Sound Advice to Serious Applicants

In addition to the actual filling out and submitting of forms, there are eight key aspects of the MBA application process:

Assess your candidacy – Work with you advisor to get a detailed understanding of your strengths and weaknesses regarding your application.  Your educational background, work history, GMAT scores, extra-curricular and community involvements all combine to form a picture of your general candidacy.  We’ll collaborate to conclude how much leverage your strengths provide and see how much we can mitigate the weaknesses. 

Develop application strategy – One of the most important aspects of the application process.  We’ll weave together what we know about your candidacy with your educational and post-MBA goals to determine how you are differentiated, what your positioning should be and how to structure your application and school search to maximize your business school experience. 

Select schools to apply to – Where do you want to go?  Our focus is on developing an honest understanding of why you are applying to business school and finding the places that match that goal.  For many candidates b-school represents the biggest investment of their lives to that point.  Some applicants are most interested in prestige, other geography or learning style, we’ll help put the picture together and find the best options for your goals. 

Develop resume – The resume is just as important for the application process as it is to finding a job.  Our advisors will work not just to get the facts down but to build a resume that integrates with your strategy and answer the unspoken questions about the candidate. 

Build relationships – The best candidates are those who stand out as more than just a pile of application materials.  Great candidates stand out in the mind of admissions committee members and make them advocates during the admission discussion.  We’ll work to understand your own communication style and leverage those strengths to make sure the committee remembers who you are.  As some schools move away from essays, your relationships become even more important.

Write essays – As we mentioned in the How We are Different section, essays are one of the few ways for a candidates individuality to truly shine.  At 7L Associates, one of our core beliefs is that we will not Volvo-ize a candidate, so we do not go into detail on essays with candidates.  We are happy and like to discuss approach and strategy, but we don’t get involved with actually writing them.  It’s not good for you and there are better things you should be doing with your money anyway.

For some non US candidates over-developed essays are a clear signal that the candidate has been massaged too well.  All business schools have great foreign students who may not be experts in English, so candidates who did not learn English first should not be distressed by that.  An applicant’s familiarity with English will be readily apparent during the interview anyway. 

Get recommendations – For some candidates the recommendations can make or break their application.  For others, it’s more of an addendum to their record.  We’ll help determine who you should ask for a recommendation, how important it is to your candidacy, and ways to make sure it helps put you over the edgein the admission’s committees’ eyes. 

Get interviewed – Like the essays, the interview is an important method of conveying your personality to the admissions committee.  We’ll do a mock interview with you to help understand what to expect, but again we won’t over-coach you.

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