<p>I have worked in a Admissions office at a top 10 MBA program for the past year or so and wanted to post some tips that may help many of you. Maybe this can be made into a sticky, but anyway I know the admission process pretty well and there are a lot of things I see day to day that you guys should know not to do. I will provide these in steps and will add to this as I see fit.</p>
<li><p>Submit your applications Early and pay right away. Do not wait to pay, all this does is creates confusion for the work study students and gets them angry. When you don’t pay, your papers are never even looked at, they sit in a bin or drawer. After a given amount of time that draw is purged and shredded. Many schools just get to many applications to deal with this. </p></li>
<li><p>If you can submit material electronically. Material needs to be official, you would never believe how many GRE/GMAT/MCAT/OAT/DAT/TOEFL scores we get that are just copies. Copies aren’t acceptable, they are shredded. It is your responsibility to get the committee all the materials it needs, we aren’t responsible for your short comings and we aren’t going to tell you what you need. But you are always welcome to call or email to confirm.</p></li>
<li><p>Pay attention to the application, read it 2-3x and make sure you understand what you are applying to. If a given program is not open to you and you still apply, you will not be considered and you may or may not loose your application fee. Make sure you meet all requirements, before you apply. </p></li>
<li><p>Now that you have applied, its time to send in the documents. Like I said above if you can send them electronically, we love it.</p></li>
<li><p>You need to know that when a application is received, the majority of its time is with work study students. The work study students are the ones who prepare your application for the admission committee, so you need to please them more then even the committee itself. When applicants make the jobs of the work studies harder, the work studies have to take there anger out on something. I’m sure you can imagine. </p></li>
<li><p>Never Staple Documents, you can paper-clip them instead. If you can, dont fold documents either, send them unfolded in a document envelope.</p></li>
<li><p>Fancy paper, Binders, Portfolios have no meaning what so ever. In fact when we get a nice binder with the documents in it with high quality paper, we strip the documents from the binder/portfolio, then trash everything we didn’t explicitly request. So all that nice work, is never even seen my a admission committee. Once stripped, the documents are scanned and put in a storage system. The admission committee, actually never sees the originals.</p></li>
<li><p>Dont send extra copies of any document, One is enough. The work study students hate having to sort through duplicates and they are just shredded. Everything is electronic, so only one will be scanned and then stored or trashed.</p></li>
<li><p>When you apply, you are usually told via either the application, what is required of you. Usually this consists of official transcripts and test scores as well as purpose statements and resumes. When you send in these documents, pay attention to the order they were listed on the application and send them in that order. we just need the basics, let your marks speak for themselves. Also only send what is requested, and what you feel will directly effect admission decisions. if you need to send Dissertations and research works, send them separately from the main application. </p></li>
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<p>As I have mentioned its the work study students who have to sort all of the materials and when you don’t follow these steps, you make there lives a lot harder and they in return will not care for your materials. We live in a electronic world now. Nobody cares about the presentation of ones application, so save your money and instead spend your time the application in asap. Good Luck all.</p>