Articles published in mbaMission

Overrepresentation and Old Achievements in Your Application Essays

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Manhattan Prep GRE Blog - Overrepresentation and Old Achievements in Your Application Essays by mbaMission

Taking the GRE for your graduate school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we are featuring a series of admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.


Many applicants worry that they are overrepresented—male investment bankers and Indian software engineers, for example. Applicants cannot change their work histories, of course, but they can change the way they introduce themselves to the admissions committee. Consider the following examples: Read more

How to Build the Ideal MBA Resume

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Manhattan Prep GRE Blog - How to Build the Ideal MBA Resume by mbaMission

Taking the GRE for your business school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we are featuring a series of admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.


Present Both Responsibilities and Results in Your MBA Resume

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: Read more

Begin Your Essays with Your Strongest Accomplishments

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Manhattan Prep GRE Blog - Begin Your Essays with Your Strongest Accomplishments by mbaMission

When preparing personal statements that require significant information about career progress, many applicants choose to discuss their accomplishments in chronological order. Although the simplicity of this approach makes it an attractive one, we encourage you to consider an alternative to showcase your more recent and thus potentially stronger accomplishments first. By choosing this alternate approach, you may capture your reader’s imagination more quickly and reduce the risk of being lost amid similar candidates. Read more

Explaining Your Contribution & Using School-Specific Info in MBA Application Essays

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Manhattan Prep GRE Blog - Explaining Your Contribution & Using School-Specific Info in MBA Application Essays by mbaMission

Taking the GRE for your business school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we’re featuring a series of admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.


Many business schools use the questions in their MBA application essays as an opportunity to ask about the unique contributions you will make to their particular program. Read more

Consider a Part-Time MBA — Or a European MBA Program!

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Manhattan Prep GRE Blog - Consider a Part-Time MBA — Or a European MBA Program! by mbaMission

Taking the GRE for your business school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we are featuring a series of admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.


We at mbaMission often receive questions about part-time MBA programs, so we thought we should offer a look at some of the pros and cons of this option. Read more

Pluralize Nouns and Vary Sentence Length in Your Application Essays

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Manhattan Prep GRE Blog - Pluralize Nouns and Vary Sentence Length in Your Application Essays by mbaMission

One way to conserve words in your application essays and short-answer responses is by pluralizing nouns whenever possible. Singular words often require an article such as “a,” “an,” or “the.” These words can add unnecessarily to your word count, thereby cluttering your page without contributing to your argument or style. Consider the following example: Read more

How to Contextualize Goals in Your MBA Application Essay

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Manhattan Prep GRE Blog - How to Contextualize Goals in Your MBA Application Essay by mbaMission

Taking the GRE for your business school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we’re featuring a series of admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.


When business school candidates read an MBA application essay prompt, they often interpret it quite literally. For example, when a school asks applicants a multi-part question such as “What will you contribute to our school’s community, and how will being part of it help you extend your professional vision?,” many applicants assume they must answer the sub-questions in the exact order in which they are asked. However, this is not true. Such questions are actually quite flexible, and sometimes, you can better engage your reader by pursuing your own structure. Read more

mbaMission & Manhattan Prep Host Exclusive Q&A with Admissions Officers from Top-Ranked B-Schools

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Manhattan Prep GRE Blog - mbaMission & Manhattan Prep Host Exclusive Q&A with Admissions Officers from Top-Ranked B-Schools by mbaMission

Taking the GRE for your business school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we are featuring a series of admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.


As the 2018–2019 admissions season quickly approaches, many MBA hopefuls have burning questions that they wish they could ask the admissions officers of top-ranked business schools. mbaMission is here to help! Read more

Mission Admission: I Must Have Done Something Wrong

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Manhattan Prep GRE Blog - Mission Admission: I Must Have Done Something Wrong by mbaMission

Taking the GRE for your graduate school application? You’re in luck. Each month, we are featuring a series of admission tips from our exclusive admissions consulting partner, mbaMission.


You have a high GRE score and a 3.75 GPA. You have made solid career progress and procured glowing recommendations. You have been actively volunteering in your community for years. You worked hard on your application and landed an interview at your target school, where you felt you did well. But you still did not get in. You must have done something terribly wrong in your interview or unwittingly made a mess of your essays, right? Not necessarily. Read more

MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: The “Right” MBA Path

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Manhattan Prep GRE Blog - MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed: The

What have you been told about applying to business school? With the advent of chat rooms, blogs and forums, armchair “experts” often unintentionally propagate MBA admissions myths, which can linger and undermine an applicant’s confidence. Some applicants are led to believe that schools want a specific “type” of candidate and expect certain GMAT scores and GPAs, for example. Others are led to believe that they need to know alumni from their target schools and/or get a letter of reference from the CEO of their firm in order to get in. In this series, mbaMission debunks these and other myths and strives to take the anxiety out of the admissions process.


Each year, we hear from a few people who think their professional position is a liability when applying to business school: “I am a school teacher. Maybe if I transitioned to consulting, I would get into the school of my dreams.” Although bankers and consultants are certainly much more represented at top business schools than teachers, this is not evidence of a bias among admissions officers, but of the nature of those workplaces. Most bankers and consultants need an MBA to progress past a certain point on the corporate ladder, whereas no teacher truly needs that MBA to progress. Read more