This week, we’ve had the pleasure of connecting with Wayne Atwell, a second-year MBA student at NYU Stern School of Business, who is perhaps better known as the MBA Data Guru. In January 2014, while in the midst of applying to business school himself, he launched a website with that name after crunching numbers to figure out his own chances of getting into the various schools where he had applied. (Atwell is pictured above, far right, with his Stern block and their strategy professor, Sonia Marciano.)
In using data to answer his own questions about the MBA application process, he realized he was also answering the questions of other MBA applicants, and so www.mbadataguru.com was born. As for why and how he’s kept updating it, even now amid the hectic pace of a full-time MBA program? “Mainly I like playing around with data,” he says. “I find it fun.” But he’s also gotten to chat with lots of MBA applicants, learned a bit about web development and managed to grow an audience, he adds. “Still, it’s more of a hobby than anything else.”
Fortunately for those who’ve come to value his analysis of all things MBA admissions, we have good news: It’s a hobby he plans to continue even after he lands a consulting job post-MBA. (He’s currently interviewing with BCG, McKinsey and a few other firms.) So you can expect to see more posts like the following as Atwell’s time permits. Read on to learn what data has shown him about the relationship between getting invited to interview and gaining acceptance at a range of leading MBA programs. And be sure to visit his site for more fascinating data-driven analyses of the MBA admissions process.
The following post has been republished in its entirety from its original source, www.mbadataguru.com.
MBA Interview Acceptance Rate by Rank
So you have just been invited to interview at the MBA school of your dreams. Obviously this raises your chance of getting in, but by how much? In general, top ten schools have lower MBA interview acceptance rates while schools ranked 11 to 20 have a higher acceptance rate for applicants who were interviewed.
The acceptance rate ranges from 34% to 75% for schools in the top 20. The average MBA interview acceptance rate for the top 10 is 50% and it is 62% for schools ranked 11 to 20.
NYU jumps out as the highest acceptance rate by a wide margin. If you have been selected to interview at Stern then you can prepare to open a bottle of champagne because you are probably going to business school. No other school in the top 10 has an interview acceptance rate above 60%.
On the other end of the spectrum is Kellogg and Tuck with the lowest acceptance rates. These two schools will allow anyone who visits campus to interview, so it is not surprising that they admit significantly fewer applicants who are interviewed. Most of the top 10 schools have an acceptance rate clustered between 46% and 51%.
Duke has the lowest acceptance rate for a school not in the top 10 at 52%. The rest of the schools range from 57% to 68%,
Good luck and don’t forget to prepare for your MBA interviews!
* The data used to create the analysis on www.mbadataguru.com comes from GMAT Club. The data only represents a small percentage of the total applicants (roughly 10%) and may be biased based on the source. Therefore, results may not be 100% accurate and are meant to give you a rough idea of your chance of admission.
