When I first started applying to business school, I evaluated schools the way most applicants do. I compared rankings and employment reports, attended webinars, spoke with alumni, and (of course) built spreadsheets. I’m still not convinced you can apply to business school without building at least one.

Like most applicants, I thought I was gathering information so I could make the right decision. Looking back, I was doing something much more interesting.

I was learning how to read institutions.

WHAT THEY DO MATTERS MORE THAN WHAT THEY SAY

That realization emerged gradually through dozens of interactions that seemed insignificant at the time: a question buried in an application form; an admissions manager who remembered a previous conversation; an alumnus who answered my question with three questions of his own; and a career services conversation that acknowledged uncertainty instead of trying to eliminate it.

By the time I accepted my offer from London Business School, I wasn’t choosing between rankings. I was choosing between institutions that had spent months quietly showing me who they were.

Most applicants spend months trying to understand business schools. I eventually realized there was a difference between listening to what schools said about themselves and watching how they consistently acted.

WHAT ARE THEY REALLY ASKING?

For me, the first clue came from the application itself.

Most applicants think of the application as something they have to complete. I realized I had to do more than answer the questions. Every word I wrote occupied limited space. Every question the school chose to ask occupied space too. If I was thinking carefully about the real estate my answers occupied, I needed to pay equal attention to how the school used its own.

When I opened the London Business School application, one thing immediately stood out. It was one of the most detailed applications on my list. The essays were certainly more extensive than those of many other schools. But what really caught my attention wasn’t the writing. It was the questions scattered throughout the application itself.

One asked whether I had spoken to my family about applying to London Business School and, if so, what their reaction had been. Another wanted to know which alumni I had spoken with while researching the school. There was even an opportunity for someone from the LBS community who knew me professionally or personally to submit an endorsement.

Most applications understandably focused on my leadership experiences, professional achievements, career aspirations, and academic background. LBS seemed equally interested in how I had arrived at the decision to apply.

At the time, I simply answered the questions and moved on. Looking back, I wish I had paused, because the more interesting part wasn’t my answer. It was why they had chosen to ask those questions in the first place.

That was when I realized I had been using the words priorities and values interchangeably. They’re not the same thing. A school’s application won’t tell you everything it believes, but it does reveal what it thinks is worth understanding. Those questions reveal priorities. Culture emerges when those priorities are reinforced consistently across the institution – in its processes, its people, and the choices it makes. An application could give me the first clue. I had to look elsewhere to see whether it was part of a pattern.

Once I started reading applications that way, I noticed similar clues everywhere.

Almost every school asked about family. Some went a step further, asking applicants whether they had experienced financial hardship or significant personal challenges while growing up. Those questions create opportunities to tell parts of your story that may never fit neatly into an essay prompt, but they also suggest that understanding someone’s trajectory matters just as much as understanding where they have arrived.

Some schools offered only one or two essays before moving to recommendations and logistics. Others, including Stanford GSB, INSEAD, and London Business School, created substantially more room for applicants to tell their stories.

At first, I assumed it was generosity. Later I realized it was another signal. More space doesn’t just invite more writing. It tests whether applicants know which stories deserve to be told. One of the easiest traps in MBA applications is assuming every available word should be used. Sometimes restraint tells a stronger story than completeness.

Admissions committees could ask almost anything. That made me pay just as much attention to the questions that never appeared.

The repeated emphasis on alumni conversations suggested that London Business School valued applicants who had taken the time to understand the community they hoped to join. The question about family hinted at something else: an international MBA is rarely an individual decision. It changes the lives of partners, parents, children, and everyone supporting that choice.

I thought I was completing an application.

Looking back, I was interpreting one.

WHY THIS PROCESS? 

The next clues came from the admissions process itself.

One of the first things that surprised me wasn’t an interview question. It was the structure of the admissions team.

At London Business School, every shortlisted applicant is assigned a regional admissions manager, who remains their primary point of contact throughout the process and continues to support them after admission. It wasn’t simply that someone knew my application history. It was that each conversation could begin where the previous one had ended. Over time, that continuity made the relationship feel less transactional and more collaborative.

That didn’t feel like an administrative convenience. It felt like a deliberate design choice. I later found the same emphasis on relationships in conversations with students, alumni, and career services. The regional admissions manager wasn’t an isolated experience. It was simply the first indication that the design of the admissions process reflected a broader philosophy about how the institution approached relationships.

The interview was no different.

Most applicants focus on preparing answers. I became more interested in why the interview had been designed that way.

London Business School places extraordinary trust in its alumni. Applicants are interviewed by alumni who undergo formal interviewer training and are given a detailed evaluation framework before every interview. The conversations usually last around an hour and often conclude with a case-based discussion designed to understand not only what you think, but how you think.

What interested me most wasn’t the case study. It was the choice of interviewer.

Different schools make that choice differently. Some rely on admissions officers and others on faculty. Schools such as London Business School and INSEAD, however, place the responsibility in the hands of alumni. None of these approaches is inherently better than another, but each reveal something about the institution.

During one of my two INSEAD alumni interviews, the interviewer described the process in a way that stayed with me. He said the interview wasn’t simply about deciding whether I deserved admission. It was about asking himself a different question: “Would I want this person sitting next to me in class?”

That single question made the purpose of the process clear. The two interviews weren’t about checking consistency. They were about asking whether different members of the community could independently imagine learning alongside you.

The interviews weren’t the only revealing part of the admissions process. I carried the same curiosity into admission events: What was the school trying to show me?

London Business School, Michigan Ross, and Cambridge Judge all invited admitted students into classrooms before enrollment. At first, I thought they were recruitment events. Later, I realized they were something else. Instead of asking me to imagine what learning there would feel like, they invited me to experience it.

During those sessions, I wasn’t paying attention to course content. I was watching something else. How did professors respond when students challenged an idea? Did classmates compete for airtime or build on one another’s thoughts? None of those observations could be found in a ranking or an employment report, yet they answered the question I cared about most: Could I genuinely imagine spending the next two years learning here?

WHAT STAYS WITH PEOPLE? 

Some of the most revealing conversations I had weren’t with admissions officers. They were with alumni. At first, I thought I was asking what business school had been like. Looking back, I realized I was listening for something else: what remained years later.

By the time someone has graduated, changed jobs, and perhaps moved countries, they rarely remember every lecture or case discussion. What remains are habits of thinking and approaching people.

One thing that consistently struck me about the London Business School alumni I met was that they rarely rushed to give advice. Instead, they asked thoughtful questions that forced me to clarify what I actually wanted instead of simply accepting someone else’s answer. I often finished conversations realizing I hadn’t received much advice at all. I had arrived at my own answer.

Months later, while working through pre-MBA coursework, I noticed exactly the same approach. The emphasis wasn’t on producing the right answer quickly. It was on asking better questions and challenging your own assumptions. That was when something clicked. I hadn’t been observing individual alumni. I had been observing the institution.

Oxford revealed itself differently.

What fascinated me wasn’t the industries alumni worked in. It was how naturally they connected them. Conversations that began with business problems quickly expanded into public policy, regulation, ethics, or long-term societal impact. The business question rarely remains just a business question. At first, I thought it reflected the individuals. Eventually, I began to see it as a reflection of Oxford itself.

During the pandemic, years before I applied a recently-admitted Michigan Ross student patiently answered my questions, shared resources, and continued encouraging me over the years. When I received my own admission offer to London Business School, Ross repeatedly called internationally until they reached me personally. Those gestures, years apart, left me with the same impression: a community that understood the emotional journey applicants were navigating.

The alumni I met across these schools were remarkably different from one another.

The personalities varied.

The habits didn’t.

That’s when I finally understood the difference between priorities and culture. Applications reveal priorities. Alumni reveal culture.

Culture isn’t what an institution says about itself.

It’s what remains visible in people years after they’ve left.

What stayed with you?

The answer usually told me far more than any ranking ever could.

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN THE BROCHURE ENDS?

Every business school looks impressive when the conversation stays inside the brochure. The website is polished. The employment report is encouraging. The webinars are carefully curated.

The more revealing conversations begin when your situation doesn’t fit neatly into any of those materials.

For me, that meant asking about my situation: someone with nearly ten years of work experience who was hoping to switch industries in a new country. I wanted to understand whether the institution had genuinely thought about applicants like me or whether I would largely be expected to navigate the process on my own.

London Business School’s Career Centre was candid about the limits of what it could open up for me. Some employers had moved away from formal MBA internship programs; the team was specific about which companies still recruited through traditional channels and where opportunities would require a more informal approach. In those cases, they explained how they could help me network my way into opportunities that might no longer appear through a formal recruiting process.

What stayed with me wasn’t a promise that my transition would be easy. It was the specificity. They had acknowledged the complexity of my situation and could still explain how they would help me navigate it.

Different applicants face different challenges. The schools that gave me the greatest confidence weren’t the ones that promised certainty. They were the ones willing to acknowledge uncertainty while explaining how they would help students navigate it.

Those conversations didn’t feel like sales pitches. They felt like planning sessions.

THEY’VE SHOWN YOU WHO THEY ARE. ARE YOU WATCHING?

None of this should be mistaken for a universal ranking of schools. Another applicant might have different conversations, encounter different people, and leave with entirely different impressions. That’s precisely the point: applicants shouldn’t look for the same signals I did, but pay attention to the ones they consistently receive.

Sometimes, those signals reinforce everything the brochures promised. Sometimes, they quietly contradict them. Either way, they are worth noticing.

Looking back, no single interaction made my decision. It emerged from the accumulation of many small ones. Over time, I stopped comparing rankings and started comparing patterns.

By the time I accepted my offer from London Business School, I wasn’t choosing the school that had given the best presentation.

I was choosing the institution I felt I understood.

Business schools spend months deciding whether we belong.

Applicants should spend just as much time deciding whether the institution belongs in their future.

Applications, interviews, alumni conversations, admission events, and career services aren’t separate interactions.

Together, they are the institution introducing itself.

Not by asking, “Is this a good school?”

But by asking, “Who is this institution?”

If you’re paying attention, they’ve been answering that question all along.

The only question is: Are you watching?

Bio: Akanksha Banerjee is an MBA candidate at London Business School, Class of 2028. Before business school, she was Head of Marketing at Lumiere Education. Earlier in her career, she spent six years as a commercial disputes lawyer at leading Indian law firms.

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