Everything you need to do and when to do it to get into business school!
MBA application deadlines are all the way in September, but take it from people who’ve helped hundreds get into business school: if you don’t start preparing for MBA admission now, you won’t be ready.
So Angela Guido is here with a simple MBA application timeline to let you know everything you need for your MBA application in 2023. It’s a long process, but should be manageable if you pace it out!
If you would like to work with us on your MBA applications, sign up for a free MBA strategy call right here: Free MBA Strategy Call.
GMAT/ GRE videos can be found here.
Good luck!
Prefer to read? Here’s the transcript:
“The MBA application is completely different from all other graduate applications.”
Hello and welcome back to MBA Monday! I'm Angela Guido, the founder of Career Protocol, a Career and MBA Coach for the last 15 years, helping hundreds of people achieve their MBA dreams and advance their careers to new and exciting heights. Today, I'm going talk to you about your MBA application timeline and the way you should organize yourself over the next several months as you're planning your attempt to submit your applications in round 1 of the 2023/2024 admission cycle. Before I go any further though, please be sure to hit that subscribe button.
February – April
- Groundwork (extracurricular, curricular, recommenders
- Research
- Test score
All right, so right now it's February, which means you are still early in the MBA application journey. Most deadlines are clustered at the beginning to the middle of September, so you've got seven whole months to get ‘er done. I'm here to help you make sure that you make the most efficient use of that time in the next couple of months. You really want to be laying the groundwork for the strongest application you can possibly create. That means that you've still got time to build your extracurricular activities, your career achievements, and your relationships with recommenders. So, as always, really work to advance your personal and professional goals over the next two months while you are beginning the process of researching schools. That's the other big thing that you can do in these next few months, get to know the programs that you're interested in applying to. Visit campus, talk with students, read all about them on the internet. Really become intimate with your target schools, and you'll be glad that you did when essay writing season comes in the summer because you'll have a lot of rich information to include in your justification for why you want to go to the schools you're applying to. The other really big thing, frankly, the biggest thing that you really want to make sure to get out of the way in the next few months is your test score. We've got a ton of videos on this channel about the GMAT and the GRE, but the bottom line is you need to push yourself to get the very best score that you can possibly get before you close the door on those test scores. Nobody ever got into business school because of having a great test score, but tons of amazing candidates were kept out of their favorite schools because their scores weren't up to snuff. So, take the time now to get the test score out of the way so that by the time the early summer comes, you can shift your attention fully to the application.
April – June
- Know thyself
- Choose a coach
- Discovering your value and stories
- Career game plan
Next comes the spring, the April to June timeline before schools have really released their new MBA application questions for the year. By the way, we really don't recommend starting on essays until your school releases their questions for the current season. Given the fact that the Harvard and Stanford and Tuck admissions committee directors are changing this year, we're expecting to see a little bit of a shake up in the way these stalwart schools approach their applications. Time will tell. But in the meantime, don’t spend a lot of time answering essay questions that may change. Save the essay writing for the summer and in the spring months of April, May, and June, what you can be doing instead is laying the groundwork of self-awareness that will enable you to crush those essays when the time comes. The very best thing that you can do is sign up to work with a Career Protocol MBA Application Coach. We are uniquely passionate about helping our clients discover and tell their most inspiring stories in the application process and our clients frequently cite the self-awareness, confidence, and clarity that they gained in working with us was even more valuable than the MBA admission itself. So consider signing up to work with us. You can request a call to talk about our process in this link. Even if you decide not to work with the Career Protocol team, if you are going to work with a coach, April to June is really the time you want to get that ball rolling so that you can begin things like discovering your values and your most important stories, developing your career game plan, or in other words, your goals, both short-term and long-term, that the MBA is going to help you achieve, and further deepen your knowledge of schools and home in on your portfolio of target schools that you're going to apply to this year. Those are all the things that you can be working on between April and June, in addition to any of the tasks that carry over from the winter, such as your test score and researching schools. But your goal is really to enter June with your coach on board and ready to tackle those applications.
June – August
- Essay time
- Manage recommenders
- Short answers
(There’s a lot to do… and lots of time to do it!)
Because guess what you’re going to do in June, July, and August? You're going to write those essays! You're going to write your essays, you're going to coach and prepare your recommenders, you’re going to finalize your resume, you’re going to complete the short answers. Your whole summer is going to be about completing those MBA applications. From our perspective, essays really, really benefit from iteration. Don’t think that even if you’re working on your own that you can cram it into a single weekend that almost never works. Most people really need to give the essays time to evolve so that they can really bring out the very best of what you have to offer vis-à-vis the question the school is asking, and that's really your goal in MBA applications. The MBA application is completely different from all other graduate applications. Most programs — law school, medical school, even masters and PhD programs in other subjects — are calling students based primarily on their statistics, on their grades, on their test scores, and perhaps on any relevant research they may have done. In the case of the MBA, however, MBA programs are really looking to admit well-rounded people. They're looking for leaders who are going to make this world a better place. That's why the MBA application is so much more sophisticated and complex than the applications you might submit to any other professional or graduate program. So really, really use the next seven months to get your test scores squared away, lay the groundwork of self-awareness, and then really give those essays and applications the full time they deserve over the summer so that you can not only submit applications that you're proud of, but, of course, hopefully, ideally, get into the school of your dreams. We're rooting for you! I'll see you next time on MBA Monday.
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Angela Guido
Student of Human Nature| Founder and
Chief Education Officer of Career Protocol
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