For Essay 2, it will be interesting to see whether candidates favor Option A, taking the rather straightforward path and exploring their envisioned careers in greater depth, or the challenging creative essay in Option B, hoping to provide a far deeper personal picture for the admissions committee. Our guess is that most applicants will choose the latter—doing so will allow the candidates to differentiate themselves from many “careerists” in the applicant pool. We also suspect that some candidates will worry that if they choose Option A, they will be inadvertently revealing themselves to be “uncreative” and will therefore feel compelled to choose Option B. But do not try to guess what the admissions committee “wants”! If the school wanted everyone to respond to one option in particular, they would not have offered two! Let us reassure you that this is not some sort of test. Take the time to consider how you would respond to both questions,  and then select the one that you believe would offer the admissions committee the more compelling picture of you.

Essay 1:  Professional Aspirations

(750 word maximum, double-spaced, 12-point font)

• Why pursue an MBA (or dual degree) at this point in your life?
• What actions have you taken to determine that Stern is the best fit for your MBA experience?
• What do you see yourself doing professionally upon graduation?

The three points that make up Stern’s Essay 1 question this year basically constitute a Personal Statement, and because Personal Statements are similar from one application to the next, we have produced the mbaMission Personal Statement Guide, which helps applicants write this style of essay for any school. We offer this guide to candidates free of charge. Please feel free to download your copy today.

And for a thorough exploration of NYU Stern’s academic program/merits, defining characteristics, important statistics, social life, academic environment and more, please check out the mbaMission Insider’s Guide to New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

Essay 2: Choose Option A or Option B

Option A: Your Two Paths

(500 word maximum, double-spaced, 12-point font)

The mission of the Stern School of Business is to develop people and ideas that transform the challenges of the 21st century into opportunities to create value for business and society. Given today’s ever-changing global landscape, Stern seeks and develops leaders who thrive in ambiguity, embrace a broad perspective and think creatively about the range of ways they can have impact.

• Describe two different and distinct paths you could see your career taking long term. How do you see your two paths unfolding?
• How do your paths tie to the mission of NYU Stern?
• What factors will most determine which path you will take?

Given that the school is asking about two possible paths for your long-term career, you may be wondering whether you can be vague or uncertain about your goals in this essay. Quite simply, “No.” In fact, you will instead need to present two feasible career options and relate your skills and experiences to them very clearly to create an effective, coherent statement and show both that you are versatile and that you know yourself well.

The key here is demonstrating that you have a full understanding of the career paths you propose for yourself and truly grasp how and why each one would be a good fit for you. If you write that you could see yourself as either a marketing manager or a hedge fund manager, for example, you will reveal that you actually do not know much about these positions, because the personalities and skills necessary to succeed in the roles are quite different. Although identifying and showing a connection between these options is not impossible (both can require a very intense focus on data mining, for example), your essay will really only be successful if you can effectively show that you know yourself and the two diverse paths well. A more plausible—and likely convincing—option is to choose two positions that are more relatable to each other, such as entrepreneur and politician. There is no “right” combination for this essay, but whatever you propose has to be credible. Basically, Stern is saying that it wants to know that you are able to make the most of opportunities, even if life (or the economy!) throws you a curveball. By thoughtfully discussing two feasible alternatives, you will prove that you are multitalented and prepared to knock any curveball out of the park.

To best answer the question that relates to Stern’s mission, you should first understand—you guessed it!—the school’s mission. Here it is in Stern’s words:

The mission of the Stern School of Business is to develop people and ideas that transform the challenges of the 21st century into opportunities to create value for business and society. Given today’s ever-changing global landscape, Stern seeks and develops leaders who thrive in ambiguity, embrace a broad perspective and think creatively about the range of ways they can have impact.

The school’s mission is clearly quite broad. You need not address every aspect of it in your essay, but make sure that you connect your proposed paths to at least one element of Stern’s statement. Further, you should definitely not trot out clichés about “doing good,” just because Stern has the word “society” in its mission. In short, avoid approaching this part of the essay with a “What do they want to hear?” perspective and truly consider how your stated career trajectories relate to the school’s objectives—think deeply about who you are, where you want to be and how your ambitions and values connect with Stern’s own mission.

Option B: Personal Expression

Please describe yourself to your MBA classmates. You may use almost any method to convey your message (e.g. words, illustrations). Feel free to be creative. (See Stern’s essay write-up in more depth via this link.)

In NYU Stern’s famed “personal expression” essay, you have a phenomenal opportunity to differentiate yourself from the rest of the applicant pool in two distinct ways. The first is the vehicle through which you choose to reveal your persona. By using a creative and captivating format, you can grab the admissions committee’s interest and compel your “reader” to pay close attention to your content. However, be sure to consider the possible limitations of certain clever options, not just their uniqueness. For example, although a baseball card may be aesthetically pleasing, this format severely limits the amount of information you can convey because of its size and anticipated style. Instead, if you were to submit a eulogy theoretically written by your best friend (and you CAN submit something that is written, but do not use this idea; it is now public), the format would be sufficiently broad to allow you to touch on all that is unique about you. The second way this essay question allows you to differentiate yourself is through your content. Ideally, you will use this opportunity to showcase a diversity of professional, personal, academic and community accomplishments that you were not able to share in essay one. The personal expression allows you to reveal your true personality and “likeability” beyond your professional/academic competencies.

One important note: NYU Stern is accepting multimedia presentations, but do not feel compelled to use this option if this is not something with which you are comfortable, and if you do choose this method, do not worry about the level of your Web design or video production skills relative to others’. For this essay, content trumps style. In fact, at an mbaMission event, we interviewed various admissions officers, students and alumni from NYU Stern who spoke of some incredibly simple “personal expression” submissions that had captivated the admissions committee—and many of these were straightforward essays!

Because of this very confined structure, there are actually cases where the structure of question and statements can give you information regardless of the specifics of the problem. There are at least four instances where a specific form of the statement(s) will allow you to eliminate several responses without evaluating the full content of the problem.

1) A value statement for a yes/no question

If a statement provides a value for the sole variable in the question, it is definitely sufficient to answer any yes or no question.

For example:

Does the integer x have more than two positive factors?
1) x = 104,381

There is no need to spend time considering the factors of 104,381 or trying to use divisibility rules to see if x is divisible by 3 or 9.  If I know the value of the number, I can answer any yes or no question about that number.  Thus, statement 1 is sufficient (meaning the only possible answers are A or D).  One caveat to this rule is that it only applies if the yes/no question is about a single variable (e.g. is the question was “Does xy have more than two positive factors?” just knowing the value of x may not be sufficient).

2) The two statements provide the same information.

If the two statements for data sufficiency questions provide the exact same information, the answer is either D or E.

For example

Company X has a total of 400 employees. (additional information in question)…. What percentage of Company X employees received a raise?

1) 80 of Company X’s employees are managers.
2) 320 of Company X’s employees are not managers.

Given that we know, Company X has a total of 400 employees from the question, it is easy to see that providing the number of managers allows us to calculate the number of non-managers and vice versa.  The statements have told us exactly the same information.  Repeating the same thing twice (even if you do so at a louder volume) does not actually provide any new information. Either this information allows us to answer the question (in which case the answer is D, either statement is sufficient), or the information is not useful (in which case the answer is E, not enough information).  Make sure to assess that the statements do actually provide the same information and you are not assuming information from one statement when considering the other one.

3) Statements that give only relative numbers when the question asks for a magnitude

If only relative numbers are provided in the question, a statement that provides only relative numbers will not be sufficient to answer questions of magnitude.

Company Y’s costs were 75% of its revenues in 2011.  What were Company Y’s profits in 2012?

1) Revenues increased by 1/3 and costs increased by ¼ for Company Y in 2012 relative to 2011.

In the problem above, the question asks about an actual number – company profits.  In the question and the statements, we are only provided with relative information (i.e. percentages, fractions, and ratios).  You can never answer a question of magnitude based only on relative information.  In the context of this question, when we only know percentage costs and fractional increases year over year, we have no sense of how large this company is.  Is it a hot dog stand on the corner or a multinational corporation?  Thus, we have no potential to answer this question, or any question of magnitude with statement 1 and should eliminate answers A and D.

Be careful because a statement with relative information could be helpful for this question if magnitudes are provided in the question.  Consider statement 1 if question instead read “Company Y’s  revenues were 100,000 and its costs were 75% of its revenues in 2011.  What were Company Y’s profits in 2012?”

4) Statements that give only angle measures for a geometry problem that asks about size (side length, perimeter, area).

If only angle measure are provided in the question, a statement that provides only angle measure will not be sufficient to answer a geometry question about size (e.g. side length or area).

Line k is parallel to line l. What is the perimeter of quadrilateral wxyz?
(Diagram that includes only information about angles)
1) Angle xyz measures 60 degrees.

This rule is essentially the geometry equivalent to rule 3.  Angle measures don’t tell me anything about the size of a shape.  Even give all three angle measures of a triangle that triangle could be microscopic or the face of one the great pyramids.  You cannot answer any question relating to the size of a shape (side length, perimeter, area, etc.) given only angle measures.  Thus, in this question, I would immediately eliminate answers A and D because statement 1 is not sufficient.

The same caveat applies as in rule 3.  If, for example, the diagram included some information about the size of the shape, such as one or more side lengths, the angle information provided in the statement could be sufficient to answer the question.

In a broader sense, understanding the meaning of these four statements is about recognizing the repetition and patterns present on the GMAT.  As your recognition grows, you should feel you are not always starting from ground zero when you see a new GMAT problem, rather you can apply some of the logic or lessons from prior problems you have done.  As you continue you doing GMAT practice problems, consider for yourself other common question and statement types that should inform your potential answers.

Triangle ABC is cut by a line DE parallel to side AC, as shown in the diagram. If side AC has length 1, and the area and perimeter of triangle ABC are both twice the corresponding values for trapezoid ADEC, what is the perimeter of triangle DBE?

To see the answer choices, and to submit your answer, visit our Challenge Problem Showdown page on our site.

Discuss this week’s problem with like-minded GMAT takers on our Facebook page.

The weekly winner, drawn from among all the correct submissions, will receive One Year of Access to our Challenge Problem Archive, AND the OG Archer, AND Our Six Computer Adaptive Tests ($92 value).

6/17/13- Santa Monica, CA - Free Trial Class- 6:30PM- 9:30PM (EDT)

6/17/13- Boston, MA - Free Trial Class -  6:30PM- 9:30PM

6/17/13- Atlanta, GA  - Free Trial Class -  6:30PM- 9:30PM

6/17/13- Evanston, IL - Free Trial Class-  6:30PM-9:30PM

6/18/13- Berkeley, CA - Free Trial Class - 6:30PM- 9:30PM

6/18/13- Online- Writing a Standout HBS Application Essay presented by mbaMission- 9:00PM-10:30PM (EDT)

6/19/13- Glendale, CA- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM-9:30PM

6/19/13- Washington, DC - Free Trial Class- 6:30PM-9:30PM

6/19/13- Online - Live Online GMAT Preview- 8:00PM- 9:30AM (EDT)

6/20/13- Online - Free Trial Class- 8:00PM- 11:00PM (EDT)

6/12/13- Dallas, TX - Free Trial Class- 6:30PM-9:30PM

6/20/13- Online - Thursdays with Ron- 7:00PM- 8:30PM (EDT)

6/22/13- Online - Free Trial Class- 10:00AM- 1:00PM (EDT)

6/22/13- New York, NY- Free Trial Class- 10:00PM- 1:00PM

6/22/13- Boston, MA - Free Trial Class -  2:00PM- 5:00PM

6/23/13- Online - Free Trial Class- 1:00PM- 4:00PM (EDT)

6/23/13- New York, NY- Free Trial Class- 10:00PM- 1:00PM

6/23/13- Santa Monica, CA- Free Trial Class- 10:00PM- 1:00PM

6/23/13- Chicago, IL- Free Trial Class- 2:00PM- 5:00PM

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.

Catch up on some business school news and tips with a few of this week’s top stories:

Best Non-US Business Schools (About.com Business School)

Here is a list of the best non-US business schools. Each school offers at least one high-quality program for business students.

Tweets, Slideshows and Social Media—The New MBA App (Poets & Quants)

The University of Iowa’s Tippie School of Management revamped their application to connect with candidates in their own space – social media.

14 Simple Ways to Get Considerably More Done (Inc.)

Don’t think it’s possible because you’re already working in overdrive? Here’s a new way to look at your to-do list.

Applicants Invest 90 to 140 Hours to Apply (Poets and Quants)

Find out just how well b-schools get to know you through the admissions process.

Did we miss your favorite article from the week? Let us know what you have been reading in the comments below or tweet @ManhattanGMAT

When I was a little boy, I didn’t want to be a fireman when I grew up.  I wanted to be a riverboat gambler.  Unfortunately, I didn’t because of a bad upbringing—utility stocks were too risky for my father. . .I do play poker and blackjack some though.  And I don’t try to fill inside straights.  On the other hand, I don’t play baccarat because I don’t understand the rules well enough.  The same principles apply to the GMAT.  The first part of this series—-“Heart of Darkness—A Holistic Guide to GMAT Scoring” —- highlights why test takers don’t score as well as they should because they don’t understand the rules of the game and thus often try to fill inside straights.  And, like a Greek tragedy, that post ends by lamenting how even test takers who know how to play baccarat are corrupted by the siren song of the ticking clock.  Yes, the clock.

Folks fail to understand that all their good work will be undone if they do not finish the sections in good order.  Leaving the last five blank will lower your score by as much as sixty points.  Roughly speaking, doing so in both sections will magically turn a 660 into a 550.  And you must not only finish, but also finish in good order.  If you blind guess the last five in each section, with average karma, your score will still drop sixty points.   Run the assessment reports on your practice exams—if your score is lower than the average difficulty of the questions that you missed, you have timing problems, even if you are finishing the sections.

How can you avoid this penalty?  Well, the easiest way is to have an angel on your shoulder and always guess right.  However, if you can’t count on that angel full time, you have to control the clock. In the first half of a section, the CAT computer is roughly approximating your ability level.  Thus, what is unforgiveable there is missing questions that you know how to do.  But test takers misunderstand—that is NOT the same as getting them ALL right.  If I take a GMAT, I’ll get ten of the first fifteen quants correct.  Maybe eleven.  Or maybe nine.  It doesn’t matter.  For me, after about the fourth one, they are all 800 level questions and, as part one discussed, you only need to be about 50% accurate at the score level that you want.  Trying to get them all right is a trap.  First off, as I implied a second ago, even if you are scoring 790, the computer will give you problems that you don’t know how to do.  So it’s hopeless on the face of it.  Equally importantly, attempting to do so uses up too much time.  The Catch-22 here is that you must answer those that you know correctly without disproportionally using the time.  Or you’ll turn your 660 into a 550.  What is the solution to this dialectic?  The envelope, please. . .

“Have the discipline to guess”—Zeke Vanderhoek, founder of Manhattan Prep.  Truer words were never spoken.  In the first half, after reading a question twice, if you hear a little voice saying, “This is not going to end well”—listen to that voice.  You must bail out on the losers because you cannot rush the ones that you know or you will be gulled into a craftily laid trap.  (If you are gullible, come to NYC.  Play three card monte on the street to develop the correct attitude.  Which is, “You’re tryin’ to trick me out of my money, aren’t you?”)  Invest in the winners, not the losers—I know you think your Facebook shares are going to bounce back. . .but, really?  I have gotten countless emails that read, “Once I quit kidding myself about the ones that I didn’t know how to do, my math percentile went up twenty points.”

If you are three or four minutes behind the pace around question fifteen, it is not ideal, but it is sort of acceptable if the extra time was devoted to ensuring that the ones you knew were correct.  However, at that point, your primary goal is to get that time back.  You should be delighted if you don’t know how to do number nineteen because you can make an educated guess and recapture at least a minute.  Let me put it another way that some of you might better understand: At that point, the time is more important than the yardage—throw the ball away.  See how clear it is if you understand the rules of the game?  Remember, in the second half of the exam, if you answer every other question correctly, you will largely protect the score that you earned in the first half.  As long as you finish in good order.  Only losing streaks hurt you.  And the way to avoid losing streaks and so finish is to have the discipline to guess.

Folks often ignore the aforementioned advice and lose too much time around question twenty because they think that there’s plenty of time left.  But there’s not.  If you are seven minutes behind at question thirty, you are toast.  At least in the sense that you will have to make some virtually blind guesses.  You do have an angel on your shoulder, right?  And why are you running that far behind?  Because you invested in losers.  Because you tried to fill inside straights.  Well, it’s like the old song goes. . .

“He used to be a gambling man, just like you,

Until he sank so low,

There was nothing that no one could do.”

What is actually sinking is your score.  Have the discipline to guess.

So, in sum, in the first half, do answer all the ones that you know correctly.  Don’t invest in losers and thus fall behind the pace.  It’s hard to harden your heart and have the discipline to guess.  Maybe this will help—if your practice CAT score meets your goal, then you don’t need to answer questions that you don’t know how to do.  You’ve proven that answering the ones that you knew was sufficient to attain that score.  I know that many, if not most of you, are implicitly thinking about the quant right now.  Well, you want to know a dirty secret about GMAT scoring?  Everybody likes hearing dirty secrets, right?

If you want to rock out the GMAT, you must score well in the verbal.   In terms of your overall score, the verbal weighs more heavily.  I worked with a woman who scored 720—99%V, 69%Q.  Other scores that I’ve seen: 700—83%V, 83%Q and 720—81%V, 90%Q.   So, you see?  How do you achieve a high score in the verbal?  Well, when I’m feeling mean, I tell classes, “Step one is quit screwing up the Sentence Correction—it’s just grammar and you guys have been to college and stuff.”  Step two is to master assumption and strengthen/weaken questions in the Critical Reasoning because those normally account for 7-9 of your 13-14 CR questions.  Voila!  That’s practically a high score already.

I know that as soon as I said that a high verbal score is essential, some of you felt like changing your target school to The Devry Institute of Motorcycle Mechanics.  Or decided to take the sanitation test since they still have a union.  Don’t feel that way.  Many students discover that their strength is the opposite of their presumption.  In some ways, the verbal is the math because it requires a precise methodical approach—like mathematics—whereas the quant revolves around accurately reading the words, as the high school mathematical competence is taken as a given.  In particular, Sentence Correction is geometry—successful test takers apply the grammatical rules as they would geometric principles rather than taking the one that sounds best.  As for Critical Reasoning, well, if you can comprehend my blog posts, you have the foundation skills to succeed there.  Simply learn the question types and approaches, as you would formulas, and bring a mathematical rigor to their application.  Folks are too laissez faire in their approach to verbal questions and then blame their inaccuracy on the subject matter.  On the contrary, their failures stem from not employing a mathematical approach accompanied with a similarly precise technique.  Apply your mathematical prowess to your verbal approach.  And, for the group that I’ve lately ignored, aside from the necessity of rebuilding your mathematical foundation, since the quant requires exactly comprehending the words, you too can bring your strength to bear in the area in which you feel less confident.

Know the rules of the game, control the clock, have the discipline to guess, apply mathematical exactitude to the verbal, and have fun.  Okay, I was just kidding about the last one.  You do have to laugh though, when you see one that you can’t do—but that’s another post.

And, by the way, “Dead Man’s Hand” is black aces and black eights—that’s what Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot down.  That’s why I always sit with my back to the wall.  And we’ve already chatted about not trying to pull inside straights. . .

1)  Questions You Got Wrong

This one is the obvious one- if you want to get better at the GMAT, you need to find questions that you got wrong and learn how to get them right. But this isn’t as simple as finding an explanation online and memorizing it (although our forums are a great place to get many of your hardest questions answered). Studying for the GMAT is more than just trying to read and memorize a bunch of facts- it’s about changing the way that your brain thinks about how to manipulate an equation or dissect an argument. And what better way for your brain to learn how to tackle a challenge than to give your brain more time to do so. In the middle of a test, your brain is rushed. You might have had to give up on the question halfway through or guessed on it immediately to save yourself time. But when you give your brain more time to discover that “A-HA! moment”, your brain is much more likely to recognize what to do the next time you see a similar hurdle. After you spend some time trying to solve it on your own, feel free to search for an explanation or a better way of solving a problem. However, you have to make sure that the explanation you read is something that you can do in your own head or your own paper come test day.

2)  Questions You Got Right, But Got Lucky On

In my experience, these kinds of questions made up half of the Critical Reasoning problems I got on practice tests: “I was able to eliminate A, C, & D, but I ended up guessing between B & E.” Sound familiar? It should. A computer-adaptive test will give you problems that you end up having to guess on. Sometimes you get them wrong and you go back to learn what you did wrong. But when you guess and get them right, you may not be as lucky the next time around if you don’t spend time learning why the answer you selected was in fact correct. You’ll never have the exact same question on your actual test, but learning about a logical fallacy on a Critical Reasoning problem or a misplaced modifier on a Sentence Correction question pays off a lot more than a pat on the back for being a good guesser.

3)  Questions You Got Right, But Spent Too Much Time On

I don’t like when students time themselves on every single question while studying. It’s not that I don’t think timing is important on the GMAT: for many students, it’s the difference between a 6 and a 7 in the hundreds digit of their overall score. The problem is that you get 75 minutes to do 37 quant questions. Which is not the same as having two minutes to do every quant question. Hopefully, you will be able to spend less than two minutes on many of these questions. But the reason you want to do so is that you can invest some extra time on some of the other questions that aren’t as easy for you. On the test, spending three minutes to solve a question is ok, as long as you have that extra minute to invest. But after a practice test, look back at that question and ask yourself why it took you so long. If a question is on the GMAT, the GMAT considers the problem solvable in less than two minutes. It’s your job to go back and learn how one would do so. Sometimes that comes from being more efficient in the approach you used, but sometimes that comes from finding a better method. Regardless, like every other question you review, find the best way for you to solve that question.

4)  Questions You Got Right Quickly, But Can Get Right Quickly-er

The ultimate self-test after reviewing a practice test is to see if you could now do every question you saw in less than recommended time (~2 minutes per Quant/Critical Reasoning question, ~1:15-1:30 per Sentence Correction question, and ~1:00 per Reading Comprehension question, not including the initial reading of the passage itself). If you took the exact same practice test with the exact same questions, you should be able to get every question right and have plenty of time to spare. But remember that when you learn how to get more questions right, you are going to get harder questions that will probably take longer to solve. And as was previously mentioned, extra time comes from learning to do other questions faster. Imagine a student who sees 3 levels of questions on the GMAT: 400 (mostly right), 500 (many right), & 600 (some right). If that student wants to improve his score, he is going to see more 500-700 level questions and those 400-500 level questions need to be where he is saving up time to answer the 700 ones. Remember that 30 seconds saved on a 400 level question is just as valuable as 30 seconds saved on a 700 level question. Until you can look at a question and know every  single step that would take you from question to answer, there’s a takeaway worth reviewing. And that’s why ultimately, there’s just one category of question for you to review: anything that you can learn to do better.

Each of seven consecutive integers, all greater than positive integer n, is divided by n. The seven resulting remainders, not necessarily distinct, are assembled into a list L. What is the value of n?

(1) List L contains two odd values and 5 even values.

(2) No odd integer appears in list L more than once.

To see the answer choices, and to submit your answer, visit our Challenge Problem Showdown page on our site.

Discuss this week’s problem with like-minded GMAT takers on our Facebook page.

The weekly winner, drawn from among all the correct submissions, will receive One Year of Access to our Challenge Problem Archive, AND the OG Archer, AND Our Six Computer Adaptive Tests ($92 value).

6/10/13- New York, NY -MBA Admissions Myths Destroyed presented by mbaMission- 7:30PM- 9 :00PM (EDT)

6/11/13- Bellevue, WA - Free Trial Class -  6:30PM- 9:30PM

6/11/13- Boston, MA  - Free Trial Class -  6:30PM- 9:30PM

6/11/13- San Antonio, TX  - Free Trial Class-  6:30PM-9:30PM

6/11/13- Chicago, IL - Free Trial Class - 6:30PM- 9:30PM

6/11/13- Denver, CO- Free Trial Class- 6:30PM-9:30PM

6/11/13- Online - Free Trial Class- 1:00PM-4:00PM (EDT)

6/12/13- San Diego, CA - Free Trial Class- 6:30PM-9:30PM

6/12/13- Online - Free Trial Class- 9:00PM-12:00AM (EDT)

6/12/13- Dallas, TX - Free Trial Class- 6:30PM-9:30PM

6/16/13- Online - Free Trial Class- 7:00AM- 10:00AM (EDT)

6/16/13- Irvine, CA- Free Trial Class- 5:30PM- 8:30AM (EDT)

Looking for more free events? Check out our Free Events Listings Page.

The numbers from GMAC’s 2013 Corporate Recruiters Survey are in, and the MBA continues to gain ground with employers. Of the companies surveyed, 75% plan to hire MBAs in 2013 versus the 71% that hired business school graduates in 2012. The median starting salary for MBAs at U.S. companies is also on the rise: up from $90K in 2012 to $95K in 2013. And companies in the classic fields of consulting and finance are not the only ones expecting to add MBAs to their work force (79% in 2013 over 69% in 2012 and 75% in 2013 over 70% in 2012, respectively): 86% of energy and utility companies (up 17% over 2012) and 89% of health care and pharma companies (up 12% over 2012) report plans to do so as well.

Undoubtedly, the outlook for MBAs is rosy, but being aware of this promising forecast is not enough to help an applicant gain a spot at a top program. Some deep soul searching is needed, and resources such as GMAC’s 2013 Corporate Recruiters Survey can be excellent sources of inspiration—especially as candidates contemplate “what next” after business school.

The following are a few things that might be helpful to consider as you think about your goals:

1. Investment banks and consulting firms are not the only places that offer finance and strategy jobs.

Often, MBA applicants fixate on consulting or investment banking, but getting a job in one of these fields is a competitive process. Consider this: you can do strategy and finance jobs in “industry” companies. More than 50% of the companies in GMAC’s survey in the areas of energy and utilities, health care and pharma, products and services and technology expect to hire MBAs into business development and strategy roles in 2013. Even more industries are looking to hire MBAs into finance roles: more than 50% of companies in the areas of manufacturing and government and nonprofit, as well as energy and utilities, health care and pharma, products and services and technology, will hire business school graduates for finance positions.

2. Give some thought to specialty degrees.

Really like finance? Have you ever considered a Master of Finance (MFin)? It might not be as well-known a degree as an MBA, but if you want to do sophisticated financial transactions or create new products, it could be an excellent choice. And recruiters recognize its value, too: the percentage of companies expecting to hire those with an MFin has increased from 41% to 43% and will likely continue to grow as these programs gain in popularity. Other specialty degrees worth considering are a Master in Management and a Master of Accounting.

3. Just because a company you like does not have a campus presence does not mean it is not interested in employing MBAs.

The mean number of MBAs that businesses in GMAC’s survey are looking to hire increased from 11.4 in 2012 to 14.6 in 2013. That number varies by company size, but even the small firms (defined as having fewer than 1,000 employees) plan to hire five. Do not constrain yourself by believing that opportunities exist only with companies that recruit on campus; just know that if the firm you are targeting is a smaller one, you will need to do some heavy lifting to engage with it. Reach out to alumni, peers, colleagues and professors to build connections and establish a rapport.