3 Reasons Why Top Business Schools Reject Applicants
At top B-schools, such as Stanford Graduate School of Business and Harvard Business School, acceptance rates can often fall well below 20%. Most of these top B-schools have similar criteria in the type of applicant they’re looking for: demonstrated leadership, strong soft skills, and good fit. Still, not everyone gets accepted. Fortune recently spoke to experts who highlighted some of the most popular reasons why applicants are rejected at top B-schools.
LOW TEST SCORES AND GPA
While test scores and GPA are only one component of your MBA application, they still play an important role. Quant deficiencies are the main reasons why applicants may get rejected from top B-schools. If you’re applying to a top B-school with below-average numbers, experts recommend offering admissions officers more context to your application.
“While getting a strong score on the GMAT or the GRE is helpful to demonstrating the strength of their candidacy, they have a lot more control over their story,” Kaneisha Grayson, who owns The Art of Applying, an MBA admissions consultancy, tells Fortune.
RUSHED APPLICATIONS
Experts say another reason why applicants get rejected is simply because they rush the application process or focus on one aspect of the application more than another. That in turn can often make for a poorly executed application or one that isn’t specialized to a B-school enough.
“It’s just a matter of allocating time to get to know the school in advance,” Shaifali Aggarwal, an HBS alum and founder and CEO of Ivy Groupe.
Customizing your application to a business school is important. At the end of the day, business schools are looking for a candidate who will fit their culture. And, experts say, applicants should view selecting a business school the same way.
“Sometimes applicants are attached to the name of a school, but they don’t actually know a lot about the school, or it’s not even a strong match for their career goals,” Grayson writes. “Sometimes it’s about letting go of a school or two to make time and space for a school that might be a better fit for them.”
NOT HAVING A UNIQUE STORY
A lot of times, B-schools reject applicants not because they aren’t qualified, but because they simply don’t seem different enough from other applicants. Having a unique story, experts say, matters in admissions.
“There’s no real theme. You’re doing good work, but again there are hundreds of other applicants in your same situation doing good work getting good reviews,” Mark Lellouch, an Admissionado consultant and Stanford University Graduate School of Business grad, tells Fortune. “It’s hard to distinguish oneself with a common background.”
Next Page: Are Rankings Meaningless?
A cartoon showing MBA obsession with rankings from a book by Menlo Coaching, the admissions consulting firm
Are Rankings Meaningless? This Expert Offers His Thoughts
Rankings often play a big role in where people decide to pursue their MBA degree. A 2021 study by the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) found that roughly 45% of domestic MBA applicants and 49% of international MBA applicants said they rely on rankings as much as they did on school-related websites.
But one expert says that maybe it’s time to rethink how we view MBA rankings. Robert Zafft, an adjunct lecturer at Olin Business School, recently discussed why rankings, such as the one by U.S. News, need to be closely examined.
RANKINGS SCANDAL
Business schools, for the most part, see rankings as very important.
“Rankings bring notoriety, prestige, and revenue to the organizations that produce the rankings,” Zafft writes. “Rankings also drive the careers of people who run governmental, for-profit, and educational institutions. This in turn drives institutional behavior.”
The lure of rankings has, in turn, resulted in some big scandals—the most recent one being at Temple University, where the former B-school dean Moshe Porat was indicted on fraud charges in an MBA rankings scandal.
U.S. NEWS RANKING METHODOLOGY
Zafft offered a close look into US. News’ ranking methodology highlighting areas that raise legitimate questions.
For one, academic quality (which makes up 40% of the U.S. News ranking) relies on subjective data from MBA Deans and Directors (25%) survey responses and corporate recruiters.
“The survey asked respondents to rate the MBA-program-quality of other schools on a scale of 1-5,” Zafft writes. “Respondents may also state they lack sufficient familiarity with a program to answer. U.S. News takes the average of survey scores from Deans/Directors and a weighted average score for recruiter-submitted surveys over the past three years.”
Surveys, Zafft says, tend to turn subjective unreliable opinion into quantified data.
“MBA-school deans and directors might be assumed to keep a watchful eye on their nearest competitors,” he writes. “But will such people evaluate these competitors fairly? And how far out does respondents’ knowledge reliably extend?”
WORTHY ALTERNATIVES
Rather than rely on surveys, Zaffit notes, U.S. News should consider ranking schools’ academic quality based on factors used for faculty promotion and recruitment such as publishing and citation numbers—data that schools themselves use for faculty promotion and recruitment.
“B-school websites typically provide faculty CVs, which include publishing and employment histories,” Zafft writes. “Publishing success and job movement can be fed into an algorithm, which will be consistent and can be adjusted over time after open discussion.”
At the end of the day, people value rankings because they shape a business school’s brand perception. But that, Zafft says, is the exact reason why we need to take them with a grain of salt.
“In a rankings-mad world, we need to look hard at the people and the methodologies doing the ranking,” Zafft writes. “A quick review of U.S. News’ approach to B-Schools raises legitimate questions. With regard to rankings of any kind, we owe it to ourselves to dig deeper and to look harder. Otherwise, we risk making crucial decisions based on meaningless data.”
Next Page: University of San Diego Lands Game-Changing Donation.
This California B-School Just Got a Huge Donation
The University of San Diego (USD) has received a historic $50 million donation. The multi-million dollar gift, one of the largest in university history, will be used to build the Knauss Center for Business Education, but also to name The Knauss School of Business, named after the donors, USD Board Chairman Donald Knauss, the former CEO of Clorox, and his wife, Elli.
“This is our investment in educating ethical and compassionate business leaders — leaders who enable a free enterprise system that creates wealth on a fair and equitable playing field. Without the creation of wealth, no society can take care of its most vulnerable, lift the standards of living of its citizens or make the investments needed to preserve this planet for future generations,” Don Knauss, USD Board Chairman, says in a press release.
The donation by the Knauss family is significant among the historically largest gifts to B-schools. Chicago’s Booth School of Business topped the list with a historic $300 million gift from David Booth in 1997.
THE KNAUSS CENTER FOR BUSINESS EDUCATION
The Knauss donation will help fund the Knauss Center for Business Education, a new 120,000-square-foot building more than triple the size of the Knauss School of Business, scheduled to open in Fall 2022. The building will include a suite to help seed student startups, a student success center, production studio, finance lab, and theater.
“We believe that ethical and compassionate leadership in business or other fields is arguably the most powerful force in society,” USD President James T. Harris III says. “At USD, we believe a values-driven education, coupled with a commitment to free enterprise, gives us the means to deliver on our vision to care for and protect society for future generations.”
Tim Keane, dean of The Knauss School of Business, says the Knauss gift will play a critical role in supporting the school’s mission.
“Many business schools across the nation focus on graduating aspirational leaders,” Keane says. “At USD, however, our focus goes deeper, to the very heart of who we are as a Catholic institution. Our focus is on true stewardship — on caring for and protecting society, on using what we learn in the classroom and in the world for good. We are incredibly grateful to Don and Ellie for their generous gift and visionary leadership in support of our mission.”
Sources: University of San Diego, Times of San Diego, P&Q
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