Which business school should I apply to?

So if you have been following my entries you would have figured out that I got into MIT Sloan’s MBA program. But what you might not know and what is truly remarkable is that this year I applied only to MIT for an MBA program. It does feel pretty good to know that I had a 100% hit rate. In this blog entry, for the benefit of my readers, I want to write about how to choose a business school. As always I have my own twist.

So why did I pick MIT and not any other school. First of all I started out by looking at the best business schools out there. What I already knew, I confirmed by reading through websites. The best schools are Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, MIT, Chicago(Booth), Michigan(Ross). There are others of course, but these usually top the list.

Then I put together an excel sheet with 7 sheets. Each sheet bore the name of a business school. I had the following columns on each sheet.

Name, Location, Incoming class profile, Specialty, letters of recommendation, Average GMAT score,   essay questions, Deadline date, cover letter, resume, interview details, additional information.

I filled out all the columns be researching the business school’s websites. Then I ranked the business schools based on the columns I thought were important to me. For me Location was very important. After living in the US for a while now and graduating from Duke which was  located in a small city, Durham, I knew that I wanted to live in a big city for the duration of my MBA. Apart from the fact that there is so much going on in a big city, a big city has many industries, start up companies, conferences etc that was of utmost interest to me. So I ruled out Michigan and Kellogg.

I was left with Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, MIT and Chicago. I live in Philly and did not like the city much so I ruled out Wharton.

After location what was important for me was what I want to do after the MBA. I really want to start my own company or work for a start up.  This could of course change during the course of my MBA, but at this point I think that is what I really really want to do. So I wanted to pick a school which has a very strong entrepreneurial focus. A school from which many companies have spun off. That narrowed the list to Harvard,  Stanford and MIT.

Then I thought about about the strategy to apply. Which school do I have the best chance of getting in out of the three. I wanted to do a good job with that application and then look to the others. One of the things that has to be done is that you have to visit the schools. They don’s say its a must, but I highly recommend doing it. You will have stuff to write about in your essays/cover letter because of your visit and you also show the school you are serious about the application. Since I live in Philly, MIT and Harvard were just a few hours drive. Stanford would take a lot of planning. So I thought I would start off by applying to MIT and Harvard.

Once I started writing my essays, answering the questions for each business school, I found that I couldn’t put down or think about compelling reasons to apply to Harvard. MIT, on the other hand, made a lot of sense. I really found that the questions they asked on the essays were questions to which I had awesome stories to tell. So I thought I would finish off the MIT application first. I scheduled a school visit and got on to doing all the things that are required for a strong application: LORs, application, transcripts, cover letter, resume, fee, talking to current students, alumni, researching the school thoroughly, revising essays etc.

It took me over a month to do that. By then it was December 15th. Then I visited India where I spent time putting together my scholarship essay. By the time I sent in the application it was already the end of R2 for most schools. So I didn’t get time to apply to Harvard.  My plan was to apply in R3 to Stanford if I didnt get MIT.

So that is the scoop. The only school other than MIT that I would have applied to was Harvard if I had the time. But my chances of getting in would have anyway been lower. I have a very strong engineering background. Most folks who end up at MIT and Stanford, I would imagine, will have a strong technical background. Harvard I guess is more of the finance types. I am guessing here of course.