How To Know If Your Target B-Schools Really ‘Fit’ You

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The most common advice given to prospective students who want to get an MBA is to select a business school based on “fit.” But what really is fit and how do you get beyond all the marketing BS to determine if a school’s MBA experience really fits with your wants, needs, and character traits?

Put simply, ‘fit’ means that someone belongs at a school, feels comfortable in the learning environment, and graduates knowing they made the best possible choice.

“Whether deciding between the two or three great offers of a place you’ve received for an MBA in the fall, or coming up with a meaningful shortlist of schools that match your personal and professional goals, finding the right fit can make the difference between another degree on the wall, or a life changing experience,” believes Matt Symonds, co-director of Fortuna Admissions, an MBA admissions consulting firm, and author of The MBA Admissions Edge. “Get it right, and it is like the perfect pair of Paul Smith shoes that make your feet sing and match any occasion. Get it wrong, and it’s like spending a painfully long evening in a dress you saw in Vogue that was meant for Kate Moss.”

AFTER RANKINGS, FOCUS ON THE PEOPLE AND THE PLACE

While rankings are helpful to explore your initial options and put together a short list of schools, that is merely the first step in the process of considering an MBA program. “If you know that the school can help you to open the career doors you want, this is the time to turn away from the endless chatter about rankings, and focus on the people and the place,” adds Symonds. “Interaction with students, staff and alumni are a remarkably reliable indicator about the culture and personality of an institution.”

Here’s something else to keep in mind when thinking about fit. “Candidates with a really strong sense of fit end up being better applicants and actually have a better chance of admission,” says former INSEAD admissions director Caroline Diarte Edwards, Symonds’ co-director colleague at Fortuna. “Their passion shines through their essays and gives them a critical boost for the interviews. Schools want to feel that the candidate really understands the DNA of the school and clicks with that.”

But ‘fit’ also requires work. Candidates have to invest the time and energy to think deeply about their own needs.”I think the problem with fit as a concept is that it can easily be taken as an abstraction and post-facto explanation for why someone was or was not admitted to an MBA program,” says Adam Markus, a top MBA admissions consultant. “The value of the idea is when you get beyond the abstraction and look at the elements of fit. The biggest challenge that applicants often have is to actually define their own needs.”

‘IT’S AMAZING HOW MANY PEOPLE IGNORE THEIR OWN INSTINCTS’

If you have the stats and the background, the most typical thing is to put Harvard, Stanford and Wharton at the top of your list. But Markus has found that candidates often do that knowing little to nothing about those programs and cultures. “One way to find fit is to be a well informed customer,” says Markus. “A well informed customer compares options (Learns about different schools), asks questions to sales people (admissions officers), finds out what current and previous customers think (Talks to and or reads blogs by current students and alumni) and checks out the product or service in person (visits the school, attends a class, at least attends virtual classes/visits/chats).”

Even highly informed applicants can sometimes push aside their true needs and go for the big brand. “When someone objectively expresses, ‘I enjoy college towns, prefer lectures to cases and want to focus on consulting positions” the field really starts to narrow quickly,” says Jeremy Shinewald, founder and CEO of mbaMission, a leading admissions consulting firm. “That said, it is amazing how many people ignore their own instincts and will articulate a thought like that and then still apply to HBS. We can hold a mirror up and be as objective as we want, but applicants have to listen to what they are saying too.”

Remember: A two-year residential MBA program is a huge investment, largely because you will leave behind a well-paying job and incur some debt in going to a top business school. So it’s not only worth thinking seriously about ‘fit,’ but also getting a close-up view of the MBA experience at a school by visiting the campuses of schools you target. “When you take into account opportunity cost, tuition and living expenses, it is $500K+ for most people,” adds Shinewald. “We meet people who have test driven ten cars before buying — and a new car is a comparatively minor investment — but won’t test drive their target MBA programs. They assume that brand strength equates to enjoyment, but the schools are really different and applicants are well advised to visit campus and take that test drive.”

So here’s some basic advice. Take out a sheet of paper, list the various ‘fit’ issues that correspond to what you want and need, and prioritize them because it’s unlikely you’ll get every attribute you want. Then, use that prioritized list to go to the next step to develop a set of target schools.

The upfront ‘fit’ issues are simpler to deal with:

One Year Vs. Two Years

Do you prefer a one-year (an option at many European schools but also at several top U.S. schools) or a two-year MBA program? Obviously accelerated programs are more intense, offer fewer electives and usually lack the chance to do a summer internship. But they cost less and aren’t as time intensive.

City Vs. College Town or A Mix

Would you like to be in an urban location (think Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, MIT, NYU, London or INSEAD in Singapore) or a college town (think Tuck, Fuqua, Kenan-Flagler, Ross, Darden, Oxford, Cambridge or INSEAD in Fontainebleau) or a hybrid of the two (consider Kellogg, Stanford and UC-Berkeley)?

“Location matters to some people,” explains Markus. “Some love college towns, others need the autonomy and/or culture of a large city. Safety considerations, cost of life, and proximity to family are all

considerations that applicants take into account.”

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