MBA admissions expert Katie Lawrence (above), who graduated from Princeton in 2008 and the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth in 2014, and who worked at Stacy Blackman MBA Consulting, to head our MBA counseling practice. Katie worked in the admissions office when she was at Tuck so she has first-hand experience seeing what MBA interviewers and admissions committees are looking for in prospective students.
No matter where you are in your education or career, you can do a lot now to increase your chances of getting into a top MBA program:
Current college students:
Take the GMAT and/or GRE as soon as you’re ready. The scores are valid for up to 5 years and current students test better than people who are busy working/not in “school mode” anymore, so take it now and get it out of the way!
Be a leader on campus. Get involved. Start a club. Lead teams and organizations. Business schools will look at how you got involved in college to see if you will likely be a contributing member of their community.
College graduates:
Develop strong relationships with your bosses. Most MBA programs ask for a recommendation from your current supervisor. Make sure they have lots of great stories about your work ethic, intellect, and strong character to make writing stellar recommendations easy.
If you took the GMAT and didn’t do well, consider taking the GRE. The GRE isn’t reported in school profiles and isn’t factored into school rankings, so if you have good work experience and got strong grades in college, you may get a little more leeway with a less-than-perfect GRE score. Some people also consider the quantitative to be a little easier. But if you crushed the GMAT, definitely submit it.
If you’d like to learn more about the MBA application process—whether it’s the right path for you, what schools best fit your interests, and how to successfully get accepted to your top-choice schools—please contact Katie @ KLawrence@esmcollege.com to learn more.
