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Networking: How to Write Thank-You Letters

By posted March 8, 2012

Snail-mail may be less often used by the students and faculty of the Best Business Schools, but any intelligent MBA applicant knows that a thoughtful thank-you letter can lead to favorably impressions from admission counselors, financial aid advisors, and recommendation-letter writers. Since most MBA students aren’t writing them, it’s all the more reason you should! E-mail is definitely a useful tool, but a well-timed thank-you letter can increase your chances of graduate school success, even if your GMAT score isn’t the best.

 Want to get started expanding your business network? Grockit’s GMAT group games allow students to study together – connect with MBA applicants from all over the world and follow each other’s progress as you take the GMAT and apply for business school!

1. Keep it short and sweet. Don’t yammer on – 3-4 sentences are always fine. The people you need to stay in contact with are busy. Just let them know you appreciate their time, and you’d like to keep them posted on your MBA progress and your entry into the business world.

2. Make it personal. Buy stationary and cards that reflect your personality. It doesn’t have to be the fanciest embossed letter-head. A casual, colorful card is fine. “Hello Kitty” might be a little too informal, but calligraphy on paper that looks like polished china isn’t necessary either. Strike a balance, but have fun with your choice!

3. Use them judiciously. There’s etiquette to snail mail. Just as you wouldn’t post on someone’s Facebook wall four times a day, so you shouldn’t send thank-you letters out randomly. Only send a thank-you letter when you legitimately have something to say – after an initial meeting or interview, thanking someone for a referral, a class, a workshop, etc. If you want to make a connection with a faculty member, a fellow student, or a business contact it’s better to send an email or make a telephone call initially, then follow-up with a hand-written note. For periodic updates, once every six weeks is fine, but more often than that and you risk becoming a nuisance.

Not sure where to focus your MBA admissions plan next? Take a quick look at your customized Study Plan on Grockit. Grockit will tell you what your current strengths and weaknesses are and suggest Targeted Practice to get your GMAT score where you need it to be!

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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?

Need some GMAT advice? Ask one of Grockit’s expert instructors or leave a comment below! Read more »

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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.

Need expert advice on a 30, 60, or 90 day study plan? Ask one of Grockit’s expert tutors!

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.

Find out how you can study online anytime of the day, from anywhere you have Internet access on Grockit! Read more »

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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 Verbal: What to Expect

By posted February 16, 2012

A great first step as you start your journey towards taking the GMAT is getting to know the structure and content of each section.  The multiple-choice portions of the test, Verbal and Quantitative, are computer-adapted; that is, the difficulty of each question you receive after the first is based on your performance on previous ones.  Generally speaking, the better you do, the harder the questions will get, and vice versa.

Need expert advice on a 30, 60, or 90 day study plan? Ask one of Grockit’s expert tutors!

Timing: The Verbal section contains 41 questions and you are given 75 minutes to answer these.  Remember that you will be able to answer some questions in a manner of seconds, while others will take significantly longer.  An important piece of your study plan is learning how to pace yourself so you don’t run out of time or move too quickly, especially since on the GMAT you cannot come back to a question once you have answered it or skipped it.

Format: There are three types of questions on the GMAT Verbal.  Here is a breakdown of the format of each type: 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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