Summary of 2012 MBA Application Trends

Do you want to apply to an MBA program? You may know that MBA programs are becoming more and more competitive every year, but just how competitive were they in 2011-2012?

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) conducted a survey this year with 744 programs from 359 business schools in 46 countries. 527 of these were MBA programs, with 24 PhD/DBA Business Doctoral Programs, and 193 specialized Masters programs. The key findings clearly show a rise in applications to MBA programs across the board.

The GMAC's key findings include:

•   51 percent of all graduate management programs reported more applicants than last year, 39 percent reported fewer, and 9 percent reported no change.

•   Specialized master’s programs in fields such as management, accounting, and finance continue to enjoy robust growth. For the fifth straight year, majorities of each program type report more applications than the year before.

•   Fueled by application gains among online and distance offerings, 46 percent of all MBA programs saw improved volumes in 2012, 45 percent saw declines, and 10 percent reported no change. 

•   The trend toward greater internationalization in applicant pools continues, with most program types reporting increased or steady application volume from foreign citizens.

•   The quality of applicant pools remains strong. Some 90 percent of all MBA programs and 94 percent of specialized master’s programs reported that their 2012 applicant pool was more than or as qualified as last year’s applicant pool.

- Source: http://gmac.mediaroom.com/2012-Application-Trends-press-release

As an applicant from Taiwan to international MBA programs, what should be running through your mind when you see numbers like this?

A few things:

It's important to remember that MBA programs prize work experience, and well rounded personalities who will contribute unique value to their community, and student body. MBA programs receive a host of applications every single year from students with perfect scores and grades, all of which tend to blend together. Remember to be thinking about your own unique and global experience.

MBA programs prize diversity. As an international student applying to western MBA programs, you bring unique cultural and social perspective to bear on the program's coursework and social environment. Admissions officers see diversity as a unique point of differentiation which will be attractive to their domestic application pool. When you are applying to MBA programs, remember to emphasize your roots, your cultural background, and your enthusiasm and respect for western style business culture: in the eyes of admissions officers in the west - you are the diversity they prize.

The way you tell your story really matters. As mentioned above - grades and scores are not always the most important factor in the mind of the admissions officer. They want to understand your ethics, your values, your moral conscience. They want to understand that when you graduate and go into the world to become a successful management consultant or executive, that you will make decisions which will lead you to acheive great success, and increase the value of their University's brand. As an applicant from Taiwan, you can emphasize the role of family values and morality in your culture, and communicate to the admissions staff that these values directly translate into your personal philosophy on business, and management.

Conclusion:

Even though the volume of applications for MBA programs have increased this year, and even though all of the numbers indicate that this will be one of the most competitive years for MBA applications ever, you don’t have to despair. What’s most important is to focus on how you emphasize your unique points of differentiation, and how you will bring value to your target school’s community.

Please refer to the catalogue of freely available information and strategies written up on my blog to serve as a reference in your application process. If you would like more individualized help in optimizing your application and crafting your unique story, feel free to reach out to me, David, at transcendadmissions@gmail.com.

Reach, Match, and Safety Schools: Making Your Application Strategy

So, you're a high school student in Taiwan, and you’re applying to undergraduate university programs in the US. But there are so many schools! How do you strategically choose a good spread of schools, optimize your chances for admission, without applying to every school you hope will take you?

There’s a simple strategy. All you have to do is separate, or categorize your list of schools into three broad categories: 1) Reach Schools, 2) Match Schools, and 3) Safety Schools. When you choose one to three schools in each category, you diversify your risk, and ensure the best chance for admission into a school you will be happy at.

Reach Schools

A reach school for some might be the most prestigious schools – the Ivys. Harvard, Princeton, Yale, etc. Reach schools are called “reach” because you have to stretch high to get them, so what a reach school is for Student A might be different for Student B. If you have a high GPA and an SAT score above 2100, the Ivy League schools might be a reach for you. Someone with an SAT around 1900 might set UC Berkeley as their reach school, and a student with an SAT around 1500 might set University of Alabama as a reach school. Depending on your grades, GPA, TOEFL, and extracurriculars, you should apply to at least one reach school.

Match Schools

Match schools are schools that are well within your reach. If a school lists its average SAT scores as 1900 – 2250, and your SAT score is within that range or better, say 1950 – 2400, then that school is a “match school” for you. It means that the school is a good fit for you, and that your grades and scores “match up” well with the average grades and scores of the school. Usually these are good schools that aren’t quite at the Ivy caliber. Schools like Notre Dame, NYU, George Washington University etc.

Safety Schools

Safety schools are schools which are “safe” for you to apply to – schools which you are almost sure to get into. These are often bigger state schools, schools which have very high incentives for international applicants, or schools where your grades and test scores are at the top of, or higher than the average range. Safety schools can still be incredible schools, and give you an amazing higher education experience. Even though you may call a school a “safety school,” you should not think that it’s a sacrifice to attend one. Often times large state schools and smaller liberal arts colleges have amazing student life, and active student bodies, giving you the opportunity to meet with a relatively high number of new friends and future professional contacts.

Conclusion

Apply to at least one school from each category. One reach, match, and safety school each. If you want to apply to more schools than three, apply to two from each category, or two safety, three match, and one reach. By diversifying your risk over a broader portfolio of schools, you give yourself the highest possible chance at getting into an American undergraduate program.

If you have any questions about structuring your application strategy, or how to choose the best schools for you, if you would like guidance for picking out the right reach, match, and safety schools, then feel free to get in touch with me, David, at transcendadmissions@gmail.com.

Making Your Game Plan: Preparing to Apply to Multiple Undergraduate Programs (Part III)

This is the third, and last part in our three part series on making a game plan to apply to multiple undergraduate programs abroad as a high school junior, or senior in Taiwan. In Part III, we’re talking about why it’s so important to have all of your essay questions in one central place.

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Ok so you already know that you need to have your dates, details and links centralized in your “My Game Plan” document. You already know that you should have both a print, and an electronic version so that you can have your plan with you everywhere you go, in case you need to refer to it. But before you head down to the print shop, there’s one last, massively important section that you have to include in your Game Plan document. That section, of course – is essays.

Essay Questions

Essay questions are the most cumbersome part of any college application, regardless of whether you are a native English speaker, or not. At Transcend Admissions Consultants, we often advise that our clients make one master document with all of the essay questions from every single school they are applying to, like an "essay packet." This way, you can read all of the essay questions you need to answer in one place. You can see which essays you might be able to modify to suit other schools, without having to write an essay from scratch, and saving yourself time.

Here’s an important, time saving question: Do two of the schools you're applying for ask a very similar question, or have an open ended question? If you invest a lot of time into writing one extremely good essay that conveys your strengths and passions, you can modify it slightly to suit the values of those two schools. Where you might write "… for all of these reasons, School A is the perfect fit for my interests, and personal motivations to attend university in America," you can change "School A" to "School B" while keeping the majority of the essay unchanged.

This Essay Questions section includes Letters of Recommendation, personal statements, and any other long-form written content that you need to take control of. Do not, we repeat, do not forget about your Letters of Recommendation (LORs).

Get all of your essay questions in the last section of your Game Plan, and you will save yourself immense amounts of time and effort down the line, when your time would be put to better use writing essays and clicking “submit” on your finished applications.

Conclusion: What does your "My Game Plan" Document look like?

It contains the

- Dates

- Details & Links

- Essay Questions

Necessary for you to stay on top of all of the information you need to apply to your target schools. Have some fun with it! Customize it and personalize it with pictures and quotes that inspire you. Put in the logos and colors of each school that you like so that you feel connected to the schools and their values when you write your application and essays. You should have your “My Game Plan” document available on your computer, smart phone, tablet, and in print so you can carry it around with you in your backpack.

If you ever have any questions about how to tailor your “My Game Plan” document, or how to approach the application season for your target schools this year, feel free to reach out to me at transcendadmissions@gmail.com.

Making Your Game Plan: Preparing to Apply to Multiple Undergraduate Programs (Part II)

This is the second part in a three part series on making a game plan to apply to multiple undergraduate programs abroad as a high school junior, or senior in Taiwan. In Part I, we reviewed the importance of getting all of your important dates in one place. Here, we’re reviewing the importance of centralizing all of your critical Details, and Links in your “My Game Plan” document.

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After critical dates, the next most important pieces of information to bring into your “My Game Plan” document are the critical details and links. But what does that mean, exactly?

Details & Links

You need all of the relevant details and links for all of your target schools. It's a pain in the butt to search through the entire internet every single time you want to look something up. So by centralizing all of the information now, you won’t have to open up five, ten, or fifteen different websites every time you need to check the application requirements for your dream schools.

Does your target school require pictures on your application? Might want to get those printed up soon. Do they ask that you have any special files or additions for you application? You must meet every single requirement they have in order to be successful, so ensure you know them all.

Often times, universities will have a “Checklist” page on their application website. This is where you need to go to get all of your critical details.

What the Duke University Checklist webpage looks like, listing all of the critical information you need to put into your “My Game Plan” document. You can print these out directly, or personalize them to suit your document if you are a visual person.

Does your target school accept the common application? Do they need your first quarter grades from you, or require contact information for a school counselor?

Your "My Game Plan" document should be both electronic, and print. This way, instead of going online (and checking Facebook or the news) every time you want information, have all of the information you need for your schools printed out, and available everywhere you go, and available on your computer. Carry it around in your backpack in a file marked "College Applications" or "Top Secret." The "Top Secret" will make your friends curious, anyway!

In Part III of this series, we’ll go over why it’s important to centralize all of your essay questions into your “My Game Plan” document. Stay tuned, and make sure you let your friends who are applying to undergraduate programs now know that they should be creating their own “My Game Plan” document, right along side you!

Making Your Game Plan: Preparing to Apply to Multiple Undergraduate Programs (Part I)

So you're a high school junior or senior in Taiwan, and you're thinking about applying to a US Undergraduate program. Actually, you're thinking about applying to 5, or 10 undergraduate programs. They all seem so competitive. Your dream is Harvard or Yale, of course, or maybe Stanford, but you want to apply to a good spread of schools in order to increase the chances you have of being accepted into a foreign university.

You've got all of your ideal schools in place. If you don't get into Harvard, but you get into UC Berkeley you'll be pretty happy; but you really don't want to wind up at University of South Carolina. There's just one problem. It's already September. The new school year has started, and you have homework. You have homework for tons of classes, and you have to balance your work, clubs and sports, all of which are important to get into US schools, with the insane level of work required to apply to 5 - 10 US undergraduate universities.

It's almost enough to make you rip your hair out, right? How do you handle the whole process, and manage your time effectively to get everything done right, and well?

Great question. And the answer is three short words.

Make a plan.

Literally. You are going to make a document called "My Game Plan." This document is both electronic, and print. You will carry it around with you everywhere you go, and have it available on your smart phone or tablet.

What do you need for your "My Game Plan" document? Three things.

- Dates

- Details & Links

- Essay Questions

(This article goes over the first part: dates. Part II and Part III will cover details & links, and Essay Questions in depth).

Why make a “My Game Plan” document?

If you have one central document outlining everything you need to do, you'll feel much more in control of the process. Additionally, you'll be able to show your parents a comprehensive plan, and reassure them that you're taking this whole college application thing seriously.

Part I: Dates

You need to know the critical dates for all of the schools that you've chosen to apply for. When are the early application deadlines? When are the regular application deadlines? When is the last date that you can re-take the SAT for all of your target schools? Do you need an alumni interview by a certain date? Often times you need to arrange for those well before the early application deadline.

Write down all of the dates in a document and color code them for schools. All of the dates for Duke will be blue. All of the dates for Harvard will be crimson.  Put all of the dates into a Google Calendar, and set up Calendar alerts for them at intervals of 1 month, 2 weeks, 1 week, and 3 days before the due date so that there is no possible way you can forget what's coming.

By setting all of the dates down in one central spot, you will give yourself, and your parents peace of mind as you go through the application process. In Part II, coming soon, we’ll review Details and Links. Don’t miss it, and be sure to share this advice with any friends you may have applying to undergrad programs abroad to help them!