Last Minute Applicants: One Successful Applicant's Story

Maybe you’ve been busy at work.  Maybe you’ve been busy at home. Or maybe you had an epiphany and decided to go to business school the day before the Round 3 application deadline. I’ve been working on an upcoming MBA Podcaster show titled “Last Minute Applicants: How to Submit a Successful Late Round Three Application.”  In the podcast, we’ll explore some of the different attitudes schools have toward round three as well as give advice on how to navigate the waters and complete your application on time. And we hear from Jedd Gold, the late applicant who after an epiphany at work was successfully admitted to (and graduated) UCLA’s Anderson School of Business.

Jedd says honest is the best policy when first approaching about being late, whether in Round 3 or just plain late.

“When I called the admissions office that afternoon knowing that the applications were due the next morning and I hadn’t started it, I took a really sort of candid, humorous approach to it, figuring there was going to be no way to really justify the fact that I was applying so late and hadn’t even started the admissions process.  So I introduced myself and said that I was probably going to make one of the more stranger requests they’d heard in a while, but that I was interested in attended UCLA, I recognized that the applications were due the next day, but there was no way that I would be able to get my application in because I had just decided that afternoon to actually apply.  I sort of waited for the pause-slash-laugh on the other end.”

 And you have to convince them that you are serious about attending the program.  

“There was sort of a befuddled silence on the other end actually until I commented on the fact that this is not coming off as the most responsible candidate in the world.  Then all of a sudden I got a very sympathetic approach from them which was ‘Don’t worry about it. We understand.’ They inquired immediately what I was doing for work and what I was hoping to get out of the program.... Clearly they wanted to get a sense how serious I was and if I was going to actually bring something to the program because at the end of the day these schools are very much looking to put together a diverse group of  people who bring different things to their programs.”

 Learn more of what Jedd did to get into UCLA and what the other guests have to say about round three applications in our upcoming show. Other guests on the show include:

• Kofi Kankam, Co-founder & Director, Admit Advantage;
• Soojin Kwon Koh, Director of Admissions for the Ross School at the University of Michigan;
• Graham Richmond, Co-founder and Director, Clear Admit;
• Alex Sevilla  Assistant Dean & Director,  Hough Graduate School of Busienss and Warrington College of Business Administration at the University of Florida; and
• Robert Wagner, Interim Director Graduate Admissions Babson College, F.W. Olin School of Business