Many applicants—even highly qualified ones—recently faced the dreaded news that they weren’t accepted into the school of their dreams. For those of you contemplating rejection and wondering if there’s a magic solution to reapplication, consider this: with just five percent of applicants making it into Stanford Graduate School of Business’s Class of 2016, and 12 percent landing a spot at Harvard Business School in the Class of 2016, getting into a top MBA program isn’t as easy as pulling a rabbit out of a hat. However, I can recommend a few tricks that might yield more positive results for the next go-around.
First, give yourself a break from this intense process. Applying to business school is extremely stressful, and starting over without taking a breather first only sets you up for failure since you’ll be burned out before you even begin. Once you’ve taken the time to mentally regroup, step two is doing some intense soul searching. Everyone has room for improvement, so take a cold, hard look and see where you can do better next time.
It’s unlikely that the rejection came as a result of just one element of your application, but the common red flags include a lack of leadership skills and experience, less than stellar recommendations and low GMAT test scores or undergraduate grade point averages. Was there room in your GMAT score for improvement? Would you have taken a class to boost your quantitative profile before applying if you’d had more time? Were you lacking depth or breadth in your extra-curricular activities, or is there room for a leadership role in your volunteer activities? Admissions committees want to hear that you’ve made progress in your career and significant improvements to your application since they last turned you down.
What else you can do inside qs leap ?
Due to the large number of applications most top MBA programs receive each season, feedback directly from the school is difficult to come by. If you do have the opportunity to speak with a member of the admissions committee, take advantage by asking for details about each area of your application. Make sure you walk away from any feedback session with action items for next year. For those still feeling anxious about what to do next time, my company offers a 2-hour session with a consultant to evaluate your application from last season and provide feedback and action steps for reapplication.
If you’re reapplying for a second or third time, you should consider adding a few less competitive programs to your list in addition to your top one or two dream schools. Some people apply to places that are clearly wrong for them. If your scores don’t come close to those of an average student at the school, it’s not likely you’ll get in next time unless you make tremendous strides on your GMAT and have other, extremely impressive qualifications too.
Perhaps the most important quality I can stress in the b-school application process is resilience. It’s very easy to look at successful people and assume their road was smooth. But for most super successful people, including those occupying the seats at top MBA programs, the road was a bumpy one. What differentiates the successful from the less so is not that the successful never failed; it’s that they picked themselves up and tried again. If you’re struggling with getting up after being knocked down, try to apply a dose of resilience. I love this quote from magician David Blaine, who is renowned for his public endurance challenges. “Magic…is pretty simple. It’s practice, it’s training, it’s experimenting, while pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be.” The same goes for applying, or in this case, reapplying, to business school.
