The Most Painful Part Of The MBA Application Process: Waiting

Ok, so the Thanksgiving Turkey and fixings have all been eaten; and even if that were not the case, I wouldn’t have access to them anyway because all that stuff is back down south with my parents, but I digress.

Around 3 weeks from now, the curtain will close on Round 1 of MBA admissions at most of the top schools. And while I still may not be certain of my fate at MIT Sloan by then (unless I’ve been released without an interview), I will absolutely have a final verdict for Wharton, Chicago Booth and Stanford.

Not as Bad as Before

In an earlier post, I mentioned how waiting for interview invites was on par with studying for the GMAT as the most painful part of the MBA application process; and I imagined that waiting for final decisions must be the absolute worst. If that is true, it hasn’t hit me yet. And while checking my temp around the 2nd or 3rd week of December might give one a truer read, I doubt that my stress level will be as high as it was pre-interview notice.

IMO, the reason for this is that the last time I found myself waiting in this fashion, I had no clue as to whether any of the schools that I applied to even thought my application was worth a second read. As it turns out, at least one or two did. And while there are still no guarantees in the end, I can comfortably feed myself a steady diet of positive thoughts based on getting a couple of interviews that went at least fairly well. That alone will prevent some of the near aneurysms that I had while waiting to be invited for an interview.

Round 2 Apps as a Healthy Distraction

I’ll also be working on apps for Round 2; therefore, I’ll have more to distract me while waiting for final decisions than I did when I was waiting to hear whether I got interviews or not. Still, this phase is no fun. Of all things in the MBA application process, the ambiguity of it all is what has driven me the closest to the edge.

The tremendous upside, on the other hand, is the wide open possibility of attending a dream institution, replete with a level of intellectual stimulation and relationship building above and beyond anything that I have experienced in the past. And if this process wasn’t what it is, that kind of environment would be nearly impossible for the schools to fabricate otherwise, so i get it.

A Surreal Moment

It’s almost weird to think that (at least for my Round 1 schools) all of the hard work, financial drain, missed gym workouts, nights with little sleep, info sessions, essay reviews and rewrites, frantic email checking and composition notes filled with GMAT math problems is going to come down to a phone call and/or email and app status change in just a few weeks. Time seems to be almost still at the moment, secretly wanting to prolong my agony of wondering where I’ll be 9 months from now.

A part of me wants to just stay as busy as possible to keep my mind off of my pending results. D-day will eventually come, just like it did for the GMAT (which always seems to come TOO soon), the app deadlines, interview invite windows and interviews alike. Meanwhile, another part of me wants to spend hours each day in forums, on blogs and in chat rooms obsessing over the probability of making it into school X or program Y with my fellow pre-MBA commiserators.

Reality will probably end up somewhere in the middle. I’ll stay just busy enough to get things done, have some sense of normalcy and avoid cardiac arrest while staying just plugged in enough to feed my hunger for MBA program data, info and editorial.

From Bankhead to Watts to New Jack City

To be honest, I feel like a bit of a crackhead. I look forward to the day when I no longer feel the need to sign into BeatTheGmat, GmatClub and Poets&Quants on a daily basis in order to prevent myself from going into withdrawal. I look forward to the day when my personal emails will actually surprise me at the end of the work day in a nice, juicy digest of updates as opposed to me getting each email literally within minutes because I’m always checking.

And most of all, I look forward to putting an end to this whole feeling like I’m in some hazing period for a fraternity and can’t just yet see the light of day. I look forward to being somewhat normal again. Until then, however, I reckon I’ll be inhaling thick, puffy clouds of speculation and inhaling endless data points up my nose until I get an admission offer that makes me excited enough to no longer feel the need to conduct myself in this manner. I just hope these schools give me some good news before my teeth begin to rot out so I can sign up for detox and rehab.

MBAOver30 offers the perspective of a 30-something, California-based entrepreneur who is applying to Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, MIT, Northwestern, Chicago, Dartmouth, Yale, and Berkeley.. He hopes to gain acceptance to the Class of 2015 and blogs at MBAOver30.

Previous posts on Poets&Quants:

How I Totally Overestimated The MBA Admissions Process

Musings on MBA Failophobia

Letting Go Of An MBA Safety School

When A Campus Visit Turns Off An MBA Applicant

Yale, Tuck and Booth: The Next Leg of My Pre- MBA Research

My Countdown: Less Than 30 Days To The GMAT

From Suits To Startups: Why MBA Programs Are Changing

Why I’m Not Getting Either A Part-Time MBA or An Executive MBA

Preparing To Sit For The GMAT Exam

Falls Short of GMAT Goal, But The 700 Is A Big Improvement

A 2012-2013 MBA Application Strategy