Having been through my first year of business school and seeing what I got out of it during my first year, I would recommend having 2 jobs under your belt and at least 3 years of total work experience before applying.

I see a lot of young people who come to business school after just 2 years at a prestigious internship. The main problem with that is you don’t really have enough experience and don’t know enough at that point to get what you want out of business school.

You won’t get as much out of the discussions in class and you won’t be able to network as effectively unless you have a bit more expertise to offer coming in.

So 3 years of work experience is the minimum amount of experience I’d recommend. If you can get 4 or 5 years of experience before coming to business school, that’s even better.

In terms of coming to business school too late, I think once you’re around 30 years old, you’re probably at the far end of what would be a good time to apply. If you wait any longer than that, you’re probably better off staying with your job.

I was pretty gung ho during the applications process. I took the shotgun approach and applied to pretty much every school.

I knew each school would have its strengths and weaknesses, but I figured I’d be giving myself a wider selection if I applied widely. I knew I could handle the extra work from all the applications, so I figured, why not?

I knew I wanted to continue working in technology, but I already had Stanford on my resume, which has a great tech reputation. Since I already had that credibility to my tech background, I had more freedom to choose whatever business school I wanted.

If I didn’t already have Stanford on my resume, I would have definitely concentrated more on getting into either Stanford or Berkeley.

One of the reasons I chose Booth is that they are very quantitatively-oriented. I’m planning on going into the advertising technology industry, so I’ll need experience with regressions and analytics. Going to a quant-heavy school like Booth is definitely respected in the advertising tech industry.

Another reason I chose Booth is I got money to go there. A lot of people don’t realize that there’s actually quite a bit of scholarship money floating around out there. It’s not a ton of money, but it’s a lot more than I expected. Schools will be trying to lure talented students to their campuses, and in a lot of cases, you can benefit from that.

Harvard and Stanford are probably not going to give you money. Schools like Booth or Kellogg, on the other hand, are a lot more active when it comes to giving out scholarship incentives.

Money shouldn’t be your main concern when choosing a business school, but it should still be somewhere on your radar.

#1: Take the GMAT early

The GMAT is generally accepted up to five years after you take it, so if you take it during your senior year or right after college, you won’t have to worry about taking it later.

After a year or two of work life, it’ll be hard to get back into the habit of studying. The best way to avoid this is to take the GMAT when you’re still fresh from student life.

#2: Start Talking to MBA Grads

Business school isn’t for everyone. It might just be better for you to continue working. Or you might want to go to a different type of school.

The best way to find out about what particular business school have to offer is to talk to those who’ve already been through the MBA process. Talking with MBAs is also great in terms of learning application tips for their specific school.

#3: Start Building Your Leadership Experience

If you don’t have any substantial experience in extracurricular involvement, community service, or professional work life, you’ll have an extremely difficult time applying to a top MBA program.

These experiences don’t really add much to your MBA application unless you’ve been doing them for two or more years, so you have to start thinking ahead in terms of useful application experiences.

#4: Start Your Application Process Early

You should start approaching recommenders and working on your essay process at least several months before the application deadline.

Starting early takes away a lot of the stress of the application process and ensures that you have enough time to put your best work into your applications.

Of all of the professional degrees you can get, the MBA is the most adaptable.

I have a lot of work experience in investment banking and new media, and in both of these fields I have noticed that nearly every one of my superiors has had an MBA. Managers, directors, VPs, chairmen, CEOs, and various other business leaders all had MBAs.

Regardless of which industry you’ll be working in, a major portion of the leadership will have degrees from elite business schools. That’s no coincidence; a degree from Wharton will help advance your career regardless of which field you’re in.

When you have an MBA, people notice, and bosses tend to promote you more quickly than someone similar without your credentials. An MBA really helps accelerate your career.

On the other hand, if you want to switch careers, people will take you more seriously if you have a degree from a top business school. They will assume that you are able to pick up skills quickly and thrive in a new environment.

And if you want to start your own business, you’ll be able to use the connections you’ve developed through business school to help raise money and attract key talent.

No matter where you want to go, your MBA will help you get there.

Harvard and Stanford are almost always every person’s top picks

I’ve talked with a lot of my friends and the people I’ve met in business. What I’ve found is that anyone who applied to Stanford or Harvard, and got accepted, decided to go there instead of any other business school. In terms of getting a prestigious MBA stamp and meeting important business people, those are the schools to be.

Wharton was generally right below Harvard and Stanford in terms of what schools people would pick over others. It’s an excellent business school with one of the greatest reputations in the nation.

From then on, the best business school varies depending on what industry you’re interested in or the region you want to work in.

Great Regional Schools

For West Coast people, Berkeley Haas is another great school aside from Stanford that has a great regional alumni network.

For people living in the East Coast, schools like Columbia offer a great alumni network, especially in the New York area.

Industry-Focused Schools

If your main concern is being able to learn a lot about a specific industry, there are a lot of schools with a strong emphasis on a particular program.

If you want a top of the line marketing experience, you should apply to Kellogg.

People looking to learn everything there is to know about finance should apply to Chicago Booth.

Most top business schools will open opportunities for you in any region or industry, but some schools will be able to help you more than others when it comes to specific regions or work industries.

Stanford Graduate School of Business

One of the most noticeable things about Stanford is their class size. They’re take on a much smaller amount of people compared to other schools. They also tend to bring in quirkier people, or those with less traditional backgrounds.

Stanford has a reputation for being really big in terms of entrepreneurship, which is true to an extent. However, if you look at the employment statistics for people right after business school, it’s really not as big in terms of entrepreneurship as people think.

As for reasons to go to Stanford, it’s really similar to Harvard. You go their to meet the best of the best, the leaders of tomorrow.

Kellogg Graduate School of Management

The main thing about Kellogg is it’s huge focus on marketing and consulting. Roughly 40% of people at Kellogg end up being full time consultants. There are a lot of Kellogg graduates working as brand marketers and brand managers. So if you’re looking to enter those field, consider applying to Kellogg.

The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Chicago Booth is pretty much the complement of Kellogg. We’re known mostly for finance, though our second most popular concentration is in entrepreneurship.

In recent years we’ve had some impressive success stories in terms of entrepreneurship. The guys behind Bump, which is a mobile app company, recently got funding from Sequioa Capital. Grubhub, a food delivery website started by people from Booth, is also doing really well.

So while Booth is a little bit under the radar in terms of entrepreneurial reputation, students here are definitely doing great things.

Columbia Business School

One of the key differences between Columbia is, compared to schools like Booth or Stanford, they are a lot more regional.

Columbia is great for people in the New York area. They’re really focused on finance, which is a great business area for New York people.

If you’re not from the New York area, you should be aware that most people who go to Columbia already have an established social base at New York. As a result, there’s not much of a community feel to the school.

The University of Pennysylvania’s Wharton School

If you look at the recent trends in the business school rankings, you’ll see that Wharton’s taken a little bit of a beating in the rankings in recent years. Part of the reason behind that decline is that Wharton is so heavily reliant on finance.

Regardless, Wharton is still one of the very top business schools, especially for people looking to go into finance.

Some things to think about when picking a business school

Harvard and Stanford are in the obvious 1A, top tier of schools. I think it’s a good idea to apply to Harvard and Stanford regardless of your location. These 2 schools will do an especially good job of giving you access to a powerful network.

The very next tier contains schools like Kellogg, Booth, Wharton, and MIT. The schools you apply to in this group will depend more heavily on your region, since your network will be centered on the school’s general geographic area.

In addition to regional concerns, you should apply to a school that sends a lot of students into the types of businesses you want to work for. Also try to get into a school that excels in your intended area of study.

One of the biggest application mistakes is not doing your research in terms of your career path. I know a lot of people who might have applied and enrolled in different schools if they’d actually researched what it takes to break into their desired industry.

Step 1: Make a List of the Business School Questions

You should open up an excel worksheet and use it to list every single question from every school you’re applying to.

Find their application questions on their websites and write them down exactly as they appear on the website and enter each one into its own spreadsheet cell.

Step 2: Group Similar Questions Together

Now that you have all of the available questions in one Excel spreadsheet, you can look at the questions and see which ones match. Drag and drop the matching questions, so they’re all together.

Step 3: Identify the Main Essay Themes

After you’ve grouped similar questions together, you should see that there are a relatively small amount of general themes they follow. You should write a one sentence statement of the theme of a group of questions next to that group, as a way of focusing your essay thought process.

Step 4: Brainstorm Personal Story Ideas

Now that you’ve identified the major essay themes, you should sit down and think about your past experiences. I would avoid high school or college experiences if possible, because business schools are more interested in what you’ve done after college.

If, however, you’re applying to business school straight out of undergrad, which is something I’d generally not advise, you can write about leadership experiences from your activities in college.

Most people will want to focus on their professional, personal, and volunteer experiences in the years after college.

Write down any experience that seems relevant and then narrow your list of experiences to a small number of versatile and impressive personal stories, ones that show leadership, growth, and adaptability.

Step 5: Start Writing Your Essays

You should now be as prepared as possible for the actual essay writing.

Actually getting stuff down on paper can scare a lot of people because they’re worried that their writing skills aren’t good enough or that they might end up making a deadly mistake on their essays.

You have to get past that initial fear. The writing process really flows after you get a couple of pages down and lose that beginning anxiety.

Be as concise as possible and be specific in your examples. Let your best past experiences do a lot of the work for you.

You should be able to pick at least a few amazing things you’ve done over the past years, so now your task is just to make the admissions committee understand the greatness of your achievements.

Step 6: Get Outside Feedback

Nobody likes showing their essays to other people, but everybody benefits from outside opinions.

It’s hard for any person to honestly and accurately assess the quality of their own writing. Other people will be better at seeing your mistakes, and strengths, than you are.

So find some trusted friends who’ve applied to business school in the past and get them to look over your essay.

My experience is that the more people who look at your essay, the better it will be.

Step 7: Revise

When you finish your first draft, you’ll want to be done with it. But you won’t be. There will be major issues lingering around your writing, and fixing those issues might be what determines whether you get in.

Writing at least two or three essay drafts is one of the most important things you can do to improve your acceptance chances.

The world is not what it used to be 20, 10, or even 5 years ago. Competition for top MBA programs and top jobs extend from the sunny beaches of California all the way to the bustling metropolis of Tokyo.

In addition to the fact that it will look good on your application and resume, it adds so many other intangible advantages to the process. Speaking more languages and working in other countries show your willingness to try new things, deal with unexpected challenges and adapt to any situation.

Now I’m not talking about simple business trips or a nice vacation. You need to actually live and work in another country. The key is to have the right type of experience abroad. You should limit yourself to one or two countries besides your homeland when looking at foreign opportunities.

When I was in high school, college and in the workforce I had explored and lived in several different countries. During that time I worked for a variety of firms and companies. I felt like I stretched myself too thin studying and working in Beijing, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. I don’t recommend doing what I did because I changed countries so quickly and did not show much stability.

Lacking that steady experience at one big firm for more than a year ended up being a weak part of my resume. It made it seem like I wasn’t sure of what I was doing. So when you find a company to work at in another country, it is important to stay for more than one year so you can gain managerial responsibilities within the firm and establish yourself as a person with leadership skills.

Even if you eventually want to end up with a U.S. company, many of them have offices in foreign countries or deal with foreign markets and issues. The point is, no matter what, a global experience will come in handy. Recent economic developments are constantly validating the importance of a more global worldview, and the top programs want their students to be ready for those challenges.

In most cases, I recommend that you don’t hire a consultant to help you with your application.

First of all, consultants are generally really expensive, so it’s a major investment that you really need to justify.

A lot of people hire consultants for their applications, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Being able to address your own weaknesses by hiring an outside specialist is one of the main functions of businesses in general.

However, most people should be able to put together a competitive application by getting critical feedback from a trusted friend who has experience applying to business school.

Aside from getting an outside opinion or two, you should be able to fill out a great application by being sincere and taking the time to really think about what a business school is looking for.

If you have extremely high ambitions and intend to start the next world-changing business, then you shouldn’t settle for any business school but the best.

Otherwise, you can gain skills and experience by continuing to work. After an additional year acquiring new success stories, your application will be that much stronger.

If you’re under 30 years old, there’s no rush to go to business school. You can always try again next year.

When you finally do get into business school you’ll have more industry experience to share with others, and because you’ll have a better overall grasp of the business world, your interactions with other students will be more fruitful and productive.

If I hadn’t gotten into Wharton or another a top school during my first application attempt, I would have continued working and reapplied.