In your best case scenario you will have participated in non-work, non-academic extra-curricular or volunteer activities during and since college. In such a case, you will have no trouble presenting a strong summary of your activities and their significance to you. Please note that you don’t have to have a laundry list of activities. one to three consistent commitments with increasing responsibilities can be extraordinarily impressive.

Now, there’s a pretty wide spectrum between our best case scenario above and our worst case one, which is that you haven’t participated in any regular activities, even for a short period of time, outside of school and work.

But even in the latter situation, it may not be too late for you to pack in the activities between now and when you apply to business school.

You may ask, “Won’t it look bad if my resume or essays reflect that the only extracurricular activities I’ve participated in were in the last few months only? Won’t the adcom members see right through that and know that my involvement was only in an effort to bulk up my B-school qualifications?”

Those are good questions, and if we were to answer honestly, we’d have to say “Yes” to both—it may not look great that all your extra-curriculars were crammed into the last few months, and the adcoms will probably be on to your scheme. HOWEVER, recent, crammed-in extra-curricular activities are still better than no extra-curricular activities at all.

Top business schools are looking for well-rounded students who are committed to pursuing life outside the classroom or office, in addition to their busy professional and academic lives. The fact that you are stepping up and showing that commitment now, albeit a little late in the game, still reflects that commitment, and is therefore still better than nothing.

Furthermore, if you maintain your commitment and are waitlisted or rejected, your participation will start to carry a little more weight. And of course if you need to reapply, then you will be able to show a consistent commitment that went beyond bulking up a resume and continued over a lengthy period of time, regardless of your original motives.

Be sure to show that your activities are not just quantitative, but qualitative too. Blandly listing “basket-weaving” on a list of activities is not nearly as impressive as explaining how every summer since high school you volunteered in a women’s business co-op in Northern Uganda weaving baskets.

Finally, community service and other non-professional commitments provide a great venue for you to show leadership and impact — sometimes tough to do when you are a low person on the totem pole of a large corporation. It is usually much easier to assume responsibility and show your motivational talents on a sports team, fund raising committee, or band. Take advantage of that opportunity.

Your extra-curricular activities will add depth, personality, and life to your application which is otherwise filled with job descriptions, numbers and test scores. This texture and color will be particularly important if you are teetering on the line of acceptance or rejection. In such cases, the adcoms will likely turn to the non-academic, non-professional aspects of your application to establish whether your personality and humanity are a good fit with their top MBA program.

Still worried your few months of extra-curriculars won’t be enough? Mine your experiences for activities that you may not have initially considered “extracurricular” or “volunteer.” Singing in a church choir, participating in your little sister’s annual ballet bake sale, or tutoring a day laborer for his GED are all perfectly valid volunteer options. Not everyone needs to volunteer in a soup kitchen to qualify as a good Samaritan!

So, MBA applicants, if you’re not already involved in an extra-curricular activity, take some time to find something that you feel passionate about. Then, follow your passions and DO something!

By Linda Abraham, CEO and founder of Accepted.com, the leading MBA admissions consultancy, and co-author of the new book, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools.  Linda has been helping MBA applicants gain acceptance to top MBA programs since 1994.

Our Series on the Essentials of an Awesome MBA Application

Part I: The GMAT

Part II: Grade Point Average

After earning a dual degree in management and engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, he works for a Big Three consulting firm. With a 790 GMAT and a 3.76 grade point average, he’s nervous that B-schools will think he should just go to an engineering firm directly from consulting because he has already taken a lot of business classes at Wharton.

This 28-year-old doctor is currently in his fourth year of training as a specialty surgeon. Rather than use his scalpel on people, however, he wants to gain an MBA to apply business discipline and thinking the public health care in order to increase its efficiency.

Sandy Kreisberg, HBS Guru, in Harvard Square

What these MBA applicants share in common is the goal to get into one of the world’s best business schools. Do they have the raw stats and experience to get in? Or will they get dinged by their dream schools?

Sanford “Sandy” Kreisberg, founder of MBA admissions consulting firm HBSGuru.com, is back again to analyze these and a few other profiles of actual MBA applicants who have shared their vital statistics with Poets&Quants.

As usual, Kreisberg handicaps each potential applicant’s odds of getting into a top-ranked business school. If you include your own stats and characteristics in the comments, we’ll pick a few more and have Kreisberg assess your chances in a follow-up feature. (Please add your age and be clear on the sequence of your jobs in relaying work experience. Make sure you let us know your current job.)

Sandy’s tell-it-like-it-is assessment:

Ms. Finance Feminist

• 750 GMAT
• 3.4 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in economics and psychology from a top five liberal arts college
• Work experience includes two years at an old, established Boston investment management firm doing equity research; plus a year and one-half in a Fortune 500 finance training program
• Extracurricular involvement as chair of the local chapter of an international women’s leadership organization, active in alumnae network, published poet in award-winning literary journals
• Goal: To eventually run my own investment management firm in China
• 25-year-old Chinese woman and U.S. citizen, fluent in Mandarin and English

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 30% to 40%
Stanford: 10-25%
Chicago: 30% to 50%
MIT: 30% to 40%
Columbia: 30% to 50%
Northwestern: 30% to 50%

Sandy’s Analysis: Hmmmm, you got gold +  silver + poetry. Hard to know how that will play out. The good is the 750 GMAT, the less good is the 3.4, which is admissible but on the low side for Harvard and Stanford.  The equity research gig at an “old and established” Boston management firm could be gold or gold plate, depending on the firm and what you do and what kind of support you get.

Let’s just say we are talking Fidelity or Wellington or Putnam — applicants from those firms get into HBS and sometimes Stanford, but usually with Boffo other things. This is where your 3.4 can be an issue. As a rule, equity research at Fidelity or another old line firm is considered one cut below pure investment banking in terms of selectivity, although still a great gig.

To the extent you can string together all your women’s empowerment  extracurrics into a powerful presentation and garner some powerful support within your firm, well, that,  and the published poetry might tip you into HBS.  Her majesty, HBS adcom head Dee Leopold, may not read much poetry–or she may, dunno for sure, I have not hacked her Lincoln, MA, library card. WONDERFUL library by the way, if you are ever in the area, so is neighboring Concord, especially if you need a restroom, it actually has an oil painting on the wall!!! But a published poet, and your other extras,  might move someone off the WL in July, if HRH were in a hurry to go on vakay.  So HBS is close but you are in a real competitive cohort so it could tip either way.  Not seeing this as Stanford, for all the HBS reasons, and stats and selectivity of employment really count over there, especially since you have a winning but not compelling do-gooder profile.

At all other schools but H and S, I’d say you are totally in-line –just a matter of solid application execution.  The key to HBS is just getting some “specialness” in your application, which can be a cumulative build up of little things (of which you have a lot) or getting some powerful fuddy-duddy at your “old and established” management firm to put his wrinkled thumb on the scale.

“Your Majesty, Ned Johnson on line 2.“ Dee takes calls like that.

You can probably predict your chances at HBS better than me. How often have applicants from your firm who do what you do gotten in?  If not much data, you still have a chance because this is just solid and winning.

I’d be careful about how you explain your goas, and what the timeline and steps to reaching it are.

Mr. Surgeon

• 730 GMAT
• 3.9 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in pre-med from the University of Toronto
• 3.7 GPA Med School
• Currently in fourth year of surgical specialty training
• Extracurricular involvement as a physician volunteer in an underdeveloped country and a couple of articles published in peer-reviewed journals
• Goal: Big dream to apply business models to public health care in order to increase efficiency or to start my own consulting firm
• 28-year-old Asian male, fluent in Cantonese

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 30% to 40+%
Stanford: 20% to 30%
Wharton: 50+%
MIT:  50+%

Sandy’s Analysis: Come on down, Doc! That is a hunk-a, hunk-a powerful resume, and while no one loves surgeons as much as they love marine biologists, well, they do respect them. The trick of getting into HBS or Stanford for you will be selling your BIG goals in some specific and supported way. As noted, most docs at HBS are from Harvard or Yale medical school, or Harvard teaching hospitals, but Toronto has some classy cred in these parts that might serve as a substitute.

What you really need to do is get powerful docs and profs to support you and your goals.  The one downside I see  is that none of your many powerful pluses synch up with reforming health care delivery, and surgeons are not known for thinking big. They are known for big egos, which is a different matter. I might say you want to reform surgery instead of healthcare, in terms of delivery of services, especially in under-served areas, which could mean areas of Canada or the undeveloped world. That way your volunteer gig “adds up.”

Becoming a consultant after all that training seems like a weak idea to me. You need to appear as a reformer and not a pre-mature burn out. Consulting would seem to throw away your surgical training. The docs I have known at HBS have used it as a career extender, not a blatant career change. You don’t list schools, but what I said for HBS would also be true for Stanford, Wharton, and MIT.  You can get a lot of guidance on this by checking out the Association of MD/MBA Degrees website—full of programs and developments.

Mr. Insecure Engineer

• 790 GMAT
• 3.76 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in management and electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania
• Work experience includes two years at a Big 3 consulting firm
• Extracurricular involvement as president of the dean’s advisory board in college, leader of the school’s chemical engineering club and a volunteer tutor for children in West Philadelphia. I’ve also done volunteer consulting work for non-profits
• “I’m a little curious as to how schools will perceive my Wharton undergrad background. I’m afraid that it might make it substantially harder for me to answer the “Why do you want an MBA?” and the “What will you get out of an MBA?” questions. I’m nervous that b-schools will think I should just go to an engineering firm directly from consulting because I’ve already taken a lot of business classes.”

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 40% to 50%
Stanford: 30+%
Wharton: 50+%
Dartmouth: 50+%
MIT: 50%
Chicago: 50+%

Sandy’s Analysis: Dude, chill out. B-schools are not going to question why you want an MBA after doing  a dual business and engineering degree at Wharton as an undergraduate.  Saying you are interested in some intersection of business and engineering and having the cred to prove it, in terms of an electrical engineering degree, is gold. All you need to say is that you want to be an impactful leader like X, Y and Z and then find some guys who are powerful and progressive CEOs with engineering backgrounds. That should not be hard.

How not hard? This guy, at the National Engineers Week Foundation says, “According to a recent ranking by Business Week of CEOs of the top 1,000 publicly held U.S. companies, more chief executive officers majored in engineering – not marketing, not finance, and not law – than any other discipline.”  So just read that press release which names names (and which oddly does not have a full date attached, kinda like leaving an elevator out of a skyscraper, but I digress, and that is why that dude is writing press releases and not designing bridges).

The rest of your story is super solid, with Big 3 consulting experience.  As for that 790 GMAT, some say that is better than an 800 since schools like to brag about how many 800 kids they ding (talking to you Derrick Bolton at Stanford!).  For an interesting other anecdote about 790 versus 800, note that the chairman of the Stanford University Department of Statistics said that they consider the scores equal (on some super-duper math/stats test the require for admission) since there is not any statistical significance between the two scores, and, ahem, that is something they try to respect.

Guys like you get dinged at HBS if they blow the interview, which can happen for lots of reasons, and at Stanford if they get unlucky and hit a PC landmine. Being CEO of a company like G.E. or more smartly, being an impactful leader at a company like GE in order to make the world better is an acceptable goal statement. And saying that an MBA will help you become a better general manager, decision maker, investor, people-person is totally fine.

Mr. Bank

• 710 GMAT
• 3.85 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in business and economics from a top Philippine University
• Work experience includes three years at a startup international bank subsidiary of a large local universal bank in the Philippines where I work directly with CEOs and senior executives in almost all aspects of the firm’s operations
• Extracurricular involvement as head of a Catholic  organization that holds retreats for students, headed a 100+ person car pool group for university students, and have dabbled in painting, sketching, and digital multimedia
• Goals: To use the MBA to transition into a private equity role focused on emerging markets “My interest in this path takes off from my experience working on deals that create socioeconomic impact in the Philippines.”
• 24-year-old Filipino male and member of Mensa

Odds of Success:

Stanford: 30+%
Wharton: 50+%
Chicago: 50+%
Harvard: 30% to 40+%

Sandy’s Analysis: This is a pretty solid story with a Philippines twist and guys like you get into Stanford and HBS 1. if they are taken with your do-gooder goals and personal story, and 2.  they know your bank, or someone can put a word in for you (not infrequent occurrence at Stanford, probably more so than most schools, although obviously I don’t have statistics).

At HBS,  guys like you get in and get dinged depending on execution and a bit of luck. You are pretty solid at Wharton, so again, it is execution and luck (or more to the point, no bad luck) and Chicago the same. But man, you should be a real strong candidate there. The goals and work experience all synch together, the extras are solid, the Philippines story is a plus, and stats are totally fine. Also sounds like you have had great experiences in the bank.  The only issue is how well known your employer is to schools. You say, “large, local universal bank” so I am assuming some global brand name. If so that will help seal the deal.

Ms. Consultant

• 700 GMAT
• 3.6 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in political science from Ivy U.
• Work experience includes three years at a top consulting firm
• Extracurricular involvement as volunteer of a mentorship program for abused women, concert pianist, vice president of class, and manager of college house
• Goal: To work in corporate strategy for consumer products/retail with a focus on Asian markets
• Plan to apply for an MA/MBA dual program in 2012
• 24-year-old Asian female and U.S. permanent resident

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 30+%
Wharton: 50+%
MIT: 40% to 50+%
Columbia: 50+%
NYU:  60+%

Sandy’s Analysis: This also is a classic profile, viz. Ivy 3.6, 700 GMAT, and ‘top’ consulting experience– and beyond that what appear to be lots of extras.  And a classical pianist!!!  You are sort of a solid consulting kid, which is very solid indeed, with a couple of  pluses and minuses: more extracurrics than many top consultants, and probably a lower GMAT but one (700) good enough for most schools. A lot will depend on the level of support you get from your firm in terms of recommendations. That is a key issue. Big 3 consulting firm (McKinsey, BCG, and Bain) kids get dinged from H/S/W  when they get tepid support from the firm or blow the interview (that is sometimes legit—several consulting kids are weird), and sometimes just bad luck. Other reasons Big 3 consulting firm kids get dinged is just lackluster careers, or poor presentation of careers,  and  sub-par extras compared to their very talented peers.

Your goals are fine. So it is just a matter of execution and firm support and luck.  If you will have four years of consulting firm experience at matriculation, that is at the border. Five is really excessive and B-schools begin to believe you are being  pushed out. I am not sure what you mean by “MA/MBA” dual degree, what subject are you seeking an MA in???  Phew, I would rethink that one, given your story and goals.

“Goal: To work in corporate strategy for consumer products/retail with a focus on Asian markets.”

Jeepers,  just a little ol’ MBA will serve you fine for that goal, and save you thousands of dollars and a good deal of demented class time rubbing shoulders with some terminal MA types.

Handicapping Your MBA Odds–The Entire Series

Part I: Handicapping Your Shot At a Top Business School

Part II: Your Chances of Getting In

Part III: Your Chances of Getting In

Part IV: Handicapping Your Odds of Getting In

Part V: Can You Get Into HBS, Stanford or Wharton?

Part VI: Handicapping Your Dream School Odds

Part VII: Handicapping Your MBA Odds

Part VIII: Getting Through The Elite B-School Screen

Part IX: Handicapping Your B-School Chances

Part X: What Are Your Odds of Getting In?

Part XI: Breaking Through the Elite B-School Screen

Part XII: Handicapping Your B-School Odds

Part XIII: Predicting Your Odds of Getting In

Part XIV: Handicapping Your MBA Odds

Part XV: Assessing Your Odds of Getting In

Part XVI: Handicapping Your Odds of Getting In

Part XVII: What Are Your Odds of Getting In

Part XVIII: Assessing Your Odds of Getting In

Part XIX: Handicapping Your MBA Odds

Part XX: What Are Your Odds Of Getting In

Part XXI: Handicapping Your Odds of Acceptance

Part XXII: Handicapping Your Shot At A Top MBA

Part XXIII: Predicting Your Odds of Getting In

Part XXIV: Do You Have The Right Stuff To Get In

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Wharton's new San Francisco campus is in the historic Hills Brothers Coffee building on the Embarcadero

The most telling detail of Wharton’s newly opened West Coast campus in San Francisco is the amount of space the prestige business school acquired: Enough room to double the size of its Executive MBA program in California, offer a full menu of ongoing executive education courses, and serve as a West Coast hub for full-time MBA students in Philadelphia who want to spend a semester near Silicon Valley.

As Doug Collom, vice dean of Wharton/San Francisco, puts it: “We’re out of stealth mode. We’ve got a killer space. When the students came out of the elevators for the first time in January, their eyes were as big as saucers.”

No wonder. These are amazingly impressive digs. Beyond the sweeping views of San Francisco Bay and the Bay Bridge, this is a place that most business schools would be happy to call their only home—never mind an outpost 3,000 miles from the main campus.

The school went from 25,000 square feet of space on two floors in the Folgers’ Building in San Francisco’s financial district with no significant signage to 33,000 square feet on a single floor in the Hills Brothers Coffee building with marquee-like billing on the Embarcadero, a couple of minutes from the city’s iconic ferry terminal building.

Wharton/San Francisco now boasts two tiered-classrooms with 75 seats each and another tiered-classroom with 160 seats. There are 16 group study rooms, a half dozen faculty offices, and a 160-person dining room with those utterly spectacular views of the Bay.

The place is loaded with world-class, state-of-the-art technology, including videoconferencing capability to beam meetings back to the East Coast and vice versa. The classroom technology, in fact, is so new that the West Coast campus will become something of a laboratory for the main campus to test out new equipment before spreading it across the entire school, says Collom.

Collom, a former partner at the law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, came aboard as vice dean of Wharton/San Francisco three years ago. He had been an adjunct faculty member at Wharton since 2002. Collom smartly hired Bernadette Birt as executive director of the West Coast campus in 2010. She had led Northwestern University’s Kellogg School EMBA program for many years and now leads a full-time staff of some 16 people for Wharton in San Francisco.

The school originally ventured west in the early 2000s at the urging of several prominent alumni, including Lew Platt, then CEO of Hewlett Packard, and David Pottruck, then CEO of Charles Schwab. With some 8,000 Wharton alums on the West Coast and roughly 4,500 in Northern California alone, it seemed like a good bet—and one that has clearly paid off. Wharton’s annual revenues from its West Coast operations already exceed $15 million. Within another year or two, Wharton’s West Coast operation will easily surpass $20 million in annual revenue.

From its perch in San Francisco, the school sees itself in competition not only with Berkeley’s Haas School and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business but with business schools from Los Angeles to Phoenix and the Pacific Northwest.

The inaugural class of 55 executive MBA students entered in 2001. Since then, Wharton’s West Coast campus has graduated some 800 EMBAs and held several custom executive education courses for nearby companies, including Google. The latest EMBA class totals 96 students. The plan is to increase the size of the EMBA class here to about 115, equal to Wharton’s EMBA program in Philadelphia, and to significantly ramp up open-enrollment exec ed programs here.

Though Wharton had hoped to establish a semester exchange program its full-time MBA students who wanted more of a deep dive into Silicon Valley, it never really occurred. However, this fall for the first time as many as 40 full-time MBAs will move west for a semester to take their elective courses in California, says Anjani Jain, who oversees Wharton’s EMBA programs. That gives Wharton’s mainstream MBA program a formidable advantage over some of its most prominent rivals, including Columbia Business School, Chicago Booth, MIT Sloan, and Dartmouth College’s Tuck School.

Wharton's new West Coast campus is no longer in stealth mode but has prominent signage on the Embarcadero in San Francisco

But it is the Executive MBA classes that remain the flagship program of the West Coast campus. Although there are no immediate plans to double the number of EMBA students here, roughly 70% of the applicants to the program are considered fully qualified to attend. Yet, Wharton’s EMBA acceptance rate is about 44%, making the program one of the most selective in the world. At a cost of $173,940, it’s also the most expensive MBA program in the world.

Because Harvard and Stanford do not offer an Executive MBA, however, Wharton has pretty much become the gold standard in the business. Unlike many executive programs, it’s as close to a full-time MBA program as possible, with 51 program weekends over a span of 24 months. The actual number of contact hours comes to 700, a third more than most other rival EMBA programs and more than double the new University of Michigan EMBA program in Los Angeles. The Wharton program allows students to pick among 35 electives as well when most rival programs offer little more than four to six. The GMAT test is required for application and the average GMAT score is 700, highest of any EMBA program in the world.

The $173,940 price tag includes meals in the dining room operated by Guckenheimer Enterprises, which serves food locally sourced within a 100-mile radius of San Francisco. The price also includes Friday night stays at the nearby Meridian Hotel, about eight blocks away from the new campus, for EMBA students who attend class every other Friday and Saturday. Currently, some students are commuting from Hawaii, Texas, Arizona, and Washington. Typically, faculty fly in from Philadelphia late Thursday night and stay at the same hotel as students through Sunday morning.

If anything, Wharton’s students here couldn’t be happier with their new digs. “My first reaction when I came here is that alright, this is legit,” says Suncheth Bhat, a second-year EMBA student who works at PG&E as chief of staff to the chief financial officer.  “For ten years, Wharton has been a bit under the radar out here. They’ve talked about having a bigger presence and becoming better known. This has surpassed all my expectations.”

Even though Bhat, 29, was at the ideal age for a full-time MBA program, he decided on the EMBA route because he didn’t want to quit his job, which at the time was in renewable energy for PG&E. “I had just started the position and it was a space I was interested in and passionate about,” says Bhat, who got his undergraduate degree in economics from UCLA. “I was hesitant about removing myself for two years from a business that was growing and changing so fast. Being in this program allowed me the best of two worlds.”

Among other things, Bhat helped to organize a global immersion trip to Brazil for his EMBA class. The weeklong excursion to San Paulo and Rio last September led to visits with some two dozen companies in the country. But before the class went, Bhat had to sell the idea to his classmates who also voted on whether to go to China or Turkey.

“The program has been very challenging,” he says. “Wharton does a good job advertising how rigorous it is, but you don’t fully comprehend it until you actually go through it.”

As part of an elective global consulting practicum, Bhat worked with a team of MBA students from IE Business School in Spain. He helped two solar companies in Spain craft a strategy for entering the U.S. market. The project allowed him to spend a week in Spain and required a presentation to executives in San Francisco.

Like Bhat, Joanne Medvitz is another second-year EMBA student here who could just as easily have been in a full-time program as well. But Medvitz, 30, had just launched a startup company called Pop Outerwear with her husband while still holding down a full-time job at PG&E. “To step away from those two things for two years didn’t make a lot of sense in terms of the opportunity costs,” she says. “But one thing I didn’t want to sacrifice was class camaraderie. When I came to Wharton, the students were so close-knit and really got along with each other.”

Medvitz, who has undergraduate and master’s degrees in material science from UCLA, says the program has more than met her expectations. “It has been two of the best years of my life,” she says. Medvitz has been able to immediately apply financial and marketing knowledge learned in class to their business and believes the MBA will serve her well in the future. “I won’t always run our financial statements, but I will always be able to understand them because of the solid foundation in finance I’ve gotten here. And if we get big enough to do acquisitions, I can go to the table in a more informed way.”

DON’T MISS: WHARTON TOPS OUR 2012 RANKING OF THE TOP EMBA PROGRAMS or WHARTON PLANS MORE EXEC ED IN SAN FRANCISCO

GMAT EXAM TRENDS

Source: GMAC World Geographic Trends Report

Today’s report, published by the organization that administers the GMAT, the Graduate Management Admissions Council, also found that the decline in the U.S. was offset by growth in East and Southeast Asia, especially China, which represents 70% of testing volume in the region. In East and Southeast Asia, GMAC found, only 40% of test takers sent their scores to an MBA program in 2011, down from 64% five years ago.

During the five-year period covered by the report, the percentage of exams taken by citizens from countries other than the U.S. surpassed 50 percent for the first time in 2009 and reached 55 percent by 2011.

GMAC also said that U.S. citizens remain overwhelmingly attracted to domestic graduate programs. In 2011, 97.9% of their scores were sent to U.S. schools, a proportion little changed form 2007 when 98.3% of the GMAT reports were sent to U.S. schools. “Of the score reports that do leave the U.S., the majority are directed toward opportunities in Western Europe, Canada, and, more recently, Hong Kong and China,” GMAC said in the report (see table below).

Interest in full-time MBA programs around the world continues to decline, meantime, as significant growth in more specialized business programs in finance, accounting and management takes up the slack. GMAC said that worldwide the proportion of GMAT score reports sent to MBA programs fell to 67% in 2011 from 78% in 2007. This in line with the recent analysis by the Kellogg School of Management which last week disclosed that it plans to double or triple the number of students enrolled in its one-year MBA program and to decrease the size of its two-year program by up to 25%.

GMAC said far more test takers sent their scores to schools for more specialized business degrees. Those candidates tended to be younger, boasted less work experience, and were more likely to be female, according to the GMAC report. “Part of this shift may be due to the fact that more non-MBA master’s programs are using GMAT scores to inform their admissions process,” the report said.

Some 258,192 GMAT exams were taken last year, the second consecutive year of a decline from the 265,613 prospective students who took the test in 2009. Even so, the latest number represents the third highest annual total.

The U.S. remained the primary study destination for GMAT examinees, accounting for 77% of all score reports. Even though that percentage was down from 83% four years earlier, the U.S. still had an overwhelming lead over any other country for graduate business education. GMAC said that in 2011 the United Kingdom surpassed Canada as the second leading destination for business school talent, with 4.49% of scores going to business schools in the U.K. Hong Kong jumped to ninth from seventh place, while Israel fell to tenth from sixth place over the same four-year period.

Source: GMAC World Geographic Trends Report

“This report clearly illustrates the growing diversity of management education, from the types of programs available, to the number of quality programs worldwide, to the variety of people who are choosing to pursue a degree,” said Dave Wilson, GMAC president, said in a statement. “We see this diversity in the growing applications for specialized master’s programs that are attracting candidates who are younger, have less work experience and are more likely to be female than the typical MBA candidate.”

Other key findings:

* GMAT examinees sent a total of 750,399 score reports to management programs across 77 countries in 2011, up 14% from the 655,506 scores sent in 2007.

* The average number of GMAT score reports sent per exam taken fell slightly to 2.9 last year from an average of  3.0 over the past four years. However, the most common examinee behavior was to send either five score reports or just one.

* Although schools in the U.S. remain the primary study destination for nine of the ten citizenship groups in the report, all but one (Middle Eastern citizens)  sent a lower proportion of  their GMAT score reports to the U.S. last year when compared with 2007. In most cases, prospective students are increasingly interested in domestic and regional opportunities.

DON’T MISS: MBA STILL WORTH IT? ABSOLUTELY, SAY ALUMS or MORE MBA APPLICANTS TAKING GRE TEST

“The Anderson community looks to engage in the big issues of the day as a forum for discussion, and as a source of solutions,” says Judy Olian, dean of UCLA Anderson School of Management, in a statement.  “TED does that, attracting the best minds and creative ideas as part of the dialogue.  This partnership represents a tremendous opportunity to add our faculty and students to that discussion.”

In recent years, the organizers behind the TED conference have been extending their brand and have reached out to several business schools to do so. Last March, Stanford’s Graduate School of Business arranged for a select group of its students and staff to participate in a direct simulcast from the major TED conference. A live stream from the conference was fed into the Knight Management Center and each of the 12 sessions had room for 25 Stanford participants. The Said and the Judge business schools at Oxford and Cambridge universities last year collaborated with TED and will do so again this year as TEDxOxbridge.

The UCLA partnership, which appears much broader and deeper, will begin Feb. 27, 2012, with a four-day campus event labeled “TED Takeover,” designed to immerse the UCLA Anderson community in the TED experience, inviting faculty and students to hear some of the world’s most innovative thought leaders, encouraging them to engage in dialogue, share and exchange ideas.  To facilitate that process, monitors around the school will live stream the TED conference in its entirety.

The school said “an idea incubation lounge” will be set up in the center of the UCLA Anderson complex. In the lounge, students will be able to watch an uninterrupted simulcast of the TED conference and contribute to the discussion in real time via social media, or “the old fashioned way, such as on the back of paper napkins that will be shipped to TED,” said UCLA.

Six panel discussions will occur at Anderson, concurrent with the TED events, to stimulate dialogue among students, faculty, alumni and selected TED speakers, such as Chairman of BP Capital Management T. Boone Pickens, UCLA Anderson Adjunct Professor of Marketing and former Global Marketing Officer at Procter & Gamble Jim Stengel, Oscar-winning Director Andrew Stanton, and Greylock Partner and Linked In Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Reid Hoffman.  Each panel at Anderson will view a TED speaker and afterwards discuss ways to advance the ideas that emerge. The discussions will be sponsored by one of UCLA Anderson student clubs that include, High-Tech Business Association (HTBA), Entrepreneur Association (EA), Net Impact/Energy Management Group (NI/EMG), Marketing Association (MA), and Design for America (DFA).

The TED Takeover week will culminate in a TED inspired campfire where the school’s students, faculty and alumni gather to participate in their own version of the idea-generating talks.

After the conference, UCLA Anderson students will remain engaged with TED, contributing to the post-conference dialogue on how to bring ideas to life.  The TED partnership will extend into the classroom, providing students an in-class opportunity to consult with TED on its larger brand and mission.

TED’s connection with UCLA Anderson extends to the geographic locations that these entities share.  Both TED and Anderson are committed to advancing thought leadership and sharing ideas in Southern California’s vibrant economy, known for its technological innovation, entrepreneurship, venture capital availability and new product introduction.

Harvard's Nancy Koehn is an astute professor of leadership

Nancy F. Koehn
Harvard Business School

Education: Harvard University, PhD, European History

Harvard University, MA, European History
Harvard Kennedy School, MPP
Stanford University, BA

At Harvard Business School Since: 1991
Before Harvard Business School: Member of Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences first as a graduate student in history and then as a lecturer in the History and Literature concentrations and the Department of Economics

Fun Fact: I am an avid equestrian and has three horses
If I wasn’t teaching, my dream job would be: Writing books and show jumping as a professional rider

Best part of the job: The bright, decent, articulate people with whom I am privileged to work; the variety of the work I do; as a historian at HBS, I get to move between the past and the present every day, learning from both.
Worst part of the job: Cold-calling a student who is not prepared

Oftentimes the question is asked, “What makes someone a good leader?” Nancy Koehn, a professor at Harvard Business School, takes a historical approach. Koehn examines leaders—both past and present—then expounds upon both the positive and negative lessons learned from the leading figures. Koehn consults with many companies and speaks regularly to business leaders and news media on a range of issues including leading in turbulent times.

Her research is particularly centered on entrepreneurial leadership and visionary leadership; however it’s not limited to just business. In 2006, Koehn wrote a case on Oprah Winfrey and brought it to life when she introduced Ms. Winfrey as a guest speaker for her Entrepreneurial Manager course. Then in 2011, Koehn published an article discussing key lessons to be extracted from Bono and U2. Professor Koehn has authored three books. Her most recent, The Story of American Business: From the Pages of the New York Times highlights people and events that have shaped business throughout the 21st century.

Chicago Booth's Raghuram Rajan is one of the world's best business school profs

Raghuram Rajan

Booth School of Business

Claim to Fame: Financial Economist

Age: 48

Education: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, PhD

Indian Institute of Management, MBA

At Booth Since: 1991

Raghuram Rajan’s list of distinguished appointments easily demonstrates his clout as a financial economist.

Exhibit A: He is the current economic advisor to the Prime Minister of India and chair of the Indian government’s Committee on Financial Sector Reform.

Exhibit B: From 2003 to 2006, he served as chief economist at the International Monetary Fund while taking a brief leave from the Booth School.

Exhibit C: Rajan is also the current president of the American Finance Association.

Professor Rajan has earned these and other similar titles due to his insights into a wide swath of the economy: banking, corporate finance, and the role of finance in economic development. He is widely credited for the warning signs he posed in the years leading up to the economic collapse in the U.S. Specifically looking at the banking industry, Professor Rajan took a gutsy stand when he explicitly outlined the threats posed by a banking industry that lacked effective risk management.

Now in the aftermath of a systemic breakdown of the U.S. economy, Rajan’s recent book, Fault Lines: How Hidden Cracks Still Threaten the World Economy, won the Financial Times Business Book of the Year award in 2010. Through this book and other outlets, Rajan continues to address the causes of the economic breakdown and offers up proposed remedies to get us back on the right track. Rajan’s interests outside of financial economics include tennis, squash, history, and Indian politics.

Harvard's Clay Christensen is a masterful, spell-binding teacher and one of the world's great thought leaders

Clayton Christensen

Harvard Business School

Claim to Fame: Disruptive Innovation

Age: 59

Education: Harvard Business School, DBA

Harvard Business School, MBA

Oxford University, MPhil

Brigham Young University, BA

At HBS Since: 1992

Before HBS: Chairman and president of CPS Technologies (CPS), a firm co-founded with several MIT professors in 1984, which was a leading developer of products and manufacturing processes using high-technology metals and ceramics.

Fun Fact: I speak fluent Korean

If I wasn’t teaching, my dream job would be: I’m already in it!

Best part of the job: Seeing my students go on to personal and professional success after graduation

Worst part of the job: Spending time away from my wife and five children

Over the past decade, the explosion of cell phone use has largely replaced the use of traditional landline phones. Professor Christensen specializes in the analysis of market invasions such as the mobile phone device. This market takeover exemplifies a key business concept he coined called disruptive innovation: the process by which a product or service takes root at the bottom of a market and then bulldozes its way ‘up market’ to displace pre-existing competitors.

Christensen’s book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, first laid the foundation for disruptive innovation in 1997. It then went on to become a New York Times bestseller. One of the most influential books on management practice and strategy, It has been sold in more than 25 countries and has been translated into different languages 10 times over.

Following the success of The Innovator’s Dilemma in the business sector, Christensen recently turned his attention to education and healthcare seeking to understand why schools struggle and how to fix America’s broken healthcare system.

As the originator of disruptive innovation, Professor Christensen is a sought after speaker, advisor, and board member. The real-world applications of his work are wide-ranging, extending from start-ups and Fortune 50 companies to national economies.

At Harvard, Professor Christensen serves as the Robert and Jane Cizik Professor of Business Administration, an appointment which cuts across the Technology & Operations Management and General Management faculty groups. Christensen holds four honorary doctorate degrees and an honorary professorship in Taiwan.

Students Say:

“It’s the only class I don’t need a coffee in.”

“The fact that I am here at 8:30 a.m. and awake the entire time says it all.”

He’s a 32-year-old U.S. Army Captain currently deployed in Afghanistan as a planning officer. He hopes an MBA degree will help him transition into the private sector and a job in investment banking or sales and trading.

With undergraduate and master’s degrees in economics, this 26-year-old Indian woman now works in private banking at a U.S. bulge bracket firm. But her goal is to use the MBA to break into investment banking in Asia.

Sandy Kreisberg, HBS Guru, in Harvard Square

What these MBA applicants share in common is the goal to get into one of the world’s best business schools. Do they have the raw stats and experience to get in? Or will they get dinged by their dream schools?

Sanford “Sandy” Kreisberg, founder of MBA admissions consulting firm HBSGuru.com, is back again to analyze these and a few other profiles of actual MBA applicants who have shared their vital statistics with Poets&Quants.

In this column, the 24^th edition of our highly popular handicapping series, Kreisberg is his usual witty and irreverent self. His blunt message to one applicant with visions of Harvard dancing in his head: “Your jobs are off the beaten path and your goals are too narrow…There is nothing driving you into the school in terms of stardust.”

To another applicant worried about how his undergraduate degree in history will play with MBA admission directors, Kreisberg advises that “business schools are probably the last bastions in America–aside from the corrupt and sincecured and  geriatric professoriate themselves–that still buy into the now desiccated wet dream that Liberal Arts is great preparation for a career in business.”

As usual, Kreisberg handicaps each potential applicant’s odds of getting into a top-ranked business school. If you include your own stats and characteristics in the comments, we’ll pick a few more and have Kreisberg assess your chances in a follow-up feature. (Please add your age and be clear on the sequence of your jobs in relaying work experience. Make sure you let us know your current job.)

Sandy’s honest and entertaining assessments:

Ms. CFO Wannabe

• 740 GMAT
• 3.1 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in finance, marketing and international business from a Big 10 school
• Work experience includes three years as a commercial lending analyst at large regional bank
• Extracurricular involvement as a college athlete who spent a semester abroad; held lots of leadership positions and volunteer experience with boys and girls’ club-type programs teaching financial literacy
• First in family to go to grad school and first woman to complete undergraduate degree
• Goal: “Want an MBA to become CFO of a Fortune 500 company”
• 26-year-old white female

Odds of Success:

Wharton: 15%
Chicago: 30-35%
Northwestern: 30-35%
Duke: 30-40%
NYU: 40+%
Berkeley: 25%

Sandy’s Analysis: Lots to like and your story all fits together which is a plus.  The low GPA and non-prestige job are your big drawbacks. Have you thought of what is called in this game, “developing an alternative transcript,” which usually means taking several courses at local colleges, either over the summer or at night. In a pinch, you could take these courses online, although IMHO online courses are not valued as much. People usually take ‘harder’ courses like stats, accounting, calculus, microeconomics, etc., and if you already took those, try the next level up. (You seem smart enough).

The idea is to show the schools that you are serious, so serious, you are willing to go through this hassle of taking those classes. Well, that would be the idea for you, since you have an anchor GMAT score.  For other applicants with both low GPA and low-ish GMAT scores, taking courses shows that you actually can do the work.  Even with an alternative transcript of some kind, I’d say you’d be a reach at Wharton. Too many applicants like you with better GPA, more elite schooling,  and better jobs with similar GMATs.

At Kellogg and Chicago, you could be in the hunt, since both of those places are open to your compelling personal story (athlete, extras, etc.) and your goals are a tight fit with your past. You might think about saying you are interested in regional banking as well, or just plain big banking. You have the background for it.   Tuck would be a good reach as well. You’re their type, totally.  As noted here before, you need to rush them like a Sorority: visit, make friends, etc. Duke, Darden (which you don’t mention) Cornell (also worth thinking about), NYU and Berkeley are worth applying to. An alternative transcript of two or four courses between now and when you apply would really help meet those places half-way.

Mr. Disney

• 700 GMAT
• 3.48 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in history
• Work experience includes two years at Disney in the corporate treasury for interest rate risk, after internships at Merrill Lynch and PIMCO
• “Throughout college I worked as a full-time student supporting myself, which detracted from some of my involvement with student clubs/organizations. However, I received a slew of very compelling scholarships and leveraged the experiences from my college jobs to grow and overcome difficult financial situations”
• “Concerned about my history major hurting my chances. But I do plan on taking some extra math courses to improve in the quant. area.”
• 25-year-old white male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 15-20%
Stanford: 10%
Columbia: 20+%
Yale: 30%
Northwestern: 30-50+%
Chicago: 30-50+%
Dartmouth: 20-30%
NYU: 30-50%

Sandy’s Analysis: Hmmmm, everyone loves Disney and Disney is great feeder firm to HBS and Stanford, but usually those lucky kids are working in business development or programming of some kind, and got there after some post-college full-time, competitive blue chip gig on Wall Street or through Ivy League friends and family.

As to your concern about being a History major—pal, being a liberal arts major, and especially History,  at many elite B-schools is a plus. Business Schools are probably the last bastions in America–aside from the corrupt and sincecured and geriatric professoriate themselves (and they may have actual have doubts!)—that still buy into the now desiccated wet dream that Liberal Arts is great preparation for a career in business.

In fact, professors and administrators will tell you this if you can get them away from Downton Abbey discussion boards or cozy conferences on the state of the Liberal Arts, but I digress. I’m a Liberal Arts major and it is great training for cracking wise in features just like this, if that is your goal in life.  Of course, many Liberal Arts majors at top 10 colleges become successful in business, and go to ace B-schools and powerful careers in business and finance. But these are just really smart people, anyway, and the Liberal Arts had nothing to do with it, although you can get them to warble about the importance of the Liberal Arts at any conference which holds out the remotest fantasy they could score with some buff junior faculty or event planner.

OK, “down boy” (talking to myself), back to you. Basically you’re a guy with a lot of high quality silver and not much gold in your story and stats, which usually rules out Harvard and Stanford. Your History major has absolutely nothing to do with it. As noted, that is a plus. What is hurting you is your slightly off GPA and marginal GMAT and being in the wrong part of Disney.  (If anyone else from Treasury ever got into H or S, look hard, and you will find something different than a white male with a 3.48 and a 700 GMAT.)

You have a good deal of personal positives. Those and taking some courses will shore up your chances at other schools you list, but will not, I believe, get you into Harvard or Stanford. Getting some mega Disney big foot strongly on your side might help.  As would some amazing personal and political identity story, but I am not seeing that in the info you provided.  At other schools you list, I would call your chances in-line, both as to stats, jobs, and personal story. You should be in good shape there, after accounting for the usuals: solid execution, excellent recommendations, luck, and somehow convincing them you really want to go.

Ms. Private Banker

• 760 GMAT
• 3.6 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in economics from a university in Singapore
• 3.98 GPA (Masters)
• Masters’ degree in economics from a university in Singapore
• Work Experience includes five years in private banking at a U.S. bulge bracket firm, working as an investment adviser and more recently as a relationship manager.
• Also own my own social media/marketing firm for small businesses and individuals. It’s been profitable for 3 years now.
• Extracurricular activity includes learning Chinese over the past five years and teaching domestic migrants computer skills and financial literacy for three years
• Goal: “I want to do an MBA to break into investment banking in Asia, and to build a solid global network in the field.”
• 26-year-old Indian woman

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 20% to 30%
Stanford: 15% to 25%
Wharton: 30% to 50%
Columbia: 40% to 50+%
Dartmouth: 50%
Chicago: 40% to 55+%

Sandy’s Analysis: Well, let’s begin with the obvious. If you were in investment banking and not private wealth, you’d be a totally in-line HBS candidate. And if you built out some do-gooder story about teaching migrants computer skills and financial literacy and mixed it up with your social media skills, you might crack Stanford as well.

The issue becomes what is the difference between Private Banking (helping rich people stay rich, for those of you who don’t know) and Investment Banking (well, some cynics the same, but  . . . ) from the school’s perspective. As a rule, IB is just harder to get into, and the schools use that as a proxy for some filtering process already done by the banks, a process they deeply respect (they care less about what you actually do in each gig, although IB has a slight edge there, I think, but happy to listen to contra point-of-view.)

In your case, going to school in Singapore, you may have been out of the normal IB recruiting channels, and gotten the Private Banking job based on super talent. So that is a slight edge for you–similar to how getting a job at Big 4 firm is much more impressive in developing countries and Europe than it is in the U.S.  You were never actually filtered by the IB’s the way U.S. kids routinely are. Given that, and given a lot of other assets in your story, if shaken together properly, you got a chance at Harvard and Stanford. At other schools, I’d say you are really on solid ground, given the usual ‘execution.’ You need to explain why you want to go there, and what your goals are.

Mr. Army Engineer Officer

• 700 GMAT
• 2.9 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin
• 4.0 GPA
• Graduate degree in engineering management from Missouri University of Science and Technology
• Work experience as a U.S. Army Engineer Officer, Captain from 2005 to the present.. Deployed to Iraq in 2006-07 as an Infantry Platoon Leader, lots of great leadership stories. Selected above peers to take command of a company as a First Lieutenant (generally a Captain position). Work as an instructor at the Army Engineer School, honed leadership skills and developed solid mentoring and teaching skills. Deployed (currently) to Afghanistan as a long-range operations planning officer.
• Extracurricular: Led the community service project while in my Engineer Captains Course. I chaired the committee and led the execution of a 5k fun run fundraiser that had over 400 participants, 15 sponsors, and raised over $15,000 for the Wounded Warrior Project. Coached youth baseball for 4 years and volunteer occasionally with the boy scouts.
• Goal: “Looking to get in to I-banking and Sales/Trading or M&A. Long term, I just want to lead people.“
• 32-year-old, married white male

Odds of Success:

Wharton: 35% to 40%
Chicago: 30% to 50%
MIT: 20% to 30%
Northwestern: 30+%
Dartmouth: 25+%
Virginia: 30% to 50%
Duke: 30% to 50%

Sandy’s Analysis: Well, I like you and so might your target schools, but you are not a typical Army applicant because you’re older (and not a pilot etc.  where a long-term  commitment prior to training makes you put in eight years, sorry if I am wrong) and because of your targeted interests in investment banking and finance. Some military wind up in IB and Sales and Trading but few state that so clearly as a career objective.

The recent course work with the 4.0 GPA will do a lot to get you some slack for low undergraduate grades, but that is still worth explaining in whatever way you can.  Aside from your age and low GPA issues, there is a lot to like, including current deployment to Afghanistan (everyone pulls for guys in a conflict zone) and history of extra-currics and leadership awards.

As noted prior here, war stories max out to adcoms (at some high level, but they max out) so having non-war stories is a big plus. Chicago seems a great choice since they are open to finance types and applications which seem to have a lot of heart, however defined.  Sloan is open to finance types but a bit tone deaf to “heart” and will be less impressed with war stories but might appreciate engineering background.  They are also more concerned about metrics like a low GPA (even though a long time ago) and they might scrutinize your GMAT Quant score.

Wharton is between Chicago and Sloan, but open to older military. On the other hand, they are just more selective, but it could happen. Kellogg likes guys like you but your interests in IB are not directly up their alley, although they are not closed to it. Tuck also likes guys like you, and you could maybe charm your way in there, if you visited and made friends.

Try to find vets at all those schools. This is not that hard to do because there is usually an Armed Forces club of some kind, and they are often pretty engaged in helping current military, esp. officers currently deployed in combat zones.   So bottom line is that you are in play at all those places.  Duke and Darden are both known to run older and like military. I think you’d stand a real good chance there.

You will be 35-36 by the time you graduate and ‘start’ your banking career, which is old for civilians but most banks are hyper-patriotic (you would be too, with all that bail-out money J). The banks may cut you some slack in that department but schools are very concerned about grads actually being employed after graduation, so if you can, explain how you plan to transition into banking or mention any buddies you know who have done so at your age, or allude to discussions with banker vets, etc. Military guys often do well in sales-and-trading, sort of the civilian equivalent of combat. So that is another plus in your favor.

Just FYI, although you did not ask, I’d say HBS and Stanford are marginal because of your age, low grades, Tier-3 schooling, and just being in the army for too long.  They like their military cohort to put in five or six years and then get out (unless pilots) and be  either service academy or ROTC at Tier 1 and 2 colleges.  Not impossible, but H+S would be long shots.
Mr. Airline

• 710 GMAT
• 3.76 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in finance from Brigham Young University
• Work experience includes one year at a boutique litigation consulting firm, valuing lost profits and developing/rebutting expert testimony, and two at an airline company developing a labor analysis group and negotiating with union groups. Also had undergraduate internships with Citigroup in Tokyo and Johnson & Johnson and spent two years as a Mormon missionary in Tokyo
• Extracurricular activities include head coaching a middle school lacrosse team, various church activities, and Boy Scouts.
• Goal: To join an aircraft leasing firm in an operations or finance role or to join an aviation consulting/advisory firm

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 10% to 25%
MIT: 25+%
Wharton: 30% to 45+%
Dartmouth: 30% to 45+%
Duke: 50+%
Virginia: 50+%

Sandy’s Analysis: This is a “just-off” HBS/LDS profile because your jobs are off the beaten path and goals are too narrow. Also, hold onto your hat, a 3.76 could be in the lower half of BYU GPA HBS admits.  Lots of HBS admits seem to roll out of BYU with 3.9’s etc. but that is a subtle point. The real thing that is going to make HBS hard is your off-the-grid and, possibly to them, not super-selective jobs. Your type of litigation and labor consulting IS represented at HBS but usually those candidates work for blue chip firms in those fields, not boutiques.

Even if you get past those subtle and never-spoken prejudices, there is nothing driving you into the school in terms of stardust. For purely gaming-the-system purposes, you should have continued on at either Citigroup in Tokyo (a real plus) or J&J, a classic HBS feeder firm. Wharton, MIT, Tuck, Duke and Virginia are all in range given your solid stats and your pretty solid story plus the Japan angle, which is impressive in general.  Unfortunately it does not synch up with your goals. That’s another reason you would have been better at Citi with a story about doing banking in Asia, if getting into HBS is all that matters to you. Then, POOF, it all fits together.

At all schools, I might say you are interested in strategy consulting, not aviation consulting, per se.  Or just phrase your goals more broadly.  Being that specific is something you do when you are applying above your head, and you want to assure the school that you will be employable. You don’t need that card and some schools might object to you using them to get your “ticket punched” at your old job rather than being open to an, ahem, “transformational experience.”  The only exception to that might be MIT, which has expertise in aviation and even a wind tunnel.

Handicapping Your MBA Odds–The Entire Series

Part I: Handicapping Your Shot At a Top Business School

Part II: Your Chances of Getting In

Part III: Your Chances of Getting In

Part IV: Handicapping Your Odds of Getting In

Part V: Can You Get Into HBS, Stanford or Wharton?

Part VI: Handicapping Your Dream School Odds

Part VII: Handicapping Your MBA Odds

Part VIII: Getting Through The Elite B-School Screen

Part IX: Handicapping Your B-School Chances

Part X: What Are Your Odds of Getting In?

Part XI: Breaking Through the Elite B-School Screen

Part XII: Handicapping Your B-School Odds

Part XIII: Predicting Your Odds of Getting In

Part XIV: Handicapping Your MBA Odds

Part XV: Assessing Your Odds of Getting In

Part XVI: Handicapping Your Odds of Getting In

Part XVII: What Are Your Odds of Getting In

Part XVIII: Assessing Your Odds of Getting In

Part XIX: Handicapping Your MBA Odds

Part XX: What Are Your Odds Of Getting In

Part XXI: Handicapping Your Odds of Acceptance

Part XXII: Handicapping Your Shot At A Top MBA

Part XXIII: Predicting Your Odds of Getting In

This is the second installment in our new series, The Essentials of an Awesome MBA Application

It makes sense to start this post out similarly to the last one: A low GPA can keep you out of a top MBA program, but a high GPA is certainly not enough to get you into the b-school of your dreams. If you have a sky-high GPA, make sure that the other components of your application are equally impressive.

Then realize what a GPA reflects about you: It may reflect a combination of academic ability and application of that ability. It may reflect only one or the other. If your GPA is at or above your target school’s average at matriculation, you don’t really need to read the rest of the article. However, if your GPA is below that average, then pull up a chair and make yourself comfortable.

Now, what should you do if your GPA is a little on the low side? If you have a GPA more than .3 below the school’s average, you are going to need to make a deliberate effort to counterbalance it with a substantive explanation plus an otherwise strong application, above average GMAT, and perhaps more recent evidence that you know how to excel in an academic setting.

What are the possible explanations? Here are a few

• Your GPA was dragged down due to an illness in your family or your own illness during a single semester or year.
• You partied too hard freshman year (like 2.0 hard) but then started to grow up as a sophomore and received 3.5 or higher during your junior, and senior years.
• Your undergraduate GPA is low, but you earned a 3.9 GPA while pursuing your M.A. in Economics after graduating from college.

A low GPA is not insurmountable. Proper explanation plus other evidence of academic mojo could pull you out of an otherwise ding-worthy situation. That mojo can take the form of a masters degree with high grades, retaking courses in which you did poorly, especially if they were business-related, or taking quant classes now, particularly if your quant record is sketchy. Consider calculus 1, accounting, statistics for business, and economics, but make sure you have the necessary prerequisites.

If, however, your GPA is a true reflection of your abilities as a student (that is, you can’t muster a proper explanation and don’t have evidence that you are a better student than your grades indicate), then you may need to adjust your list of target schools accordingly.

Be honest with yourself—do you really want to spend the time applying to a school that doesn’t value your qualifications, only to get rejected and go through the application process a second time next year?

By Linda Abraham, CEO and founder of Accepted.com and co-author of the new book, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools.  Linda has been helping MBA applicants gain acceptance to top MBA programs since 1994.

Our Series on the Essentials of an Awesome MBA Application

Part I: The GMAT