Qualities looked for in MBA applicants:

1) Wharton:
- in-depth work experience or school work - academic aptitude
-leadership qualities - confidence , discipline, willing to take risks
-self awareness - who they are, where they are, what their plan is

2) Chicago GSB
-Academic achievements
-Professional Development (work progression, career development)
-personal qualities (leadership and involvement in extra. activities)

3) U Michigan Ross
- wants to get a sense of app.' leadership potential and their ability to create results.
-What they have been doing, how have they made an impact to their organization, are they willing to take risks
-Michigan is known for its action based learning and the ability for students to build on broad
based curriculum and rest of the univ offerings to create a robust and customized experience


This is going to be more of an evolving post, as I gather more information about my target bschools :-)

Struggle

What have you done so far?--Where are you going? -- Why MBA? ---Why now? --What that university's MBA?

Time and again, many applicants, MBA students, admission committees have emphasized these key questions. A compelling story to these questions , filled with one's sweat and tears and smiles, will make a winning application. As I have put effort into understanding these questions for myself over the past few weeks, I have realized the part that I struggle the most with. "How do I link my "specific goals" to that university's MBA program offering? Points that come to mind are:
1) Core program curriculum - BUT , most B-schools have more or less the same type of courses in the core areas (finance, accounting, marketing, etc)
2) Clubs, Activities - BUT, most B-schools have more or less the same type of clubs (ASIA club, Enterpreneurship club)
3) Programs - Chances of some difference arise here. Most top schools offer a global practicum, b-plan competitions, case competitions etc
4) World Class Faculty - Hmmm, every school has its own cream
5) Commitment to Community - So many b-schools have started emphasizing this lately.
6) Student Culture/Personality - THIS one begs to differ. Each b-school has its own persona, that projects itself into the dynamic community that the school represents.

Are these the only elements to use to link one's goals to university X's MBA program? Also, what does it mean by "linking one's goals to MBA program"? If one of my goals is to learn about marketing high tech internet consumer products for start-ups and small businesses, is it sufficient to "link" this goal with the "Marketing for entrepreneurs" course at the university?

Thoughts on this very much appreciated.

Essay Advice

Some key points from various posts, blogs, articles, emails:

1) Your essays should reflect who U are? not just your work experiences
2) What results have you achieved because of who you are?
3) What values drive your life? What makes you unique?

A great essay advice post from Dave's blog: http://daveformba.blogspot.com/2005/01/application-essay-advice.html

My Haas and Stanford Visit experience

My Haas and Stanford Visit experience

Overall I am impressed by both schools. I have been to SF, Berkeley, Palo Alto. I don't want to write text on why those areas are popular. :-) . Also, I don't intent to compare these 2 vists or schools , each school has its own personality. So here goes visit experience:

Stanford : I started the day with a visit to Stanford GSB- class visit. I had picked up a class at 10.00am, arrived 10 minutes before the class started. (the traffic in that area on a monday morning can really get to you). Anyway, I soon met up with my class visit buddy, who gave brief about the class. (Organizational changes).

In the class, I get a brief intro (name, place where I come from). There were couple other visitors as well. This class session had case studies related organizational behaviour for (1) a steel company (2) eco tourism company. I haven't read the case study myself, but what was amazing what the amount of class participation and interaction that happened. The students even quoted their personal experiences to analyze and draw conclusions. Not to mention, that the prof also cold-called some students to share their viewpoints. The class size was small , may be around 60 students. The prof raised different points to discuss, the students followed with their viewpoints. Even though I am not a student of GSB, I could understand a few things, and derive a few conclusions. I spoke to my class buddy at the end of the class, asked him a questions about how are the rest of the classes are. His response: class are usually small and there is a lot of learning from the students in the class. I proceeded to a tour after this.

Stanford has great courses in leadership, management, amzing resources for areas that I am aiming for -high tech entrepreneurship , strategy.

Haas experience:
At Haas I started with the school tour and then proceed to the class visit - Global Marketing . This was a second year elective , the class strength was therefore about 20 students. The prof had already given a class case study in the previous class. So this was more of a presentation slide lecture, which describe some marketing facets. What was interesting is that the prof was linking all those factes to his previous case study. The students discussed their view points amongst themselves, drawing on examples from different courses. Haas also has unparalled resources for high tech enterpreneurship (including the Haas business plan competitions)

Overall, the classes at the bschools are very interactive, dynamic and require prep work on part of the students.