6

Managing Timelines

Once you have embraced the task and have mentally prepared yourself to endure the application process, it is very important to plan the details. There is so much to do that one might end up missing out on some of the smaller things like arranging for transcripts well ahead in time or making a booking for the GMAT or the TOEFL exam or at a later date, making an appointment for the visa interview at the local embassy or consulate of the country to which you are headed. The reason is more often than not a lack of updated information and in most cases, poor time management by the applicant. The process of applying to B-schools consumes an extraordinary amount of time and effort, especially if you are in a corporate job that places a high premium on your time. It is important that you plan this process well and start early. This chapter contains essential information to help you do these and come out on top of the entire process, so that you are able to catch the first round’s deadline targets.

Set the Ball Rolling (March–May)

As subsequent parts of the application process progressively build on decisions made earlier, it is important that you start the initial preparation seriously. We strongly recommend that, as an international applicant, you start with the research on business schools at least 18 months ahead of the expected commencement of your classes.

For instance, if you intend to apply for the fall 2009 admissions, then you should ideally start the initial preparation in March 2008. The reason for this will become apparent in the following sections.

The initial preparation should cover the following aspects: (The details of some of the following points have been covered earlier in Chapter 3. The others will be covered in detail in Chapter 7):

1. Decide what exactly you want from an MBA programme (look up Chapter 3). This is more important than it sounds. Sure, everyone wants a better academic qualification and improved career prospects. But what beyond that? Allow yourself some time for soul-searching and answering questions like:
   • What would you ideally like to do 10, or maybe, 20 years from now?
   • Irrespective of monetary compensation, what is it that you really want to do in your life?
   • Given a chance to start afresh, which field/kind of business would you like to work in?

   Write your thoughts down. This will help you later in the process when you begin to look at specializations that schools offer as also in expressing, in your applications, your reasons for doing an MBA. Once you have been through this process, ascertain for yourself that an MBA is indeed what you are looking for. A half-hearted attempt at submitting applications to business schools is bound to betray your inadequate preparation and commitment, and would lead to suboptimal results.

2. Take the GMAT. It is important to complete the GMAT in the initial phase of preparation as it will impact the range of schools that you would finally shortlist. Preparing well for the GMAT is as essential as taking it in time. If you are, for some reason, dissatisfied with your score, this will give you enough time to retake the test or postpone it in case you feel doubtful about your preparation. While options such as retaking the test or postponing are available, remember that they come at a cost (retaking involves the entire cost of USD 250 again, while postponing a week or more before the scheduled date involves an additional USD 50 and cancellation gets you back USD 80 as refund, as of September 2007). There are also restrictions on how often and how soon you can retake the test—only once per calendar month and no more than five times within any period of 12 consecutive calendar months.

   If you are not able to schedule the GMAT early enough, you will at least need to ensure that it is in time for you to catch the application deadlines. Most schools require the official reports to reach them before the deadlines for applications. The GMAT test offers you the facility of sending across the test scores free of charge to any 5 institutions across the world. These need to be specified by you when you take the test. Official reports to other schools can be separately at a later date, by paying a fee per report (USD 28, as of June 2007). It takes 3 to 4 weeks for these reports to reach the schools. This needs to be built into your application timelines (GMAT details have been given in Chapter 7).

3. Take the TOEFL (fee USD 150 for the iBT, as on June 2007) or the IELTS (fee INR 7200, as on June 2007). These are relatively easy tests as compared to the GMAT and are not demanding in terms of preparation (assuming that you are proficient in conversational English). These tests also have a provision of sending five free reports as well as additional reports at a fee of USD 15 plus service charges for TOEFL (for the IELTS, look up Chapter 7).
4. Collate information about the application process and make a rough shortlist of the B-schools that could eventually form a part of your application list. You can:
   • obtain books and guides to help you with the process. A suggested list of books is already given in Chapter 3.
   • order copies of the school brochures or admissions booklets well in advance. Going through them helps you internalize the requirements of an application as well as the profile and unique aspects about each school.
   • browse B-school Web sites as well as others dedicated to the MBA admissions process. Store the necessary information about the schools from the Web sites including the application forms for the previous year (the application forms for any year are uploaded on the Web sites of most schools only in July or August) so that they may be easily available for future reference. Remember that this compilation takes time and cannot be done at one go.
   • jot down responses to some of the most common essay questions that appear in the applications—such as strengths/weaknesses, describing a failure, describing a leadership experience or reasons for doing an MBA. Essay topics usually do not undergo major changes for any school. Hence, it is a good idea to start penning down possible responses though these essays may not be the ones you will eventually write.
5. Contact the alumni and current students at the various schools to get the ‘inside scoop’ on the B-school. Remember, first-hand information is always more reliable than general information, provided you interpret it correctly. Many aspects such as the culture, workload and latest employment prospects and trends cannot be correctly ascertained through other means—it is best to rely on the information from those participating in the action. You could refer to students who have been posted on forums, such as those on www.businessweek.com and www.mba-forums.com in the previous year or earlier and contact them for information. If you can afford a trip to the campuses, then nothing like it. In this case, be sure to meet some of the admissions committee members, attend some classes and get a feel of what life on the campus is actually like.
6. Send across requests for official transcripts to all the institutions where you have done undergraduate or graduate coursework. In India, since transcript requests are not very common in most of the colleges, you may need to personally ensure that each of these is collected in time. Order extra transcripts (at least 15) and keep them with you, as you might need these later on for job searches in an overseas environment.
7. Develop the necessary contacts for your recommendations. Identify people who would be enthusiastic about your application and who know you well in your professional capacity or in an academic context. Ensure that you speak to them often and apprise them of your plans. Depending on the universities you are applying to, you would need anywhere from one to three recommenders—and it is best to pre-soak them so that they can get enough time to think through what they would write about you. You could also share with them your perspective of what you would like to do in the future, your goals and beliefs so that they become familiar with your thought process regarding your MBA. This is important as recommendations should not contradict your own application.

Where and When to Apply (June–August)

Having taken your GMAT and worked your way through the initial stages of compiling information about the schools, you now need to shortlist a set of schools that you will actually apply to.

Your research now needs to move on to the next level where you compare the schools and programmes in a detailed manner. Inputs from alumni and students you asked for help from in your initial round can prove very useful here.

The following need to be covered in this stage of applications:

1. Note down and tabulate data so that you can compare and assess easily. It is very easy, at this stage, to get bogged down by information because of which effective decision-making can take a beating. Tabulating is an easy way out of this. Even for subjective topics about schools, writing down the information in a single table or an excel sheet is a useful practice.
2. Make a note of the factors that make you lean towards a particular school. Though these might not seem very relevant to the task at hand (for example, none of the essay questions might ask this), keep in mind that during the interview stage, you may be faced with questions about what led you to choose the particular school. Retrieving thoughts from memory lane might not be something you want to be troubled with while facing interviews.
3. Continue to work your way through responses to the standard essay questions. Keep checking the Web sites of the schools to update your records with the requirements for the new round of admissions.
4. If you are working, try and see if you can schedule a week or a two-week break from work in the months of September/October. There is nothing like some time off from work to focus exclusively on your applications and it can be worked out best if you plan it early enough.
5. Make a summary of your key extracurricular activities—these could be in the form of sports, organizational activities (clubs/religious events/charitable causes), or artistic avenues. These are important to give the adcom a well-rounded view of your personality, rather than merely an academic or professional perspective. These activities are even more relevant if they are in the nature of community service. Please include only those activities where you were involved over a period of time—during school/college days or during your work life. If possible, collect the necessary certificates, or commendations as certain schools may wish to verify the same. We recommend an early start here, as this is a new exercise for most professionals and students. You may recollect things at irregular intervals and, therefore, would need time to collate them.
6. Do a similar exercise with your academic qualifications and credentials—these would include honours, awards, scholarships, academic publications or research work and additional qualifications.
7. Start work on your résumé (this is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 7). An early start gives you the time to discuss this with colleagues/friends and polish it further.
8. Get your paperwork in order—tax returns, investments and bank account details as well as the data on starting salary, salary increases, bonuses. Some schools require these while applying for financial aid. If you are well organized, this should not pose much of a problem.
9. Arrange for sources to fund your application fees. For most universities, you will need a credit card to apply online. If you do not have one already, plan to get one with adequate credit limit (this will depend on how many schools you apply to. Check the application fees for the top MBA programmes in Chapter 5).
10. Keep your recommenders posted on your choice of schools. Sometimes, they could also give you valuable information and leads that could help you make your decisions. Remember, however, that you are the person who is going to spend those years slogging it out on the campus. Listen to all the advice, but make decisions for yourself and not simply because of what someone said.

Tabulating all the data in a format like the one in Table 6.1 is useful for the sake of comparing requirements and arriving at your final list of schools.

The actual selection from this ensemble will depend on the information you have gathered and your ability to do justice to the application requirements of these schools. As you can see, the requirements vary from school to school and if you are hard-pressed for time, you might find the quality of your applications dwindling. Unfortunately, not all of us are blessed with jobs where you can take a couple of months off to complete our application process and a trade-off becomes inevitable.

While you apply the criteria listed in Chapter 3 and develop your list of ‘dream’, ‘reach’ and ‘safe’ schools, remember that the way you phase these applications overtime (in case of ‘rolling’ admissions) and across rounds (in case of ‘rounds’ admissions) matters and might impact your eventual results.

Applying early and/or applying in the earliest round is advantageous for a number of reasons. Firstly, the procedure of selection by the admissions committee involves human judgement, which is subjective. A good analogy to this is shopping in a mall with different stores. You enter the first store with a certain set of criteria which the wares at the store should either meet or exceed. In this first store, you tend to pick up many such objects which meet your requirements. But the more you window shop, the more your frame of reference changes and your standards begin to rise. Also, in the second store, you are less likely to buy objects very similar to what you have already bought. You constantly compare items against each other and become more selective in your choice. Add to this a budget constraint (read seats in an MBA classroom), and you have a good idea of how the process pans out. Though choosing a business school class is not as simple as this, the basic psychological factors are the same and the admissions committee is also subject to these constraints. Secondly, the process becomes tougher with each passing round. As the admissions committee reads more and more applications, it becomes increasingly difficult for your application to stand out. Thirdly, applying in the first round shows the school that you are committed to the process and are well organized. Some schools in particular, such as Columbia and Tuck, are favourably disposed towards applicants in the earlier rounds—they even have a special round called the ‘early decision’ or the ‘early action’ round (even before the first round).This is intended to help students with a clear idea of which schools they would like to attend. These rounds normally require a higher deposit to be paid than in the later rounds to secure your place in the class. Some of these schools also require that on being offered the admission, you withdraw your applications from all other business schools that you have applied to. The clear advantage, however, is that you will learn of the decision early in your application process so that you can modify the remaining application process accordingly. Lastly, knowing your admission decision earlier in the application season allows you more time for arranging for financial aid, housing and other requirements related to moving into another country.

Table 6.1 Comparison of Requirements by Different Schools*

Bearing all of these in mind, we strongly recommend that you apply to as many schools in your shortlist as possible, in the early decision or first round. The key here is the balance between quality and quantity. If this necessarily involves a prioritization among schools, ensure that you have all of your dream schools and at least one safe school covered in this round. The reason for this is that your dream schools are best attempted in the early stages. Later rounds will make it difficult to get in. Also remember that the first one or two applications are the toughest—they demand fresh thought and expression. As you move forward in the process, you would have most of the information penned down and it becomes a question of modifying and adding to the information already available. There is tendency, sometimes, to overestimate the time required for applications based on how long it took to complete the first few applications.

What we have said above is a recommendation, and by no means a gospel. Please recognize that this process can throw surprises at you, both pleasant and unpleasant. You must be willing to acknowledge this and adapt accordingly. This means that if your applications in the first round do not meet with the kind of success you hoped for, you must be willing to use the subsequent rounds to apply to a new list of schools and adjust your application strategy accordingly. On the other hand, if you are lucky enough to have your dream schools admit you in the initial round, you can party your way through the next several months! If there is one unequivocal advice that we would give you if you intend to put in a degree of commitment and hard work, it is this: do it as early as possible.

The only way in which an applicant can benefit by applying in a later round is if it allows a significant change in your qualifications or position at work. For instance, if you are due for a promotion and know that it will happen by the end of the second round, you could hold your application till then so that you can include this in your résumé and highlight it in your essays and achievements.

Preparing the Application (September–March)

Once the schools are shortlisted and you have identified which schools you are going to target by which round/month, you then need to sink your teeth into the actual process of writing your applications.

As outlined earlier, the first application is usually the hardest. You will need to get used to the online application concept. Only as you go through it in earnest will you get a clear idea of how your initial preparation including the test scores, transcripts, certificates and résumé fall into place. Thereafter, the other applications will take much less time, unless they involve the writing of unusual essays.

It is best to tackle one set of essays at a time, i.e. one school a time—this will ensure that your story-to-date, your ambitions, your reasons for choosing an MBA and the ‘fit factor’ with the school concerned all paint a coherent picture. Line up some friends and family to read these to ensure that your true personality is reflected through the essays. Remember, sometimes we can see ourselves better from a distance.

Once your first application is ready, set it aside and start work on the next one after a short break of a few days. This will help rejuvenate your creative juices, since the first would have drained you out. On the plus however, your first application acts as an excellent base for the second—you will only need to tweak the essays to bring out the facets of your personality that tie in with what the school stands for and its key focus areas.

You could use the following checklist for each of the schools that you have selected.

• Request additional score reports for GMAT/TOEFL/IELTS for universities not sent to at the time of the test and confirm if your schools have received it.
• Send original transcripts to the schools. Check if the schools have received the transcripts.
• Check for requirements such as interviews. Some schools such as the Ross School of Management at the University of Michigan and Kellogg have mandatory interviews for all applicants. In such cases, you would need to schedule your interview (either telephonic or with an alumnus in your geographical area) at the time of applying itself. Make sure you work out a convenient date. Remember that you need to be very clear about not just what you will write in your application but also about questions that have not yet been asked—about your knowledge of the school, your fit with the school and the like. Allow yourself time to prepare for these aspects too.
• Ensure that all the financial documents required by your schools are in place. Check the deadlines for applications for financial aid. These might be different from the application deadlines and might not necessarily be after a decision comes through. So you need to be careful in planning this out.
• Prepare write-ups about your job and responsibilities you have handled. If you are in a corporate job, your organization would have a detailed write-up on skills and assessment parameters used for the employees. You might even have your annual assessment reports that can be used to your advantage. Make use of these in describing your work in a professional manner. Else, look out for a good source of information on career and professions and use the terminology after you have understood what it means. The idea is to sound professional and, at the same time, avoid sounding pompous.
• Your write-ups regarding your extracurricular/community work that you started in the previous stage should now be complete. Make a judicious selection and include pieces that do not seem redundant. Applicants from India often make the mistake of compiling too much information and making it difficult for the admissions committee to identify the critical ones. In fact, a couple of admissions directors that we have interacted with remarked that they could actually make out from the thickness of a file that it is from India!
• Finalize the essays. Keep in mind the question of your overall theme, the ‘fit’ factor and the format/word limits. Refer to Chapter 9 for how to best craft your essays. A simple way of ensuring that you do not go astray is to compile distinctive features of each school in a single table (as in Table 6.2) and internalize them well.

   

  Table 6.2 A Technique to Understand Schools’ Needs Better and Plan Essays Accordingly

  	Harvard Characteristics	Ideas for Essays
  Experience at B-School	Transformation; contacts	Goals after MBA; Networking
  Learning	a) As much about yourself as the world b) Not just science but also the art of business	How 1 discovered that there is so much more to banking than just accounting and finance; banking is more about dealing with people than accounts.
  Relationship with Professors	Work together; learn from each other	Collaboration-examples of learning from work
  Academic Focus	Managerial problems faced by those charged with leading the organization as a whole	Will need this to set up my own business in the future: plans after MBA
  Method of Instructions	Case studies-simulating real-life business situation; problems that stem from many interdependent factors	Learning from one’s job-how it is more relevant and effective than learning from a standard repository of knowledge
  Student Diversity	Common factors: exceptional talent, demonstrated capacity for leadership, desire to learn	Character profiling at career camp -‘learner’
  Objectives and Values	Values and practices that support personal and organizational excellence; corporate purpose and various approaches to decision making	Self-initiated projects on improvement in customer service levels and banking efficiency

• Get your recommenders to complete the recommendations and submit them on time. Detailed discussions with them would be required at this stage so that their writing reflects your overall impression and fit with each school. It is probably a good idea to share with them your essays so they have a better understanding of your application. Some schools such as the Yale School of Management insist on hard copies of recommendations on the recommender’s letterheads. This makes the logistics more complex and you may need to budget for more time for these schools.
• While you are doing all of the above and more, try to take out some time and visit an event such as the World MBA Tour being held in a nearby location. It would sometimes help you to connect with the admissions officers and get insider tips on the application process. Also, any personal interaction or one-on-one chats, if you can make an impact, will do you a lot of good. The event would also give you a wider perspective by helping you to understand and evaluate a lot of other programmes, just to gain an idea of how things stack up in comparison to your own choices.

After Finishing the Applications (November–March)

• If you have got calls for interviews, then you need to prepare for the same and finish them on schedule, especially for schools such as Harvard and Stanford, where calls for interview are based on evaluation of your completed application.
• Make sure that all the requirements have been completed for each of your applications and things like transcripts, recommendations, GMAT scores, have reached the school. Reconfirm with the school about the same.
• If you have time on your hands, start interacting with the current students at the school. This will help you in developing relationships which would stand you in good stead when you finally land up on campus and even before that, for arrangements of your housing, visa and a host of other things. They would also give you good advice on how to prepare well for the programme early on, so that you are able to get a head start on your classmates.

Your Final Decision (January–May)

• Once you have made your decision about the school you plan to attend, notify all the other schools of your decision and thank them for having provided you the opportunity. Send in your deposit to your choice school along with your acceptance letter.
• If you were not able to get an admission into your dream or reach schools, plan your decision of attending the safe school or reapplying next year. Start early and prepare well, if you choose to reapply.
• Check the requirements for applying for a visa at the local embassy or consulate office of the destination country. Book a visa appointment date as soon as you can, but leaving enough time for you to receive all the required papers from the concerned university regarding your student status (in case of the US universities, it is the I-20 form and the letter stating the financial aid award, if granted). You should look at taking an interview appointment in the month of June/July for which you must book in advance around March/April. This would give you enough leeway, in case you need to reappear for an interview, and will make sure that you are able to get your visa, second time round.
• Complete all the requirements as stated by the university, prior to your enrollment, which might include some courses that you may need to take as well as arrangements for housing, finances and other specific pointers related to the school such as reaching early enough to join a wilderness trek.
• Read up about B-school life through books such as Snapshots from Hell: The Making of an MBA by Peter Robinson on the life at Stanford GSB and Year One by Robert Reed on similar lines for HBS. Most schools offer experiences which are closely related to the ones portrayed in the above two books, so you would get a good feel of what to expect in the days to come.

The ‘when’ of the application procedure is as important as the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. The guidelines given above can help you avoid basic errors on timelines and smoothen out the process of applying. These, thorough as they may be, are not exhaustive. You will need to be cautious about changes in the procedures followed by the schools and incorporate them with the advice given. Planning the process well will release your time and energy for the more creative elements of your application—the real differentiators. And that should be your aim, right from the beginning till the end.