Admissions Protocols Vary Between Schools
Reports to MBA LiveWire also serve to highlight the different admissions protocols followed by various schools. For example, HBS and Wharton have for the past several years made a point of being as transparent as possible with applicants anxiously awaiting word. Both schools set a specific date by which all invitations to interview will be extended, releasing applicants who have not been invited to interview from further consideration at the same time. Other schools are far less transparent, letting both interview invitations and rejections trickle out without apparent order up until final decision deadlines.
As we commemorated in our recent “Waiting for Bolton” blog post, the anxiety produced by this lack of insight into the admissions process does sometimes translate into great creativity on the part of applicants awaiting word. We loved the lyrics, poetry and other musings people shared while trying to guess when Stanford GSB Admissions Director Derrick Bolton might begin to issue interview invitations.
The waiting has also been hard at MIT Sloan, driving some to Castaway-quoting madness, as captured in the below submission.
Others have floated fascinating theories to explain the sequence of admissions decision notifications, ranging from geography to GMAT score to favorite food.
The waiting has been made worse, according to some, by the unfortunate timing of marketing emails sent out by the school. According to various LiveWire reports earlier this week, several hopeful applicants eagerly opened emails marked MIT expecting an invitation to interview or other admissions decision information. Instead, they found an invitation to an upcoming information session in New England. Adding insult to injury, due surely to some technological glitch, those marketing emails actually went out multiple times to the same recipients—one reported receiving the offending email 13 times.
Throughout, as with the anxious Stanford GSB applicants a couple of weeks ago, many MIT Sloan applicants have shown grace and humor in their submissions to LiveWire. One offered up, as a proposed post-MBA career plan, “Join MIT Sloan and change their admissions evaluation structure.”
Our website traffic also provides a meter of sorts for applicant anxiety. Stanford’s LiveWire page has been one of the top five most viewed pages on our site for three weeks running, and MIT Sloan’s LiveWire page has joined Stanford’s in the top five for the past two weeks.
When Applicants Speak, Clear Admit Listens
As many of you have noticed, we recently implemented comments on LiveWire to make it easier for applicants to communicate back and forth with one another. When you started using the Notes field for this purpose, we heard you loud and clear. Our hope is that the ability to comment will allow applicants to communicate freely and easily with each other as they share their progress through the application process.
We’re delighted to see that you have submitted hundreds and hundreds of comments—in multiple languages—in less than a week since the new functionality went live. We hope you’ll continue to be as active and engaged with us and each other going forward. As always, please just keep it clean and civilized.
Of course, as Round 2 admissions decisions roll in, don’t forget to head over to MBA DecisionWire to share how and where you ultimately choose to enroll!
