Written by Rachel Nelson, Gatehouse Consultant and Wharton MBA. One question that prospective MBA applicants often ask is whether they should pursue an executive MBA (EMBA). As with many questions like this, the answer is… it depends! Both the EMBA and the more traditional two-year, full-time MBA program are well suited for applicants who can …
Letters of recommendation (LoRs) play a vital part in an applicant’s pursuit of admission to business school. With thousands of candidates vying for a limited number of spots, compelling, impactful LoRs can significantly tip the scales in favor of acceptance. The admissions team depends on LoRs for several reasons: LoRs can help the team gauge …
Business school applicants who are just starting their MBA journey often ask what they should keep in mind as they begin working on their applications. Rather than simply tell you what we think, we polled our past clients so you could get timely advice from individuals who just went through the process themselves. We asked, “What do …
While you have likely heard of several of the leading MBA programs—including the ever-popular Harvard Business School, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the United States and Europe have roughly two dozen “top” business schools. How do you decide which MBA programs to target for applications …
This might surprise you, but the version of your resume that helped you secure your most recent job is not what a business school wants you to submit with your application—and if you submit your standard resume, you will probably come up short in your quest for admission. The admissions committee is a very different audience from …
Your letters of recommendation are a vital part of your MBA application; they allow the admissions committee to see you through another person’s eyes. The letters can also bring life to you and your achievements in a way that you cannot do yourself, and they should reinforce why you are worthy of a spot in …
One of the most essential components of your business school application is your rationale for why you want an MBA in the first place—your career statement—and it needs to tie together your future goals, how they relate to where you are today, and how business school is the necessary bridge between the two. Each school …
The MBA application requires providing business schools with a lot of statistical and discrete information about yourself—your undergraduate transcript and GPA, GMAT and/or GRE scores (and verbal and quantitative breakdowns), current employer, past employers, salaries, bonuses, place of birth, date of birth, and so on. Yet these facts tell only part of your story. Your …
Did you even know that online application questions were a thing? For some schools, the online application simply requires providing your name and some biographical and professional information. But these days, more and more MBA programs are using the online application to collect additional information from and about candidates. For example, you might be asked to …
Writing memorable MBA essays has always been challenging enough, but over the years, business schools have introduced new challenges in the form of alternative “essays” in their applications. For example, some programs prompt candidates to make a video in which they introduce themselves to their classmates; others ask applicants to submit a set of photos …
Business school admissions interviews are a critical final hurdle on your path to being accepted to an MBA program. Fortunately for applicants, certain types of questions—and even certain questions—are commonly asked in these interviews, and this means that you can more easily prepare for and practice your responses to them. The MBA interview is primarily …
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