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What are the Admission Parameters for MBA at Top Universities?

Written by  Rachit Agrawal, MBA

Published on Fri, February 23, 2018 12:49 PM   Updated on Mon, December 16, 2019 6:44 AM   5 mins read

Admission committees evaluate the applicant’s weight with various test scores, essays, records etc to decide whether their pearly gates will open for them or not. The Admission officers seek for ‘balanced’ candidates. However, they don’t openly reveal the evaluations they make for each part.This leaves the applicants with no option other than to form their independent judgment on the optimal mix obviously by assuming there is one.An MBA aspirant would have already thought about all the criterion that might go into evaluating your application. Well if you haven’t, now is the time to and we are here to help you out with it.If you are wondering what do the MBA admission officers really look for while evaluating a certain parameter. The focus of this post is to explicate the process as much as possible for your understanding, given the limitation of what business schools are willing to share with us.

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What are the MBA Application Parameters?

In a survey  was conducted to find out how business schools break up the application and what is the relative importance assigned to each section the following was found :

The parameters may vary from school to school. Some business schools use more than 20  parameters. But the given parameters is a good reference list that captures more the 80% of all the business schools.

We will tell you how to use this data and design your application plan but before that let us have a quick primer on what the individual entries in the table mean.

PARAMETER WEIGHT
GMAT TTOTAl  SCORE 16
GMAT QUANT PERCENTILE 6
ESSAY QUESTIONS 15
ADMISSION INTERVIEWS 12
UNDERGRADUATE GPA 10
RECOMMENDERS 8
EMPLOYER’S BRAND 7
UNDERGRADUATE COLLEGE 6
EXTRACURRICULAR 6
LENGTH OF WORK EXPERIENCE 5
INDUSTRY OF EMPLOYMENT 3
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCE 3
UNDERGRADUATE MAJORS 2
LANGUAGES 1

GMAT Score

Source: https://images.careers360.mobi

This is the most important parameter which is in an applicant’s immediate control. Many business schools use this as a parameter to evaluate both your language and analytical skills.Read here about how to score well in GMAT essays.

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Essays

The essays are the means by which admissions committee get to know to know about your story. This is one chance that you get to connect the dots and present a reasonable plot as to where and how the MBA fits in. The essay is not a test of your literary prowess but it is meant to understand you and judge whether you can meet the requirements of the ideal candidate they are seeking for.

Interviews

Some might wonder Why the interview after having put in your application and everything else being done. The reason is that the Admission committee is seeking mainly for two things in you through an interview. First is your communication skills.The second is to also check whether you are in reality the person as demonstrated in the application.

GPA

What makes this factor different from the ones presented before is that this is not something that you can do much about. You cant change it but you can definitely manage it.

Recommendations

A business school application is a blend of aspects where you have all the freedom to express and communicate through essays,CV etc. They access your potential for senior roles with this.

Employer’s Brand

Obviously brand matter! Google is essentially weighed differently than a local IT Products firm. The business schools that you apply to don’t have the opportunity of knowing you personally for a long time but this compensates it. It is generally assumed that bigger brands have better processes so the applicant gets a good training there.

Undergraduate College

This is parallel to the previous point, this is about the reputation of your undergraduate school. The explanation here is similar. More the prestigious school more the weighage you have

Extracurricular

Now, this is a wider vessel bucket and includes everything. You can include everything here from a hobby to volunteer work. The admission committee will love to keep the students who have multi-dimensional personalities. here should be at least one thing that makes you interesting as a person apart from being professional.

Length of Work Experience

Your Work Experience will give the admissions committee an idea of your maturity level. 5 is always better than 4 right? This is an important parameter which can increase your chances of getting admitted.

Industry of Employment

The Industry of Employment becomes important because it can determine your post-MBA employability.  Business schools evaluate you on how your current skills you’ve developed in the Industry and match it up with your intended plans.

International Experience

An international student may find it difficult as it might feel like being thrown into an extremely diverse peer group. This might be a little intimidating for them resulting in tremendous conflicts being created during various assignments and group work. If you have prior experience in such settings then you can take this into your stride rather than get a huge shock

Undergraduate Majors

Yes, Your undergraduate majors do mater! The admission committee’s The intention is to check whether you will be able to manage the austerity of the program.

Languages

Knowledge of different languages can help you project another dimension in your personality and also can serve as a means to communicate more effectively with the diverse peer group.

Discover the top colleges in the United States.

I hope that now you understand what do the MBA admission officers really look for while evaluating a certain parameter. Now you know what all should you focus on. MBA is a much sought after program and you definitely have to meet the requirements perfectly to survive the competition.Read here about the GMAT scores for top

About the Author & Expert

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Rachit Agrawal

Author • MBA • 20 Years

Rachit believes in the power of education and has studied from the top institutes of IIIT Allahabad, IIM Calcutta, and Francois Rabelias in France. He has worked as Software Developer with Microsoft and Adobe. Post his MBA, he worked with the world's # 1 consulting firm, The Boston Consulting Group across multiple geographies US, South-East Asia and Europe.

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