Category Archives: Admissions

Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis

Many applicants worry about applying to business school if they have a low GPA. I analyzed the low GPA MBA acceptance rate at the top 25 schools to see what are the realistic chances for applicants with a GPA below 3.0. In my data sample from GMAT Club, less than 3% of applicants had a low GPA, which I defined as below 3.0. Individual schools did not have enough data for me to analyze in depth, so I grouped schools into clusters for analysis. I was surprised to see that low GPA MBA acceptance rate is a lot higher than I expected.

Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate by School Rank

For applicants who have a low GPA, school selection is extremely important. Only 8% of applicants with a GPA below 3.0 are accepted by top 10 schools. This is much lower than the 18% acceptance rate for applicants with a higher GPA. Acceptance rate is much closer at schools ranked 11 to 16 for low GPA applicants. Low GPA MBA acceptance rate is highest for schools ranked between 17 and 25 on US News’ top business school rankings. There is only a small disadvantage for low GPA applicants who apply to schools ranked 17 to 25. Next I looked at how GMAT impacted chance of admission for low GPA applicants.

Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT and School Rank

As you can see in the graph above, GMAT is especially important for applicants with a low GPA. An applicant applying to a top 10 school with a GMAT below 700 has an extremely low chance of being admitted. Scoring a 750 or higher raises an applicants acceptance rate to 13% at top 10 schools. However, an applicant is much better off just applying to lower ranked schools. Low GPA applicants with a GMAT below 700 had a respectable 20% acceptance rate at schools ranked 11 to 16. An applicant with a GMAT of 750 or higher has double the chance of admission, with acceptance rate of over 40%. For MBA programs ranked 17 to 25, it seems that applicants with a GPA below 3.0 only need to score 700 or higher to have a 50% chance of admission.

Although there is not enough data to analyze low GPA acceptance rate in depth at each school. I posted the acceptance rate for each school below. I included the sample size of so you can get an idea of how trustworthy the acceptance rate calculations are. For example, Foster and Mendoza have a sample size below 10, so you probably can’t trust the accuracy of these acceptance rates. On the other hand, Ross has a sample size of 45, so I trust the 40% acceptance rate for Michigan much more than Mendoza and Foster.

MBA Acceptance Rate for Applicants with GPA Below 3.0

School	Acceptance Rate	Sample Size
Tepper	57%	30
Foster	56%	9
Mendoza	50%	8
Cornell	49%	37
Georgetown	45%	29
Kelley	43%	21
Ross	40%	45
Kenan-Flagler	38%	29
McCombs	24%	33
Duke	23%	48
Kellogg	19%	59
Emory	18%	17
Booth	16%	38
Darden	15%	34
Olin	11%	9
Anderson	10%	31
Tuck	5%	40
Yale	4%	24
Haas	4%	25
NYU	3%	29
Sloan	3%	30
Stanford	3%	32
Wharton	3%	36
Columbia	0%	22
Harvard	0%	38

UNC MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis

Kenan-Flagler is University of North Carolina’s business school. UNC has five programs including a full-time MBA, various executive MBAs and an online MBA program. UNC’s MBA program is currently ranked 18th by US News and World Report. The UNC MBA class of 2017 has an average GMAT of 710 and GPA of 3.4. I built a logistic regression to predict an applicant’s chance of admission to UNC, here are the insights I gained from it.

UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT

GMAT has a very high impact on acceptance rate at UNC. Increasing your GMAT by just 50 points from 650 to 700 increases your chance of being accepted by 56%.

UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by GPA

Undergraduate GPA has little to no impact on UNC MBA acceptance rate. Surprisingly, applicants with a 4.0 actually had a lower acceptance rate than those with a GPA below 3.0. Applicants with a low GPA should certainly consider applying to Kenan-Flagler.

UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by Application Round

I was very shocked to see that acceptance rate was so much higher for round 3 than for round 1 and 2. I looked at the GMAT and GPA to see if that explained the difference and it did not. Round 3 applicants had the lowest average GMAT and GPA.

Round	GMAT	GPA
Round 1	710	3.42
Round 2	710	3.38
Round 3	707	3.35

Other Factors

Applicants that majored in science, math and computer science tended to have high acceptance rates. On the other hand applicants who worked in computer software tended to have a lower acceptance rate. Indian citizens have a much lower chance of admission. US applicants have a 50% acceptance rate, but Indian applicants have an 18% chance of getting admitted.

MBA Interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT and GPA

The interview is a crucial component of the MBA admission process. All top full-time MBA programs interview applicants before admitting them. Generally the MBA admissions committee is looking for two things during the interview, that you fit the culture of the school and that you have the emotional intelligence to succeed at business school. I have already looked at MBA Interview acceptance rate by itself. However, I always wondered when applying to business school if all applicants are considered equal after they have been invited to interview or does the rest of the application, like the GMAT and GPA, still matter. It turns out that it matters at some schools and not at others.

MBA Interview Acceptance Rate: High vs. Low GMAT

The graph above shows the average acceptance rate for applicants who were invited to interview, separated into GMAT below 720 and GMAT 720 and higher. Two thirds of the schools have a higher acceptance rate for applicants with high GMATs. This suggests that being invited to interview does not put everyone on an even playing field, other components of the application still matter. Booth, UNC, Stanford and Columbia have the largest disadvantage for applicants with low GMAT during interviews. At the other end of the spectrum, MIT, Tepper, Emory and McCombs all have a higher acceptance rate for applicants who were invited to interview but have a lower GMAT score. I don’t think that a lower GMAT actually helped these candidates, but that these schools consider the interview to be more important than other schools, which gives low GMAT applicants the opportunity to stand out.

MBA Interview Acceptance Rate: High vs. Low GPA

Unlike GMAT, half the schools seem to care about GPA after interviewing candidates while the other half do not. Similar to the GMAT table, MIT, Tepper and McCombs have a higher acceptance rate for applicants with lower GPAs. The only exception is Emory, which still doesn’t have that much of a disadvantage for low GPA. GPA does not seem to be as important as GMAT to admissions committees after interviews given that the average disadvantage for low GMAT is -10% and the average disadvantage for low GPA is -1%.

Most of the schools cut applicants with low GPA and low GMAT before interviews. I excluded Tuck and Kellogg because they will interview all applicants who want to interview. So it is not fair to compare them to the other schools who have already cut applicants with low scores. I included their tables at the end of this article for reference.

My take away from this analysis is that some schools place a lower weight on interviews while other schools place a higher weight on interviews. If you are applying to Booth with a high GMAT and GPA then you probably don’t need to stress the interview too much. On the other hand if you have a low GPA and GMAT and are applying to Sloan, you should prepare as much as possible for your MIT MBA interview because they take their interviews much more seriously than other schools.

If you are preparing for business school interviews, check out my MBA interview preparation guide.

Kellogg and Tuck MBA interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT

Kellogg and Tuck MBA interview Acceptance Rate by GPA

The data for this article came from GMAT Club, one of the best websites for GMAT preparation.

Stanford MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis

When I first built the Stanford MBA acceptance rate model, it showed that GPA had little to no impact on acceptance rate. I have reevaluated the data and now I believe that GPA does matter when applying to Stanford. Although GPA has an impact on acceptance, GMAT is still more important for Stanford MBA admissions.

Stanford MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT

GMAT is very important when applying to Stanford’s business school. When an applicant increases their GMAT by 100 points, from 650 to 750, they increase their chance of admission 8 fold. Average GMAT is over 730 points, which means an applicant must have a GMAT north of 750 for an acceptance rate in the double digits.

Stanford MBA Acceptance Rate by GPA

My new analysis demonstrates that GPA is actually important when applying to Stanford GSB. The average GPA of a Stanford applicant is 3.56. Each “.10” increase in GPA raises acceptance rate at Stanford by approximately 1%.

Stanford MBA Acceptance Rate GMAT vs. GPA

Although both GMAT and GPA are important factors that influence an applicant’s chance of admission to Stanford Graduate School of Business, GMAT is more important than GPA. A high GMAT increases acceptance rate at Stanford by 5%*. On the other hand, a high GPA only increase acceptance rate by 3%.

I was not happy with the original predictive model I built for Stanford. I updated my methodology for building the model, mainly in the way I cleaned the data. The results above represent my new model. Below I compare the performance of the old and new model. In order to evaluate performance, I grouped applicants into buckets based on their predicted acceptance rate, then looked at the actual acceptance rate was for that group. The X-axis is the predicted acceptance grouping and the Y-axis is the actual acceptance rate.

Original Stanford MBA Model Performance

Although the graph above looks like it does a good job of predicting the acceptance rate at Stanford. The results are deceptive because almost all of the population fall into the 3% – 6% or 6% – 9% groups, which have little separation.

New Stanford MBA Model Performance

The new model clearly shows significant differentiation, with the exception of the 6% – 9% group. The biggest problem is that the 6% – 9% group has an acceptance rate that is over estimated and the above 9% population is under estimated. The main difference between the original model and new model is the distribution of predictions seen below.

Stanford MBA Model Distribution: New vs. Old

In the original model, 82% of all applicants fell into the 3% to 9% range with only 5% of applicants below 3% or above 12%. The new model has a much more even distribution of applicants. The number of low and high acceptance rate applicants has increased from 5% to 24%.

Data used to create this post came from GMAT Club, which is one of the best websites for preparing for the GMAT.

*A high GMAT or high GPA is defined as one standard deviation above average. A low score is defined as one standard deviation below.

MBA Acceptance Rate by Country

Most elite American business schools brag about how internationally diverse they are. Although American business schools try to make sure they have students from all over the world, the reality is that there are winners and losers. Applicants from some countries have an easier time than others. In this analysis I calculated the MBA acceptance rate by country and region for American MBA programs.

MBA Acceptance Rate by Region

Since there is limited data for many of the countries, first I grouped the countries to look at MBA acceptance rates at a high level. Not all regions apply to the schools in the same proportion. In fact European applicants tend to apply to the higher ranked schools with lower acceptance rates. On the other hand applicants from India are more likely to apply to lower ranked school with higher acceptance rates. I calculated the expected acceptance rate for each region based on the school application distribution.

The regions that have the highest acceptance rates are the Middle East, Europe and Latin America. If you limit Europe to the large western countries such as England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, then the acceptance rate for Europe jumps to 31%. The USA has a slightly higher acceptance rate than average. On the other hand, Asia, Australia and India are all at a significant disadvantage when applying to business school in the United States.

Next I looked to see if the difference in acceptance rates could be explained by GMAT. GPA isn’t a good indicator because different regions have different average GPAs based on how much grade inflation there is in the area. Most regions are clustered around the average GMAT of 722 with two exceptions. Latin America has an average GMAT 16 points lower than average and still has an acceptance rate 6% higher than expected. Africa has an average GMAT that is 34 points lower than average but it only hurts them a small amount. Asian applicants have the highest average GMAT, however Asian MBA acceptance rate is 6% lower than average.

MBA Acceptance Rate by Country

Next I looked at MBA acceptance rate by country for those countries with high enough application volume. I excluded all countries with lower than 20 applications. It is not surprising to see United Arab Emirates and Israel at the top given that the Middle East has a high acceptance rate. Chile, Mexico and Brazil all helped to pull up Latin America’s acceptance rate. The United Kingdom and Russia are the European countries with the highest acceptance rates.

Viet Nam, China, Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea all have acceptance rates that are below average. The only Asian country with a high acceptance rate is Japan. Given that Asian acceptance rates are so low, I would recommend using the help of an admissions consultant if you are applying from one of these countries.

The data for this analysis came from the GMAT Club forum. If you are looking to increase your GMAT, check it out.

McCombs MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis

McCombs School of Business is a top MBA program and part of University of Texas Austin. The full-time program is small; the class of 2017 is 267 students. McCombs average GMAT is 694 and average GPA 3.40. The acceptance rate is at the higher end of the spectrum at 35%. UT Austin also has an evening business school with more relaxed admissions criteria. For the evening MBA, GMAT is 640 and GPA is 3.34.

McCombs MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT

GMAT has a strong impact on acceptance rate at McCombs. If you raise your GMAT by 100 points, from 650 to 750, your chance of admission increases by 120%. Even with a relatively low GMAT of 650, an applicant still has a respectable 1 in 4 chance of admission.

McCombs MBA Acceptance Rate by GPA

Although GMAT is critical when applying to University of Texas Austin, GPA does not appear to be important as long as it is above 3.0. When I built the acceptance model for McCombs, GPA was one of the first variable eliminated. As you can see in the graph above, GPA seems to have no impact on acceptance rate. Data is sparse below 3.0, so I cannot be confident how low an applicants GPA can be before it hurts them. However, if you have a low GPA and want to go to a top 20 MBA program, then McCombs is a great place for you to apply.

McCombs MBA Acceptance Rate by Application Round

When applying to McCombs, the round you apply during matters. Round 2 acceptance rate is not statistically different than round 1, but there is a penalty for applying round 3. Round 3 applicants are 25% less likely to by admitted than applicants from the first two rounds.

Other Factors that Impact McCombs MBA Acceptance Rate

Although a quarter of applicants studied engineering for their undergraduate degree, McCombs does not seem to love engineers. The acceptance rate for engineers is two thirds that of non-engineers. On the other hand, McCombs loves economics majors. Applicants who majored in economics are 70% more likely to be accepted to McCombs than other majors.

Data for this article was collected from GMAT Club, one of the best websites for preparing for the GMAT.

Kellogg Interview Questions

Kellogg is somewhat unique in that it allows anyone who applies to interview. Kellogg MBA interviews are typically off-campus with an alumnus, although it is also possible to interview with an admissions committee member on campus or over Skype. Interviews with Kellogg tend to vary greatly based on who interviews you. You can expect anywhere from 6 to 14 Kellogg interview questions. Kellogg interviews are on the longer side, sometimes lasting an hour to an hour and a half. If you are interviewed by an alumni, typically they will have already read your resume but not your whole application. Below are the most common Kellogg interview questions, ranked from most to least common. Your chance of being asked each questions is in parenthesis.

Most Common Kellogg Interview Questions

Why Kellogg? (87%)
Why get an MBA? Why now? (87%)
What is your greatest accomplishment or what is the accomplishment you are most proud of? Sometimes when this question is asked, you are limited to an accomplishment at a certain company you worked at. (67%)
Walk me through your resume. (60%)
What will you contribute to the program? What will you get involved with at Kellogg? (60%)
Tell me about a time you faced a challenge. Frequently the interviewer asks specifically about a challenge or failure in a team environment. (53%)
What is your leadership style? (53%)
Tell me about your education. Why did you choose your major? (40%)
Is there anything else you would like me to know? (40%)
Why did you pick your company or industry? (27%)
What are your hobbies outside of work? (27%)
How would your coworkers or peers describe your strengths and weaknesses? (20%)
What role do you take within a team? (13%)
What inspires you? (13%)
What words would your classmates use to describe you? (13%)
Tell me about a time you took an initiative. (13%)
What are your long term goals? (13%)

You may also be asked specific questions about your resume or experiences. At the end you will have time to ask a few questions. For additional interview tips check out my MBA interview preparation guide. The questions for this article were collected from Clear Admit.

Yale MBA Acceptance Rate Analysis

Yale School of Management, also known as YSOM, is a prestigious school located in New Haven, Connecticut. It is difficult to gain admission to Yale’s MBA program, similar to their undergraduate school. The YSOM class of 2016 has impressive statistics, with a median GMAT of 720 and median GPA of 3.56. Only 22% of applicants who apply to Yale will be accepted.

Yale MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT

Similar to all other schools, a high GMAT score will increase your chance of being admitted to Yale. Although the average GMAT score for the class of 2016 is 720, the average score for applicants is 7 points lower at 713. The GMAT range of the middle 80% of Yale MBA students is 680 to 760. However, the difference in acceptance rate for the bottom of that range is substantially lower than the top. An applicant with a 760 is more than three times more likely to be admitted than an applicant with a 680.

Yale MBA Acceptance Rate by GPA

A high GPA also raises the acceptance rate at Yale. The middle 80% students in the class of 2016 have a GPA between 3.17 and 3.87. An applicants with 3.87 is surprisingly only 50% more likely to be admitted than one with a 3.17. Even a perfect 4.0 only raises Yale MBA acceptance rate to 32%.

Yale MBA Acceptance Rate: GMAT vs. GPA

The chart above shows that GMAT is more important for admission to Yale than GPA. A high GPA will only increase acceptance rate by 4%, while a high GMAT results in a 10% higher chance of being admitted.* If you have a low GPA and a high GMAT, Yale is a great school to consider. For example, an applicant with a 3.0 and a 770 has a 34% chance of admission.

Yale MBA Acceptance Rate by Application Round

When applying to Yale, it does not matter whether you apply during the first or second round. However, applying in the third round is a huge disadvantage. Your chance of admission is less than half as likely compared to the first two rounds, so be proactive and submit your app early.

Other Admissions Factors

Indian applicants are at a significant disadvantage at Yale, with only a 6% acceptance rate. On the other hand, Yale seems to really like applicants with experience working for consumer packaged goods companies. Their acceptance rate is shockingly high, almost three times higher than average.

*A high score is defined as one standard deviation higher than average.

MBA Concentration Acceptance Rate Analysis

With the current semester just about over, next years application essay questions will be posted in the coming weeks for many schools. Round one applicants should start figuring out their story and crafting their essays. The most important essay for most schools is the question: Why get an MBA and why is [insert school name here] the right choice for you? In order to answer this question you need to have a plan for how an MBA is going to help you achieve your goals. The vast majority of MBA students are looking to switch careers. Why else pay $120,000 in tuition and give up two years of salary? If you wanted to stay in the same industry, you would probably just go for a promotion or switch companies.

I was curious if the industry an applicant is trying to transition into impacts their MBA acceptance rate. My theory was that there are a lot of people trying to transition into consulting, banking and technology, so there may be oversupply for those concentrations. Perhaps a candidate would stick out if they are pursuing a more unique career. I took the business school admissions data from GMAT Club and looked at the acceptance rate by stated concentration. First I decided to look at the top 20 schools in aggregate, to ensure the results were statistically significant. I was surprised by how much the acceptance rate varied depending on MBA concentration.

MBA Acceptance Rate by Concentration

The average acceptance rate for top 20 schools is 23%. Many of the concentrations towards the top are fairly small with the exception of Marketing. As you can see, there is a huge range in the acceptance rates based on industry focus. With Social Entrepreneurship applicants 2.5 times more likely to be admitted than applicants interested in Technology or Operations. Most of the results don’t surprise me, business schools seem to be trying to help the world right now, so it is no shock that Social Entrepreneurship, Nonprofit and Sustainability are all in the top half. With the crisis in the Healthcare industry, the high acceptance rate for Healthcare applicants is also logical I am a little surprised that Real Estate is so high and Technology is so low. There is not a lot of focus on Real Estate that I have seen in business school, so I didn’t expect it to be the concentration with the second highest acceptance rate. On the other hand, Technology is very hot right now, so it is shocking the admissions rate is so low.

Since this data does not have gender included, it is possible that the acceptance rates are skewed by gender concentrations. More women tend to focus on Nonprofit, Social Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Healthcare, which could have bumped up the acceptance rate. Many schools are trying to increase their female enrollment, so women tend to have higher acceptance rates. At the other end of the spectrum, industries such as Operations and Technology are more dominated by men, which likely led to the low acceptance rates in those concentrations.

In the end, I wouldn’t recommend outright gaming the system. Don’t say you want to pursue Social Entrepreneurship rather than Technology if Tech is really what you are passionate about. It will likely show in your application. However if you are unsure of what you want to focus on, it would make sense to chose the concentration you are interested in that has the highest acceptance rate. There was a lot of variance by school. The chart below shows some of the highest and lowest acceptance rate concentrations by school. Take these findings with a grain of salt because the sample size is pretty small.

School	Increase Acceptance Rate	Lower Acceptance Rate
Stanford	Social Entrepreneurship	Finance, Entrepreneurship
Harvard	Entrepreneurship	Finance*
Wharton	Healthcare*	Finance, Entrepreneurship, Marketing
Booth	Healthcare, Marketing	Entrepreneurship, Finance, Operations*
Sloan	Marketing, Social Entrepreneurship*	Technology, Operations
Kellogg	Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Social Entrepreneurship	Operations, Technology
Haas	Entrepreneurship, Healthcare	Operations, Technology
Columbia	Social Entrepreneurship	Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Healthcare
Tuck	Healthcare, Marketing	Finance, Technology*
Darden	Marketing	Entrepreneurship, Finance
NYU	Entrepreneurship, Finance, Marketing*
Ross	Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Healthcare, Social Entrepreneurship	Finance, Operations, Technology
Duke	Healthcare, Marketing, Social Entrepreneurship*	Finance, Operations, Technology
Yale	Marketing, Social Entrepreneurship	Entrepreneurship
Anderson	Finance, Marketing	Entrepreneurship, Technology
Cornell	Finance	Entrepreneurship, Operations
McCombs	Entrepreneurship, Marketing	Finance
Kenan-Flagler	Finance, Healthcare, Marketing
Tepper	Entrepreneurship, Operations, Marketing*	Finance
Emory	Marketing	Finance

*This concentration had a very large increase or decrease.

Cornell MBA Interview Questions and Guide

This guide is designed to help Johnson MBA applicants to prepare for their interview, complete with a list of the most common Cornell MBA interview questions. The typical Johnson MBA interview is 30 to 50 minutes long. It can be given by either a second year student, alumni or an admissions committee member. It is even possible to get an interview with an adcom member while a second year student is observing for interview training purposes. Interviews can take place on campus, off-campus or over Skype. Expect the interview to be semi-blind, which means that they have seen your resume but probably nothing else. The Cornell MBA interview questions below are organized from most common question to least common, with the frequency it is asked in parenthesis.

Most Common Cornell MBA Interview Questions

1) Tell me about yourself or walk me through your resume. (80%)

2) Tell me about a challenging situation at work or a work conflict. (70%)

3) Why Johnson? (70%)

4) Why get an MBA? Why now? (60%)

5) How will you contribute to Johnson? (50%)

6) What are your post MBA plans or goals? (50%)

7) Describe a time when you managed or lead other people? (50%)

8) What are your biggest weakness? (40%)

9) Why did you make XYZ transition? (20%)

10) What is your leadership style? (20%)

11) Have you applied to any other schools? What do they have in common with Johnson? (20%)

12) Is there anything else you want me to know? (20%)

At the end you will have time to ask a few questions. For additional interview tips check out my MBA interview preparation guide. This guide was created using the Johnson interview reports from clear admit.

Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate by School Rank

Low GPA MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT and School Rank

MBA Acceptance Rate for Applicants with GPA Below 3.0

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UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT

UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by GPA

UNC MBA Acceptance Rate by Application Round

Other Factors

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MBA Interview Acceptance Rate: High vs. Low GMAT

MBA Interview Acceptance Rate: High vs. Low GPA

Kellogg and Tuck MBA interview Acceptance Rate by GMAT

Kellogg and Tuck MBA interview Acceptance Rate by GPA

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Stanford MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT

Stanford MBA Acceptance Rate by GPA

Stanford MBA Acceptance Rate GMAT vs. GPA

Original Stanford MBA Model Performance

New Stanford MBA Model Performance

Stanford MBA Model Distribution: New vs. Old

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MBA Acceptance Rate by Country

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McCombs MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT

McCombs MBA Acceptance Rate by GPA

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Most Common Kellogg Interview Questions

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Yale MBA Acceptance Rate by GMAT

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