Applying to business school – what not to do

Publish date	2008-01-10
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Getting into a good MBA programme can be tough. As well as filling out lengthy application forms, you’re expected to provide fantastic references and come up with a dazzling personal statement.

It’s hard work for sure, and the temptation for many is to race through dozens of applications, sling them in the post and hope for the best. If you’re tempted to go down this route, spare a thought for the people who have to read what you submit. It might just keep you out of the rejections pile.

Alison Yemm is head of MSc operations at the University of Bath School of Management. She reads in excess of 2,000 applications to the school each year and knows all too well the mistakes that can kill an application stone dead. So what are the absolute no-nos?

“This sounds really basic,” she says, with a weary sigh, “but the most important thing is to read the application form and understand it. It’s almost as if some people see what they want to see when they read a brochure for the school. It never fails to amaze me how many people don’t grasp what we’re looking for. Do read the admissions criteria.

“Answer the questions we ask you. From my perspective as admissions tutor, I look at an application in a certain way – I read the form, then the transcript, then the references and the personal statement. If I have nothing on the application form but ‘please see my CV’ then it’s not feeding me the information in the way that makes it easy for me to process. It really makes my life a lot easier if it comes in the format we asked for. Answering all the questions is another good one.”

References are fairly straightforward for British students. But cultural differences can throw up a different set of problems for international applicants.

“In common with a lot of other UK universities at the moment, we receive a lot of applications from China,” Yemm says. “In their culture references aren’t used, and quite often it’s clear that applying students from that region have written their references themselves and got their professors to sign them.”

Experienced admissions tutors can spot this kind of thing instantly, says Yemm. “We can spot things like students writing their own references because the margins on the reference document will be the same size as on the statement, or the paper will be of the same type. We do notice.”

The personal statement is the applicant’s chance to tell the school why they want to go there and what they hope to achieve. It can also help to sell an applicant with an uninspiring first degree or gaps in their work experience. But, according to Yemm, even a supposedly personal account of one’s goals can be plagiarised.

“We ask applicants for this because we want to know what their thoughts are and why they are applying for the programme. There’s a trend at the moment – there must be a website somewhere that tells people what to put in their statement. I see so many statements with the same, strange phrases in them. We will notice that. When you put those kinds of phrases in, and the rest of your English is not so good, it has obviously been copied. Some phrases are deeply strange – ‘I’m standing on the edge of an opportunity’ and so on.”

Yemm says a surprising number of applicants making multiple applications have a tendency to get one fundamental detail wrong: the name of the school.

“We know that people basically apply to ten universities and duplicate their personal statements,” she says. “But when they include a statement and send it to us with ‘I really want to go to Warwick because…’ that’s not particularly impressive.”

There’s one further faux pas that won’t gain your application much sympathy: getting mum or dad to do your legwork for you.

“One thing that really depresses me is when an applicant’s parents ring up and do all the research for them. I can understand it if you’re away on a gap year, somewhere remote – although to be honest there aren’t that many places where you can’t send an email. But if you can’t drag yourself away from daytime TV to phone up, that’s not the sign of a serious candidate. I think by the time you’re 21 you should be making that call yourself.”

Keywords: MBA, University Admissions, Business School, University of Bath.

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