Improve Your Candidacy With MBA Programs in 20 Minutes Flat

While, it's definitely true that school research is a very important part of the MBA application process, and I really encourage you to dedicate far more than 20 minutes to your research process, today I'm going to give you the five things that you can do in a span of 20 minutes to change your relationship with your target schools by the end of those 20 minutes. Here we go. Ready?

1. First action item number one is to start your application. Go to their website, click through to where it says “apply” and sign up. Create your application. If you're watching this video before the new application has come out, most schools release the application for a given year in June or July. So, if you're watching this before your school's application comes out, that's OK. Go and instead sign it for their email list. If you do either one of these things, it gets you into their system and they'll start tracking your behavior on their website so they know – in a way – that you exist and that you're watching them, just like they're paying attention to you.
2. The second thing you want to do is register for an online event. In the good old days, we used to be able to visit campus and see where students take their coffee and do their studying and prepare for interviews, but and covid time school campus visits are a little bit difficult. So instead of physically going to campus, be sure to sign up for an online event. You can attend a panel discussion, an interview with the admissions committee or even a virtual campus tour. Be sure to sign up for at least one event with your target schools and then attend and participate. I actually encourage you to attend three, four or five such events over the course of your application process. But for today, in your 20 minutes, just go and pick one event and sign up today.
3. The third thing you can do is reach out to current students via the campus club websites. This is something you want to do sparingly and be really polite and thoughtful as you're reaching out to current students to set up conversations. But given that you're planning to become a member of this community, it's completely normal to want to connect with the people that are going to be part of your future alumni group. So go to the school's list of campus clubs, choose one or two clubs that are really interesting to you, and then see if you can find the email address of one or more of the students who are in charge of that club and then send them an email and ask to set up a 15-minute zoom chat.\
4. The fourth step in your 20-minute research sprint is to follow the school on LinkedIn and Instagram. Go find their accounts, click “follow” and then start liking and engaging with their posts. This one is easy. You can do it a little bit every day, but just make sure that you're following them.

Your fifth step today is to go down to the description of this video and download our MBA Career Placement Report. This is an over one hundred page summary of where all of the graduates from all the top MBA programs went to work. So, start looking at where did students from your favorite schools go to work, what companies, what industries, what geographies and what functions they go to. And this will start to form the foundation of your own career research as it relates to your target MBA programs.