The following article is intended for those aspiring MBA students who plan to apply to business schools during the first admissions round this fall.
The main thing in applying to business school is to avoid all the uncomfortable things that go along with hurried applications. According to Magoosh, a hurried application means you started gathering together your application pack several weeks before the deadline. Maybe you procrastinated, maybe you had your hands full, or maybe you are already thinking about applying during later rounds. Don’t be this kind of person – better start early and prepare for your admission several months before the deadline.
To achieve that goal and not make the mistake of a hurried application, you should start thinking about it right now.
Statistics shows that people who start planning their fall application in winter or spring, tend to get into top schools (or just the schools of their choice), have a much better chance to get a scholarship and know much more about their target school when they finally get admitted.
All in all, people who start early catch the proverbial worm: they do much better applying for their MBA programs than prospective students who wait until the last possible minute.
To compete with achievers and early starters, you should become one of them. Which means you should start planning right now – not next month or week or day.
Start preparing for GMAT or GRE
First of all, even before you make up your mind about your target business school, you should start preparing for the required test (first, of course, make your choice between GMAT and GRE). The results you obtain after the test are one of the most important parts of your application. If you start researching target schools without having any idea about how well you are going to do at GMAT/GRE, you’ll be in for a world of disappointment.
A very important thing is to start preparing so early that you’ll still have time to retake your test in case you fail it. If you take your test very close to the deadline, you won’t be able to prepare again and retake it. But if you fail in spring, you will have the opportunity to get better at it and ace the test, even before the first round deadline comes up.
Choosing your target school
Some people just want an MBA from a prestigious school and never think about what it means to fit into your prospective program. Most often, they don’t have a clear goal in pursuing an MBA degree. It could be that they were procrastinators and started too late to learn more about their target schools. Anyway, their choice of program resembles a game of darts – just throw one and apply to any random school.
However, such an approach to application leads to bad MBA experiences or even rejections. That’s why you should research many schools before you choose where you fit and which program will help you achieve your goals in the best, quickest and least expensive way possible.
Save time for writing your essays
Taking the GMAT/GRE and deciding on your target school is one half of your job in applying to business school. But it’s not the last part. You still have your application package to complete.
If you procrastinate and don’t save enough time for writing essays, completing your resume and maybe filming videos for interviews, you will end up having a rushed application, which is an extremely bad idea. Also, you should remember that no one writes a perfect essay the first time around – you’ll have to rewrite and proofread it, which takes a long time.
All in all, bottom line is that you should not dawdle, but instead start as early as possible if you want a smooth and satisfying application experience. Good luck getting admitted to your target school!
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