Author name: LeapQuest

Governments around the world spend a huge amount of money on education every year. This includes setting up institutes of higher education or expanding the reach of the ones that already exist. Yet, given a chance, every single student wishing to pursue their MBA from the likes of Stanfords and Harvards of the world will jump at the opportunity. With the growing popularity of international MBA, students have more options to choose from, and not limit themselves to only the biggest names alone. What does an international MBA offer that a degree from a home-grown institute doesn’t? Does the word ‘international’ mean only attending B-schools in the U.S. or Europe? If it does, then why do European & US students reach out to business schools in other countries to do their MBA? Many in the field will explain this word (‘international’) by way of diversity among students in the class. Universities would be wary if their student pool had a majority of students from one particular culture, community or country. So, you’d notice almost all the B-schools will more or less be open to sharing the diversity of their students in terms of gender, nationality, culture, and the like. Even US and European students prefer to pursue their course from a place that gives them the opportunity to study in a more multicultural environment. Then you can basically work with just about anyone, anywhere in the world. And then of course, it looks good on your CV as well! Now, let’s come to the point. What are the benefits of an international MBA degree? Quite a few. Let’s go through these one by one. For all of you out there, one reason could be more important than others so this list is definitely not in any order of priority. 6 Benefits of an international MBA degree 1. Gets you closer to your dream job Most students who enroll for an international MBA are professionals. They have a few years of work experience post which they opt for higher study. So, they are already earning a decent amount. Yet a foreign degree shines bright on your CV giving you an edge over other competitors at the workplace. Higher the ranking of the B-school you graduated from, better chances of your dream company hiring you. And in a leadership role! You stand in good stead to take over a role in senior management, as that’s what an international MBA degree trains you in. Following a global curriculum in terms of business, marketing, management, sales and operations along with understanding the various facets of leadership from an international perspective makes you understand business in a different way. You get the confidence to work in any organization in any part of the world.The Financial Times says as of January 1, 2018, almost 31% of the world’s 500 largest listed companies by market capitalization are led by an MBA graduate. 2. Expands your professional footprint For many professionals, stagnation sets in quite early in the career. After a year or two of learning, it generally is more of the same in the years to follow. The biggest culprit is the lack of variety at work. For bosses, it’s more productive to get an experienced employee to continue doing what they have been doing for years. This is why the learning stops and the daily routine becomes a mechanical chore. One big advantage of an international MBA degree is it gives you the chance to expand your area of interest. From a business operations profile, you can learn about business development, or from manufacturing, you can go into consulting. The program is developed in such a manner that it ensures you get an overall perspective and necessary training to shift your career focus. 3. Gets you back into school Talk to the MBA aspirants, and you’d know that one of the reasons why they want to ditch their job or life they are living, is to take a break and do something constructive in the period. There’s nothing better than going back to being a student – sitting down in a room full of people who don’t know you, jotting down informative content, looking up at the professor with eyes full of awe at the knowledge that s/he is spewing. Well, you do end up spending a fortune on this experience, but actually taking time off work could give you a much needed break from all the corporate baggage you’ve been carrying all along. You don’t have to carry your office with you anywhere, no late night office calls, no travel for work. There will be time to think of that business idea you have been toying with in your head. You can chit-chat with new friends and do not feel the urge to network with them for work. It can be quite an experience being a student again. 4. Expands your network As a business professional, one of the key requirements of your job is to network with people from various industries. In fact, almost all companies encourage their employees to network with people other than their colleagues. You never know which connection gets you more work. And while pursuing an international MBA, you have the opportunity to meet like-minded individuals from various industries, from around the world. It is the best setting to make life-long friends and extend these partnerships beyond the classroom. Some of them may just go to head some top-notch organization later in life.And that’s not all. B-schools globally tend to nurture their alumni so as to have an extended network of their wards. You’d have access to such a huge alumni network too who can always counsel, mentor and even help you find a good job. The professors and guest lecturers from various disciplines and industries too shoot up the excitement factor of these degrees. You can learn so much from these accomplished people from various walks of life. These will be invaluable connections. 5. Feeds your entrepreneurial ideas

The most common start to an MBA admissions interview is a friendly, open-ended question: “Tell me about yourself.” It is the only interview question that is so famous as to have its own acronym, TMAYS. Furthermore, because it is often the very first question, answering it well puts your interviewer in a good mood and paves the way for the rest of your interview to go smoothly. This article will explain why admissions committees ask this question, some basic mistakes you can avoid, and what you should do if you want to deliver a great answer that helps you to really connect with your interviewer. Why do MBA Admissions Interviewers Ask This Question? The interviewer already has your resume, and at some schools, such as HBS, the interviewer has conducted a detailed review of your entire application package, including your essays, recommendation letters, and more. Because the interviewer already has this information in front of them, they aren’t looking for you to recap the basic facts. So why are they asking this question? The interviewer wants to make you feel comfortable. This is meant to be an easy question — it’s open-ended, and is a totally foreseeable question that you had plenty of time to practice again and again until you got it right. The interviewer wants you to connect the dots between the different areas of your background. Your resume shows where you attended college, where you work, and what you do outside of work, but it doesn’t explain why you chose those schools, employers, and activities. The interviewer is evaluating your soft skills. During an MBA, you’ll introduce yourself to hundreds of people — among others, classmates, alumni, employers, and professors. Will you make a good impression during those interactions? You might notice that none of these reasons have anything to do with understanding the facts of your background. Although a good answer will always include some facts about your education and work experience, this question is NOT primarily about memorizing the content of your resume, or figuring out a short way to cover every single experience you’ve ever had. It is about explaining your deeper motivations and making a personal connection with your interviewer. Mistake #1: A Chronological Summary The first big mistake would be giving a blow-by-blow chronological account of your life: So, I was born in Los Angeles, where I played football in high school, and eventually attended Notre Dame for college, where I majored in… By my junior year, I secured an internship with… Why would this be a mistake? First of all, how many times do you think your interviewer has heard this one before? For experienced interviewers, it may be hundreds of times. This type of story can bore the interviewer because every part is so predictable. Nearly every MBA applicant in the world: Went to high school and pursued some extracurricular activities there Attended a good undergraduate program Secured an internship, and then a full-time job (often in traditional areas like finance, consulting or technology) You do NOT want to bore your interviewer by giving an answer that is totally predictable, and similar to what hundreds of competing applicants will say. Second, this type of answer makes it very easy to fall into the trap of giving too much detail. During mock interviews, some applicants begin by telling me about two or three college internships before they even get to their first full-time job, at which point they’ll start talking about the details of several work projects per job. And this huge amount of detail leads them right into the second big mistake. Mistake #2: Too Long! There is a fundamental asymmetry in MBA admissions interviews: If you give short, clear answers, your interviewer will be happy to dig for extra details by asking follow-up questions. However, your interviewer is unlikely to cut you off if you ramble. It would be a violation of social norms to interrupt you and insist that you wrap up your answer quickly… so the interviewer will simply watch and wait until you finish, even if they are getting bored. This means that you want to give short, understandable answers, and trust the interviewer to dig for more detail if they want it. This enables the interviewer to get through all of their desired topics. The average MBA admissions interview lasts 30 or 40 minutes, and your interviewer probably wants to cover your career goals, your fit with the school, and a few examples of your previous experiences in which you succeeded, failed, or worked on teams. Taking too much time on any one question can prevent your interviewer from covering their full agenda. How to Answer the ‘Tell Me About Yourself’ Question If you treat your interviewer as a real human being, and the interview as a conversation — not an interrogation — you’ll do wonderfully with this question. The right answer should be interesting and memorable, but not too clever or overly engineered. You should take full advantage of the fact that there’s no prescribed structure, which allows you to frame your profile in exactly the way you want. We could never give a one-size-fits-all answer, but a few successful openings have looked like: Sometimes, I wondered how I ended up in private equity… for an applicant who was in a traditional PE job, but had a rather non-traditional background. You could say that I’m like a legal Walter White… for a medicinal chemist who was using the MBA to transition into a business-oriented role. Both of these examples offer an engaging start, while also getting directly to the practical point of explaining what the applicant does professionally, and setting them up to say more about that. The way you deliver your answer is equally important as the content — maybe more — and for this reason, Admitem’s MBA interview preparation service includes spending two hours with our professional experts on communications training. 5 Tips to Create Your MBA Elevator Pitch   1.

My Recommender’s Grammar Will Ruin My Chances At Leap Quest, we emphasize the need for effective written communication. Indeed, gaining admission to your target business school involves no real “trick”—earning that coveted letter of acceptance depends on your ability to tell your story in a compelling way and in your own words. But is good grammar vital to good communication? And if so, will your recommender’s bad grammar be detrimental to your chances?   We can assure you that no MBA admissions committee will reject a candidate’s application because they incorrectly used a semicolon instead of a comma. The committee is seeking to learn about you as an individual to evaluate you and your potential, both as a student at the school and in the business world after graduation. What is most important in your application is that you convey your unique stories—and ideally captivate your reader—in your own voice. Of course, you should always strive to perfect your presentation, but in the end, the quality and authenticity of your content carry more weight than your verbiage and punctuation. And if you are not a native English speaker, you can certainly be forgiven for the occasional idiosyncrasy in your expression.   This is even truer for your recommenders. The committee is not evaluating these individuals for a spot in the school’s program, so their grammar is largely irrelevant to your candidacy. And again, if your recommender is not a native English speaker, the admissions committees can be even more forgiving. The school will not penalize you for having a recommender who grew up in another country or whose English skills are not very polished for any other reason. As long as your recommender can offer anecdotes about your performance that create a strong impression about you and complement the abilities and qualities you have presented elsewhere in your application, you should be just fine. The substance of the recommendation is always what matters most.   Leap Quest is planning to bust more MBA Application Myths. Continue Reading… Yes, Indian, IT, and male are probably the three most dreaded words in MBA admissions. In that order.   In fact, so huge is the category by itself, that it is the biggest of its kind at most global MBA programs. Sometimes, it even outnumbers the number of local (citizen) candidates. Despite the size, the commonality, and the competitiveness, this category is still sending plenty of students to top MBA programs every year. If you’re in this category, are you already doomed, or is there hope?   That’s not the only category of Indian MBA applicants looking at top business schools though, even if it is the largest by far. We also have doctors, lawyers, administrators, chartered accountants, merchant navy officers, and (a small but growing legion of) fashion designers, media professionals, and even artists applying to business school from the sub-continent. The number of Indian applicants to top MBA programs is rising every year. We should know – we work with hundreds of them every year, and by now, have worked with easily more than a thousand. The MBA is more than a degree for Indian applicants. For many, it is a life accomplishment, and even a life qualification. Most still view it as the transition from a job (usually an engineering one) to a career (of choice).   This is why we are focusing on the top myths that Indian applicants have about the MBA admissions process. Given the sheer numbers, this should help plenty of people get a better grip on MBA admissions, and even the journey beyond.   Myth #1: Business school prepares students to work in only a few fields. In the past, an MBA degree helped boost the careers of professionals primarily focused on banking and consulting. These days, people heading to b-school are interested in entrepreneurship, healthcare, technology, human resources, real estate, marketing, non-profits, entertainment, and much more. Even if you work in a field that doesn’t traditionally require an MBA degree, you may still benefit from it. This is especially true if your career goals include rising to senior management within your company or starting your own company. Seek out people who are pursuing your target career at any level. It’s a great way to understand what you need to do to accomplish your goals.   Myth #2: I won’t be successful because I don’t have a business background. This is one of the most common MBA admissions myths that we’d like to debunk permanently. Admissions teams continue to ramp up efforts to attract non-traditional applicants to their MBA programs, says the Graduate Management Admission Council. These prospective students bring unique experiences and skills to business school and the business world. Applicants with unconventional or less traditional work or academic experience before business school often worry about how admissions committees will assess their records. However, it’s more than okay to be different. No MBA program wants to fill an entire class solely with candidates from investment banking or consulting. In fact, non-traditional applicants often stand out in the MBA admissions process. Such applicants bring different perspectives to classroom discussions, which enhances the learning environment for all. Working in diverse teams is one of the most effective ways to learn essential soft management skills.   Myth #3: High rankings mean the school must be better for me. The majority of applicants fall for admissions myths such as this one. But, you should determine if a school is better in ways that suit your list of priorities. Job placement statistics and average salary post-MBA are the most important criteria for many MBA candidates. You may find that a smaller regional school, while not highly ranked nationally, has an excellent record of placing graduates in the industries of their choice. Ensure you’re looking at the data points necessary to your career path when determining a particular ranking’s value. Don’t worry about whether you’ll get into the best MBA program of all. Figure out which business school is

Each year, international applicants represent a sizable percentage of Leap Quest’s students Students often ask us if being an international student helps or hurts their chances of MBA application success and how they can maximize their chances of acceptance.  Business school applications are notoriously complicated. What makes them feel like ancient Chinese torture is the uncertainty of how big of a role is played by each application parameter viz recommendations, essays, GMAT score, extracurriculars (Best extracurricular activity for college admissions), work experience or the interview with the holy admission committee.   Subjective they may be, however, they provide a little bit of insight into the black hole of the admission process into an MBA program. One thing everyone can be certain about is that an MBA application process is not very cheerful. It is long, sometimes confusing and often designed to probe your brain until its grey matter starts spilling out, making your hair greyer through the process.   Yes, the process is grueling and the usual profile of an MBA applicant is one who already has a demanding job.   Leap Quest will answer a few of the most frequently asked questions about the MBA/MS applications and offer some tips that will help you make the most of this element of your MBA/MS application.   Q: Does Being An International Student Help My Chances? A: This varies considerably based on the country you are applying from. Business schools are looking to develop well-rounded classes, which means you are going to be evaluated not just on your own stats but on how you add diversity to the class.   Top US MBA programs receive a large number of applications from certain regions, and if you are coming from one of those regions, your chances of success do decrease. It should come as no surprise that India is one such area. Conversely, there are many countries in which applying to business school, particularly in the US, is not very common. In this case, your odds of success are higher than those of US applicants.   Q: How Can I Stand Out As An International Student? A: Regardless of where you are applying from, the best way to stand out is to develop a compelling and ownable personal story. Admissions committees want to know how you will improve the business world (and the world at large) when you graduate from their MBA program. They are also looking for evidence of how you will make your unique mark.   While doing something remarkable or overcoming a difficult situation can produce strong essay content, it is important to recognize that many applicants write successful essays without this type of material. The most important thing is that your essays fit with your story and paint a clear picture of who you are as a student, classmate, employee, and overall individual. It is also important that your application shows you are aware of the realities of job searching as an international candidate. For example, if you hope to work in the US post-MBA, be sure that your target industry frequently sponsors H1B visas.   Not sure where to begin? Leap Quest finds that personal story development is one of the areas in which students require the most guidance. Find out how we help candidates craft focused, logical, and unique personal stories via our comprehensive services.   Q: Which Business School Accepts The Highest Number Of International Candidates? A: Candidates applying to US schools from other countries often want to know the best MBA programs for international students. At the top US business schools, international students make up a significant portion of the student body.   Columbia Business School’s class of 2023 is composed of nearly 50% international citizens (48% in the latest reported data). Stanford GSB and Yale SOM also accept a high number of international candidates, with 47% and 44% international students in the class of 2023 respectively. MIT Sloan follows close behind (43%) and Booth’s latest class profile information reported 39% international students.   HBS and Berkeley Haas’s most recent class profiles reported 37% international citizens, followed by Wharton and Kellogg (both 36%). NYU Stern’s class of 2023 is close behind at 32%.   Please keep in mind that not all schools report class profiles the same way.   Q: What does an MBA admissions committee view as an applicant’s most important quality? A: There is no magic characteristic that will make you an easy admit for a program. Every school will be looking for different qualities based on the school’s values and in an effort to build a diverse community.   The committee will be considering several aspects of your candidacy when reviewing your application: Will you be successful in their academic environment? (This is typically evaluated using GPA and standardized test scores.) What qualities and expertise will you bring to the classroom and community, and have you expressed the inclination to share this with your peers? Business schools are looking for candidates with varying skill sets, but more importantly they are looking for candidates who understand how that will benefit the school’s community.   MBA admissions committees will also look at your work experience to determine whether you have demonstrated the potential for leadership. Some schools will explicitly ask you for your post-MBA goals. In this case, committees are often evaluating whether your previous experience, paired with the school’s resources, will get you to where you want to be professionally.   Q: What if I come from a non-traditional background? A: Top MBA programs (not to mention future employers) are increasingly recognizing the value of diversity of thought and expertise for the business school experience and the bottom line. This makes the MBA classroom a welcome place for those applying from less represented industries and functions.   When applying with less traditional work experience, you will still be expected to submit a competitive test score because schools do not want to set you up for failure in the classroom. However, your