Are you planning to do an MBA from a top B School in 2014?

Are you planning to do an MBA from a top B School in 2014?

It may seem a wee bit too early to even think about taking few baby steps to that end at this juncture. However, you could not be more wrong about that. I will walk you through the time line sequence to starting an MBA in the US or for that matter in any top B school in Aug 2014.

Most B Schools start their application window for an MBA program beginning in Aug-Sep 2014 a year earlier. Their Round 1 (R1) application deadlines fall anywhere from the end of Sep 2013 to Oct 2013. If you are serious about a B School and are keen on getting some tuition fee waiver or some form of financial assistantship, or a job on campus (assistantship), or even suitable accommodation near the campus, you should apply in R1. Applying in R1 is also a better indication of preparedness, and you tend to beat the crowd that rushes in later.

Let us take end of Sep 2013 as our application deadline and work backwards.

You should have completed and submitted your online application in all aspects as on the deadline date. What does that entail?

1. Having GMAC send your official GMAT score to the school.
2.  Having ETS send your official TOEFL score to the school (if applicable).
3. Drafting, trashing, redrafting, editing and fine tuning your application essays and submitting them.
4. Having your supervisors / professors submit their online reference forms.
5. Scanning and uploading all your transcripts – mark sheets, certificates, achievement letters, et al.
6. Repeating this process for 5-8 schools

A reasonable guestimate is that if you have your scores in place, it will take about 4 to 5 weeks to put your first application packet in place. Subsequent applications (if you are applying to more than one school – which you should) will take about 2 additional weeks each – mainly to fine tune your application essays for that school and have the reference letters for that school completed by your referees.

Getting back to the timeline, you should therefore, start your application process by the third or last week of August. So, you should have taken your GMAT and TOEFL latest by the second week of August 2013, not allowing for re-attempts in case the score is low. Re-attempts take 1 to 2 months.

Most students who apply to good B Schools have about 2 plus years of experience before they start their GMAT preparation – enough time in corporate life to forget the difference between factor and factorial. A decent GMAT preparation to get a score upwards of 700 with a 3 month weekend classroom program thrown in will take about 4 to 5 months. So, the latest you should aim to start your GMAT prep is by March 2013.

Ideally, you should start by February 2013 providing for some slack in the system – there will invariably be those busy year end March weekends – travel, health, social compulsion related disruptions to preparations. Leaving those aside, having a backup plan to attempt the GMAT a second time if your first score is not up to your liking will be possible if you start early. In short, this is that appropriate moment to take that baby step towards your MBA journey.

You should also simultaneously start your research on the different B Schools – the country, ranking, number of students admitted, cost of education, availability of scholarships and funding options, how friendly is the school to international students, post education employment opportunities, placement record, how friendly is the country to students and how friendly is the country’s visa regime. You should also contact alumni and current students, and build a network .

There is a quite a bit of work to be done. Remember – you only do an MBA once in your life. Spare no effort to make it worthy.

What is the Penalty for not completing the GMAT test?

All of us have known for a while that there is a substantial penalty for not completing either or both the sections in the GMAT test.

I have provided a simplified version of how the penalty works – based on the inputs received from the GMAT Test Prep Conference held on Dec 9, 2011 @ Gurgaon.

Let us say I attempt 34 out of the 37 questions in the GMAT Quant section. And to make things simple, let us assume that I have got all the questions correct. This gives us an interim score, which, let us say is equivalent to a Q46. Since, I have skipped 3 out of 37 questions, this interim score gets further adjusted.

Let us see how this adjustment happens. I have skipped 3 out of the 37 questions in the quant section. i.e., 8.1% of the questions in the quant section or I have attempted 91.9% of the questions. I will attract a penalty of 8.1% and my score will get multiplied with this percent of questions attempted. That is, after applying the penalty for skipping questions, my adjusted score after the penalty will be 91.9% of 46 = 42.

It clearly points to the fact that – even if I had attempted and marked something for 35th to the 37th question, even after assuming that none of the last 3 answers were correct, I would have retained my score of 46 without attracting any penalty. Skipping questions gets you a double penalty – you lose marks for not attempting these, and the overall score gets scaled down to reflect percentage of attempts. So, anyone taking the GMAT, please do not skip even a single question.

R1, R2 and R3 deadlines of US B schools - Fall 2012

Have compiled R1, R2, and R3 deadlines of top US B Schools along with result notification dates.

You can access the list at http://top-b-schools.4gmat.com/US-B-Schools-deadline.shtml

New GMAT Format from 2012

GMAC, the makers of the GMAT, has announced a major change to the exam coming in 2012: one of the Analytical Writing sections will be replaced by a new thirty-minute section, Integrated Reasoning.

The new section will test students on how they assimilate data from multiple sources. For instance, students will have to read passages, graphs as well as tables and spreadsheets in order to ferret out bits of information from each to answer a question. Students will be asked to analyze information, draw conclusions and discern relationships between data points, just as they must do in business school.

The Graduate Management Admission Council, the body that conducts GMAT, decided to introduce new section after surveying B-schools across the world in last three years. The overall length of the GMAT exam (three and a half hours) will not change. In conjunction with adding a new 30-minute Integrated Reasoning section, the Analytical Writing Assessment will be streamlined to include only one essay prompt instead of two.

The GMAT exam’s Verbal and Quantitative sections will not change. As a result, when the new section is introduced in June 2012, tests will be scored on the same 200–800 scale used today. Test takers will receive a separate score for the essay—as they do now—and a separate score for the new Integrated Reasoning section.

These questions are on the lines of those testeed in the data interpretation section of the exams such CAT (the entrance test to join the IIMs in India). However, the question types that are likely to appear in the GMAT seem quite different from the reasonably plain vanilla variants that you get in the CAT.

Students, who are currently preparing for the GMAT, have nothing to worry about — scores will be valid for five years. Nevertheless, the optimal strategy for test-takers will be to prepare for three to four months, and take the test before the format changes.

For more details, please visit http://www.gmac.com/gmac/TheGMAT/TheNextGenerationGMAT/NextGenGMATFAQs.htm

2011 Jan intake : Some good B Schools

Programs starting in January (2011 intake)

A vast majority of the applicants target the fall intake (September); this takes the focus off the programs that have a January start. INSEAD is one of the top programs that has an intake twice a year – in September and in January. The January intake has a unique advantage – the possibility of interning with a company for two months during the summer break. This is an invaluable opportunity for career switchers and the respite from the 10-month rigorous academics is always a welcome.

European School of Management and Technology (ESMT) offers a 12 month MBA program in Germany, starting in Jan of every year. The program has corporate support from twenty five “founding” companies (such as Siemens, SAP, Allianz, Deutsche Bank, McKinsey to name a few).The class size is restricted to two digit numbers (the class of 2011 will have 40 participants) and about half the participants get placed with these founding companies.

Rotterdam School of Management (RSM) offers a similar MBA program in the Netherlands. The school has a tie-up with ING to offer loans of up to Euro 44,000 for students irrespective of their nationality. Two of the top Portuguese universities – Católica and Nova have collaborated with the MIT to offer a full-time MBA program in Lisbon. A unique feature of the program is that every student has the opportunity to spend the summer in MIT, Sloan School of Management.

R2 and R3 deadlines of US B Schools : Fall 2010

Here is a quick reckoner of the deadlines and admission notification of top 20 odd US Business Schools.

Please check the dates with the university websites. We have made an attempt to make it error free as of publishing it.

Click here for top 20 US B Schools Fall 2010 R2 and R3 deadlines

Still possible to start MBA in 2010

If you have missed the R1 deadlines of US B Schools and have not started your preparation for R2 deadlines of US B Schools and will still like to start your MBA in 2010, then you could look at some of the internationally reputed Business schools in Asia and Europe. Many of these schools have international student application deadlines in the months of March and April 2010.

Here is a snapshot of some of the top schools and their deadlines for the MBA program beginning in Academic year 2010.
European and Asian Business School dealines : 2010

Therefore, there is still a chance to start your MBA in 2010 even if you have not started your prep for the same to date.