NewCareer, Most schools (maybe MIT excepted) want you to clearly articulate your post-MBA career goals, and some directly ask for short-term and long-term scenarios. I usually have clients present both ST and LT goals, even if not explicitly asked. If your goal is entrepreneurial, you want to give some notion of the industry/space (and why [...]

JAW, A P.S. Not having read your essays, I don’t know how you put forth wanting to do something entrepreneurial, but I never let clients lay out an entrepreneurial goal unless they establsh prior entrepreneurial activity/behavior or explain that they grew up with entrepreneurial parents and have been strongly imprinted with/affected by that type of [...]

JAW, In reading what you wrote above, my attention goes to what you wrote re Why do I want an MBA. Let’s just say I hope you wrote something other than what you wrote in brief here, and that the points were more fleshed out and integrated with each other. What I am reading here [...]

Cupocofi, Re HBS post-mortem, I erred. Yes, it is only avaialble if you got interviewed. You didn’t tell me what you actually told them that you wanted to do post-MBA and why it took you till now to decide. That could be the crux of the matter. I think mentioning that you would need an [...]

I’m happy to report that Saif, my client in the story above, got accepted at Stanford, HBS, and Wharton.

Cupocofi, I would be scratching my head in your case, too. Without seeing your application, it is hard for me to say what happened, though HBS does give short post-mortems (not sure how much substance), so that might give you some sliver of insight. Did you have a compelling reason for needing the MBA? Could [...]

LA,

Thank you for sharing all this information. I am sure it will encourage many solid older applicants.

Deborah

LA, I am so glad you shared all this. I am wondering a few things (answer what you like). First, did you suggest that you could handle your own job search or did you not mention that? Also, were you at or above the median for GMAT and GPA? I am sure that getting fast-tracked [...]

LA,

I’m not sure if you’d be willing to share your Why MBA and Why Now answers, but I was thinking that might be helpful to other readers if you feel comfortable doing so.

Deborah

LA,

That’s great! Enjoy!

Deborah

lifeisrockandroll, If you look at the Business Week profiles for the schools you mentioned, for the Class of 2012, you’ll found the following. Boston College Median age: 27 80% range for work experience: about 2 to 7 years Babson Median age: 27 80% range for work experience: about 2 to 7ish years Hult Median age: [...]

It’s great that Ross has that makeup, though as I noted in the article, we can’t really tell much if we don’t how many applicants of a certain age applied vs. how many were accepted. If in your case, about 1 out of 8 of applicants were 30 or older and 1 out of 8 [...]

Sherry, You have a less common goal than most, so from a diversity perspective, that is a big plus. In your appliications thus yet, have you mentioned organizations that might hire you, talked about how they require an MBA (if they do), and suggested that you could handle doing your own job search? I am [...]

bschool2013, Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on the piece. First, given your military background and post-MBA goal, you may be in a good position to get into a FT MBA program, assuming you’ve got good stats, leadership experience, etc. Although attending PT MBA and EMBA programs may make it harder to [...]