The Fit Grid: How to Pick the Right School

One of the hardest and most critical tasks facing a grad school candidate is picking the right schools to apply to (and then attend). Fit is so important not just for improving admissions prospects, but for creating the best possible graduate school experience. Unfortunately, distinguishing top programs -- especially among law schools and business schools -- can be very difficult. Plus, there is a propensity to let the tail wag the dog. In other words, students decide the schools they like first and then make any sort of research (visits included) fit the existing paradigm, rather than coming to conclusions based off of authentic exploration.

So how should students go about determining "fit?" If you have the resources, we advise handing over your information -- background, skills, goals, etc. -- to a trusted expert and letting them give you an objective list of matching programs. Obviously, that requires a significant financial outlay and it starts to feel a little bit strange offshoring the whole operation.

Fortunately, there is a middle ground in the form of "The Fit Grid."

The Fit Grid is simply a way to prioritize on the front end, based on factors, and then create results on the back end that help move you away from preconceived notions. It is pretty simple and not a perfect solution, but it definitely helps.

Basically, what you want to do is create a list of important factors that you think will play a major role in shaping your graduate school experience. Common factors include: location, prestige of program, career placement (specifically in your area of interest), international program opportunities, ability to take classes in areas of interest, student organizations, cost, scholarship opportunities, admissions chances, and culture.

Once you create your grid on the y axis, you can put all of your schools on the x axis and start filling in the boxes with scores for each program in each area. The goal is obviously to focus exclusively on that factor at each place, so that, again, the preconceived ideas you have about the entire school don't weigh you down. You can also weight various categories based on what matters most to you.

One example might look like this, for Chicago's Booth School of Business (to keep things simple, I'll rate every category on a scale of 1-to-10):

Location -- 10, because I've always wanted to live in Chicago and it’s a great city

Prestige of the program -- 9, not quite as prestigious as many some others on my list, but right up there

Career placement -- 7, because I'm in marketing and while the program is sneaky good and the same companies recruit at Booth as do at Kellogg, the placement numbers still don't bear out a major trend in marketing jobs

International programs -- 9, not quite the pinnacle of global education (like, say, Wharton, Columbia, or Duke), but with the International Business Exchange Program (IBEP) and the opportunity to take five "global" classes to get an IMBA, Booth has great opportunities for someone like me who is interested in global studies

Scheduling flexibility -- 9, the only mark against Booth here is that the bidding system for getting certain professors can be tough, but the flexibility of the core is almost unmatched

If I stopped there, Booth would come in with a very high score of 44 of 50, and probably rate as one of my top choices.

Again, it can be difficult to remove yourself from the big picture in order to fairly and truly assess each piece of each school, but if you go through the exercise, you will be able to get a better handle on the schools that are truly a good match. More importantly, you will even start to understand your own goals and your own candidacy better as a result.

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Success Story Part 4: "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the essays of our lives..."

(This is the fourth in a series of blog posts in which Julie DeLoyd, a Veritas Prep GMAT alumna-turned-instructor, will tell the story of her experience through the MBA admissions process. Julie will begin her MBA program at Chicago Booth this fall. You can also read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 to learn Julie's whole story.)

Since the time this business school idea first occurred to me on that Texas highway, the GMAT had been my main concern and the only real hurdle I had anticipated. Now with that hurdle behind me, I realized there was a whole new challenge ahead. Choosing schools, and writing essays upon essays upon essays…

My sister, my wife, and my best friend all applied to law school at the same time. I watched them all study vigorously for the LSAT and witnessed the collective sigh when it was over. Just one personal statement to write and they were essentially done. This one statement goes to every school, and once you send your information to a central clearinghouse, all the details are forwarded on to your schools without any further effort on your part. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly from MBA admissions, but I noticed pretty quickly that the experience would be very different from that of law school admissions.

After a few days of walking on air after getting my 770 (though still secretly thinking that a letter was coming to announce there had been a technical error), I started discovering that even with a 770 GMAT, and a 3.8 GPA, my admissions journey to an MBA would be decidedly more difficult than it was for my law school friends. For MBA admissions, your GMAT is just the sales pitch that gets you in the admissions door; the essays are the substance that will determine whether you get admitted. If you can’t really sell your “story” then admissions can find someone else. I’ll admit it. I resented this.

I signed up for admissions coaching through Veritas and spoke to my consultant before I took the actual test. At the time I was scoring 670 on my practice tests. Because I was interested in marketing programs and social entrepreneurship, she gave me a list of great programs: Haas, Kellogg, Michigan, Harvard, Wharton, Chicago, Yale, and University of Wisconsin at Madison. My wife had a job waiting for her at McKinsey in Chicago, so the Midwest was a big draw for me. With a little reading from a Peterson’s guide to MBA programs, I basically chose the top 5 schools that had some geographical appeal as well. In order of my excitement: Kellogg, Harvard, Michigan, Chicago, Wharton – and I added UW Madison at the end of my list hoping that I wouldn’t need a back-up school. (Their marketing focus is on market research, and that wasn’t really my bag.)

After I took the GMAT, I called up my Veritas admissions consultant again and she told me that if I wanted a safety school, I could apply to Yale. This blew my mind a little. So my list of schools changed again to include another top school I hadn’t even considered before. My list now included: Kellogg, Harvard, Michigan, Chicago, Wharton, and Stanford. I didn’t really expect to get into Stanford, but I figured it was worth a shot. I also wanted to apply Round One because I was worried my musician background might be seen as a weakness in my application. I wanted to take advantage of the best possible odds for admission and also financial aid—as I only made about $15k/year as a musician, money was a major concern.

I took my GMAT in July, and though I had my list of schools set, most of the applications wouldn’t be available until late August or September. Over the next few weeks though, many of the essay topics started being released (as you likely have been reading about in other Veritas Blogs recently). Once I started looking at the long list of different essay questions for each school, I once again envied my law school friends. I also started to rethink applying to SIX schools. I ended up taking Wharton off my list, because I knew Philly wouldn’t work for me. So I now had 4-5 essays for each school… essentially meaning I would have to write 20+ essays. Oy.

I began to craft my story, choosing to accentuate my entrepreneurial experience and frame myself as more of a record label owner instead of “just” a musician. I also picked a few choice examples of instances in which I paired my musical endeavors with my political ideals, particularly around environmentalist causes and domestic violence issues. I knew that I’d be telling a different story from most because my background was in the arts, which isn’t typical for MBA candidates.

The other unique aspect of my life I tried to develop in my essays was how my identity as a lesbian would be a strength in the classroom and in my future career. (Though most minority recruitment is focused on race or gender, the percentage of lesbians in business school is incredibly low. 1 for every 150 students is a generous estimate. In the general population, it’s estimated we make up 1 out of every 16 women.) I knew this would add another unique element to my application, and had a few admissions people specifically talk with me about this aspect of my application. If any other GLBT applicant were wondering whether they should come out in their application I would strongly encourage them to do so.

Now, if I could do one thing differently about my application process, it would be to have visited more of the schools before I started applying. For the essays asking “Why MBA? Why Now? Why Here?” I found myself terribly lacking in finding an answer to the “Why Here?” question. I generally knew reputations, but even when I went to the websites to do more research they all seemed to say the exact same thing: “We’re a school focusing on leadership and innovation!” …which essentially means nothing. If all schools have the same pitch, then how can you use that information to differentiate why you want to go to a particular program? I became very frustrated.

Part of me thought that putting in too much research and emotional energy into places like Harvard or Stanford was just setting myself up for disappointment. I figured I’d do the real research once I got in and had to decide between schools. Unfortunately, my finances were such that I couldn’t visit most schools unless I happened to be touring through already. I didn’t end up going on admissions tours or day-in-the-life programs until I got interview requests, so it wasn’t until the end of the admissions process that I really had some good answers to that “Why Here?” question. If I could have begun my school search the year before, I would have been at a distinct advantage.

If I had taken my own advice, I’m pretty sure I would have changed the list of schools I applied to as well. After more research I found that Harvard was a TERRIBLE fit for me. The only thing I liked about it was that it was Harvard, but the do-gooder/environmentalist/musician/artist/weirdo in me didn’t feel at home with the culture there at all. Surprisingly, I ended up falling in LOVE with Michigan, whereas Kellogg (my top choice initially) turned out to be a disappointment. Going through this process the idea of “fit” became all too clear. What might have been a great fit for someone else, wasn’t for me. I discovered a lot about myself through the application process. I discovered what I truly wanted out of an MBA program.

The biggest surprise came when I started doing more research into the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business (then known as the GSB). Because I had been relying on reputations, I had Chicago (the-“quant-heavy”-Trekkie-antisocial-GSB) way at the bottom of my list. I didn’t want to go there, even though it was IN Chicago, which is where I wanted to live. My mind began to change when I first read the Booth essay questions. First was the traditional 3-Why’s essay (but with a longer word limit so you could actually explain yourself, instead of having to figure out a way to make your intentions fit into a haiku…). The next was an essay asking, “When have you gone against the grain?” (which I could have easily written an autobiography on). The final “essay” question, my favorite, asked for the applicant to create four slides explaining who s/he is. At this, my artsy side started to do a little white-man boogie in my head. I created my four slides in just a couple of hours and loved doing them. I appreciated the chance to express myself in another way in which I excel (i.e. graphic design). This was my first clue that Chicago wasn’t as square as the reputation had foretold.

The essay writing was endless; I pretty much wrote and re-wrote my essays every day for six-weeks until applications were due. Once again, I thought the hard work was over. But I’d never before had to go through the waiting game of MBA admissions. It was an adventure unto itself…

NEXT UP: The Wait

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Five Questions You Need to Ask When Choosing an MBA Program

As we mentioned last week, the Bay Area's Contra Costa Times turned to Veritas Prep for insights on what the value of an MBA is in the current economic climate. In the article, we provided some advice for applicants as they choose which business schools they want to attend. As we always do, we stressed that an applicant must look at so many things beyond just rankings when choosing an MBA program.

Adapted from that Contra Costa Times article, here are five questions you should ask when evaluating how well a certain business school meets your needs:

• What employers recruit from the school? If you want to switch careers and get a job in banking, but no investment firms recruit at the school, then don't expect your post-MBA job search to be easy.


• How far do the school's reputation and alumni network reach? Many schools provide an excellent education, but only have a regionally strong brand. If you want to get a new job in another part of the world after school, this may make it harder to do.


• What type of programs does it offer? Most business schools offer a full-time, two-year program. If this may not fit your schedule or you don't want to quit your job, see if they offer part-time programs that allow you to work and study at the same time.


• What are its academic specialties? Is the school strongest in one specialty, such as finance or marketing? Or is it a more general management-oriented program? Make sure this strength matches what you want to focus on in school.


• How much will the school cost you? Obviously, half of the return on investment equation is the size of investment itself. If a school offers you a significant grant or your employer will cover the cost of the program, that may tip the scales in that school's favor.

This list only begins to scratch the surface, but these are all important questions you need to be able to answer for every school to which you plan to apply.

For more advice on choosing a business school, talk to our MBA admissions experts, and follow us on Twitter!

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Specialized MBA Programs Keep Growing

A recent BusinessWeek article explored the growth of specialized MBA programs, especially at schools outside of the top ten MBA programs. These programs are one way for lesser-known schools to stand out from the pack, but are they always a good choice for business school students?

"Not necessarily," writes Fancesca Levy for BusinessWeek. "While established programs have placement records on par with those of their general MBAs, many newer programs have not yet established the kind of recruiting relationships that guarantee students high-paying jobs at graduation. And graduates always run the risk of getting hamstrung by their specialties later in their careers, when an industry downturn forces them to look outside their specialties for opportunities."

While specialized programs are often very valuable, their recent growth reminds us of the wave of e-commerce programs that appeared in business schools eight to ten years ago. Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management, for example, made a big push with its e-commerce MBA, only to scale back its offering after the dot-com party was over. (A recent search for "e-commerce" on Owen's site turns up just one Internet Marketing Strategy class.)

We're not knocking Vanderbilt or any of these schools for rolling out these programs. The market for management education always changes, and it's often these smaller schools that create real curriculum innovation. Just be careful that you don't chase any fads or trends that may not suit your goals five years from now, once the next fad comes along (real estate fit that description a couple of years ago, and "green" MBA programs just might be next).

Also, consider what you really expect to get out of your business school education. For many, an MBA is a chance to learn how to think like a CEO, regardless of the industry or function. Other applicants, meanwhile, enroll in business school to learn specific skills that can help them flourish as soon as they graduate. If you're in the former camp, you may want to skip these specialized programs in favor of a more general management-focused curriculum. If you're in the latter camp, however, then a specialized program may be a good fit for you.

For more help in choosing a business school, try the Veritas Prep Business School Selector and take a look at our books on MBA admissions strategy, Your MBA Game Plan.

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