As you can see the changes are somewhere between slight and miniscule.  Larger jumps and changes occurred outside the top 10, but the statistical significance of these changes becomes questionable due to fewer responses farther down the list.

And how “reliable” are these rankings? Wait a bit. We’ll be writing more on that.

By Linda Abraham, president and founder of Accepted.com and co-author of the new, definitive book on MBA admissions, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools.

Poets and Quants (“GMAT Scores Slip At Many Top Schools”) did an analysis of the median GMAT score at the top 25 US business schools and discovered that median scores are slowly dropping. MIT Sloan, Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, Carnegie-Mellon’s Tepper School, North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, and the University of Southern California’s Marshall School all reported a 10-point drop in their median GMAT scores.

Poets and Quants analysis also reveals that a larger percentage of students were accepted to some b-schools this year than in 2010. USC’s Marshall School accepted 38% of applicants, in comparison with 22% last year, Georgetown’s McDonough School accepted 49% of its applicants, up from 42% last year, and Michigan’s Ross School accepted 32% of its applicants, up from 25% last year.

Implications for MBA applicants:

This is an excellent year to apply to business school.

While you still can’t slap together a mediocre application and expect to get accepted to a top-tier MBA program, if you know why you want an MBA and where you would like to get it, now is the time to apply. If you are competitive at your target schools, invest the time in your MBA essays, work with your recommenders, and submit for the round 2 deadlines.

You may also want to apply to an additional “reach” school or two. However, don’t get too cocky. This data does not imply that all your target programs should be “reaches” or that the GMAT no longer matters.

There is just a little less competition to enter the MBA class of 2014, especially for those not coming from super-competitive cohorts in the applicant pool.

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Look no further – the MBA book of all books is here, MBA Admission for Smarties: The No-Nonsense Guide to Acceptance at Top Business Schools, written by Accepted.com founder, Linda Abraham, and editor Judy Gruen. And now, for a very limited time only (Monday, Dec. 5 – Tuesday, Dec. 6) you can purchase this must-have book for $10 OFF the cover price by using coupon code SMARTIES at checkout. That’s almost 2/3 off the list price!

In MBA Admission for Smarties you will learn how to:

• Determine “fit” with a program.
• Establish your post-MBA goals and present them in a compelling goals essay.
• Write dazzling, memorable application essays.
• Secure winning letters of recommendation.
• Optimize your MBA application resume.

…and much, much more!

So what are you waiting for?

Be smart. Buy MBA Admission for Smarties now!

(Non-U.S. residents should buy MBA Admission for Smarties from Amazon.com where international shipping is available. Sorry – no coupon available to ship outside the U.S.)

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• Chicago Booth Executive MBA 2012 Essay Tips
• Columbia Executive MBA 2012 Essay Tips
• Cornell Johnson Executive MBA 2012 Essay Tips
• Duke Global Executive MBA 2012 Essay Tips
• IMD Executive MBA 2012 Essay Tips
• Kellogg Executive MBA 2012 Essay Tips
• MIT Sloan Executive MBA 2012 Essay Tips
• MIT Sloan Fellows 2012 Essay Tips
• NYU Stern Executive MBA 2012 Essay Tips
• Stanford Sloan Master’s Program 2012 Essay Tips
• Wharton Executive 2012 MBA Essay Tips

For more Executive MBA admissions advice, please download our free special report Ace the EMBA: Expert Advice for the Rising Executive

Statement of Objectives: What are your immediate and ultimate professional objectives for attending the program. Specifically, please indicate how your objectives fit with the purposes of the MIT Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership and indicate what you would contribute to the Sloan Fellows community. (500 words or less, limited to one page)

Translation: What do you want to do immediately after attending the Sloan Fellows program and farther into the future that requires you to attend the Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership?

Clearly you will need to know about the Sloan Fellows Program’s goals and objectives. Realize that the long name is there for a reason. It reveals the program’s purpose. Do you need to know about “Innovation and Global Leadership”? You should be able to demonstrate that you need those skills to achieve your goals.

For further insight into the MIT Sloan Fellows Program in Innovation and Global Leadership, please see my 2010 interview with Stephen Sacca, Director of the MIT Sloan Fellows Program.

Essay 1: Discuss a defining experience in your development as a leader. How did this experience demonstrate your strengths and weaknesses? (500 words or less, limited to one page)

Choose your crowning leadership example and briefly provide some of the challenges you faced, how you handled them, and the impact of your leadership. Make sure you answer the last part of the question. Focus on the strengths, but please show the maturity and self-awareness to honestly reveal a weakness — one that the Sloan Fellows Program may actually help you address.

Essay 2: Discuss a time when you made an unpopular decision. What did you learn from the experience? (500 words or less, limited to one page)

Leadership and innovation frequently cause the person in charge to take an unpopular position. Advocating change (innovating) is frequently opposed. When have you faced such flack? What did you learn that will improve your ability to spearhead in the face of human headwinds?

Please answer only ONE of the next two essays.

First of wall which of these options should you choose? The one that allows you to write most easily and with the most enthusiasm; the one that will produce an essay that complements the other essays and information found in your application. You want your each essay to add value.

Essay 3: Please give an example of when you were part of a high or low performing team. Describe your position in the team and how you contributed to making it successful, or if low performing, what actions you did take (or, in retrospect, would have taken) to improve the performance. (500 words or less, limited to one page)

This question is about impact in a team setting.  Whether the team was performing well or poorly, describe the story of your team. What challenges did it face? How did you help it meet those challenges? Or, what should you have done?

OR

Essay 4: Please give an example of a significant innovation (product or process) that you developed for your organization. (500 words or less, limited to one page)

This is a pretty straightforward question and actually gives you a little room to go in a direction of your choosing, as long as you reveal how you innovated for your organization. You could start with the innovation or with the problem that propelled an innovative solution. Discuss some of the challenges you faced, how you resolved them, and ultimately the impact of your innovation.

MIT Sloan Fellows 2012 Deadlines

The application deadlines for the next MIT Sloan Fellows class are:

• November 15, for non-U.S. citizens and U.S. citizens currently residing outside of the United States.
• January 16, for U.S. citizens currently residing in the United States.

Admissions decisions will be announced before March 31, 2012.

If you would like help with your MIT Sloan Fellows application, please consider Accepted’s EMBA essay editing and EMBA admissions consulting or our MIT Sloan Fellows Packages, which include advising, editing, interview coaching, and a resume edit for the MIT Sloan Fellows application.

By Linda Abraham, President and Founder of Accepted.com.

Check out more 2012 EMBA application tips!

This MIT Sloan 2012 MBA Application tip post is one of a series of posts providing MBA application and essay advice for applicants to top MBA programs around the world. Check out the entire 2012 MBA Application Tips series for more valuable MBA essay advice.

MIT Sloan 2012 MBA Essay Questions

Résumé
Please prepare a business resume that includes your employment history in reverse chronological order, with titles, dates, and whether you worked part-time or full-time. Your educational record should also be in reverse chronological order and should indicate dates of attendance and degree(s) earned. Other information appropriate to a business resume is welcomed and encouraged. The resume should not be more than one page in length (up to 50 lines).

Go beyond mere job description to highlight achievement. If your title is “consultant.” Saying that you “consulted on projects” is redundant and uninformative at best. Writing that you “Led a 6-member team working on a biotech outsourcing project to Singapore with a budget of $X; it came in on time and under budget.” conveys infinitely more.

Cover Letter
Prepare a cover letter (up to 500 words) seeking a place in the MIT Sloan MBA Program. Describe your accomplishments and include an example of how you had an impact on a group or organization. Your letter should conform to standard business correspondence and be addressed to Mr. Rod Garcia, Director of MBA Admissions.

Like all cover letters, this is a sales document. Make your case for admission using your accomplishments, specifically those where you “had an impact on a group or organization” and can show above-average progression. How do the talents revealed in these examples demonstrate fit with the Sloan program, its tight-knit community, and its innovative culture?

Essays
We are interested in learning more about you and how you work, think, and act. For each essay, please provide a brief overview of the situation followed by a detailed description of your response. Please limit the experiences you discuss to those which have occurred in the past three years.

In each of the essays please describe in detail what you thought, felt, said, and did.

The devil is in the details, and Sloan wants them for each of these stories. Look for moments that stand out in your mind. You don’t have room for anything but those stand-outs.

Also, if Sloan is asking for events that occurred in the last three years, that’s what you should write about. “But!!!” No but’s. Stick to the last three years.

Essay 1: Please describe a time when you went beyond what was defined, expected, established, or popular. (500 words or fewer, limited to one page)

The question on one hand provides direction and is clearly defined. On the other, it provides plenty of latitude for individuality. One of the more interesting and unusual options in this question is “beyond what was … popular.”

You need to write about an experience with an expectation of outcome or performance that you surpassed — perhaps blew past. In writing your essay you could start with the expectation, i.e. what you went beyond. Or you could start with the achievement. You could start with the moment when you accepted the challenge or when you realized you were going in an unexpected direction.

Remember to include analysis in the answer. To what do you ascribe your success? What motivated you? What did you learn from the experience? Say what you felt and thought as well as what you said and did.

Essay 2: Please describe a time when you convinced an individual or group to accept one of your ideas. (500 words or fewer, limited to one page)

This question really reflects two ideas at the very heart of the Sloan MBA: leadership and innovation. Persuasion is one element in leadership and “your idea” should showcase your problem-solving and innovative thinking.

As in your Essay 1, focus on one event. Make room for analysis. Tell a story, and tell a different tale from the one told in Essay 1. You can use a professional or a non-professional experience for this essay. Sports, community service, or the arts can provide the context.

Essay 3: Please describe a time when you had to make a decision without having all the information you needed. (500 words or fewer, limited to one page)

Ambiguity. Lack of a clear path or obvious “right choice.” That’s the stuff of life and leadership. Rarely does one make a decision with complete information and certainly not with 100% certainty. When you have compete information and 100% certainty, the best outcome is obvious and there’s not much to decide.

You can choose an example from your professional or non-professional sphere, just balance what you include here with what preceded this essay. Again, choose one experience, describe the uncertainty, reveal your decision making process or how you compensated for the unknowns.

Supplemental Information (Optional)
You may use this section to address whatever else you want the Admissions Committee to know. (250 words or fewer, limited to one page)

If there is some facet of your experience, be it professional, academic or personal, that you have not discussed elsewhere and would like the adcom to know about, include it here, in this optional essay. Give them another reason to admit you, but don’t submit the grand summary, appeal, or closing statement. Keep it focused and cogent. Yes if necessary, you can use this question to address specific circumstances that may have negatively affected your academic performance. Don’t leave them wondering or guessing.

If you would like help with your MIT Sloan MBA application, please consider Accepted’s MBA essay editing and MBA admissions consulting or our MIT Sloan School Package which include advising, editing, interview coaching, and a resume edit for the MIT Sloan MBA application.

MIT Sloan 2012 MBA Application Deadlines

Round I               Round II

Application Due: Oct 25, 2011      Jan 10, 2012

Decisions Released: Feb 6, 2012       Apr 2, 2012

Application must be received by 12 noon pacific time.

* Reapplicants must submit their application by the Round I deadline. LGO reapplicants must submit their reapplication by the LGO deadline.
**Decisions will be released early for some candidates who will be denied admission without an interview.

By Linda Abraham, President and Founder of Accepted.com.

US News is at it again!  The magazine’s newest top ten list is the top 10 Business Schools That Receive the Most Full-Time Applications. Not surprisingly, almost all the top 10 programs listed in US News’s rankings of the best business schools were also on the list of the top 10 business schools that received the most applications for full-time admissions in the 2010-2011 academic year (Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business was the only exception).

A total of 261 business schools provided US News with application data. On average, programs received 525 applications for admission.  But Harvard Business School surpassed them all with 9,524 applications, 32% more than the Stanford Graduate School of Business, which received the second highest number of applications.

However, the US News data does not reveal the number of students accepted into the class, making application numbers misleading. For example, Stanford has a class of fewer than 400, whereas Harvard’s class size is approximately 930. These statistics are also just a close approximation of the upcoming US News’ top 10.

Other schools that made the list of “the 10 business schools that received the most applications for full-time admission in 2010” were: University of Pennsylvania (Wharton),  Columbia University, Northwestern University (Kellogg), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Sloan), New York University (Stern), University of Chicago (Booth), University of California—Berkeley (Haas), and Duke University (Fuqua).

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In a recent blog post, Motown asks a question faced by many business school applicants beginning to feel rushed as deadlines appear on the horizon: should she continue her plan to submit applications in the first round or delay until a later round?  (She has “A LOT going on”: an accounting class, a possible GMAT retake, school selection, a possible new role at work, a month-long project requiring travel, and personal commitments to baby showers, weddings, birthdays, and the need for “time to take it all in.”)

Some basic advice first.  It truly is best to apply in the first round at selective schools: all class seats are open and acceptance rates are usually highest in this round.  That said, submitting a great application in the second round is far better than submitting a good application in the first round: a merely good application cannot survive the highly competitive admissions process, and acceptance rates for the first and second rounds are not hugely different.  So, if the first-round deadline arrives and those essays could use another draft or two, wait.  If at all possible, do not wait past the second round: by then, most seats are filled and acceptance rates drop very dramatically from earlier rounds.  I have worked with many reapplicants told by admissions committees that they could have been admitted had they applied before the late rounds.

To Motown, I would add this advice.  Yes, you may be very busy, but a vast majority of applicants to top business schools are very busy.  (Admissions committees wouldn’t have it any other way: if you think you’re busy now, just wait until you get to business school!)  If those people can find the time to apply, then so can you.  In my years as an admissions consultant, I’ve found that diligent clients take no more than three weeks to complete an application: the earliest deadlines are more than two months away, and your other blog posts show that you’ve been preparing for quite a while.  So, you definitely have enough time to complete a number of first-round applications.  You just need to move past the “planning” stage to the “doing” stage; once you do, you might well find your application work moving along quickly.  Most schools have posted their essays for the coming application season; it’s time to get to work!

By R. Todd King, an MIT Sloan MBA. He has advised successful MBA applicants to top schools since 2001. Previously he served in the U.S. military and then worked in technology and media/entertainment. He has lived for extended periods in China.

Do you have a blog that chronicles your MBA admissions journey? Do you want to be featured in our blog, Accepted Admissions Almanac? Do you want to have Linda & her staff of talented MBA admissions consultants answer your pressing MBA admissions questions? If so, email us at mbabloggers@accepted.com.

An article on the Poets & Quants website asks, “Do Veterans Need Unique Admit Advice?“  A veteran who was interviewed for the article thinks that they do: he “believes that the soldiers and officers who want to pursue an MBA have unique concerns and issues” when they apply to top business schools, and he’s founded a company to advise them.

Is he right?

Let’s look at those “unique concerns and issues” more closely.

According to the article, one unique concern for military personnel who want to pursue an MBA is that they “are so accustomed to speaking and writing in military terms that B-school essay writing is a major challenge.”  But that’s true for applicants from any industry where the jargon is heavy: technology, for example.  As a long-time admissions consultant with both a military background and a technology background, I’ve actually found veterans to be stronger writers than technologists.

Another unique concern: “the meaning of ‘leadership’ and ‘teamwork’ in the military can be quite different than in the corporate world.”  But that’s true of other fields as well: the meaning of “leadership” and “teamwork” can also be quite different to a tech lead, or a community leader, or a family member within a sizable family business, or someone working in a very non-Western business culture.

Another concern: “many junior officers already have families to support and are hesitant to walk from a steady paycheck to go to business school.”  But that’s true of civilian applicants as well.  My first-semester team of seven at Sloan included three students with families, all non-military, and that situation was hardly unique.

And finally, pieces of advice are offered in the article: “junior officers can gain invaluable insight and help from the powerful veteran network.”  Yes—just as people in other fields can gain much from their own networks.  More advice: junior officers should “consider their options at least a year before the end of their service commitment.”  Yes—just as people in other fields should consider their own options well before applying.  And more advice for military personnel interested in an MBA: “they should take time to find out about the culture of each school.”  Yes—just as every applicant should.

Veterans, as a subgroup, have different experiences from many.  Engineers, community workers, entrepreneurs, and other subgroups also have different experiences from many.  Should each have its own separate consulting firm addressing its own subgroup’s “unique concerns and issues?”  No—because when it comes to applying to business school, the challenges faced by applicants of one subgroup are not really all that different from those faced by applicants of another.  The admissions requirements are the same for all.  And to an admissions committee, an applicant is not a subgroup: an applicant is an individual.

Your uniqueness lies not in your subgroup, but in you.  Your job is to portray that uniqueness, not the distinctiveness of your group as opposed to other groups.  Your consultant’s job is to guide and critique you as you convey your individuality.

By R. Todd King, an MIT Sloan MBA. He has advised successful MBA applicants to top schools since 2001. Previously he served in the U.S. military and then worked in technology and media/entertainment. He has lived for extended periods in China.

• The Chronicle presents an interesting article on the physically active, improvisational nature of one of MIT Sloan‘s courses, “Improvisation and Influence: An Experiential Leadership Lab.” Among other things, the class stresses the importance of flexibility in business relationships. (Source: “Future Business Leaders Cut Loose at MIT,” The Chronicle of Higher Education)
• Business school grads are seeking out less conventional careers as compared to their Wall Street- and S&P 500-pursuing peers of a few years ago. In response to this shift, which is set to be driven by the students, top business schools are spending more time and money reaching out to more startups and nonprofits. “We have to be much more proactive,” says J.J. Cutler, Wharton‘s career services manager. “I need to have thousands and thousands of relationships with these small firms around the world….Part of this is a reaction to the financial crisis, part of it is a generational shift, part of it is that they are coming from much more diverse backgrounds.” (Source: “MBA Students Give Career Services a New Assignment,” BusinessWeek)
• Stanford University is hoping to open a satellite campus in New York City, reports a recent Poets & Quants article. Apparently, so are 26 other universities including Columbia, Cornell, and the University of Chicago. If Stanford’s proposal is accepted, the top university would first offer business degrees at its new New York campus before expanding to other degree programs. This possibility could materialize as early as 2015. (Source: “Stanford May Offer MBA in New York,” Poets & Quants)

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