If the answer is not a resounding yes, then perhaps you may want to hold off and go round two. Here are three things that can influence you to postpone your application to the second round:

1. New Job Limits: You’ve just changed jobs and the new job has some really interesting projects that can provide some strong experiences worth bringing to bear in your application. In this case, holding off for 3 months may be well worth it to give you the chance to further gain experience that can be a huge differentiator for your application.
2. Recommender Challenges: You are struggling to get your recommenders behind you, especially if this is a new job and you need more time to “prove your mettle” so to speak before making a demand on your supervisor to support your candidacy.
3. GMAT Issues: You just took the GMAT and bummed it. Instead of simply plowing ahead and retaking it in 30 days (which doesn’t give you enough time to strengthen your weak spots), you may be better served to push the application to the second round. This delay will give you time to invest in a course, self study, or one-on-one tutoring. While the GMAT isn’t the only variable looked at in the evaluation process, it is certainly an important one and if you are in a position to increase your score 50, even 100 points, then submitting the application in the second round is not a bad idea. This doesn’t include individuals who have taken the GMAT umpteenth times and are chasing the perfect 800!

The two required essays, Accomplishments and Mistakes remain the same. They offer insight into your achievements, what you value, and your judgment. Last year, you had five questions from which you were to select two. This year, you have four questions and have the option to select two essays. Some of the questions have changed. The two new questions about professional frustration and how you would introduce yourself should make for some interesting self reflection.

HBS Essays:

• What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such? (600-word limit)
• What have you learned from a mistake? (400-word limit)
• Please respond to two of the following (400-word limit each):
  1. What would you like the MBA Admissions Board to know about your undergraduate academic experience?
  2. What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?
  3. Tell us about a time in your professional experience when you were frustrated or disappointed.
  4. When you join the HBS Class of 2013, how will you introduce yourself to your new classmates?

Joint degree applicants:

• How do you expect the joint degree experience to benefit you on both a professional and a personal level? (400-word limit

Select one of the following essays (400-word limit each):

Discuss how you have engaged with a community or organization.

To do justice to this essay you should opt for quality over quantity. It’s more important that you have one or two activities that you are truly committed to and where you can show evidence of your direct involvement. The key word to keep in mind when addressing this essay is “engaged”. This conjures up a picture of rolling up one’s sleeves and helping to bring about an impact. Membership in several organizations doesn’t get at what the admissions board is looking for. The primary objective of this essay is to ascertain what type of student and future leader you will be. If you haven’t shown commitment to other people in the first three required essays, then this essay could be a vital one for you to make sure that you demonstrate that you care about others (not just your own achievements) and that you have tangible examples to show that.  It’s less about the leadership title you held and more about the passion you bring to an organization and how you are able to make an impact.

What area of the world are you most curious about and why?

Self awareness, global perspective/exposure, and maturity are a few words that come to mind when thinking of this essay. This essay could be good for applicants who have a genuine passion for a particular region of the world since it will allow them to “educate” the admissions board why they have this passion and how it fits with their vision for their lives. Remember, what is important is not the region but what it means to you—why you are curious about it. The “why” in this case is more important than the “what”. It’s what you reveal about yourself, your character, what matters to you, that is at the heart of this essay. This could be a great essay to delve into your background—talk about your family.  Or it could be an opportunity to share a hobby/interest that means a lot to you. The choice of topic and how you address it can say a thing or two about your maturity so use good judgment with this essay.

What is your career vision and why is this choice meaningful to you?

It is interesting that HBS doesn’t word this question in terms of your goals but your vision. That leads me to believe, then, that it is less about a step by step process of achieving a particular set of career objectives and more about whether you have the foresight to imagine where you would like to end up and the necessary skills/resources you will need to achieve it. There is a strong element of aspiration connected to vision that applicants should think of when writing this essay. This essay could be good for someone for whom it is questionable why they are applying to the 2+2 program. If you are already on a business track, what is your vision that justifies applying now? Or conversely, if your background is quite far removed from business, then this essay could be a good platform to help the admissions board understand why you are motivated to going to business school and why a program like this would be necessary to help you make that transformation in your career.

Required Essay Questions

What are your three most substantial accomplishments and why do you view them as such? (600-word limit)

This essay gets at your self-awareness and character. What you will find is that successful candidates all have very different things that they have identified as significant achievements. What matters are two things: what you achieved (impact on a product, process, person or group) and why it matters to you (what you discovered about yourself). Most applicants tackle this essay by addressing the substantial achievements but leave out the second part of the question: THE SELF AWARENESS: “Why do you view them as such”? You need to do some serious soul-searching to arrive at what you consider your most substantial accomplishments. There isn’t a one size fits all response or formula of internship-check, academics-check, and personal- check. Having said that, successful accomplishment essays are those that show you are multidimensional and a strong leader.

What would you like us to know about your undergraduate academic experience? (400-word limit)

This question is trying to understand your academic decisions and the forethought that went into them. They obviously have your transcript and can see the impressive grades. What is more telling is revealing something about your character that drove the decision. Why did you take the two advanced masters courses? What was it about the subject matter that motivated you to pursue the coursework? How did you decide on what subjects to focus on for your major? Why did you pursue a triple major? What does that reveal about you besides the fact that you are smart and can handle different subjects and a challenging curricular? Are you someone who has always had a path mapped out for him and you are basically staying on cue or are you willing to steer your own boat? Do you explore other things and are you curious? Are you willing to try something new? Did you help get a new class introduced at your school? What was it like to teach the freshman seminar class and overcome your initial fears of X? If there are hiccups in the academic experience you should own up to it without excuses and without fixating on it. Simply address it and spend the rest of the essay presenting all the other positive aspects of your educational experience. It’s the self-awareness plus helping the admissions board to connect the dots about your experiences that could make this essay a hit.

What have you learned from a mistake? (400-word limit)

This question can really reveal a candidate’s maturity level. Stay away from simplistic mistakes of “I procrastinated and ended up bumming my Physics final”. Equally troubling are mistakes that raise questions about your character. For example, rudeness towards a boss can never be excused. There is no turning back by putting a spin on the story about the important lesson you learned from the experience. I read an application of someone who wrote about how she went over her bosses head to get a project done because she had gotten buy-in from her bosses’ boss. What that showed about her is that she was insensitive and a solo player. Not the best example to convince Harvard to take a bet on you. Meaningful mistake examples go below the surface and reveal something about you as a person.

Researchers have been investigating the “Helper’s High”, a phrase that describes the energized feeling and excitement followed by a sense of calmness that individuals who are involved in helping others report, for a long time.  Allan Luks and Peggy Payne, authors of The Healing Power of Doing Good, studied over 3,000 Americans who were volunteers and found that 90% indicated that volunteering served as an “antidote to stress, chronic pain, and even insomnia”.   Now that’s good enough reason to get involved! No more excuses about not having enough time to volunteer in your community. We are not talking about hours on end of volunteer work but finding something meaningful that you could get involved in and making a real contribution where you are.

I encourage you to take that step and commit to helping improve someone’s life either through mentorship or by volunteering and serving in a leadership capacity for local organizations in your own backyard. You will not only benefit by feeling better about yourself after volunteering but this commitment will help you develop some experience that demonstrates to the admissions board that you are not simply a candidate who is in it for himself/herself only.

Here are a few places you could go to for information to get started:

• USA: Board Net USA
• UK: Volunteering England
• UK: Community Service Volunteers
• NIGERIA: Fate Foundation
• AFRICA: Eleghana
• GLOBAL: Serve Your World
• USA: All For Good
• USA: Volunteer Match

Scholarships are an ideal place to begin searching for aid. There are several resources that can help direct your search.  The Scholarship Book 11^th edition, edited by Daniel Cassidy, includes a CD which can facilitate your search for scholarships. Scholarships, Grants & Prizes by Laura Paul provides information on millions of awards offered to students based on ethnic heritage, talent, employment experience, military service or religious affiliation. Online, Fastweb.com helps match students with over 1.5 million scholarships based on geographic location, intended majors, need, merit and other characteristics.

When starting the process of financing your education, do not assume that you will not qualify for financial aid.  Begin by completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid or FAFSA.  Next, inquire into what a school’s financial aid package typically covers.  Several Ivy League schools offer hefty financial aid packages that leave students paying less out of pocket than if they had attended a less expensive school. 

There is over $11 billion worth of merit-based scholarships available to students.  To qualify for academic-based scholarships, a student will need strong grades and standardized test scores.  Start with those PSAT scores. National Merit Scholarship rewards approximately 7,500 students based on PSAT scores. Furthermore, discuss with the college admissions office about any merit-based scholarship that they may offer. Additionally, an online resource to help in your search is the website, www.meritaid.com.

Merit-based scholarships aside, there is a substantial number of minority-based scholarships available. The AICPA Minority Accounting Students Scholarships provides funds for students with African American, Hispanic or Latino, Native American or Asian American heritage. The United Negro College Fund (UNCF) is an excellent resource that offers over 400 scholarships, fellowships and grants to students from low to moderate income families.  The Gates Millennium Scholarship provides financial assistance to deserving students from African Americans, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Asian Pacific Americans and Hispanic Americans heritage.

If you have exhausted all scholarship resources, look into securing a student loan.  The Federal government supplies Direct Student, Stafford and Perkins loans, all of which have secure, low interest rates.  In addition to scholarships and loans, the Federal government offers a Federal work-study program, which employs students at the college or university. Several schools also offer non-federal work-study opportunities for students who do not qualify for federal work-study.

When applying for scholarships and financial aid, remember to apply early. Money is limited, especially in these financial times.

Schools differ when it comes to the admission interview. Some schools interview a large portion of the applicant pool but admit a small percentage (Wharton, as an example); others interview a smaller portion of the application pool but admit a larger size (Harvard Business School). So how should a student who receives an interview invitation interpret the interview offer? This is clearly good news—you are one step closer to being admitted. It means that you have done something good at some level with regards to your application. But that’s all you know at this point. What you don’t know for sure is what questions or holes the admission committee has identified in your candidacy. This is particularly important for schools where there is a full review of your entire application and where specific questions are highlighted for the interview (see Harvard).

The questions that may arise may be as simple as probing for more details with regards to an essay you wrote. It could be feedback that your mistake essay seems weak and for you to come up with another example. Perhaps the choice of essays and the way you approached all your essays did not reveal fully who you are and this could be a flag that the admission committee has about you. Perhaps you have focused too much on work or too much on your personal/community side. The important thing with preparing for your interview is to have one or two people who know you well evaluate your admission essays and identify the knee-jerk response/issues that jump out at them. Then you may want to have an objective person who has experience evaluating candidates to assess your story in order to flag blind spots and potential gaps/issues which you can prepare for ahead of the interview.

Some schools outsource their interviews to alumni primarily. Stanford GSB is an example. My advice to candidates interviewing at Stanford is to be prepared to talk about ANYTHING. The interview is really more of an assessment of who you are, your vibe, whether you will fit at Stanford versus how impressive your particular work project or leadership impact was. Subtlety is key. That’s not to say that other MBA programs do not ask for awareness. It matters regardless of MBA program but pay particular attention to it for Stanford. And know the schools’ brand. If a school is very big on team culture (think Kellogg, Tuck) for example, going on and on about what you did and your great, impressive achievements could signal that you are not a good fit for the program. It also appears that Stanford is taking a great deal of time in matching alumni interviewers with MBA applicants which is interesting because it allows the school to get a really good read on the candidate’s authenticity. Don’t however assume that this is based primarily on work experience similarities. It can be as simple as you mentioning that you have a passion for bullfighting….next thing you know your interviewer unbeknownst to you is an international, award-winning bullfighter. Ok, I’m being a bit fictitious, but the point is that preparation, knowing every facet of your story is key. But equally important is doing your due diligence of your interviewer when you are fortunate enough to know his/her name.

A final thought on the admission interview. Many MBA programs conduct a sizeable portion of their interviews through their second year students. While there are no major differences between alumni and student interviewers, I personally think that sometimes student interviewers can be a bit fastidious and can in some instances take their job a bit too seriously and see themselves as gatekeepers. Interviewers ask themselves whether they can see you in their program and filter your responses through this lens. I think it can be a bit awkward for an applicant who is a bit on the mature side (with tons of experience) to be interviewed by a current student who technically in the real world would be a subordinate. Just my observation. When given the choice to interview with a student versus alumna think about all facets of your story before making the decision on which option to go for. If you have never been on campus, then I recommend taking advantage of the campus interview and squeezing in a class visit ahead of the interview. It can provide some common ground to kick off the conversation.

Stanford has already started extending invitations for interviews and HBS will begin extending its interview invitations in four days (October 16th). Know your story cold for your HBS interview and have someone review your essays to identify questions/gaps that may prompt interview questions. For Stanford, be ready to defend any information you provide on your resume since that is the focal point of the interview. But most importantly, be yourself and come prepared to communicate the value you will add to each MBA program.

Interview between Chioma and Reapplicant (Spring 2009)

Chioma: What was going through your mind as you embarked on the reapplication?

Reapplicant: I won’t lie – the application process was daunting, even the second time around.  Not getting into your dream schools or getting into school at all is very frustrating. Also, a very humbling experience.

Chioma: What advice do you have for individuals who are attempting the application a second or third time around?

Reapplicant: I did some practical things that I believe made a difference in my application outcome this time around. The steps I took this year and the lessons I learned include:

• Invest the time/resources to find out where you went wrong the first time. I suspect that for many of you, it won’t necessarily be issues with your GMAT or G.P.A. (those can be mitigated by retaking the GMAT and securing a high score as well as taking some courses to offset weak grades); the greater challenge is when you have excellent academics, high GMATS, strong professional profile and still get rejected as was my case. That is very frustrating because you don’t know what intangibles could have kept you out. To pinpoint those factors, I recommend showing your applications to friends who are already in business school or to an admissions counselor. Don’t simply show the essays, but the recs, transcript, resume – everything that went into the application package to get a holistic evaluation of your application. This was the first step I took with my reapplication.

• Really ask yourself why you want an MBA. Timing is everything. I never understood that until the 2^nd time I reapplied. And I didn’t understand how skeptical business schools are when discerning your reasons for wanting an MBA. Luckily, I had a counselor who pushed me very hard and really made me sound out exactly why I needed an MBA. If you have progressed too far in your current career, it’s hard to make a case for why you still need an MBA so make sure you flesh out your goals and develop the rationale for the MBA.

• Be able to connect all the dots of your past and account for everything you’ve done. Obviously, this is harder if you’ve been out of school longer – your story is that much richer, but you’ll have to work harder to account for all that you’ve done and rationalize how the experiences have shaped you. It’s possible that you switched jobs or industries based on instinct. But unfortunately, that won’t sell with schools unless you can put a reason behind that or show what you learned from the transition and how that has impacted your current position and your aspirations. This was also something I didn’t really understand the first time around. I focused on my current position, without really connecting the dots from my past, beginning with my undergraduate experience.

• Know the importance of branding. This was another thing I failed to consider the first time I applied. I naively thought that my entire application package would somehow come together. But you can’t be passive when you apply. You have to know from the outset what your 3 – 4 key themes are that you want the schools to know about you. At the end of the day, schools need to be able to have a good read of your brand—who you are. Without communicating your brand, you won’t be a memorable candidate and you probably won’t be admitted.

• Take the time to research MBA programs. Schools really do have certain cultures and they are looking for different candidates. Make sure you are applying to schools where you are a fit. I applied more strategically the second time around, whereas the first time, I applied more blindly.

These steps helped me gain admission to 5 out of 6 top MBA programs (plus scholarships too!). Good luck with your application or reapplication!