The folks at mbaMission always recommend getting started with your MBA applications as early as possible. By taking action now, you can dramatically improve your chances of gaining admission to a top MBA program in the coming years. It is never too soon (and certainly not too late) to take several crucial steps to shape your MBA candidacy. So they’re presenting a five-part series to provide a step-by-step timeline to help guide you down the long road of applying to business school. These guidelines assume that you are setting out a year ahead of the January deadlines. Even if you are starting later, you should be able to leverage this timeline to help you prioritize each step along the way. This week, they lay out what you should be doing May through July. For more information on mbaMission and how they can help you in this process, click here.

View Part 2 here.

May

Brainstorm and Start Writing Essays
We at mbaMission always tell our clients, You can’t turn a bad idea into a good essay. We insist on taking our candidates through a lengthy brainstorming process (which begins with a thorough questionnaire) to discover the stories that make each candidate distinct. Even as you uncover your stories, it is still important to consider them from as many different angles as possible. While this will help ensure that you understand the various weapons in your arsenal, Read more

by Jonathan McEuen, guest blogger

Jonathan McEueun is a Manhattan GMAT grad who is off to Wharton this fall. We asked him to share his application process with us. What follows is Part 5 of 5 posts in a series about his experiences. You can read Part 4 here.

Decisions, decisions

I’ve written so far about my experience preparing for and taking the GMAT, writing and editing (and occasionally re-writing) essays and gaining confidence for the interview process, all of which led into the result “ in broad strokes, a yes or a no.   In this last post, I’m going to describe my experience after getting the yes I was hoping for and the process of confirming my enrollment in a full-time MBA program. Read more

by Jonathan McEuen, guest blogger

Jonathan McEueun is a Manhattan GMAT grad who is off to Wharton this fall. We asked him to share his application process with us. What follows is Part 4 of 5 posts in a series about his experiences. You can read Part 3 here.

Be A Score With A Story

How do you tell a great story in a few essays or a few minutes of dialogue? How do you make it compelling but not desperate, informative but not pandering? How do you make sure that your reason for applying to an MBA program comes through clearly, with goals that are both realistic and inspired?

It’s a lot for a couple thousand words to accomplish.  But in sitting down to the essay-writing process, that’s the end goal (at least, it is by my opinion). Read more

This post orignally appeared on the mbaMission blog.

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported on the shifting career balance of Harvard Business School’s incoming Class of 2013. Notably, the class will have a higher percentage of students with manufacturing and technology backgrounds, and fewer students with finance backgrounds. According to HBS managing director of MBA admissions and financial aid, Deirdre Leopold, the school does not run with quotas or targets. It is worth noting that this shift is not all that significant “ the finance industry still has the strongest representation in the class.

mbaMission Founder and President Jeremy Shinewald frequently comments on how candidates erroneously try to game the admissions system. The Journal quotes him as saying, You’re going to see guys who worked on one private-equity deal with an auto manufacturer try to play up their auto experience and look ridiculous. Candidates buy into stereotypes for their target schools and become things they think the school wants. As candidates examine the stats, they should keep in mind that they can only be who they are and that they cannot go back in time and change careers. So, they are best creating an authentic picture of themselves in an attempt to set themselves apart from all others (not just those in their fields).

Whether you are headed off to business school in the fall or just planning for the day when you will be, summer is the perfect time to beef up your knowledge with a little summer reading.  We spoke with Chris Ryan, Manhattan GMAT’s Vice President of Instructor and Product Development, and with Jason Arvanites, MGMAT Instructor and Yale School of Management 2^nd year, to ask them what books they thought should be added to the incoming MBA student’s summer library. (And if you’re looking for more books after reading the list below, be sure to check out last year’s summer reading list.)

Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert

What makes you happy?   Read more

by Jonathan McEuen, guest blogger

Jonathan McEueun is a Manhattan GMAT grad who is off to Wharton this fall. We asked him to share his application process with us. What follows is Part 3 of 5 posts in a series about his experiences. You can read Part 2 here.

Don’t Get Lost Before The First Step

The big question of How should I prepare for this test? quickly becomes a set of much more detailed, specific questions:  Do I enroll in a course? Should I buy books and study on my own?  What if I need to take the test multiple times?  All this tends to become a little overwhelming.

I tried to calm down and bring myself back to the first question.  I knew I needed structure and guidance.  I again turned to friends for recommendations.  It was word of mouth that Read more

by Jonathan McEuen, guest blogger

Jonathan McEueun is a Manhattan GMAT grad who is off to Wharton this fall. We asked him to share his application process with us. What follows is Part 2 of 5 posts in a series about his experiences. You can read Part 1 here.

Deciding to apply was the easy part.

Once you weigh the pros and cons (the bird “ or paycheck “ in the hand, the uncertainty but immense potential of an MBA program that is right for you and that suits your goals), you start to see the hurdles ahead.  Application season is an expensive and stressful marathon no matter what school you apply to.  My road was looking no different.

I was going into what felt at the time like a particularly hard journey, especially considering my work situation, slightly atypical background, the amount of change going on in my life, etc. etc. etc.  But at the end of the day, Read more

The two authors of Case Studies and Cocktails, Chris Ryan and Carrie Shuchart, were recently interviewed on The MBA Show. See what they have to say below about dating, relationships, sex, and b-school jargon:

This post orignally appeared on the mbaMission blog. Read the introduction below and find the full post here.

Columbia Business School (CBS) whittled its essay questions from four to three to two over the past five years but is now back to posing three essay questions. Maybe the school’s admissions committee felt that, with just two questions, they were not learning enough about applicants? This year, CBS is offering a variety of creative options in its final essay question, giving candidates greater flexibility”and thus greater control over what the admissions committee will learn about them.

Here are the Questions: Read more

by Jonathan McEuen, guest blogger

Jonathan McEueun is a Manhattan GMAT grad who is off to Wharton this fall. We asked him to share his application process with us. What follows is Part 1 of 5 posts in a series about his experiences. We hope it gives those of you who are going down a similar path some insight into the decisions, work and thought that goes into applying to business school.

I was wrapping up my doctoral thesis in Neuroscience when I first started thinking about business school.  My research had taught me to see the process by which an experiment can grow into a potential drug candidate, and that left me eager to participate in the process of bringing innovations from the lab to market.  In addition, I had planted the entrepreneurial seed in my mind back as an undergrad, and by the end of the PhD process, it had grown into an urge to jump back into the business of science.

So Why Business School?

Halfway through the PhD process I wasn’t yet convinced that business school was the best answer for my position. Then, I started working with a student-run consulting group , and Read more