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10 Best Ways to Ruin Your MBA Applications, pt 5

By posted March 6, 2012

This installment rounds out the series of articles covering ways I’ve seen people try to ruin their MBA application process (yes, I’ve seen all of these).  As I mentioned in the series’ first part, reality obviously plays a role in your process, so it may be that you can’t have the perfect application process; that’s ok.  Even though I’ve seen people do all of these things, I’ve also seen people get into their dream schools in spite of these mistakes.

9. Don’t talk to anyone else.  To maximize your chance of failure, don’t talk to any of the following:

* Colleagues who have MBAs  – what could they possibly know?
* Admissions counselors at schools — they probably don’t want to talk to anyone about their program anyway
* Current students in MBA programs — those current students can’t have anything in common with you, so why bother?
* Faculty and staff, when you visit the schools (you are visiting the schools, aren’t you?) — they’re almost certainly too busy
* GMAT tutors — the real mark of excellence is grinding away at a topic alone until you get it right, no matter how long it takes
* Professional editors for your resume and essays — when you are at the top of your own company, “they” will make sure everything you say has clarity and professionalism, so why bother learning that stuff now?

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The GMAC Voucher Program: How to Take the GMAT for Free

By posted March 5, 2012

Starting in 2001, GMAC created a voucher program for the GMAT to assist potential business school applicants with the cost of the exam itself. Currently, the GMAT costs $250 to take, which is a significant amount of money for many undergraduate and graduate school students. The idea behind the program is to help economically disadvantaged students take the exam at little to no cost.

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How to apply? To qualify, you must apply for a GMAT voucher BEFORE you register for the exam. Upon registering, you will be prompted to enter your GMAT Voucher Code. The code is to be obtained from business schools directly. Each school is entitled to a minimum of 10 vouchers a year, and each voucher is worth $50. Schools can distribute them as they see fit to offset a student’s cost, so it’s possible to be awarded anywhere from $50 – $250 in vouchers.

Grockit is also committed to helping disadvantaged students succeed academically. Find out how you can help under-served students achieve their dreams of higher education with Grockit for Good. Read more »

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10 Best Ways to Ruin Your MBA Applications, pt 4

By posted March 2, 2012

Sometimes doing nothing isn’t enough; sometimes, you need to take extra action to make sure your admission to the best business schools is endangered (especially if you already got the GMAT score you needed).  Note that this particular set of options can actually be very useful for people who are not MBA-bound; if you are already famous or semi-famous (or are running for political office), these can help you stay on the cover of the National Enquirer.

6. Be too modest.  Your application to a program is very like your application for a job — you need to make them interested.  You want them to think, “Wow! I can’t wait to actually talk to this person” or “This person will be a tremendous asset to our program, we don’t have anybody like this.”  Unlike a job application, there isn’t even the cover letter as a platform from which you can sing your own praises; you have their essays (which are often aimed at your future plans, weaknesses, and greatest challenges rather than your best points) and your resume instead.  You do need to be truthful — lying on an application for admission is a form of academic misconduct and can result in revocation of admission at any point later if it is discovered — but you need to present the best and most compelling true version of yourself possible.

Find out how Grockit predicts your GMAT score based on your answers and tracks your performance and improvements, projecting accurate score improvements.

7. Be unrealistic.  Everyone likes to think that they will ace the GMAT, be accepted into their top program, connect personally with faculty, form a network of fellow students that will lead to powerful contacts later, impress everyone, and launch a successful multinational corporation within five years of graduation.  Some people will, and confidence breeds success, but ambitious goal setting needs to be tempered with a dose of reality throughout the process.  A solid grasp on the likely outcomes at all stages — neither too idealistic nor too pessimistic — keeps you from devoting too much energy into unnecessary scrambling (you got in when you thought you wouldn’t) or into avoidable therapy (you didn’t get in this round and hadn’t even considered that possibility). Read more »

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10 Best Ways to Ruin Your MBA Applications, pt 3

By posted February 29, 2012

This serial article is aimed at how best to fail your MBA application process; those especially interested in keeping office jobs that leave them with a lot of free time to create fake celebrity Facebook pages will be most interested in this series, which has two parts before this one.

4. Blow off the essays.  I mean the business school essays, not the ones on the GMAT (though since your scores are reported with the AWA, you shouldn’t blow that off either).  As always, a stellar GPA, work record, and GMAT score may get you admitted to the programs you want even if your essay is not great, but you don’t get to be a high-powered executive in command of your own destiny by leaving easily-fixed things to chance.  Take some time to think about what you write, and look online at what others have written.  The directions for the essays are usually quite specific (though some may just want a “statement of interest” with no further details given), and many have word limits.  Your ability to pad and B.S. your way through papers at the high school and college level (if you had that) will directly and powerfully hurt you here; you need to give them clear, concise reasons to set up an interview.  Use friends and colleagues for input on content (and editing, if they have that skill); write your essays, let them sit at least overnight, then look at them again and see whether they still make sense.

Test your GMAT skills with this GMAT verbal practice question. Read more »

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10 Best Ways to Ruin Your MBA Applications, pt 2

By posted February 27, 2012

This is part of an ongoing series of articles on what NOT to do during your MBA admissions process if you’re hoping to get into your top schools; if you haven’t read the first part, go do that now.  You can even watch a few YouTube videos of cats chasing laser pointer dots; I’ll wait.  Ready?  Let’s continue!

2. Fail to research.  There are a few things to research in a solid application cycle, and they center around schools and their programs.  What are the average GMAT scores and GPAs of the average applicant?  What is their average length of work experience prior to application?  Is the program targeted primarily at people fresh out of college, or with a decade of experience, or with an executive position at a large company?  Nothing will sink your applications faster than applying for specialties that don’t exit, or for programs that are looking entirely for people with qualities you don’t have at all.  Look carefully; one student I know was looking at a college that advertised an MBA with a specialization in agribusiness; business school’s page mentioned it, but there were no agribusiness courses listed in the elective tracks.  Only by digging through the actual agriculture department website did we find a brief notice that there was very little interest in the agribusiness MBA, and therefore no courses in it had even been offered for years.

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10 Best Ways to Ruin Your MBA Applications, pt 1

By posted February 23, 2012

Applying to schools is not an exact science, and you should mistrust anyone who tells you otherwise.  All of the things that follow — things that can ruin your MBA applications — are not things that will cause you to be left out of the incoming cohort automatically, but they absolutely will increase your chance of failure.  Avoid them whenever possible, but know that you can still get into your dream school in spite of these things.   Stop me if you have heard this one before:

A farmer wrote to the big state university, asking for it to help him devise a way to increase his cows’ milk production. Seizing the opportunity to have an impact on the community, the university gathered faculty from many science departments, headed by a theoretical physicist; they began their very thorough academic investigation with a visit to the farm. The scholars then returned to the university armed with all the data they could possibly need, where the task of writing the report was left to the team leader. One week later, the physicist returned to the farm, saying to the farmer “I have the solution, but it only works in the case of spherical cows in a vacuum.”

The advice that follows is for the ideal world; adjust or disregard the advice as necessary for your actual world. Read more »

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GMAT Quantitative: What to Expect

By posted February 14, 2012

If you’re planning to take the GMAT or thinking about it, a great place to start is familiarizing yourself with the basic structure of each section.  Here’s everything you need to know about what to expect on the Quantitative section of the GMAT.

The GMAT Quantitative section, like the Verbal, is computer-adapted, meaning that the difficulty level of each question you receive will be based on your performance on previous questions.  Generally, if you answer a question correctly, the next question will be more difficult; if you answer a question incorrectly, the next question will be easier.  Because of this format, you cannot go back to questions that you skipped or want to double-check.

Find out how you can customize your study plan with a Grockit tutor and rock the GMAT! Read more »

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GMAT Integrated Reasoning Two-Part Analysis: A Strategy

By posted February 13, 2012

Got the basics of the new Integrated Reasoning formats, and ready to start with some questions? The new Two-Part Analysis questions are one of the most straight-forward of the new question types. A short paragraph is followed by information in columns and rows. Each column stands for an element of the paragraph, and each row is part of the solution. You’ll be asked to choose one answer from each column since the complete answer will have a two-part solution. Let’s look at a sample Grockit Two-Part Analysis question and look at how we can approach it!

Question 1

Cignature Cigars has two seasonal sales, Spring and Fall.  The Spring sale last year sold an average of 200 cigars per week during its four-week push.  The current Fall sale is expected to exceed last Spring’s sale by at least 250 cigars during its four-week push, despite only selling 100 cigars its first week.

Identify a number of cumulative sales for the third week of Fall’s sales drive, and a number of cumulative sales for the third week of the next Spring sales drive, if next Spring’s sale is expected to have a weekly average equal to half of the average of Fall’s last three weeks.

          Fall Sale            Spring Sale

100

159

317

477

636

734

Answer:  734, 477.

 Try Grockit’s free GMAT mobile app for practice on the go!  Read more »

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Variables and Integrated Reasoning on the GMAT

By posted February 11, 2012

You may have noticed that every question on the new Integrated Reasoning section involves variables. Variables are the factors in a question. In the real world, some variables are time, distance, rate, etc. You’ll need to effectively manage your time on the Integrated Reasoning section, so only spend so long on the graphs, tables, or paragraphs to identify just the main information, the variables and their relationships to each other, and don’t get bogged down with the confusing details. Remember, it doesn’t matter what aspect of business the Integrated Reasoning is focused on – it’s the concept that should always be your focus!

A “variable” in Quant is a placeholder for an unknown, like x or y. In these complex questions, it is somewhat that can affect the data. Independent variables are factors that are controlled. Dependent variables are factors that are observed to change, those which are uncontrolled results. On the Integrated Reasoning section, you’ll mostly be focusing on the dependent variables, and how they are dependent, especially in Table Analysis questions.

Direct variation occurs when two variables change in the same way over time. If Column A increases and Column B increases at the same time, we can say that the two columns vary directly.  If when Column A increases, Column B decreases, there is an indirect (also called inverse) variation between the two elements. In the real world, think of a pie and the number of slices eaten. The weight of the pie is inversely proportional to the number of slices eaten. That means that as more and more slices are eaten, the pie weights less and less.

Check out GMAT Integrated Reasoning Table Analysis: What is Sorting? blog post for more GMAT IR advice!

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How to Deal with Rates in Two-Part Analysis Questions on the GMAT

By posted February 9, 2012

You may have noticed on the GMAC official Integrated Reasoning practice questions for Two-Part Analysis that rates and work have appeared as a tested concept. While rates and work already appear on the GMAT’s Quantitative section, it’s logical to assume that they will also continue to make an appearance on the new IR section once it fully launches in June 2012. In the meantime, let’s review the first of  two necessary formulas to approach this type of concept: D = R x T

This stands for Distance = Rate x Time. It is perfectly acceptable to also think of it as Time = Distance / Rate or as Rate = Distance / Time. In a Two-Part Analysis question, if you see the word “per” you know this is a question involving rates. The second formula is: Average Rate = Total Distance / Total Time. Let’s try a practice question that is more like a classic Quantitative word problem.

Question 1: Cindy spent all day on a sightseeing tour in France. First she boarded the bus which went 15mph through a 30 mile section of the countryside. The bus then stopped for lunch in Paris before continuing on a 3 hour tour of the city’s sights at speed of 10mph. Finally, the bus left the city and drove 40 miles straight back to the hotel. Marion arrived back at her hotel exactly 2 hours after leaving Paris. What was the bus’s average rate for the entire journey?

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