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SEPTEMBER 1999 MBA JOURNAL: ADMISSIONS Bob Morse: How I Got into B-School
Undergraduate GPA: 3.84 Work Experience: 6 years Age: 28 Schools Applied: 3 (Stanford, Harvard, MIT) SEPTEMBER 1999 -- This journal entry would be easier to write if I could point to the one reason why I got into business school, or if I had used one key source that allowed me to decide where to apply, or if I had found one course which made me ace the GMAT. The truth, though, is that I don't know exactly how or why I got in. My take on the whole process is this: There is no one thing that gains you entrance into a top MBA program. The first step in the application process for me was discovering that I had a real desire to go to B-school. This was an introspective and difficult process, carried out in coffee shops and on mountain tops. Ultimately, I emerged with great energy to pursue a plan of action that I believe in. As I discussed in my first journal entry, I had a vision and decisiveness that was lacking the first time I tackled the application process in 1997. Perhaps this conviction made all the difference. I graduated from Princeton University in 1993 and had many friends who were already in business school as I reentered the application process in August, 1998. The list of schools to which I applied was perhaps most influenced by the business school choices made by these friends as well as my colleagues at work. Evaluating the Select B-Schools The reputation of a business school varies tremendously by industry. For example, the private-equity business tends to have a concentration of people from a select few schools. In fact, a person for whom I worked advised me that the merits of returning to school are entirely dependent on where I went. If I want to return to the private equity business, he said, a Stanford or Harvard degree would have great value, while a degree from an "unfamiliar" MBA program would be worse than no degree at all. Certainly, the non-Top 25 business schools - which is to say the vast majority of all B-schools in the country serve an invaluable role in educating businesspeople. The point he was making (in an elitist way) was that if I want to maximize my opportunities to return to the private equity business, I should focus on the select few schools to which professionals in that industry ascribe the greatest prestige. The list of these "select" schools does not depend on the latest Business Week or US News & World Report polls. Over time, I noticed where people in my industry had gone to school, where companies held on-campus recruiting, and the choices made by some of my most accomplished friends. I would recommend that anyone applying to business school informally canvas people whom they respect in their industry. My conclusions about the best business school may well have been different were I an industrial engineer. In addition to gauging the industry perception, I called some of my friends currently in B-school. I asked them if they were having any fun, if they were impressed with their classmates, if they had learned anything, and whether they had made any new friends of the rare, lifelong variety. I also read published reviews and surfed through school descriptions at the Princeton Review Web site and compared vital statistics such as average GMAT and class size. I stood in bookstores and flipped through business school guidebooks from the Princeton Review and a few others, reading the quotes from current students about their experience. I also had to decide how much I valued remaining in Boston, and I discussed with my wife the possible pains of relocation and a new job search for her. Tackling the Applications To complete the applications I purchased MultiApp, a great software program which freed me from the frustration of using a typewriter to enter my demographic information on the closely spaced personal data sheets. Because I already had my reasons for returning to school established in my own mind, the essay-writing process changed from the task of devising pieces I thought would "get me in" to the task of introducing myself accurately and telling my story clearly. Nonetheless, I probably spent more than 150 hours over the course of four months completing the essays for Stanford, Harvard, and MIT to my satisfaction. One of the advantages of narrowing my school selection was that I did not need to ask any single person to complete more than three recommendations for me. I asked three people to write recommendations: One from Morgan Stanley, one from GCC Investments, and one from the management team of a GCC portfolio company with whom I had worked closely. I gave each of my backers more than a month of lead time, but I think the key to meeting the deadline was that I took the time to explain to each, in person, why I wanted to return to school and why I wanted them to recommend me. Conquering the GMAT Improving a GMAT score is perhaps the most straightforward part of the entire application, one in which persistence and hard work pretty consistently translate into better performance. Preparing for the GMAT is like training for a marathon a bit of training every day for a long time eventually puts you in shape to achieve what would be impossible otherwise. When I took the GMAT last year, the Computer Adaptive Test (CAT) format was still new enough that the test prep companies missed a few critical features. I did not take an instructor-led course, but I did purchase books by Kaplan and the Princeton Review. The most helpful purchase was the book containing ten practice tests with real ETS questions. If you read a few books by an author, you get a feel for his or her style and eventually recognize favorite themes and recurring characters. I found I developed the same familiarity with ETS writers after two months of answering about a hundred questions a week. I preferred working with questions written by ETS, not the prep companies. As Vincent (John Travolta) says in Pulp Fiction: "It's the little differences." The biggest problem for those facing the CAT format is that there is not, to my knowledge, any way to take a realistic practice test because none of the practice tests are adaptive. That is, they don't give you incrementally harder problems as you answer questions correctly. I recommend the practice software ETS provides, so that you can adjust to the rather nonintuitive navigation format. However, these two tests aren't adaptive -- they contain only one set of questions. The Princeton Review has a helpful, free online testing simulator using their own questions, but based on my experience, I do not believe it is adaptive. The one thing I wish someone had told me about the GMAT CAT is this: If you are doing well, and the adaptive test cannot throw any new types of problems at you, the program makes the final questions harder by simply making them longer. At least, that was my experience, corroborated by a few friends. I was forced to rush or skip the last few questions in each section because I ran out of time, while I had always finished every practice test with time to spare. I was on pace until the last five questions or so, and then the problems just became longer. It's not a clever strategy for knocking down your score, but it's effective. It's also disconcerting to have an unexpected twist appear on test day. The upshot? I scored a 750. Enough process - here are the results. I applied to Stanford, my first choice, in the first round, and Harvard and MIT in the second round. Harvard was a close second choice, though it's hard to say whether or not the benefits of remaining in Boston would have altered my decision. I was part-way through the Wharton application when I received that wonderful acceptance call from Stanford. I put away my Wharton papers and pulled my Sloan application. I was later turned down by Harvard again. They just don't seem to like me. In all, the process took from August, 1998, to April, 1999, and cost me more than $1,000. I was, however, admitted to the Stanford Graduate School of Business. It was all worth it.  Bob Morse  | | Learn about your online education options |
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