Monday, October 24, 2005
Getting In
The other day I ran into a friend of mine who is trying to get into the MBA program here at BYU. He said that he had been accepted to the MPA program, but because his GMAT score wasn’t quite high enough he was not admitted to the MBA program and would have to try again next year. He decided against the MPA degree and plans to try again next year. It sounded like the only hurdle he had to cross was a great GMAT, but talking to him reminded me of when his brother applied to school. He didn’t get in even with a 750, double major, great grades, and great work experience (we were co-workers).
Although Every school varies somewhat on its criteria, most schools seem to value things in roughly this order: story, work experience, GMAT, grades. Things such as letters of recommendation can be very important (not so much here at BYU) but mostly just to confirm your story.
Story
You’re story is a critical part of the application. Getting into an MBA program is almost like trying to get a job. Being qualified isn’t enough, they want to find a good fit. You need to show in your application that you have a well thought out plan, that you know how you’re going to get from point “A” to point “B” and that an MBA is the logical connecting point. At BYU its very important that your application and goals be consistent with the aims and mission of BYU. Since the school is mostly financed by the LDS church, the administration looks at a students motives pretty carefully. If you are a Mormon, then I think the bar is pretty high in terms of your commitment to building up the church worldwide. If you’re not a Mormon, its not so tough but you need to demonstrate a commitment to follow the honor code. I’ve heard a few stories suggesting that they don’t care how qualified you are; if your commitment doesn’t come through they are not going to give you a spot.
Work Experience
BYU, more than most schools, is pretty uptight about work experience, and LDS missions don’t count; if you’re LDS its almost expected. I’ve known people who’ve gone to HBS with zero or only one year of work experience besides their mission, but here it doesn’t happen for most applicants. BYU has been hammered by some recruiters threatening to boycott BYU unless they get their minority and percentage of female students up and so they have a few diversity initiatives – they also have experimented with letting in super smart women right out of undergrad on an experimental bases.
However, for most applicants, work experience is imperative. I have good friend in the program who is super smart and placed last year in BYU’s business plan competition. Although he scored a 790 on the GMAT, because he had only one year of work experience he had to apply to a joint-degree program with the engineering school. Every year BYU accepts a handful of IPD (Integrated Product Development) students who excelled as engineering students – they get two masters degrees in three years and are admitted with no post-graduate work experience. He’s trying to drop the engineering commitment and just do the MBA, but is having a really hard time getting permission because he only had one year of work experience.
Furthermore, the students who have the most experience also seem to get the best scholarships. I looked over the list of students who received the incoming Dean’s full-tuition scholarship and they were typically those students who had the most experience. Also, its pretty important that the work experience be post-graduate experience rather than something you did during school.
Grades
The last time I looked, BYU had the highest average GPA of any school listed in the US News rankings. Whereas most top schools had average GPA’s in the 3.5 range, BYU was listed about 3.6. My opinion is that this is primarily due to the fact that roughly 60% of Marriott MBA’s went to BYU for their undergrad and BYU has a fairly bad case of grade inflation. I haven’t heard much inside the school about undergrad GPA as a criteria so unfortunately don’t have much else to say about it.
GMAT
As with most top programs, doing poorly on the GMAT can keep you out, but doing exceptionally well will not necessarily get you in. Its primarily a hurdle that you have to jump over just to be in the game. From my experience, at lower-ranked schools a stellar GMAT can guarantee you an “in” but typically it just gets you in the game; you need it just to be considered. BYU publishes that they pay more attention to the quantitative score than verbal and ignores the AWA section. From their website “The average GMAT score for students admitted to the MBA program is 660, and scores below 600 are usually not considered competitive for admission” (http://marriottschool.byu.edu/mba/prospective/admission_criteria.cfm). For those of you in Utah, there is an excellent GMAT course available ;) that I teach with a friend of mine http://www.acegmatprep.com/.
Although Every school varies somewhat on its criteria, most schools seem to value things in roughly this order: story, work experience, GMAT, grades. Things such as letters of recommendation can be very important (not so much here at BYU) but mostly just to confirm your story.
Story
You’re story is a critical part of the application. Getting into an MBA program is almost like trying to get a job. Being qualified isn’t enough, they want to find a good fit. You need to show in your application that you have a well thought out plan, that you know how you’re going to get from point “A” to point “B” and that an MBA is the logical connecting point. At BYU its very important that your application and goals be consistent with the aims and mission of BYU. Since the school is mostly financed by the LDS church, the administration looks at a students motives pretty carefully. If you are a Mormon, then I think the bar is pretty high in terms of your commitment to building up the church worldwide. If you’re not a Mormon, its not so tough but you need to demonstrate a commitment to follow the honor code. I’ve heard a few stories suggesting that they don’t care how qualified you are; if your commitment doesn’t come through they are not going to give you a spot.
Work Experience
BYU, more than most schools, is pretty uptight about work experience, and LDS missions don’t count; if you’re LDS its almost expected. I’ve known people who’ve gone to HBS with zero or only one year of work experience besides their mission, but here it doesn’t happen for most applicants. BYU has been hammered by some recruiters threatening to boycott BYU unless they get their minority and percentage of female students up and so they have a few diversity initiatives – they also have experimented with letting in super smart women right out of undergrad on an experimental bases.
However, for most applicants, work experience is imperative. I have good friend in the program who is super smart and placed last year in BYU’s business plan competition. Although he scored a 790 on the GMAT, because he had only one year of work experience he had to apply to a joint-degree program with the engineering school. Every year BYU accepts a handful of IPD (Integrated Product Development) students who excelled as engineering students – they get two masters degrees in three years and are admitted with no post-graduate work experience. He’s trying to drop the engineering commitment and just do the MBA, but is having a really hard time getting permission because he only had one year of work experience.
Furthermore, the students who have the most experience also seem to get the best scholarships. I looked over the list of students who received the incoming Dean’s full-tuition scholarship and they were typically those students who had the most experience. Also, its pretty important that the work experience be post-graduate experience rather than something you did during school.
Grades
The last time I looked, BYU had the highest average GPA of any school listed in the US News rankings. Whereas most top schools had average GPA’s in the 3.5 range, BYU was listed about 3.6. My opinion is that this is primarily due to the fact that roughly 60% of Marriott MBA’s went to BYU for their undergrad and BYU has a fairly bad case of grade inflation. I haven’t heard much inside the school about undergrad GPA as a criteria so unfortunately don’t have much else to say about it.
GMAT
As with most top programs, doing poorly on the GMAT can keep you out, but doing exceptionally well will not necessarily get you in. Its primarily a hurdle that you have to jump over just to be in the game. From my experience, at lower-ranked schools a stellar GMAT can guarantee you an “in” but typically it just gets you in the game; you need it just to be considered. BYU publishes that they pay more attention to the quantitative score than verbal and ignores the AWA section. From their website “The average GMAT score for students admitted to the MBA program is 660, and scores below 600 are usually not considered competitive for admission” (http://marriottschool.byu.edu/mba/prospective/admission_criteria.cfm). For those of you in Utah, there is an excellent GMAT course available ;) that I teach with a friend of mine http://www.acegmatprep.com/.
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you mention or rather charge (without much support) that BYU has a "bad case of grade inflation." I have heard this many times, however, BYU students also have higher standardized test scores both entrance (ACT) and exit (GRE,GMAT,LSAT,etc). Since these are standardized for the country it is safe to assume that BYU students are just smart and hardworking and deserve their grades. Afterall, how many of your graduate school bound classmates at BYU regularly skip class because they are half drunk? BYU is a whole other world of academic seriousness unparallelled anywhere else and rightfully it should show on our grade reports. (This is partially inspired by Brent Dunn of ace by the way)
Thanks Josh for commenting - I'm certainly happy to have people defending BYU. I appreciate what a great place it is and how lucky I was to attend. And you're right, the people there are very smart and very hard-working.
When I graduated from BYU with my undergrad in 2000 I went to work for a company that recruited heavily from MIT, CalTech, and other expensive schools. As I recall, during that year this company recruited more engineering grads from MIT than any other company - including Microsoft.
They also recruited heavily from BYU. I suppose I had an inferiority complex for the first few months because I was surprised to find that BYU students consistently outperformed rivals from more prestigious schools. For instance, during training we were put into teams to compete against each other on some difficult projects - almost without exception (in my team, in fact) it was somebody from BYU that was named team MVP.
I agree that BYU students are very smart, very hardworking, and generally deserving of great grades. However, since grades are meant to put students in a ranking, it sort of defeats the purpose to let everyone get high grades (I've heard that Stanford has the same problem, by the way).
Whether deserved or not, that BYU students have higher GPAs is perceived as grade inflation. That is a problem when you are applying for MBA schools. I've heard an AdCom at Wharton once suggest that they have a table to adjust GPAs from schools where the grades are comparatively too high. If a table in fact exists, I'm doubtful they factor in qualitative data such the Mormons work ethic.
I didn't understand your comment about Brent - are you taking the ace class?
When I graduated from BYU with my undergrad in 2000 I went to work for a company that recruited heavily from MIT, CalTech, and other expensive schools. As I recall, during that year this company recruited more engineering grads from MIT than any other company - including Microsoft.
They also recruited heavily from BYU. I suppose I had an inferiority complex for the first few months because I was surprised to find that BYU students consistently outperformed rivals from more prestigious schools. For instance, during training we were put into teams to compete against each other on some difficult projects - almost without exception (in my team, in fact) it was somebody from BYU that was named team MVP.
I agree that BYU students are very smart, very hardworking, and generally deserving of great grades. However, since grades are meant to put students in a ranking, it sort of defeats the purpose to let everyone get high grades (I've heard that Stanford has the same problem, by the way).
Whether deserved or not, that BYU students have higher GPAs is perceived as grade inflation. That is a problem when you are applying for MBA schools. I've heard an AdCom at Wharton once suggest that they have a table to adjust GPAs from schools where the grades are comparatively too high. If a table in fact exists, I'm doubtful they factor in qualitative data such the Mormons work ethic.
I didn't understand your comment about Brent - are you taking the ace class?
awesome environment and can do more things from yours. really great to gain more interesting content from yours. thanks keep share more good things.
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