Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.

If your supervisor is writing your MBA recommendation and you are having trouble ensuring that he/she is putting the proper thought and effort into your letter, you are not alone. Because of this asymmetry of power, a junior employee can only do so much to compel his/her supervisor to commit the necessary time and write thoughtfully. So, before you designate your supervisor as a recommender, you must first perceive how committed this person really is to helping you with your business school candidacy. In particular, your recommender needs to understand that using a single template to create identical letters for multiple business schools is not okay. Each letter must be personalized, and each MBA program’s questions must be answered using specific examples. Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

Studying for the GMAT is likely one of the hardest things that you’ll ever do. Many of my former students tell me that studying for the GMAT was way harder than business school classes! Read more

Guess what? You can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free—we’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

How are you supposed to get better at GMAT Reading Comp? You’re already pretty good at reading, we must admit. After all, you’re doing it now. When you see a word, your brain recognizes it without you even trying. Seriously, try not to read this word: slurp. You can’t not read it. Read more

We at mbaMission are proud to announce a new addition to our extensive trove of free Insider’s Guides: the INSEAD Insider’s Guide! Informed by firsthand insight from students, alumni, program representatives, and admissions officers, the INSEAD Insider’s Guide offers detailed descriptions of the following: Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

Some people really like history-based Reading Comprehension passages—and others find them pretty boring. Either way, you’ll probably have at least one historical passage, so let’s talk about how to tackle these. Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

The basic rule of GMAT Find the Assumption problems on Critical Reasoning is this:

The right answer is the only one that’s necessary to the argument.

But what does that actually mean, and how can you apply it on test day? Read more

How can you write essays that grab the attention of MBA admissions committees? With this thorough Duke Fuqua School of Business essay analysis, our friends at mbaMission help you conceptualize your essay ideas and understand how to execute, so that your experiences truly stand out.

Unlike a number of the top U.S. business schools, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business has made no changes at all to its application essay questions this year, meaning that it is again posing its rather unique “25 Random Things” prompt. This decision will likely make some candidates happy but dismay others. If you are among the dismayed, we encourage you to view this submission as the generous opportunity it is to provide a comprehensive picture of yourself as a well-rounded candidate. Few application essays provide such a broad platform through which to share your most meaningful values, experiences, interests, and accomplishments. Fuqua’s second required essay focuses on candidates’ expectations of their role within the school’s MBA program. You must discuss how you anticipate engaging with and being a benefit to others in the Fuqua community. The school also poses a few short-answer goal questions concerning the basic professional elements of the applicant’s profile. In our Duke Fuqua School of Business essay analysis, we offer our advice for approaching each of Fuqua’s prompts for this season… Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

A bold claim to be sure! But as I’ve used this phrase with a number of tutoring students over the past several years, I’ve seen it pay huge dividends. And I’m a big fan of simple rules and phrases that you can easily remember and apply across many different questions and even different question types. So here it is: Read more

Did you know that you can attend the first session of any of our online or in-person GMAT courses absolutely free? We’re not kidding! Check out our upcoming courses here.

If you’ve just finished taking a three-hour practice CAT, I assume you didn’t do it “just for fun.” You probably want to glean some information from the ordeal! Most people focus on the overall score and the Quant and Verbal percentiles. I’m here to say STOP. Don’t do that!! But what should you do instead? Read more

How can you write essays that grab the attention of MBA admissions committees? With this thorough Northwestern Kellogg essay analysis, our friends at mbaMission help you conceptualize your essay ideas and understand how to execute, so that your experiences truly stand out.

The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University has made minimal changes to its application essay prompts this year. The school’s required first essay has maintained its focus on leadership, but gone is the reference to teamwork, replaced by a request for evidence of “lasting value.” Kellogg also no longer stipulates that the incident candidates share be “recent,” thereby allowing applicants to plumb the full range of their history as needed to identify the most compelling or appropriate story. As for the video essays, we note that Kellogg is not stating this season that one of the questions will definitely be about a challenge, though we take this to mean merely that some applicants may receive such a question while others may not. The bottom line with Kellogg’s video questions is that they have no wrong answers and are intended to help the admissions committee get a more authentic impression of your personality (not to intimidate you!), so we hope applicants are not too concerned by that part of the application. In our Northwestern Kellogg essay analysis, we present our thoughts on how to address all the school’s prompts for 2017–2018. Read more