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DECEMBER 2003 MBA JOURNAL: ADMISSIONS & ORIENTATION Maxim Mironov: Admissions, Pre-Term, and Orientation "I advise prospective applicants to select schools as carefully as one would select a marriage partner. Do your homework. Look at yourself to really understand what you enjoy and how you envision your life." Reading MBA Journal entries last year, I found myself wishing that some of the writers had addressed issues faced by international applicants. To cover some of these blank spots, I plan to explicitly describe the difficulties that my wife and I faced coming from Russia and how we overcame them. The MBA Application I advise prospective applicants to select schools as carefully as one would select a marriage partner. Do your homework. Look at yourself to really understand what you enjoy and how you envision your life. Every school is different. Some are very technology driven and team oriented, as is MIT; others, such as Harvard, highly value individual excellence. Repeat "culture fit" one hundred times a day as your mantra. Talk to students, alums, and adcom members. Visit road shows and MBA fairs. Be hyperactive. Get a feel for the atmosphere. Pick up the buzzwords, tune to the frequency. Find a place you connect with. Loving your school experience and enjoying time spent there are great components of a future success. Painful stuff. GMAT and TOEFL. If you fear that you can't possibly achieve the test scores necessary for admission, I hope my story will offer some encouragement. I truly believe that essays and recommendations are much more important than standardized tests. I heard from students who served as student representatives in admission committees that a GMAT score of 650 is the minimum score needed for admission. After scoring 530 on a prep-test, I realized that I needed to work really hard to reach 650. It took me over six months, studying more than 10 hours a week, to become confident. I can not thank my wife Olena enough. She woke me up to study at 5:30 a.m. every day and did everything to help me concentrate on the task at hand. My first real GMAT score was a 630 with almost perfect math and below average verbal. Thus, what I needed to do next was clearly defined. I concentrated on refreshing my grammar and practicing writing. The second time around I got a 670. Other students assured me this was a great score and recommended that I put any further effort into my essays. In short, applying to B-schools I had six years in management consulting, a GMAT score of 670, and a TOEFL score of 267. My School Portfolio. Hedging Risks. Like many applicants, I was not very confident about my chances. But after taking a finance class at MIT, I have come to realize that I was a "risk-loving" investor (applicant): I applied to nine top schools in the first round: UC Berkeley, Chicago, Harvard, Kellogg, MIT Sloan, Stanford, Tuck, UCLA, and Wharton. In selecting schools, the most useful sources were BusinessWeek Online and US News and World Report. Visiting school Web sites became a second step in my exploration. I read every student comment, studied lists of clubs, and distilled my knowledge into 5-10 bullet-points for use in my essays. However, I wish I had done more research on Berkeley and UCLA. Even if I had been admitted there, I wouldn't have had adequate financial resources because these schools do not offer sufficient loans to internationals. Most of their financial aid programs require a student to have U.S. cosigner for loans.If I were to apply today, I would still have applied to nine schools, but distributed the workload between first and second rounds. To make my essays better, I would have spent much more time talking to students, defining more clearly what I could bring to each school, and understanding how the school could help me in my career. A bitter taste of a denial, a sweet taste of an acceptance. According to the probability theory, if all admit/deny decisions were independent, my chances of getting nine denials were negligible. I hoped to get two or three admissions, which would allow me to select the program that suited me most. My first denial came from Wharton, which did not even select me for an interview. This was a harsh message. I was not really prepared for a ding. Then I received invitations to interview with Tuck, Stanford, and Chicago. This charged me with positive energy and helped to restore a balance. I still remember the evening of January 9. I was walking from one client meeting to another when I received a phone call from an unknown number. A man with a deep baritone said: "Hello, Maxim. This is Don Martin from the University of Chicago Business School. I would like to congratulate you on your acceptance." I was so stunned I couldn't say a word. I still don't know how I managed to thank Don. I GOT IN! It was an unbelievable moment I will remember for the rest of my life. I did not feel pain getting denials from other schools after that and was absolutely prepared to get another ding from MIT. So I was very surprised to learn I was waitlisted there. Chicago had asked me to pay a deposit by May 1, so I had about two months to convince Sloan that I was worth being a student. Chicago is a great starting point for a career in established corporations, while MIT Sloan has unique brand recognition among technology companies. After six years of experience with leading management consulting companies, I was looking forward to working in a less structured environment.
 
BW MALL
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