Monthly Archives: December 2015

Optimal MBA Application Number

Many business school applicants wonder how many MBA applications they should submit? In this article, I will discuss the optimal MBA application number based on real data. Deciding on your MBA application number is challenging because the more schools you apply to, the less time you have to spend on each application. On the other hand, you don’t want to put all of your eggs into one or two baskets. The data suggests that the ideal number of MBA applications is 5 to 7. For more information, check out this article on how to build your portfolio of MBA applications co-authored by Lawrence Linker and I.

Distribution of Number of MBA Applications

Distribution of MBA Application NumberFor this analysis, I used MBA application data from GMAT Club forums, which is self reported admissions data. By matching usernames across different school applications, I was able to get the number of MBA applications submitted. It seems strange to see that a third of applicants only applied to one school. I would have expected more applicants to apply to 5 or more schools. Even if we assume the source is slightly biased and ignore those who apply to only one school, two thirds of the remaining applicants still apply to only 4 or fewer schools.

MBA Acceptance Rate by MBA Application Number

MBA Acceptance Rate by MBA Application NumberThis graph is possibly the most important piece of information for applicants who are considering applying to a lot of schools. It shows that average acceptance rate per application is relatively flat if you apply to seven or fewer MBA programs, at around 24%. However, if you apply to more than seven schools then acceptance rate plummets to lower than 15%. Those few individuals who apply to 10 or more schools only have a meager 6% acceptance rate. Perhaps there are alternative explanation as to why these acceptance rates drop so much, such as GMAT or GPA of the applicants.

GMAT and GPA by Number of MBA Applications

GMAT and GPA by MBA Application NumberDespite having the highest average GMAT and GPA, applicants who apply to 8 schools have an acceptance rate of only 13%. This supports the idea that if you apply to many schools then you don’t have as much time to commit to each application, so quality decreases. Those who apply to 9 or 10+ schools tend to have lower GPAs while those who apply to 1 school tend to have lower GMATs. People who apply to 6 to 8 schools on average have the highest combined scores.

Also applicants that don’t get in for round 1 often apply during round 2 or 3. I found that 63% of applicants who applied to 2 to 5 schools applied to all schools in the same round while only 25% of applicants who applied to 6+ schools applied to all schools in the same round. Surprisingly there wasn’t much of a difference in average acceptance rate for those who applied to all schools in one round vs multiple rounds except for 8+. When applicants applied to 8 or more schools in one round, the acceptance rate was 50% lower than applicants who applied to 8 or more schools but did it in multiple rounds. So if you plan to apply to many schools, spread it out over a few rounds.

Accepted to at Least One School by MBA Application Number

Accepted to at Least One MBA ProgramThe next question is how likely is an applicant to get into at least on MBA program? If you want at least a 50% chance of being admitted, you should apply to 4 or more schools. The peak is 65% for those applying to 7 schools. If acceptances were completely random with a 25% acceptance rate and 7 applications, we would expect 87% to get into at least one school. This gap suggests that the applicants who are accepted tend to get into many schools while 35% are rejected by everyone. Similarly, for those applying to 5 schools, we expect 75% to get at least one acceptance but only 58% are admitted. I expect that this is because there is a major flaw in their application and they repeat it with every school. This is one of the reasons I suggest applicants use an admission consultant for at least one school. Catch the mistake early with the first school and you will be in much better shape.

Average Number of MBA Acceptances

Average Number of MBA AcceptancesThe graph above shows how many schools applicants got into, if they were accepted to at least one school. Unsurprisingly, those who applied to many schools were more likely to have a choice.

MBA Rank Comparison

MBA Application Number Rank AcceptedThe final graph shows the average school rank of the schools applied to verses the school to which they were admitted. I excluded applicants who did not get into at least one school. It is not shocking that applicants tended to get into lower ranked schools than the average rank of their applications. The big takeaway here is that the gap is much smaller for applicants that submitted 5 or fewer applications. For applicants with 2 to 5 applications, the average school accepted is 2 ranks worse than the average application. For applicants with 6+ applications, the average school accepted is 3.2 ranks worse than the average application. So applying to many schools degrades your chance of being accepted to the most elite MBA programs.

In conclusion, there are many considerations when deciding how many MBA applications to submit. Most of the data suggests that an applicant should apply to 5 to 7 schools to maximize their chance of getting into at least one school. If you want to raise your chance of being accepted to at least one MBA program above the 65% figure for 7 applications, I recommend you hire a consultant to help you craft your essays and avoid major mistakes rather than just submitting more applications.

Strategies on Building Your MBA Application Portfolio

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As Founder and Application Coordinator for , one of the first things I’m often consulted on is how many schools an applicant should apply to and which ones. This is an extremely important step to get right in the application process, because there is almost no other decision you will make along the way that has a greater influence on how likely it is you will end up getting into a school with which you will be happy.

When considering your application strategy, there are a few key considerations to take into account:

  1. How much do you need to go to business school this year?
  2. How wide is the prestige range of schools you are looking at? ie, do you want to get into Harvard, but would you be willing to go to Kenan-Flagler if accepted?
  3. What is your personal level of risk tolerance?

From a qualitative point of view, I think most applicants well understand the implications of applying to many schools, but I reached out to my friend Wayne Atwell of MBADataGuru.com because I wanted people to see hard data on how different application strategies affect their chances of admission. My comments are in black, Wayne’s are in green.

In order to make this simulation as realistic as possible, I’ve asked Wayne to use data from his pool of applicants.

Thanks, Lawrence. I would like to introduce you to our sample MBA applicant, lets call him Robert. Robert is applying round one and has a 710 GMAT and a 3.5 GPA from his undergraduate university where he majored in engineering. He is 27 and has 5 years of work experience as a consultant. He is considering applying to Harvard, Wharton, Sloan, Tuck and McCombs. Here are his predicted chances if he were to apply to just one school.

Harvard
Wharton
Sloan
Tuck
McCombs
12%
13%
14%
31%
46%

Thanks, Wayne.

Unsurprisingly, Robert’s chances of getting into each program tracks well with their known selectivity. With statistics so low, it’s easy to be discouraged. While most applicants would like to believe that if they just hit a certain GMAT number, just talk to the right people, or just want it bad enough, they are sure to get in to the program of their dreams. The statistics do not bear this optimism out.

All is not lost, however. Let’s now look at the probability of a total failure (no admission to any school) by multiplying through the probability of failure for each school. Taking the reciprocal of that gives us the probability of success in getting into at least one of the schools for the applicant. Robert has a 75% chance of being admitted to one of his top schools which means his chance of total failure is only 25%. You have to admit it is a much better looking number.

Now, let’s say Robert really is determined to start business school next year and is still uncomfortable with the above number. He needs to increase his overall probability of getting into at least one school he will be happy to go to, but he also don’t want to completely eliminate the chances of going to his dream school, Harvard.  Over to you, Wayne.

To give Robert a better chance of getting into at least one business school next year, we’re going to have him apply to some less selective programs. Here are the results.

Harvard Cornell UNC Ross McCombs All 5 Schools
12% 47% 51% 51% 46% 94%

Thanks, Wayne. Obviously, Robert’s chances for HBS are unchanged. He has decided to swap out Sloan, Wharton and Tuck for Ross, Johnson, and Kenan-Flagler, less selective programs that offer many of the same benefits. Now when we look at the chance of total success, we see a very different figure.

Needless to say, if Robert gains admission to HBS, we expect he will have an easy decision. But it’s nice to know he is covered in case that doesn’t happen.

Now for our last example, let’s take a look at a different kind of applicant. This applicant has the same statistics as Robert, but they have a very different strategy in mind. For this applicant, it is a highly ranked school or nothing. They can live with not going to business school next year, but they are ready to go if they can get into an ultra-prestigious program.

Let’s take a look at this person’s application profile.

We’re going to have this applicant apply to only the most competitive programs. Find the statistics below.

Stanford Harvard Wharton Sloan Columbia All 5 Schools
4% 12% 13% 14% 36% 59%

Taken individually, none of these chances are particularly encouraging, but put together, the success rate is actually not too bad! Considering this applicant is applying to only the most selective schools, this is a rate of success I would think any applicant should be happy with.

Here are a few additional things to keep in mind when thinking about which and how many schools you should apply to:

  1. Applying to more schools will always give you a higher overall success rate statistically, but practically speaking there is a point of diminishing returns. A poorly executed application will always get a ding, no matter how strong your profile. In our experience, for most people, the magic number of schools to apply to is 5.
  2. The above models don’t take fit into account at all. There are similarities between schools that an intelligent applicant can exploit by applying to schools with similar offerings, decreasing their need to come up with widely different rationale’s for why they want to go to each school. Put another way, actually think about what schools you want to go to, and apply to schools that are a genuine fit, rather than taking a purely random approach.
  3. Applicants often have the belief that school selectivity is totally ordinal. That is to say, if you get denied by a less selective school, a more selective school will certainly deny you. That is absolutely not the case! We see this happen all the time. There is simply an element of luck or chance in the application that can NEVER be removed. But it can be mitigated! More on that soon!

The data used to predict acceptance rates for this post came from GMAT Club.