Fifty Shades of Grey: MBA Edition
I haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey but know the storyline: intimidated college senior (Anastasia Steele) meets successful magnate (Christian Grey), and they have a wild romance.
To many candidates, applying to elite MBA programs can be as mysterious as Christian Grey, as unsettling a tryst.
Yeah yeah yeah, maybe the analogy falls short. But here are 50 reasons desired MBA programs will put you in the grey zone. The grey zone, in this case, would be the “maybe” or “no” piles.
Admissions Directors could never say these (there are always exceptions to the rules!), so I’ll do it for them (I used to be one). They can thank me later.
Remember no candidate – or application – is perfect. The goal here is minimize admissions alarm bells.
Avoid these grey zone signals to score with your target MBA.
- GMAT score below average
- Crappy grades in undergrad
- Poor grades in quantitative business courses
- Not meeting minimum TOEFL or IELTS score
- Graduating from an unknown university
- Poor English
- Mentioning the wrong business school in your application
- Vague career goals
- Wildly unrealistic career goals
- Career goals that have nothing to do with your past experience
- Little or no progression in job responsibility
- Zero international experience
- CV longer than 1 page
- CV looks like it’s going to take a long time to read (i.e. no white space)
- Indian Male Engineers
- No work experience
- Little, if any, extracurricular impact during school or work
- Being late to an interview
- Dressing unprofessionally to an interview
- Not having spoken to any students at target school
- Taking more than 4 minutes to answer an interview question
- Asking ridiculously obvious questions at end of interview
- Treating any admissions officer (no matter what rank) rudely
- Badgering the admissions office for an answer
- Thinking you’re IN because you have a 760+ GMAT
- Reciting the school brochure in your essays
- Giving canned interview answers
- Essays that exceed the word limit
- Your essay writing and AWA writing don’t match up
- You want to be a management consultant with a GMAT in the 600s
- The adcom asks you to retake the GMAT… and you don’t
- No concrete business results in your resume
- You’ve worked 4 jobs in 4 years
- You have unexplained gaps in your resume
- Your application is nearly identical to someone else in your demographic
- Short recommendations
- Lukewarm recommendations
- No recommendations from current or past supervisors
- You treat the school (and application) like a backup option
- You expectantly ask about scholarship funding before getting in
- You ask the admissions office to connect you to alumni without a reason
- You say “school x is the perfect fit for me” in your application or interview
- You treat career services like a job placement service
- You only have one post-MBA job in mind
- There is no evidence of self-reflection in your application
- You don’t answer the essay question asked
- Your essays are all lecture, no scenes
- Your essay sounds like a cut and paste from another essay
- You use your optional essay to cut and paste another essay
- You can’t name 3 industries or 3 companies that interest you
Got questions? Objections? Hate the book? 🙂 Let’s hear them in the comments…
update 2/14/2015 – I just found out Matt Symonds of Fortuna Consulting wrote a similarly titled post on Forbes, check it out – 50 Shades of Admissions Grey. Evidence of poor ethics is definitely something I should of included on my list…