demonstration of leadership beyond what I get paid to do um they tend to have that college extracurricular mentality right it's a club it's a sport it's um and and I always remind people that is such a broader swath of activities for this application than they're normally thinking it might be family commitments it might be very informal you might have a disabled neighbor who you make sure has food and so the the dividing line for me is Do you have impact on someone other than yourself it's great like the persistence the diligence running the marathon is great but for me the dividing line is are you doing something that makes the world a better place that's right i'm going to say something that our colleague Jessica who attended Harvard Business School does not like but I will still say it there are no vice presidents at Harvard Business School and what I really mean by that is you have to think about impact you everything you do you have to think about impact so I say to this to my clients all the time don't tell me you're on the board of an organization because we all know one can be on a board and really not do anything so what do you do where do you have impact so to sort of run that backwards it's like okay I have two years i'm going to own something i'm going to do something i'm going to have impact you know maybe you do a fundraiser maybe you just do a pub crawl for your alumni group whatever it is and I think that focus on impact has you know in the 15 years years or so I've been doing this has only grown the focus not on the what but on the why and what is the legacy that it leaves have you seen that i think people think that the admissions officers are really like narrowly counting points or stuff like that when it's far more about actually like big thoughtful impressions that people are making and so if you have punched the clock at your local soup kitchen that there's nothing like there's nothing wrong they're not taking points away from you but if you've been an impact player and you've gone in there and you said look like I went in there I started recruiting people I found donations this place is running better now I have to reestablish the process make it more efficient right I'm an impact player wherever I go and you can see that when I joined this organization I didn't just do it in a passive way that's where you want I mean who are you who are you the viewer accepting you know in your MBA program one other area that I think that that again overlooked um that I've that I I'm I always try to poke a little bit with my applicants on this one is it takes time often for applicants to get firm sponsorship and I think a lot of applicants think my firm would never do that and they don't even bother and I've had not like thousands but but many applicants over the years who's just gone back to their firm and said hey we don't have a firm sponsor but one of my first applicants came back and we don't have a firm sponsorship program but I would like to come back and I would like you to pay for it and they did yeah and and we have we have another applicant who signed up the other day who um you know works for a family office and they're eager to have him back he is being sponsored and and so was his boss who worked with us many years ago and so you know these things just take time it's it's it's rarely you know the decision of like one person like yeah we'll sponsor it's going to go through approval it's going to go through an HR process it's got to get someone senior who says yes we'd like to allocate these funds to you and we'd like to sometimes has to go through legal we'd like to get a contract with you that says that you'll return or you'll repay this those things just take time and and and they take the willingness to put your hand up and ask and I think a lot of people don't want to ask because they're afraid to tip their hand and say they're going but maybe once you get in you go offer and hand right hey I just got into MIT right i really want to come back and you've got more leverage because you you're more valuable to them now yeah yeah definitely susan just from a purely professional perspective you know what do you do one to two years out in your job itself that will actually move the needle when it comes to being accepted to business school yeah when I talk to clients we talk about what opportunities are there given the the general realm of what you do to do something that's an outlier to take a greater level of responsibility a higher level of leadership it's about and and a lot of that again to time is about talking to your bosses to your mentors and saying I'd really like to do some I'd like to be an outsized contributor here in what ways can I do that um right and I think it that takes exploration you know it looks different in every job but it usually exists and I think if you take that initiative and initiate those kind it doesn't it doesn't just open the doors to those things it also nurtures the relationships that you're probably going to tap into later for recommendations which is the other thing for people to really think about i mean you need to be doing a great job at work but the more you nurture relationships with people who really care about you know you personally care deeply about you that's not going to happen overnight either right and also all of us have been asked to write recommendations for people who used to work with colleagues whatever it is there is nothing more off-putting than you get a a call from somebody you haven't had any contact with for the last six years and they reach out to you and they say "Hey could you write me a recommendation?" like I barely remember your name i'm like who who are you and what's this all about you have to develop your recommenders into mentors over that period of time absolutely to Susan's point I think they're also this is also something I would say is overlooked to an extent is a lot of people in their professional environment are really only thinking within the confines of their own job and so they're not thinking hey how can I get on that the the firm's charitable committee how can I get on on you know on the how can I revise training how can I how can I show that I'm I'm thinking even beyond my own scope to be an impact player and those those quasi community endeavors can really help you and they can really help you again we keep going back to this word impact that's impactful right right right you know I I I very often early in engagements or in consults talked ask people about like give me the 10,000 foot level at your firm what does it need where are their obstacles you need and so many times they are not prepared to answer that so you need to step back in your own environment and say there probably are things that are very visible to me that I just haven't spent the time to look at or I could step in fantastic no no that's a great point really one of the things that I say very early in the process to people is don't fall in love with a school but fall in love with pieces of many schools and what I really mean by that is this idea here of the schools that you're looking at are probably hard to get into and even if you work with us there's a chance that you do not get in that's just the nature of the the business really that's what this process is so rather than confining yourself and really narrowing your view of your career let's start broadening and start thinking to yourselves are there pieces of other schools that really excite me that will get me where I need to be absolutely i mean I think a lot of applicants start with a very narrow path forward right two or three schools that are their favorite which are there may be great reasons why those schools belong on their list but we talk a lot in NBA mission lingo about the tipping point right right and but and if you want to guarantee yourself a seat in the next cohort somewhere you need to broaden that list sometimes to to make sure that you you've given yourself options at the end of the day and so often when people do the homework to really understand the schools they come back and say "Gosh you know that number five program is fantastic yes I thought it was I thought there were only three schools I could possibly consider there are eight that are amazing in so many different ways to your point and I guess this goes back sort of full circle how long does it take to actually get those applications done because the essays come out in May and if you're saying to yourself look I want to do I I I personally think like if I'm working with an applicant who's being reasonable about their chances I'm rarely getting beyond six schools maybe seven every once in a while probably like five yeah and so how long does it take to execute on five schools it's it's I mean you just you know you do the math here i'm not trying to do it but let's say five schools two or three essays each five drafts each your resume is probably going to be five six drafts you know we're looking at we're looking at short answers talking recommenders working a full-time job like basically from the time the essays come out it's go time it's May and you don't want to spend every moment of your summer working on your applications like it's it's it's May you know like if you work at it just in the way we all intend to work at things when we make our New Year's resolutions i'm going to be better this year i'm going to work at I'm going to go to the gym every day whatever it is but if you can get yourself to work on your applications regularly you will methodically get through the process and you will not have it totally totally overtake your life and cause you stress that's right one of the things that I love to do with my applicants is I love to get them done i say them "Okay you're applying first round we're done August 15th that's your deadline." And applicants tend to cruise into that deadline because they've got that deadline and they're working towards it and if I said them you're done September 5th on deadline day they'd be working on it that night it's just it's just some sort of psychological you know trick I suppose to get them to do it better more organized in a more relaxed way and be done earlier so that's you know that's May June July August you know it's it's it's that feels about three and a half months to get five schools pretty close to done right right when I do ding reviews one of the questions I ask folks is "Okay when did you actually submit your application?" And if they tell me less than 48 hours before the deadline I say "I suspect it wasn't your best work." Great point and I think that that's what we're really looking at here plenty of time also means you can do your best work you give yourself the absolute best chance at the at the schools that I know you're thinking about which are great schools but require great applications i I I feel like I have to say this just cuz I don't want to cause anyone to panic if they're watching this you can get in in the second round okay i was just going to say we're just talking about an ideal so it's a good segue this is we're talking about an ideal and so we're saying hey if all your ducks were in a row it's they're about equal you're you know in some certain schools you might see I don't know 45% class in the first round 45% in the second like 10% in the third it's hard to know i don't want I don't want to I probably shouldn't go with numbers because But we always prior prioritize quality over timing when it comes to round one versus round two for sure that's right for sure we want we want to submit a better application in round two instead of a rushed application in round one right right right and people do get in round three yeah yeah they do that's why it exists we were talking before I had I had a private private equity applicant who uh who I I know well I did the consultation for him worked with Gabby on our team uh really over represented but just did a great job and got into got into Wharton in the third round makes sense i would say one of the things that comes up a lot in in consults for me because it's another adjustment you need to make and it's why there can often be so many iterations of essays is that many people have not done good writing since college they know how to present a thesis and five supporting points and a conclusion right and that and that's they feel like they're good writers because of that we say all the time this is a storytelling exercise absolutely it's about narrative writing and not everybody immediately understands what that means right a good story doesn't say this happened then that happened and that happened right the adjustments between beats in your story or but therefore because and it takes some time to develop a good relatable compelling story yeah yeah the classic um three paragraph essay doesn't work it's like the introduction tell them what you're going to tell them tell them and then tell them what they you told them that doesn't work in this situation and again good we've talked about this in other podcasts good writing takes time it also requires good editing and and good writing doesn't need to be the like adjective that no one's heard about that's not the point good writing good writing is about truly reflecting your values through your experience and your character and your values that is hard to do it's hard to do for anyone if I had to sit down I'm a professional writer and I've been editing and editing these essays for for many many years and if I had to sit down and write these prompts I would not do it in an afternoon it's sometimes harder for better writers to to get And it gets back to the time it takes to do the brainstorming we want people to do to surface the full inventory very often you know the sterling point in the story is out in the corner it's not the accomplishment in the project it's the fact that you may motivated a teammate in some really unique way that facilitated that success or it's understanding that a challenge can be an obstacle or a problem or it can have been an opportunity for you to go further and stretch more you know there's a lot of different ways to look at the way the general prompts are structured and if you don't take the time to think about all your stories from multiple angles and look in the corners and find ways to connect the dots you sacrifice quality no I think that's right and that's actually not a bad way to end it yeah yeah which the idea here is do not sacrifice quality the more time you have the reality is is you're going to produce a better product quality will be as high as you can have it the more time that you have so by all means start early give us a call yeah thanks for thanks for joining uh thanks for joining Harold's podcast Susan such a pleasure to be here do you want to learn more about your target business schools check out OnTrack by MBA Mission where we have in-depth modules on all the top business schools covering everything from what makes them unique to how to tackle the application essays and short answers and so much more you can also practice for interview and video questions all done on your schedule on demand we appreciate your dedication to our podcast and we want to offer you 30% off any OnTrack subscription use the code MBA pod to get 30% off any Ontar subscription check it out at ontra.mbammission.com