The Four Dimensions of a Perfect MBA Applicant, Part 2

The following is an excerpt from Your MBA Game Plan, Third Edition: Proven Strategies for Getting Into the Top Business Schools, © 2012 Omari Bouknight and Scott Shrum. It is reprinted with permission of the publisher, Career Press, Pompton Plains, NJ.  800-227-3371.  All rights reserved. This is a continuation from part 1.

What to Do About Your Weaknesses

In the event that you look at one row or column of your grid and see a lot of white space, don’t panic! Most applicants will encounter this challenge. Remember that the table isn’t the end, but rather it is the means for identifying what you might need to work on while you build your application.

Following are some areas where applicants typically have some holes in their grids, and some ideas for bolstering your position in each.

Community Service

Not everyone has done a lot of community service, and it can be tempting to want to volunteer for five nonprofit organizations in the months leading up to your application deadline. Admissions committees can see right through this, however, so don’t waste your time in a last-ditch attempt to look “involved.”

If you simply do not have any community service activities to point to, look for other activities in your background that will demonstrate similar characteristics. Starting a volleyball club at the local gym won’t solve world hunger, but it still shows that you like to get involved and can motivate others to do the same. If you find that your application still lacks the altruistic angle that a community service activity might demonstrate, then make sure to bring out your human side in other ways, such as more subtle examples of how you helped a family member or someone on the job solve a problem. The bottom line is that you want to show that you like to get involved in the community around you, and that you are more than a GMAT score and fancy resume.

If you still have time before you begin the application process, be on the lookout for community service opportunities. Mentoring programs such as Big Brothers Big Sisters are great ways to show your willingness to give back to the community. Just remember that the key is to make a strong impact in one or two areas, not to simply sign up for half a dozen activities. That single word—[BEGIN ITAL]impact[END ITAL]—should be your guiding light. Activities that give you the opportunity to say “That would not have happened if I hadn’t been there” are the most powerful examples of all.

Another way to think of community service is as a powerful way to complement your work experience. If you haven’t had many opportunities to lead a team at work, for example, then showing how you did so as part of a volunteer organization is a great way to demonstrate leadership abilities. MBA admissions officers know that most applicants are young and may still have somewhat limited work experience, so they’re adept at scouring your entire background for evidence of high potential. This doesn’t only apply to leadership examples; community involvement, though most often associated with leadership and a desire to make the world better, can give you opportunities to demonstrate all four of the key applicant dimensions.

GMAT Score

The good news about the GMAT (or GRE, for those schools that accept it) is that it is one of the few achievements that you can work on and improve in a short amount of time (compared to community service or an undergraduate transcript from five years ago). The bad news is that some applicants can spend months studying for it and still fall short of their goal. If your GMAT score makes you look weak in the quantitative or verbal departments, be sure to bring out other examples in your application that will counterbalance these weaknesses.

If your quantitative score is low, highlight any tough analytical courses that you took as an undergrad. Or show how you use your quantitative skills to unravel tough problems on the job, or even as part of a volunteer opportunity in which you participated. Remember that demonstrating an analytical skill set doesn’t have to mean showing that you know calculus. There are practical, everyday activities that can help you demonstrate your ability to break down a problem or your comfort with using numbers to make decisions. The bottom line is that you just need to show that you won’t be helpless two weeks into your first-year finance course.

If your verbal score is low, then you will need to work extra hard to highlight your communication skills. You can do this through your essays and your interviews. Keep in mind that admissions officers will be suspicious of someone with poorly written Analytical Writing Assessment (AWA) essays on the GMAT, but terrific application essays; that kind of application is often covered with fingerprints from a professional editor or admissions consultant. Remember that getting some help is okay, but the application you submit must be your own work.

You can also enlist support from your recommenders to address weaknesses in both the quantitative and/or verbal section. They may be able to provide examples that offset some of the concerns that your GMAT score raises. If your undergraduate transcript and your job don’t help, consider enrolling in a statistics, finance, public speaking, or accounting course in a local community college. This shows a dedication to education and will impress the admissions committees. Many business schools are happy to suggest what kinds of courses they would consider as useful preparation for their programs.

Hobbies and Extracurricular Activities

This is usually the part of the application that gives applicants the least amount of trouble, as most of us have enough interests to keep us busy outside of school or work. Look at how your hobbies relate to your other activities, and they hopefully will provide a well-rounded picture of you as a person. If you already have the four desired dimensions covered reasonably well by your other activities and achievements, then use your hobbies as a way to provide a little extra depth and color to your application. Even seemingly silly or frivolous hobbies and interests can help in this way. If your hobbies truly don’t add anything new, then de-emphasize them and let the other parts of your application stand on their own.

International and Cultural Exposure

For many people, this is a clear-cut, have-or-don’t-have issue. If you haven’t worked, studied, or traveled abroad, don’t despair. Business schools like to see experience in this area, but realize that not everyone has had a chance to see the world. If this is the case for you, be sure to emphasize the success that you have had in working with people of various backgrounds or even different points of view from your own. Even two people from the same school who work for the same company have a lot of differences between them. Show how you have overcome these differences to build success, and, even more importantly, demonstrate that you value these opportunities to grow and push yourself outside of your normal comfort zone. The more easily admissions officers can envision you successfully working on a study team with four other people from four different countries, the better your chances will be.

Professional Experience

People who worry about their professional experience are usually concerned with either the quality or quantity of the work that they have done. If you are worried about the amount of work experience that you have, take comfort in the fact that many business schools are actually pursuing younger applicants. They will still be interested in you as long as you have demonstrated success on the job, increasing responsibility in your assignments, and a true understanding of what an MBA can do for you. If you are still an undergrad and are looking to go right into business school, your best chances of demonstrating leadership and maturity will be in your extracurricular activities and anything else where you took charge and made something happen outside of the classroom.

Ultimately, though no applicant wants to hear “Wait till next year,” the quantity problem can be solved by simply waiting another year or two before you apply. Or, if you apply and are rejected, you can apply again after gaining a couple of years’ worth of terrific new experiences.

On the flip side, particularly as some top schools take an interest in younger applicants, there is such a thing as too much work experience. There’s no cut-off in terms of years of experience, and every school will take great pains to point out that a couple of students in its entering class are pushing 40 years of age, but anyone with more than seven or eight years of work experience will invite questions along the lines of “Why are you only applying now? What took you so long to discover that this is what you want to do next in your career?” No school will judge you based solely on your age, but if you strike admissions officers as someone who’s applying now just because his or her career is stagnating, then your chances of success will be low. Or, the school may decide that a part-time or executive MBA is ultimately a better fit for you.

Quality issues around work experience can be tough, but these can be overcome, at least in part, with your other application components. Do you feel as though your career is starting to plateau? Think about why this has happened and how an MBA will help you address the issue. Maybe your career progress has slowed because you lack important managerial skills that an MBA will give you. The important thing, in this case, is to demonstrate that your lack of upward mobility does not correspond to a lack of ambition or aptitude for success.

Does your work not seem interesting or exciting enough? Don’t worry too much about this issue, as business schools love people from a variety of backgrounds. Being a foreman at a corrugated box factory may seem dull to you, but if you can highlight what you have learned about business on the job—and what you still have to learn—then you can make a strong case for yourself.

Some applicants have holes in their work records, as they took sabbaticals to travel, to care for a sick loved one, or to simply try new things. As long as you have a legitimate reason for such a hole and can convince the admissions committee that you are indeed ambitious and committed to studying business, they will appreciate the unique perspectives that these experiences will give you. It is always better to hit these holes head-on than to try to hide them and hope admissions officers don’t notice them.

Undergraduate and Graduate Transcripts

If your transcript shows weakness, don’t worry. Not all “weak” transcripts are equally bad, and there are some things you can do to help yourself.

A Stanford admissions officer once said about transcripts, “We’re forgiving of slow starts, but not as forgiving of slow finishes.” Most business schools have the same attitude. If you got off to a rough start your freshman year but showed steady improvement while in college, then you are probably in good shape. Admissions officers aren’t itching to reject you because of a bad choice you made while you were still a teenager. They like to see that you got more serious about your work and were able to turn the academic tide.

If you were consistently poor or did worse as time went on, however, your challenge will be to convince the admissions committee that you’re serious about academics and have the brainpower to succeed in business school. The former can be accomplished in your essays, where you will discuss what it is that you expect to get out of an MBA curriculum. The latter can be made up for by the GMAT or, if that is also weak, by earning strong grades in part-time courses at a local school.

Your transcript(s) may also be weak because you were simply too involved in extracurricular activities as an undergrad. Use this opportunity to turn a weakness into a strength by demonstrating your commitment and initiative at your undergraduate school, and making the case for why you will be equally involved in business school. You must balance that out, however, with a demonstrated understanding of the importance of academics in business school. In other words, you should try and convince the admissions counselors that you will get the school/activities mix right this time around.

Final Word on Strengths and Weaknesses

In general, a winning application strategy counteracts your perceived weaknesses with examples that show your strengths in those same (or similar) areas. The more that each part of your application can naturally complement and support the other pieces, the better off you will be. Some applicants will use the extra essay—which many schools provide as an option in their applications—to directly address a weakness such as a low GMAT score or undergraduate GPA. This is fine, but think of it as a last resort. One risk of devoting an entire essay to a weakness is that it highlights the very issue that you’re trying to neutralize. There are times when the extra essay does help, however, and we will discuss these types of situations more in Chapter 4.