Download Getting off the Waitlist Podcast 5.76 MB 16:46 Min

More Information on this Topic from our Sponsor

Support for MBA Podcaster comes from ManhattanGMAT, the world's largest GMAT-exclusive test preparation provider. Developed by Ivy-League Education Professionals and continually updated to reflect current trends, ManhattanGMAT's advanced curriculum goes beyond "teaching the tricks" and focuses on in-depth content understanding in addition to GMAT specific strategy. All programs are taught by highly trained and experienced instructors with GMAT scores in the 99th percentile, a 760 or better out of 800. Visit manhattangmat.com/mbapodcaster to explore program options including comprehensive nine session courses, private tutoring, one-day workshops and a two-week intensive boot camp. MBA Podcaster listeners will receive a $100 discount on Manhattan GMAT programs by using the code "PODCASTER" when enrolling for a complete course. Visit manhattangmat.com/mbapodcaster to enroll and receive your discount. ManhattanGMAT - The New Standard in GMAT Preparation

Resources:

Click here to read an excerpt chapter from Linda Abraham's book "The Nine Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make on an MBA Waitlist"

Transcription:

Welcome to MBA Podcaster—the only source for cutting-edge information and advice on the MBA application process. It could top the list as the most frustrating position to be in—admissions purgatory—or better known as “The Waitlist”. Some schools advise the best thing to do now is nothing at all, while others schools say you can send periodic updates. If you’ve been forced into limbo and want to know how to get out, two MBA admissions consultants are here to help you plan a strategy. We’ll find out what to send to the admissions committee, how often you should contact them, and whether a campus visit will boost your case. We’ll help you move off the waitlist and on to being accepted.

Sometimes straight-forward answers are easier to deal with like “Yes, you’re accepted,” or “No, we don’t want you.” At least, you know how to proceed. Being told maybe yes, maybe no, inevitably, leaves you guessing. Linda Abraham is the author of “The Nine Mistakes You Don’t Want to Make on an MBA Waitlist”. She’s also CEO of Accepted.com, an admissions counseling service. Abraham says being waitlisted isn’t all too bad. “Being waitlisted means that the school likes you, you’re competitive; you’ve qualified, but that somebody is a little bit more attractive or competitive. It’s a good sign in the sense that it’s a definite sign of interest from the school, but it’s also very frustrating because it means they want somebody else a little bit more.”

Maybe you’ll find some comfort knowing you’ve got quite a lot of company in admissions purgatory. Business schools report they receive more applications each year overflowing with qualified candidates leaving a lot of applicants on the waitlist. Abraham says almost all schools don’t place waitlisted candidates in any sort of order, so you have no idea who is going to be called next. Schools like diversity, and they want to balance out their incoming class. That means even if you top the list of most qualified investment bankers, the admissions committee might be looking for someone different. Michael Cohan is President of MBAPrepAdvantage.com, an MBA admissions consultancy. “Different schools have different ways to evaluate the waitlist. And also, you have to look at the reasons why the people are put on the waitlist. If it’s something like low GMAT score, you’re not often waiting for somebody else’s spot. You can actually remedy the situation with just improving your GMAT score. However, let’s say you come from Brazil, and you were waitlisted because they already have a lot of excellent candidates from Brazil, and they’re waiting to see if those Brazilians accept their admissions offer. In that instance, you’re actually waiting in the process.”

When choosing off the waitlist, the admissions committee will likely pick someone who’ll jump at the chance to go. That means schools generally want to see your enthusiasm, unless the waitlisted school falls into the don’t-call-us, we’ll-call-you group, says Linda Abraham. “The don’t-call-us schools are schools that very firmly say we do not want any additional information from you. We want to go just on the basis of the application that you submitted. For those schools—Harvard, Wharton are probably most prominent in that category— you have to control yourself and not contact them. The question that immediately arises is: Well, what about having supporters contact you? It depends. It’s a little bit of waffling from what I can see. The schools insist that they don’t want to be contacted. I am a little suspicious that an informative letter from an alumnus or current student and a letter of support—brief, succinct, meaty that expresses support for the candidate because the alumni or student knows the candidate well and knows the school extremely well and intimately and feels that there’s a real match there—might help a little bit.”

Two more groups schools will fall under are what Abraham calls the show-me-you-love-me and coy schools. “The show-me-you-love-me schools are schools that want to know you’re interested in attending. They’re interested in updates and they’re interested in what you’ve been doing. And the coy schools are a little bit in between. They say if you have something really important, send it in. At the moment, I would say that INSEAD is probably in the coy category. Most of the schools are in the category of schools that encourage contact. They want to know if you’re interested. They want to know if there’s anything significant that has occurred that improves your candidacy. They want to know if you’ve clarified your goals or clarified how their program helps you to achieve your goals. MIT, Chicago, Haas, Michigan, Carnegie Mellon, Kellogg—they would fit into the show-me-you-love-me schools. And that’s a little bit of a flippant title. You don’t want to send them junk. You don’t want to be a pest. You don’t want to just send them endless drivel. That will not help your case at all. But substantive information—real demonstrations of interest, a new perspective from a supporter—those things are very, very helpful at the show-me-you-love-me school.”

Abraham says if you read and follow the instructions in your letter, you’ll know right away if the school wants to hear from you or not. If it does, you can now start planning your strategy to get off the waitlist. And the very first step begins by telling the admissions committee you would love to be a student there. “I have talked to many admissions people and there’s no question that they say show interest. Let us know that you want to attend our school. Because you might have wanted to attend in October, doesn’t mean that you want to attend in April and May. So if they don’t hear from a waitlisted applicant, or all they get is a postcard—and, again, we’re talking about the show-me-you-love-me schools—they assume you are not quite as interested as a person who has sent in monthly updates, letters of support, perhaps visited again. In addition, remember the waitlisted applicant is somebody who is attractive but not quite attractive enough. The person who is sending an update isn’t only demonstrating interest, they are showing growth. They can talk about what they have been doing in the last three and six months—how they’ve taken on additional responsibilities, how they’ve improved their quantitative skills or verbal skills, how they’ve clarified their goals and reasons for wanting to attend the school.”

Michael Cohan of MBA PrepAdvantage says people skills as well as business management savvy come in handy while on the waitlist. You’ll have to gauge when you’re pushing enough and when it’s too much. Cohan gives us some suggestions on how to approach the admissions committee. “The first thing I would say is that the school provides a number to call. Call the number! And if the person answering is on the admissions committee, thank them for placing you on the (waitlist). If the school is your top choice, let them know that if accepted off the waitlist, you will attend. So that’s one thing that you definitely should be doing in your correspondence. If you know you will attend, state it so that the school will be getting positive yield numbers off admitting you off the waitlist. Second, obviously express enthusiasm in the initial written waitlist response to the admissions committee. Again, as I mentioned, if the school is your top choice, explicitly state so in your letter. Third, develop a list of all your contacts at the school who can write a letter of support for your candidacy. School alumni and present students are helpful, but also try not to write more than two recommendations. One of the things that we, as a consulting company, try to advise during the initial phase of researching the school is to contact the heads of a variety of clubs that they’re interested in to learn more about the schools they wish to apply to. These contacts then become valuable during the waitlist process, because if the candidate and the contact bonded during the researching phase, the contact will now feel comfortable endorsing the applicant’s candidacy with a recommendation letter.”

Taking an honest look at your application comes next. You weren’t accepted for a reason. Some schools may offer you feedback, but if they don’t, Cohan says here’s a list of common weaknesses in an application and what you can do about it. “In terms of low GMAT score, it’s obvious—retake the GMAT. And if you did not work with a test prep company, you might consider doing so. Additionally, even if you get the same GMAT scores you did before; it’s still positive in the eyes of the admissions committee that at least you retook the test and showed effort. So definitely if you have a low GMAT score—and that’s pretty easy to figure out. The average GMAT scores for the school are published in Business Week and elsewhere, and you can easily tell if yours is below the average. Now something like low grades—there’s a little bit less you can do in this situation. However, you can take a local calculus or statistics course or something like that to build an alternate transcript. Additionally, you can get a recommendation from a professor about the quality of your academics. Keep in mind that this helps, but not as much as you would think, because the biggest indicators of your academic success are your previous transcripts. But this helps to a degree. Another is lack of work experience or leadership. Send updated information about promotions and/or an increase in responsibility such as managing people, spearheading new initiatives, closing large sales etc. Lack of community service: If you’re elected to the board of a non-profit or organized a new fundraiser, this is definitely good, updated information to send. Lack of fit: Indicate how the school fits with your career goals and personal interests. A recommendation from a present student can help. Lack of career goals: If you did not accurately define your career goals in your application, you can do so now. Show a logical progression from your existing skills sets and experiences as well as demonstrate a fit with the offerings of your target MBA program.”

What if someone doesn’t have opportunities in their company to demonstrate leadership? How would you recommend someone go about that? “First of all, I think you always have an opportunity to demonstrate leadership. It might not be formal leadership as in i.e. being able to manage more people. But, usually, you can assume a project, or assume a module within a project, or assume a task force, or assume something no matter how trivial that demonstrates leadership. I’ve had people that even on the leadership essays, initially; it looks like they have no leadership in their job. Maybe they’re a research scientist and they manage their own work. But when you push and push and push, there’s some form of leadership whether it be thought leadership, whether it be mentoring or something. But even so, let’s look at the areas outside of the work that you can get leadership, and that’s usually within the community. You can try to push for a board position of a non-profit you’re working at. You can try to organize new activities for that non-profit, or you can do some sort of fundraising initiative. In life, regardless of what area you’re in—whether at work or community or even your personal pursuits—there’s usually some way to exhibit leadership. And it’s just usually a function of initiative.”

While it’s important to update the school of recent accomplishments, it’s good to spread out your letters in a timely way. For example, bombarding schools with updates and recommendations a couple of months before an admissions committee makes a round of decisions wouldn’t serve you best, but monthly updates would. And Cohan says he even suggests sending a letter every two to three weeks at the right time. “Your goal in this process should be to have positive name recognition among the admissions committee members when the school starts accepting waitlist candidates. For example, let’s look at Chicago. If you’re waitlisted during round two with Chicago, most of the candidates will then be re-evaluated with the round-three pool. That’s not everybody, by the way. There are certain instances where they do take people off the wait list beforehand. So what you want to do in this instance is you want to be making sure that your letters come before major dates for the school. So if the school has a deadline for its round-two applicants to send their deposits in, you want to make sure your update is coming in at least a week before. And if they have a deadline for notifying the round-three applicants, you want to make sure another update is around a week before. So you not only want to try to time them every three to four weeks, you want to also make sure that these are sent before major milestone dates in the admission process for the school that you’re targeting.”

Waitlisted applicants are in a delicate situation. You want to show enthusiasm, but you don’t want to bother an admissions committee. Accepted.com’s Linda Abraham says here’s one simple way to gauge if you’re teetering on annoyance. “Too much is when you are saying nothing, because you have nothing to say. You’ve let them know what you’ve done up until this point. It’s three days; nothing new of substance has happened, and you feel you have to write it again. That’s silly! That’s a waste of time. The applicant has to keep in mind that no matter how desperate they are, and how much they want to get into the school, the worst thing they can do is waste the admissions committee’s time.”

School visits can be helpful. Even for yourself, you can reaffirm that this is a school you want to attend if you got accepted. But it’s also a chance to present yourself to the admissions committee. Michael Cohan: “Most schools will explicitly let you know whether a visit will help. And a lot of schools officially say a visit will not help because this would create an unlevel playing field for applicants who are located farther away. However, if you’ve been waitlisted and not interviewed, or come to schedule an interview—try to schedule it on campus, by the way, if you can—this both indicates your interest level to fly over there, and then it’s an opportunity to potentially get face time before an admissions committee member. So, unofficially, these visits could really help. I’ve had candidates who have been able to secure a meeting with an admissions officer and then been accepted off the waitlist. And these are actually by schools that explicitly discourage people from trying to arrange visits. Again, these types of visits, though, require good people skills and so forth. Because every time you make a call into the admissions office, if you’re not appreciative of the other person’s time; if you’re not able to back off when you encounter resistance, there is a potential you could hurt your candidacy.”

For more information, advice, and to register for your weekly MBA podcast, visit mbapodcaster.com. This is MBA Podcaster. Thanks for listening and stay tuned next time when we discuss getting your Master’s in Business Administration versus a Master’s Degree in a similar topic like an MS in Finance or Economics.