MBA deadlines tracker by ApexWriters!
Tired of tracking your MBA application deadlines by visiting various websites, maintaining excel sheets and setting reminders?
Now, you can create your personal tool for tracking the business school admissions deadlines. You can login to your account, select the schools and create your monitor. You will be able to track a particular round of deadline for specific school and see the number of days remaining for application submission. Start now and checkout http://www.apexwriters.com/deadlines.in
MBA application deadlines 2010-2011
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Are you waiting to meet the representatives from your choicest schools in Bangalore, Delhi, Hyderabad or Mumbai? Now you can track the upcoming sessions in your city.
ApexWriters has created a tool that can help prospective MBA applicants keep track of the info session/MBA fairs and schools’ events in their location. We will keep updating the list as and when the information is available.
Please visit MBA Info Sessions Schedule and share the link with your interested friends.
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Renowned business schools including Harvard, Stanford, INSEAD and ISB; will accept Pearson’s PTE Academic scores for accessing applicants’ English proficiency. PTE was launched eight months ago and is in the process of being recognised by more than 1500 programmes worldwide. It is endorsed by the Graduate Management Admission Council GMAC, the owners of the Graduate Management Admission test GMAT.
“We have a 10-year plan for the test and are targeting 3 per cent of the academic English market in India which is currently 200,000 students. For us, the testing parameters are listening, reading, writing and speaking and all these four modules can be tested in three hours,” said John K Philip, Regional Director (SAARC Countries), Pearson Language Tests.
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According to topmba.com applicant survey and GMAC Alumni Perspectives Survey 2010 about 40% of its test takers are now women. The actual number of takers has crossed 100,000 for the first time ever. David A. Wilson President and Chief Executive Officer of the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) says. With about 36% of the applicants being from India, it is interesting to note that more and more Indian women are now exploring an MBA as an career propelling opportunity. Business schools, already keen on increasing the number of female students in their class, offer special incentives like loans/scholarships and flexible schedules exclusively for women. You may just need to check with individual schools and find the best fit.
Zoya Zaitseva, Manager of the QS Tour, says: “In 2009, though 41% of applicants to the QS World MBA Tour were women, for the first time ever, there are some countries where the proportion of women was over 50% and we’re looking into why that might be.”
More details are available at TopMBA.Com
An interesting read for women aspirants: Seven Worries That Get in the Way of B-School
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Seven Worries That Get in the Way of B-School
Congratulations to all those who have received the admission confirmation and are now on their way to start at their dream schools. One of our consultants has written this interesting article about the first year of MBA, read on…
If you’re just getting started on your way to a global MBA, you must be filled with myriad questions. How will it be like? How do I gain the most? How am I going to hunt for internships and jobs? Are my two years going to be very competitive?
In this section, our consultants attempt to provide you a good picture of your MBA period, so that you’re not in for any surprises, at least not many of them 
. In what follows, we are assuming a common scenario of a 2-year US full-time MBA, starting in the month of August.
Typically, in India, the first month of an under-graduate academic session feels like a honeymoon period. However, a US MBA starts on quite a busy note. You have deadlines to do assignments right from the beginning and it is difficult to have the luxury of having a quarterly test which is three months away.
August and September pass quickly as you intermingle with your study-group and class-mates but, before you know, campus placements start. Whoa, when you have barely begun to understand the MBA stuff, you’re up against all others for internships. Your must-dos are:
- Prepare a professional resume which talks about business rather than technical details. You will need to take help from the second year students and friends for review.
- Prepare a cover letter. An average Indian student will probably do it for the first time. Yes, cover letter is important and employers read it.
- Networking. You had always assumed that your knowledge and performance will take you to the best jobs. Now you need a third element – your relationship-building skills. Networking events in the evening, can easily convert into late night events, and can leave you breathless.
- Thank you emails – you have never done so. Yet, you will wish to remember precisely what was discussed in the event and with whom. Personalizing your thank you emails is a good idea.
In your first recruitment season, your professors may be willing to extend your deadlines and relax your work schedule, but not a whole lot. As a management student, you will be expected to do everything and still find time to do more. Be ready.
Those gunning for investment banking and financial services industry positions need to do more. These demanding employers will be the first to visit for recruitment. Internship positions are few so obviously, not everyone can end up spending summers in a top-rated investment bank. Gun for the best but don’t ignore the niche banks.
By October end, the pressure starts easing up. But many students, who may not have tasted success in campus recruitment, will have to start looking for alternatives recruitment platforms. Some of the good recruitment platforms are:
- NBMBAA – National Black MBAs Conference. This conference generally takes place in late September, almost two months after you join MBA.
- NSHMBA – National Society of Hispanic MBAs Conference. This happens generally a month after the NBMBAA.
- West Coast Forum – This career track is typically an initiative by the business schools standalone or as a consortium.
Are NBMBAA and NSHMBA conferences really meant for Indians? Absolutely! Most Indian MBA students visit these conferences and many walk away with leads, contacts and job offers.
By the time Christmas & New Year holidays commence, campus recruitment dries up and major conferences are over. For those still looking for a break, there may be many options:
- Start the search individually using job sites such as Monster and Linkedin
- Use the contacts and reach out to the alumni network for a break
- Start cold-calling companies in the surrounding region
- Look within the university and the school to find promising projects
- Discuss opportunities with the professors for TA or RA
- Go entrepreneurial, form a team of like-minded classmates and discuss ideas
- Reach out to your friends in other business schools and be on the scent of hot employers
We hope that this will give you some idea on how you might spend your first year at the business school.
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ISB and the Net Impact Club in partnership with the Give India Foundation launched the the ‘Shadow A CEO‘ program to auction a day with top Indian CEOs. As a as a part of the ‘Joy of Giving Week’ (27th September – 3rd October ‘09), the amount raised through this auction will be given to an NGO of the CEO’s choice.
The bidding process was conducted between the 21st and 23rd September 2009 and a total of 1,196 students placed their bids for the ‘Shadow a CEO’ program. Amongst the 26 business leaders who participated in the ‘Shadow a CEO’, the highest bid amount was for Mr N R Narayana Murthy.
Women are good administrators and companies like Yahoo, PepsiCo, ICICI and others have recognized the fact. Today, women manage diverse businesses and are quickly climbing the corporate ladder. Number of women role models is increasing and so is the desire to formally understand the fundamentals and enroll for a business degrees.
Among the top US schools, Wharton has managed to attract the maximum female population of whooping 40%. This is a 4% jump from its last year’s enrollment. Schools like Stanford, Kellogg, Harvard, Columbai also have 33% to 37% female students.
Wharton has taken special steps to attract more female population – some initiatives are admissions presentations specifically targeted at women, developing a relationship with undergraduate organizations like Wharton Women and Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business and facilitating women involvement by Wharton Women in Business, career fairs and coffee chats.
Source – Class profiles (2011) of Harvard, Wharton, Kellogg and Columbia
Female_MBA_Enrollments
Different business schools have different opinions about the importance of essays in the admission process. Some schools say that personal records speak louder than the words and others feel that essays are the heart and soul of your application. Getting into a top business school entails much more than having a GMAT score and an undergraduate academic record. Even with years of professional work experience in your resume, you may still fail to capture the attention of the admission committee.
Writing a B-school essay is neither about being the best English writer nor about being able to showcase your work experience in 500 words. It is a unique blend of strategic thinking and ordinary English skills. Applicants should carefully bear on certain crucial points while drafting their application essays, which can help make their profile impressive. Here are some pointers that you can keep in mind while writing the essays:
- Start with strong introspection and analysis; you will never be short of experiences and stories. Think harder about your career goals and why do you want to do an MBA now
- Keep up your thinking cap and start this process well in advance and do not do a hurried job just before the deadline
- Understand the question; do not beat around the bush and be direct while handling the responses
- Do your home work; and let the school know that you have gone beyond the website to know about their community and school. Do not parrot out whatever is written in the public domain, while answering school specific questions. Understand school’s mission or vision and interact with students
- Mention specific examples where possible; it gives authenticity to the claims that you make in your essays
- Tell your story honestly and reveal enough about yourself
- Do not leave anything for the admission committee to guess, revisit your essays for clarity
- Do not try to be funny when you are not; humor is good but do not try too hard to introduce humor
- Take the advantage of the additional essay and use that space to highlight the aspects of your personality which have not been covered anywhere else. Here, you can address some obvious weakness like low grades or gap in employment
- Do not bank on your writing skills only, ask your friends or mentor to give you a second feedback but do not lose your voice while revising the essays
- Finally, proofread your essays and close your essays in prescribed word limit. Do not take totally unnecessary risk of exceeding the word limit by 10-20 words. If you can write in 530 words, you can surely wrap up in 500 too
When you are struggling writing that ‘why MBA’ and specifically ‘why <x> school’ essay, recalling a first hand experience with current students or admissions officers of school <x> can be the key. You should make every possible effort to know about the prospective schools you may be wishing to spend those crucial years at. These meetings may present you with additional information or data which you may have disregarded earlier.
If you can get an opportunity to meet admissions officers in the MBA fairs/information sessions, you should not miss it. To maximize the returns from your visit, these pointers can be helpful -
Know the schools – It saves time, you do not end up attending the info session of the school that you may not be interested in. Do some preliminary search about your target schools by going through rankings, reading latest news articles and consulting friends. In an MBA fair, do not look for the ‘big’ names and waste time for an interaction if that is not the right school for you. Remember, your motive behind this visit is to know more about your target schools and understand how you fit.
Research and research- To let the school know that you are one of the interested and serious applicants, do your homework. You should find more about the school by visiting school’s website, reading some students’ blogs and speaking with alumni/current students.
Get an appointment – MBA fairs are crowded events and you can easily get lost among those hundreds of candidates. Please do not expect a personal interaction unless you have set your appointment in advance. Some info sessions are conducted for exchange of information where as some schools are willing to conduct the interview ( yes even before you submit your applications). Do not miss such an opportunity.
Have your queries ready - If you could not visit the school in person, you definitely have many questions about the teaching methodologies, culture, student profiles and career paths, financial feasibility and living etc. Admission officers will be glad to take your questions as long as they are relevant and you do not demand too much of their time.
Try to connect with all representatives – Speak with alumni, current students and admission officers. Students and alumni, especially from your own country or academic/professional background would be an indispensable resource while getting a close look at the school’s offerings and your fit.
Present yourself well – You might not know who you could meet and forge a relationship with. It could be the person who will later help you through your application process or even conduct your interview. So be tidily dressed in business wears and maintain a cheerful disposition
Finally, take the judgment call – You can evaluate the school on many aspects, including – the type of people you met, how helpful the students and admission officers were, how did they seem to like you, did you get clear responses to your questions, do you see yourself being among them?
Thank you for your tremendous response towards our scholarship contest. Winners will be announced on August 10, 2009 and results will be available at ApexWriters GMAT Scholarships. Good luck to all the participants.
We were in the same boat once and know how demanding the GMAT preparation and then writing the MBA essays are. The whole process demands your time, commitment and money. Taking a small step to help the applicants, team of ApexWriters is awarding three scholarships to deserving applicants.
If you are an Indian, with minimum of two years experience and are applying this fall then here is your chance to avail 100% towards your GMAT test fee and up to 50% off on our one application help package. We have already started accepting applications for ApexWriters GMAT Scholarships and the last day to submit your entries is July 31, 2009.
Good luck to all the applicants.
We are taking related queries at – gmatschol (at) apexwriters.com
