Graduate Admissions:
MBA Programs
Many people think of a degree as a golden ticket to a job - get the degree, and companies will trip over themselves to hand you a career. This was true in the 20th century, however, today this simply isn't true. The MBA is a perfect example of this.
An MBA is designed to act as a seal of approval that you are ready to tackle the biggest real-world challenges in business. However, even universities acknowledge the limits of being able to effectively prepare students for this within solely an academic setting. That’s why any MBA program worth its salt will require applicants to have 2-5 years of work experience. Any program that doesn't is not worth it. Such programs will bleed you for money and make you less competitive in the job market.
If you want to unlock opportunities in industry, you need accomplishments in industry, and anything that saps time away from that, will hurt you. For solid mid-tier MBA programs, they will require that you have a track record of holding a steady job in a single industry, and have made modest real-world accomplishments in it. This experience, along with your GMAT scores, vastly outweighs factors like a college GPA.
For people with a modest resume, but want to take their career to the next level, an MBA is a good choice. For those who have yet to nail down the direction they’d like to take their career , or struggle to start a career at all, an MBA is not for you. An MBA is a “win more” degree - it won’t turn around a losing streak.
For elite MBA programs like Wharton, Stern, and Ross, the MBA serves more as a formal initiation ritual into a particular line of work. Competitive applicants for such programs don't really need an MBA, they are perfectly capable of having lucrative careers without it, and can launch successful businesses if they want to. Sometimes this leads elite students to stay at these programs for just a semester, only so they can network with the right people, and then leave once they have found the human talent they are looking for. People getting into these elite programs typically have worked for the top companies in the world, or have eye-catching numbers or deliverables on their resumes, indicating significant accomplishments they have made in their careers so far.
Overall, when it comes to MBA admissions, industry experience is the most important factor. Beyond that, other factors include recommendation letters, GMAT scores, essays, and interview performances.
In their essays, MBA programs are looking to gauge who will actually benefit from an MBA. One of the biggest mistakes top applicants make when applying to MBA programs is that writing their academia essay like an industry sales pitch. Instead of answering questions like what diversity means to them, or talking about how they overcame a challenge, they will ignore the prompts altogether and give a detailed business plan of how they will launch their dream business and leverage the human capital at a school's MBA program to do so.
This is a terrible idea. If you've got your business perfectly planned and all you need is the human capital to start it - why get an MBA? If you know everything and have it all figured out, just launch your business and find your labor elsewhere. There are plenty of places you can find the "right" people besides an MBA program, after all.
MBA programs are trying hard to filter out candidates who attend just so they can network for a semester then drop out, hurting their profits and stats. Unless they ask you to pitch your business plan, don't do it. What attracts venture capitalists repulses admission officers at MBA programs. Remember, business programs are still academia, even if they pretend to be more grounded than the philosophy grad departments.
Another mistake is to critique industry leaders. There are lots of MBA applications filled with hot takes on any number of controversial industry leaders. In the same way negativity has no place in undergraduate essays, they have no place in MBA admission essays either. Admissions officers want to learn about you, your motivation for wanting to attend an MBA program, how their program will benefit you, how you will contribute tangibly to their program, and what your goals are after your MBA. They don't particularly care about your hot takes - If you are qualified enough to judge people who have been in business longer than you have been alive, then you most likely don't need an MBA and wouldn't benefit from the program.
In short, when applying to MBA programs, don't present yourself as someone who already has it all figured out. Rather, present yourself as a student who has much more to learn and wants to do so.
At Cosmic, besides helping you avoid these common pitfalls, we will ensure each and every one of your essays make clear to the college how their MBA program will be instrumental towards unlocking your full potential. We will prep you for interviews, guaranteeing that your responses reinforce the person you portray yourself to be in your essays, and demonstrating to them that you have a clear vision of what you'd like to accomplish in life.
No matter where you are in your MBA admissions journey, we have services for you. Still in college? We will help you apply for internships and prep you for interviews. These internships will help you land your dream entry-level job which will set you up on the right path to get into a legitimate MBA program. If you’ve graduated already, we will help prep your resume, offer career advice, prepare you for interviews, and anything else it takes to get you the roles in your chosen industry that will let you make both an impact and a name for yourself - which will impress MBA admissions officers.
Finally, if you are already in the process of applying, we'll help you brainstorm essay topics, edit and polish those essays, provide you interview and resume prep, help you curate your list of MBA programs to apply to, and help you write your recommendation letters as well.
