As many business schools approach the first-round deadline for MBA applications, the admissions committees are anticipating their annual stop in Crazy Town. Population? The one MBA applicant who steps over the line by doing something so inane, silly, or downright wrong that he or she ruins any chance of getting in.
These are not candidates who send out generic essays and forget to change the school's name, or nervously click their pens throughout the interview, although admissions teams say they see both of those errors often. These are the stories of MBA applicants who make major blunders—from proposing marriage to the admissions interviewer to including a picture of oneself aiming a bazooka—true stories that happened at IMD (IMD Full-Time MBA Profile) and ESADE (ESADE Full-Time MBA Profile), respectively, according to the admissions teams at both schools. For admissions officers, such application blunders are at worst annoying, and at best a comedic highlight to an otherwise boring day. But for applicants they can serve as cautionary tales: admission strategies that do not bear repeating.
There is no shortage of great stories about candidates who went too far in their quest for MBA admission, said Graham Richmond, chief executive officer and co-founder of the admissions consultancy Clear Admit, which is based in Philadelphia. Richmond, who previously worked in admissions at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School (Wharton Full-Time MBA Profile), said he has seen everything from candidates whose parents take the campus tour without their adult child to someone who wrote in a business school application (and sent relevant photos to boot) that her biggest failure was not being the maid of honor at her friend's wedding.
"For better or worse, these kinds of faux pas are the kind you don't recover from," said Richmond. "It's hard to do damage control once you're in the crazy zone."
One of the biggest mistakes an applicant can make, Richmond said, is to constantly call, hound, or demand face time with members of the admissions committee. Linda Abraham, president and chief executive officer of the admissions consultancy Accepted.com in Los Angeles, has had at least one client whose behavior poisoned his relationship with the admissions team of a top business school.
He got into an argument with a clerk at an admissions office, and felt compelled to make a formal complaint with the admissions director, describing the incompetency of his workers, said Abraham, who added that the admissions director let the applicant know he wasn't impressed. The applicant got rejected at that program, and although Abraham and the applicant don't know the specific reason, they can assume that this negative interaction played a part in his rejection, Abraham added.
Sometimes, once applicants get allotted face time during the admissions interview, they make a bad impression, said Julie Barefoot, associate dean of MBA admissions at Emory University's Goizueta Business School (Goizueta Full-Time MBA Profile) in Atlanta.
"On more than one occasion, the person fell apart," she said. "A few years ago, someone stopped the interview and said, 'This isn't going well,' and then sobbed."
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