Hella

I finished my first official set of application reviews this afternoon. I had been working on them throughout the weekend. I’m finding that it takes me about 45 minutes to an hour to review just one. A week’s worth of work is easily a two to three day job. With lots of stuff going on both in and out of class (we just had some midterms, more to come, and full-time interviews start this week), it looks like this will consume most of my weekends for the near future.

The one thing that stands out the most to me is how applicants fail to mention why the Wharton program is of particular interest to them. As an applicant I often wonder just how much I needed to tailor my application essays to each school. Now I’m seeing things from the other side and realize it’s rather important. Just a modest bit of research (in the form of reaching out to current students, visiting campus, etc.) can go a long way towards making an application shine a lot more than it otherwise would. And given that the first essay question in our application point-blank asks for why this program is of interest, I think it’s really important to give it some thought.

Another thing that I’ve found is difference in how people approach improving their chances. Some applicants have obviously realized they needed to retake the GMAT (and did so close to the Round 1 deadline). Others, even with weak GMAT scores, did not retake even though it seems like they had plenty of time. This can be particularly important when other parts of the application (notably transcripts, work experience, and recommendations) reflect a common theme.

I’ll try to keep posting on my experience in reading the applications as I think it’s something people want to hear about.

Filed under: B-School