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Should I Apply to Business School in Round 3?

Business schools typically refer to Round 3 as “the shaping round.” By the time admissions officers are reviewing Round 3 applications, they have already accepted the vast majority of the next incoming class of students (in Rounds 1 and 2) and have a pretty good sense of how balanced that class is in terms of diversity (e.g., gender, age, race, citizenship, industry, college, background). Therefore, in Round 3, the schools’ primary focus is on increasing the diversity of the class, and this is the lens through which they view that round’s applicants. Of course, the programs first have to confirm that any candidates under consideration are qualified, but beyond that, their goal is ensuring that the class is as varied as possible. And remember, Round 3 applicants are competing for the few remaining spots not only with other Round 3 applicants but also with waitlisted candidates from Rounds 1 and 2.

Given these factors, we would say that if you believe you are coming from an overrepresented demographic in business school admissions (e.g., consultant, investment banker), you would likely have a better chance of being accepted at your target program if you wait until Round 1 of the next admissions season to apply. However, if, on the other hand, you are from a less represented industry or country—or have some other particularly distinctive attribute in your candidacy—you might have a better shot at success in Round 3.

We should note that these concerns about Round 3 are generally only applicable to the top 20 or so U.S. schools. So if you are considering applying to an MBA program in Round 3 (or the “last” round), one way of balancing the risks is by applying to schools outside the U.S. top 20.

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MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: Never Mention Religion or Politics in Your Application!

One of our consultants was chatting with a potential client one time who had applied to business school on his own the previous year but had not been accepted. Together, they were exploring what he might do differently this time, and our consultant asked whether he had discussed any of his community service activities in his previous application.

The candidate hesitated a moment before confessing, “Well, I have some volunteer experience, but I can’t write about it in my application. It has to do with my church.”

The truth was, this applicant had been involved with church activities for an entire decade—leading fund-raising activities, facilitating group discussions, organizing social events, and participating in extensive community service. But he believed (and in fact, had been told by an admissions consultant from a different firm) that because his efforts all fell under the umbrella of a religious organization, he should avoid sharing them with the admissions committee.

We disagree.

We at mbaMission have a simple rule of thumb for deciding whether or not to address potential hot-button topics such as religion and politics in your MBA application. If your intention is to convince your reader to agree with or accept your views, then you should not write about them. But if you are describing why the topic is meaningful to you, then including it gives the admissions committee insight into your personality and value system, helping them get to know you better as an individual and candidate.

Sharing activities you have participated in within a religious context is certainly fine, but what about discussing your actual religious beliefs? Are those taboo? We have read compelling emotional essays from applicants about how they lost the religious beliefs they were brought up with, and essays from candidates who discovered and adopted religious practices and beliefs on their own. Again, our rule of thumb applies: as long as you are writing about your personal beliefs—not condemning anyone else’s or trying to push your personal beliefs onto others—the topic can truly be a powerful one.

(And as for the potential client in our opening anecdote, he ultimately became an mbaMission client, wrote about both his volunteer activities with the church and his religious beliefs and practices, and was ultimately accepted to multiple top-ten business schools!)

Without a doubt, applying to business school demands a substantial commitment and can sometimes feel overwhelming. mbaMission consultants are experts at navigating the process and can help you improve your odds of a successful outcome. Sign up for a free 30-minute consultation to learn more about our services and to discuss your specific applicant profile. 

Should I Consider an EMBA Program?

A point might come in your career when you ask yourself how you can “level up” or accelerate your professional trajectory. We at mbaMission have advised many candidates over the years on whether an EMBA (Executive MBA) program might be right for them. These programs are becoming increasingly popular, so we have compiled a list of reasons you might want to consider pursuing the EMBA option.

An EMBA program might be a good choice for you if…

You are on the executive track with managerial experience.

The top EMBA programs are looking for “executives” first and foremost. This means that in addition to having a minimum of ten years of work experience, you should have people-management experience or at least be on the executive, or junior executive, track (for example, you oversee projects or teams even if they do not report directly to you).

You prefer to remain at your job while getting your degree.

EMBA programs are usually offered on a part-time basis on weekends over an 18- to 24-month time frame. For example, Columbia Business School offers two EMBA options: (1) Friday and Saturdays, and (2) Saturdays only. UPenn Wharton’s EMBA classes are held on Friday and Saturday of alternate weekends, plus several extended sessions.

This format allows students to remain at their jobs and immediately apply the lessons they learn in the classroom to their work environment and responsibilities. The opportunity cost of this kind of program is therefore lower, given that students are not required to pause their careers while they pursue their degree. If you like your job and wish to stay in it while you earn your MBA, an EMBA program would be a good choice for you.

You prefer to network with classmates who are more mature or more tenured in their career.

While many students in two-year MBA programs are seeking to explore their career options, most EMBA students already have clearly defined goals and a set career path. If you value interacting with classmates who are more mature and have more experience in their career, an EMBA program is likely a better fit for you.

You feel that having technical expertise alone is not enough as you progress in your career.

Many EMBA students do not come from traditional business backgrounds. In fact, a good percentage of them tend to be attorneys, engineers, accountants, and so on. However, as they attain ever more senior levels at work, they are increasingly asked to manage business issues and people. This shift in responsibilities can give a person the sense that their technical expertise might not be sufficient on its own to support them as they advance in their careers. An EMBA can provide you with the knowledge and skills you would need in a top leadership position in many companies and/or industries.

You are prepared to juggle work, family, and personal life while in school.

Because EMBA programs are part-time, you will have to hold down a demanding full-time job while attending classes, meeting with your study groups, studying for exams, completing course work and projects, and maintaining your family responsibilities and personal life—all at the same time! This is no easy feat. Although an EMBA program might check all the boxes with respect to what you require to accelerate your career, keep in mind the demands it will make on your time and family life. In reality, EMBA students do sometimes drop out before earning their degree, often because of work or family/personal reasons. So, be sure you have the full support of your family and employer before you embark on your EMBA journey.

You want to grow your network globally.

Top schools recognize the need to expand access to elite business professionals around the world. To do so, they are increasingly offering online and/or blended EMBA programs. For example, Wharton launched its first-ever international cohort through its Global Executive MBA program in May 2023. This 22-month learning format brings together students from around the globe for a learning experience that is 25% in-person and 75% live online. If you wish to grow your network globally and are open to an online format, a program like Wharton’s could help you do so more easily than before.

If you would like to discuss your profile in more detail or receive targeted guidance on your EMBA plans or application, sign up for a free 30-minute consultation with an experienced mbaMission consultant.

Three Misconceptions about the Chicago Booth School of Business

Chicago Booth - mbaMission

The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business is one of the top MBA programs in the world, boasting several Nobel laureates and holding a spot among the elite “M7” schools. Yet despite Booth’s strong reputation, many applicants are often surprised when they investigate its MBA program. Here are three common misconceptions about Chicago Booth…

1. It is not just a finance school. 

Chicago Booth has become synonymous with finance. Its reputation in this space is undoubtedly well deserved; Booth’s finance faculty members, which include Nobel winner Eugene Fama and Fischer Black Prize winner Raghuram Rajan, have made significant contributions to the field of finance. Booth itself even claims on its site, “There is no better business school in the world to study finance than Booth.” But does that mean Booth should be known only for finance? We always recommend that applicants investigate for themselves the career outcomes and resources available. Looking at Booth’s employment report, you will find that 32.6% of its most recent class (Class of 2023) entered the financial services industry. That means that approximately two-thirds of the class accepted positions in industries such as consulting, technology, health care, consumer products, and real estate. In fact, consulting is so popular that 38.6% of the Class of 2023 (more than 190 Booth graduates) accepted consulting jobs, making the school one of the top programs for consulting placements. 

Another popular and sometimes overlooked focus at Booth is entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is the most popular concentration at Booth, which makes sense given the school’s experiential lab courses and the robust resources offered by the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The Startup Summer program offers incoming students the chance to work for a Booth-led start-up the summer before they start their MBA courses. And the school’s popular New Venture Challenge is a top start-up accelerator, helping launch more than 370 start-up companies over the past two decades. 

What is the takeaway here? Booth should undoubtedly be on your list if you are interested in finance, but if not, definitely do not count Booth out. It is more than just a finance school.

2. Flexibility means freedom to explore. 

Booth has also earned a reputation as the most flexible business school, with only one required course that everyone takes (called LEAD). Indeed, Booth students have more freedom than students at other programs do in that they are not required to pick a concentration (though most do), and they can choose their courses, electives, and professors right away in the first quarter. You can design your course load to match your recruiting timeline. And you can even take up to six courses outside Booth at other University of Chicago schools. 

Most find this flexibility empowering as they challenge themselves beyond classes in subjects they already know well or mix and match courses tailored to their needs as career changers. However, this reputation for flexibility can be misleading. Booth’s curriculum has more structure than many expect. For example, in the full-time MBA program, students must choose one course from three foundation areas—Financial Accounting, Microeconomics, and Statistics—and at least one course from seven of eight categories, which include Marketing, Decisions, Society, and Strategy. But what is different about Booth is that within these areas, students can opt for the basic course, such as “Business Statistics,” or a more challenging one to satisfy their foundational requirements, such as “Machine Learning” or “Data Mining.” Rest assured that Booth has track suggestions, career advising resources, and second-year students to guide you.

Perhaps where most applicants misjudge Booth is thinking that flexibility applies only to course selection, when in fact, it extends to the entire Booth experience: which student clubs you join, the teams you form, where you live, and so on. The school does not assign you to a learning team to collaborate with a preselected group of fellow students, you do not take multiple classes with the same cohort of students, and you are not required to live on campus. Booth truly supports the freedom of each individual student to make their own choices and believes that this freedom best prepares students to navigate future ambiguity and complexity. 

What is the takeaway here? Flexibility is core to Booth, but this does not mean you will miss out on opportunities or have zero guidance or support. Think of flexibility as more opportunity to explore.

3. The community is cohesive but not always on campus.

As mentioned earlier, Booth does not dictate where students live. Although the campus is located in a diverse neighborhood called Hyde Park, just south of downtown Chicago, most students opt to live in Chicago’s vibrant downtown, in an area known as “The Loop.” In fact, a recent student shared that most students live in one of three apartment buildings right next to each other. This off-campus proximity creates an incredible social scene, with regular dinners at Chicago’s many eateries and popular weekly “TNDC” (Thursday Night Drinking Club) events at local bars. In addition, Booth students who live in The Loop have an easy train ride down to Hyde Park and enjoy all the benefits of urban living, with modern apartments and easy access to restaurants, shopping, museums, and Chicago landmarks. 

When students are on campus, everything at Booth is housed within one building, the Charles M. Harper Center. The heart of the Harper Center is the Rothman Winter Garden. This six-story atrium serves as a gathering space for events and a common area for students, faculty, and staff to connect throughout the day. Fun fact: the Harper Center also houses an impressive contemporary art collection of 500 works by more than 120 global artists. 

While Booth students are free to choose from a wide variety of student clubs and activities, the school facilitates regular social interaction through weekly events for all types of students and lifestyles. Further afield, Boothies (yes, they call themselves that) rave about the two annual ski trips and student-organized Random Walk trips abroad. 

What is the takeaway here? Booth’s community is not fully centralized on campus, but the school and students still cultivate a thriving social scene. At Booth, you will not find a completely campus-centric culture like you will at its neighbor Northwestern Kellogg, nor does Booth have a dispersed metropolitan culture like that of Columbia Business School. 

Between the career opportunities, curriculum, and community, Booth offers a plethora of chances to explore. So, you must ask yourself, Will you relish in those choices or feel daunted by them?

I hope this post has given you a better understanding of Booth. For even more in-depth information on the school, download a free copy of the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to the Booth School of Business or watch our video on How to Get into the Chicago Booth School of Business.

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How to Build the Ideal Resume for Your MBA Application

Present Both Responsibilities and Results

In your MBA resume, be sure to showcase your accomplishments, rather than merely stating the responsibilities of your position. When your responsibilities are presented with no accompanying results, the reader has no understanding of whether you were effective in the role you are describing. For example, consider the following entry, in which only responsibilities are offered:

2022–Present Household Products Group, Flocter & Gramble Cincinnati, Ohio

Brand Manager

  • Responsible for managing a $10M media campaign, supervising a staff of five junior brand managers, monitoring daily sales volumes, and ensuring the consistent supply of product from five production facilities in three countries.

The reader is left wondering, “Was the media campaign successful? Did the staff of five progress? Did sales volumes increase? Did the supply of products reach its destination?” When this one long bullet point is instead broken down into individual bulleted entries that elaborate on each task and show clear results, the reader learns not just about the candidate’s responsibilities but also about that person’s ultimate effectiveness and successes.

2022–Present Flocter & Gramble Cincinnati, Ohio

Brand Manager

  • Initiated $10M television/Internet “Island Vacation” promotion introducing new Shine brand detergent, surpassing first-year sales targets within three months.
  • Mentored and supervised five junior brand managers, each of whom was promoted to brand manager (company traditionally promotes 25%).
  • Analyzed daily sales volumes and identified opportunity to increase price point in Midwest, resulting in 26% margin improvement and $35M in new profits.
  • Secured “safety supply” of vital chemicals from alternate suppliers, ensuring 99% order fulfillment.

By comparing the first entry with the second, you can see how much more effective an accomplishment-driven resume is than one that simply lists responsibilities.

Demonstrate Nonquantifiable Results

Presenting quantifiable results in your resume is preferred because such results clearly convey your success in the actions you undertook. However, in some instances, you simply cannot quantify your success. In such cases, you can instead demonstrate nonquantifiable or even potential results. Consider the following examples:

  • Persuaded management to review existing operations; currently leading Manufacturing Review Committee, which will table its final report in June 2024.
  • Established divisional continuing education series, noted on review as “crucial” and “game changing.”
  • Initiated biweekly “Tuesday at Five” team social event, resulting in enhanced workplace morale.

In each of these bullet points, the results of the writer’s actions are not measurable, but they are nonetheless important. The accomplishments, while “soft,” are conveyed as clearly positive.

Keep It Concise

Ideally, your resume should be only one page long; admissions committees generally expect and appreciate the conciseness of this format. If you choose to submit a resume consisting of two pages or more, your reader may have difficulty scanning it and identifying (and remembering) important facts. With these space constraints in mind, we offer two fairly straightforward “space saver” ideas:

  • Do not include a mission statement at the beginning of your resume. Your mission in this case is to get into the MBA program to which you are applying—and, of course, the admissions committee already knows this! A mission statement will take up precious space that can be used more effectively for other purposes.
  • Your address should take up no more than one line of your resume. Many applicants will “stack” their address, using four, five, or even six lines, as if they were writing an address on an envelope. Consider how much space an address occupies when presented in the following format:

Ms. X
123 Y Street
1st Floor
City, State 10001
646-111-2222
[email protected]

You just wasted five lines of real estate! To help whittle your resume down to one page, try putting your address on just one line so you can save five others for valuable bullets.

And, while we are discussing the document’s length, resist the urge to shrink your font or margins to make your resume fit on one page. Your font should be no smaller than ten-point type, and your margins should be no smaller than 1″ on either side and 0.75″ at the top and bottom. Rather than trying to squeeze too much information onto the page, commit yourself to showcasing only your most important accomplishments that tell your story best.

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