Admissions Tip: School Selection » Clear Admit: MBA Admissions Consultants Blog

APPLICANT RESOURCES

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Admissions Director Q&A
Below are links to Clear Admit's exclusive interviews with MBA admissions directors at leading programs.
Dawna Clarke (Tuck)
Rose Martinelli (Chicago)
Judith Hodara (Wharton)
Sara Neher (Darden)
Soojin Kwon Koh (Michigan)
Randall Sawyer (Cornell)
Beth Flye (Kellogg)
David Simpson (LBS)
Liz Riley Hargrove (Duke)
Linda Meehan (Columbia)
Bruce DelMonico (Yale)
Peter Johnson (Berkeley)
Isser Gallogly (NYU)
Mae Jennifer Shores (UCLA)
J.J. Cutler (Wharton)
Jake Cohen (INSEAD)
Rod Garcia (MIT Sloan)
Mary Miller (Columbia)

Clear Admit School Guides
Become an expert on your target schools overnight! Get the program-specific details you need to craft essays that stand out. See how schools compare head-to-head in key areas like recruiting, curricular structure, elective offerings and more. Available for immediate download. As featured in the Economist.

Clear Admit Career Guides
Understand career-specific offerings at leading MBA programs and identify the schools that will best support your career goals with the Clear Admit Career Guides! Available for Consulting, Investment Banking, Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Healthcare.

Clear Admit Strategy Series
Craft a winning application with the Clear Admit Strategy Series! Step-by-Step guidance through the application process. Titles include a Resume Guide, Recommendations Guide, Waitlist Guide and more!

Clear Admit Interview Guides
Be as prepared as possible for your MBA interviews this season with the Clear Admit Interview Guides! School-specific sample questions and in-depth strategy, campus visit details and places to stay.

Application Deadlines
Below are the upcoming deadlines for admission to top-tier schools.
Jul 28: INSEAD Jan. Intake R3
Sep 29: INSEAD R2
Sep 30: Duke / Fuqua EA
Oct 1: HBS R1
Oct 4: Cambridge / Judge R1
Oct 4: UPenn / Wharton R1
Oct 6: CBS EA
Oct 6: Stanford GSB R1
Oct 7: Yale SOM R1
Oct 8: Oxford / Saїd R1
Oct 11: Michigan / Ross R1
Oct 13: Berkeley / Haas R1
Oct 13: Chicago / Booth R1
Oct 13: Dartmouth / Tuck EA
Oct 14: Northwestern / Kellogg R1
Oct 20: UCLA / Anderson R1
Oct 22: UNC / Kenan-Flagler EA
Oct 26: MIT / Sloan R1

Essay Topic Analysis
Below are links to our comments on some of the top programs' essay topics.
The Career Goals Essay*
Berkeley / Haas
Chicago Booth*
CMU / Tepper
Columbia*
Cornell / Johnson
Dartmouth / Tuck*
Duke / Fuqua*
Harvard*
Indian School of Business
INSEAD
London Business School*
MIT / Sloan*
Michigan / Ross*
Northwestern / Kellogg*
NYU / Stern
Oxford / Said
Penn / Wharton*
Stanford GSB*
UCLA / Anderson*
UNC / Kenan-Flagler*
USC / Marshall
UT Austin / McCombs
UVA / Darden*
Yale SOM*
* denotes '10-'11 commentary

Categories
Use categories to access all that has been written on each of the topics. We have categorized by school and by subject matter.

Interview Reports
A selection of interview field reports from fellow applicants posted to the MBA Admissions Wiki. Add your reports when you are finished with your interviews.
Chicago
Columbia
Dartmouth / Tuck
Duke / Fuqua
Harvard
Kellogg
Michigan / Ross
MIT / Sloan
Stanford
UNC / Chapel Hill
Virginia / Darden
Wharton
London Business School

GMAT Resources
MBA.com
Manhattan GMAT
GMAT Club
Princeton Review
Test Prep New York
Kaplan
Beat The GMAT
Knewton
GMAT Pill

Writing Resources
Guide to Grammar and Writing
The Internet Grammar of English
English Usage, Style and Composition
The Economist Style Guide
Paradigm Online Writing Assistant

School Rankings
Rankings are a good way to start your research on various MBA Programs. Keep in mind each uses a different methodology.
Business Week
Economist
Financial Times
Forbes
USNews
Wall Street Journal

Career Guides
The following resources should be useful to those who want to research the careers open to them after (or before) earning an MBA.
Vault.com
Wetfeet

Business School Resources
The following are business resources offered by a variety of leading Business Schools. It's useful to subscribe to these resources, especially for the schools to which you are applying.

MBA Programs: North America
If an MBA Program is not listed, please e-mail and we will be happy to list it.
Berkeley / Haas
Boston College / Carroll
Carnegie Mellon / Tepper
Chicago
Columbia
Concordia
Cornell / Johnson
Dartmouth / Tuck
Duke / Fuqua
Emory / Goizueta
Harvard
HEC Montreal
Indiana / Kelley
Michigan
MIT / Sloan
Northwestern / Kellogg
New York / Stern
North Carolina / Kenan Flagler
Notre Dame / Mendoza
Pennsylvania / Wharton
Queens
Stanford
Syracuse / Whitman
Texas / McCombs
Thunderbird
Toronto
USC / Marshall
UCLA / Anderson
Vanderbilt / Owen
Virginia / Darden
Washington University in St. Louis / Olin
Western Ontario / Ivey
Yale

MBA Programs: Rest of the World
As there is some variety in the length of international MBA programs, we have denoted the length of the program next to its name (1 = one year; 2 = 2 years). If an MBA Program is not listed, please e-mail and we will be happy to list it.
AGSM (Australia) 2
Cambridge / Judge (UK) 1
CIEBS (China) 2
Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (China) 1
Cranfield School of Mgmt (UK) 1
ESADE (Spain) 1 or 2
HEC (France) 2
Hult (UK) 1
IESE (Spain) 2
IMD (Switzerland) 1
INCAE (Costa Rica) 2
INSEAD (France) 1
IPADE (Mexico)
ISB (India) 1
London Business School (UK) 2
Manchester Bus. School (UK) 2
Melbourne (Australia) 2
Oxford / Said (UK) 1
Rotterdam (Netherlands) 1
Tsinghua IMBA (China) 2
University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) 1

Additional Resources
Here we link a host of additional resources available across the web. E-mail info@clearadmit.com to have resources added to this list.
AACSB International
Association of MBAs
Beyond Grey Pinstripes
EFMD
gradschools.com (worldwide)
Infozee
International Student Loans
mba.com (GMAT Scores)
MBAInfo
mbaleague.blogspot.com
MBAzone
MBA Jungle
TOEFL
Top MBA

MBA Tipline
We encourage admissions officers, students and applicants to alert us of interesting news and developments, please send an email to news@clearadmit.com so we can blog it.

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Monday, March 07, 2005

Admissions Tip: School Selection

For those of you who are beginning to think about MBA applications for the class of 2008, we’d like to offer a few critical tips on researching the schools. Although there are many issues to consider when choosing a group of target MBA programs (size, location, teaching method, industry strength, fit), this post focuses on the tools that are available to help applicants evaluate the various programs that may be on an initial list.

Visiting Campus
Perhaps the best way to decide whether you like a school is to visit: take a tour, speak with current students, sit in on a class, etc. This will give you a feel for the school’s atmosphere, attitudes, community, and focus on academics. You will also get to see whether you like the school’s location within the surrounding city or town. Early-bird applicants may consider visiting in the spring semester before applying so as to avoid juggling applications and campus visits in the fall.

Student Writings
Thanks to the combination of schools’ recruiting strategies and the blogging phenomenon, there is now a plethora of ways to read about the experiences of current business school students.

There are a number of benefits to reading what current students are writing. They will write about everything from their classes to their internship/job search to their peers to their thoughts about the Super Bowl. While this is not a systematic way to gain information – you never know what you will be reading about – you will find that some of what you read will be quite useful, and may go a long way to shaping your perception about a school.

There are also many online forums about business schools, which give you the chance to talk (and panic) with other applicants, as well as the occasional admissions officer and current student. While the information on these forums is not always reliable – rumors tend to spread fairly well – chats with current students, in particular, can be useful.

Human Resources Departments
You can learn a fair amount from speaking with the human resources departments of firms who you expect to target post-MBA. You can ask them if they would be interested in someone of your background (with or without an MBA), and what schools they would recommend you consider. You can also ask them what they think of the schools that you have already been considering. This can be a good reality check, as you can get a feel for whether your goals would be feasible within your target companies.

Alumni
While alumni networks are often thought about in terms of securing employment after graduation, speaking with alumni in your area can be another way to learn about a school and whether it is the right place for you. Often, alumni clubs will have annual events to meet the year’s applicants, which can provide you with a great opportunity to meet both alumni and potential classmates. You should feel free, however, to contact the local alumni club outside of these events and see if there is someone who would be willing to talk to you about their experiences at business school. As informative as these discussions can be, however, you should keep in mind that the information you are getting might be out of date – especially if you are talking to someone who graduated more than a decade ago.

Rankings
There are a number of business school rankings available, and more appear every year. As with any rankings, there is a great deal of debate about what criteria should be considered, the extent to which rankings shape, rather than reflect, reality, and who should care about a school’s rank. For better or for worse, however, many people make decisions on the basis of ranks, from applicants deciding which schools interest them to professors deciding where they are willing to teach. The schools themselves also tend to put a great deal of effort into improving or maintaining their ranks.

Whichever rankings you decide to look at, it is important to keep in mind what, precisely, is being measured (and what is not being measured), and to interpret that information in the context of the other factors involved. In the end, we encourage you to come up with your own personal ranking which takes into account all of the factors which you consider important and all of the independent research you have done, and to base your decisions on that customized list of schools.

# posted by Clear Admit @ 10:08 am in Admissions Tips

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Wharton Interview Field Reports
HBS Interview Field Reports
Kellogg Interview Field Reports
Chicago Interview Field Reports
Columbia Interview Field Reports

Discussion Boards

BusinessWeek Forums
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Beat The GMAT Forums
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GMAT Courses | Add your site

StudyLink Forums
Clear Admit manages the Applying section of the StudyLink MBA discussion boards.

GMAT Club Forums
Below are the five most recent posts to the GMAT Club message boards.

student 2 student
The student-2-student Discussion Boards are managed by Wharton. Here are the five most recent discussions.

School-Hosted Blogs

Straight from the source: aggregated posts from students and administration. Below are the seven most recent posts in school-hosted blogs.

Individuals' Blogs

A selection of the latest updates to MBA blogs compiled by Hella.
MBA Applicants

MBA Students

Bloggers by School

The following are links to bloggers at each of the schools listed.
Chicago
Columbia
Dartmouth / Tuck
Duke / Fuqua
Harvard
Kellogg
Michigan
MIT / Sloan
New York / Stern
North Carolina / Chapel Hill
Stanford
Virginia / Darden
Wharton
Yale
ESADE
IESE
INSEAD
London Business School

Community Blogs

Bshoolers.com
Community blog with MBA student and alum contributors.

Forté Foundation MBA Diaries
Video blog entries posted by women MBA students.

Owen Bloggers
Independent blog with content by Vanderbilt MBA students.

Best of Blogging

2009-2010 Top Ten: