How To Show School Fit In Your MBA Application

Which school is right for you among the Best MBA colleges and how can you go beyond MBA school rankings and the top 10 U.S. Business schools to find the perfect fit for you? Angela answers this important MBA query in her second MBA Monday video!

School fit is one of the most misunderstood concepts in successful MBA applications. It’s so important to get to know your schools beyond the MBA school rankings and to have a compelling Why MBA in your essays. In this quick video, Angela Guido explains the four major components of school fit so you know how to choose the right business school for you AND show fit in your applications!! #MBASchoolFit #MBAMondays

YouTube video

Prefer to read? Here’s the transcript:

Hi, I'm Angela Guido. Welcome to MBA Monday. I'm the founder of Career Protocol, and I'm here to help you with how to choose the right business school for you, as well as help you get in, by debunking all the nonsense that's out there on the internet and helping you focus in on what really matters in your MBA applications.

So, Which School Is Right for You?

Today, I want to talk about school fit. It's a much-misunderstood concept. It's thrown around a lot to mean a lot of different things. If you ever applied to business school and didn't get in and got feedback from the school, they probably told you something along the lines of, well, we just didn't feel like the fit was right. This is part of why people think that MBA admissions is a black box. They say “Oh, there's just a part of this calculation and MBA data analytics that we can never understand and we can never know why MBA schools decide the things that they decide.”.  Well, to some extent, of course, that is literally true because you're not sitting in the room when they're making a decision about your application. However, school fit is not as complicated a concept as you might think. School fit actually boils down to a really simple equation. And there are four parts. Are you ready? Here they are!
  1. Are you going to business school for the right reason? Seems straightforward, right?
  2. Have you done your research? Have you looked at things like MBA school rankings and the best MBA colleges out there for you?
  3. Will you leave the place better than you found it?
  4. And finally, is this school your top choice?
I wrote a really long blog post about this. It's called The Ultimate Guide: How to Get into Business School. So just click the link and indulge yourself in all the details of how to show school fit in your MBA applications and to decide which school is best for you.

Show Them That This Is the Best MBA for You

But right now, I want to talk specifically about number four. Is this school your top choice? Most people get this totally wrong in their applications. The last thing you want to do (usually) is say School X is my top choice, and if I'm admitted, I will definitely attend. The reason this is foolish in your application is because most U.S. business schools know that most people who are intelligent are applying to multiple schools. So it's going to ring as false. It's just not going to feel authentic to them. If you tell them point blank that they're your top choice, the best way to let a school know that they're your top choice is to show them. And this is not a simple overnight process. It does affect your essays. When you write about the school in your essays, you need to show a really complex and robust understanding of what makes that school different from other schools, of what they offer that's going to be of unique value to you. You need to really project yourself into your life as a student at that school and show the school in your essays what your MBA going to look like. You have a vision for your journey and MBA specialization and you're genuinely excited about it.

But just doing that in your essays probably isn't enough. For most schools, you're also going to want to visit campus. You're going to want to network with current students and alumni. You're going to want to stalk them on social media and visit their websites and their blogs so that they also have a digital paper trail that shows them that you're very, very serious about their program. We have a ton of resources on our website. We have the links to all of the top MBA programs’ Instagram feeds and Twitter feeds. We have links to student blogs and the school club website. So to begin really learning about your top choice schools and laying the groundwork to show them in the application that they are your top choice, head over to careerprotocol.com right now and check out our huge selection of MBA resources for your complete guide to showing school fit with MBA programs.

Thanks very much for reading and be sure to check out my other #MBAMonday episodes for all things MBA!

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Angela Guido

Student of Human Nature| Founder and
Chief Education Officer of Career Protocol

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Additional Resources:

Check out the Ultimate Guide How to Get Into Business School: https://mbas.co/ultimateguide

Get Our Comprehensive MBA Career Report: https://mbas.co/report