Our guest for a BusinessWeek Online chat on Sept. 25 was Dan Bauer, founder of MBA admissions consulting firm The MBA Exchange. Every year, Bauer's eight-year-old company counsels about 250 applicants, who pay from $195 for an hour of counseling to $4,500 for a full package of help with applications, essays, and admissions interviews. Bauer also claims to have a 90% success rate at helping MBA hopefuls get into one of their top-choice schools.

Before launching The MBA Exchange, Bauer was senior vice-president for global marketing and sales at MasterCard International, and vice-president for national marketing at Citibank (C ). He's a 1990 graduate of Harvard Business School's MBA program.

Bauer fielded admissions questions from a live audience during the event, which was co-hosted by BusinessWeek Online's Mica Schneider and by Jack Dierdorff, consulting editor of BW Online. Following is an edited transcript of the chat:

Q: Many business schools have reported a decrease in MBA applications, thanks to the weak economy. But it seems that MBA hopefuls will still compete to get into B-schools in 2003, since applications are still very high. What's your read of the coming application season?
A: The number of quality applicants will always exceed the number of available seats. So even when volume is down, that doesn't mean competition is down. Even though the economy remains soft, I'm confident that the number of quality applicants is going to remain solid for the foreseeable future.

Q: Do you expect applications this year to be up or down compared with last year, by how much, and why?
A: I expect applications to be about the same as last year, which was down markedly from the prior year. A dramatic change in the economy -- up or down -- could spark an uptick in second- or third-round applications.

Q: How many schools do you recommend that your clients apply to? Should applicants select a safe school?
A: We have found that the optimal number of schools for most applicants is five. You will probably want to include one or two schools where your chances are better than even. That said, we encourage our clients to never apply to a school that they wouldn't attend were it the only school to admit them.

Q: What's your take on applying in a school's first admissions round vs. the second?
A: All things being equal, we emphasize first round, as that is when schools have the most seats and the most flexibility. However, an excellent second-round app beats a halfhearted first-round app in most cases.

Q: What's the outlook for non-U.S. applicants in the autumn of 2004?
A: The better schools continue to seek diversity in their incoming classes. In many ways, the bar is higher for international applicants, because as a percentage of an entire class their numbers tend to be smaller. We have found the best strategy for international students is to emphasize their uniqueness in a cross-cultural sense but also to compete aggressively on the same measures -- professional, academic, and personal -- as any other applicant. One should not consider being "international" as either an advantage or a disadvantage per se.

Q: Do you know what percentage of the applicant pool for the top schools is made up of women? In your experience, do women have an advantage?
A: This varies by school. But it continues to be an area where the leading programs want to grow. Now is a great time for a woman with solid credentials and clear goals to apply to a top business school.

Women continue to represent an inordinately low percentage of incoming classes. Around one-third of the class at (Harvard)is female, for example. It's somewhat lower at (Kellogg).

Q: For female applicants, should the timeline of starting a family come into play in the "why now?" application question?
A: Great question. I would tend to avoid a personal issue like that one in my rationale for "why now?" While that's certainly a reasonable area of concern, the schools will be more impressed by the relevance of this degree to your long-term goals.

Q: How much difference does a ("GMAT") score of 700 vs. 750 make for similarly qualified applicants?
A: Using as a reference point the top five schools, it would be significant, since the averages hover around 700. So excellence on the GMAT, to that extent, could help overcome a flaw in, for example, [the applicant's undergraduate] GPA or professional credentials.

Q: Should someone with a 720 GMAT score retake the exam in an effort to improve it to 750?
A: It's impossible to answer that without a full understanding of your other credentials. In any given case, time spent enhancing an already above-average GMAT would probably be better spent on some other aspect of your application.

Continued on next page>>  | 1 | 2 | 3