Online MBA Forum

Yesterday I talked about interviews, and their importance in gaining a place on an MBA program. I happened to have a conversation with a colleague of mine who is at present interviewing candidates for his University's MBA program. He said that they had very specific guidelines for the interviews, and they were specifically selecting the kind of people who they thought would be able to fill more senior management positions.

He also said that they tried to put together groups of people who would work well together. They look for certain experience, and try to get a mix of candidates who have worked in different roles in their previous careers. They find that this makes groups of students who can work together and can contribute to the learning process of the whole group. He stressed that an MBA relies on much more than simple tuition, it also needs student input, input from guest speakers and outside organisations, and from other resources such as research, industry and even the government.

The interview that you will be asked for to gain a place on an MBA program is one of the most important parts of the selection process. For many program leaders the impression that you make in your interview has to be consistant with that of a good manager. You also have to convince the interviewer that you will benefit from the education process that you are going to take on, and that you will be able to complete the program - not always as easy as it sounds.

Of course, the MBA program interview is also your chance to see that you will be comfortable with the people who will be directing your studies, and that the institution that you will be studying at suits your style of learning.

So you should prepare yourself for this interview, making sure that you are aware of trends and recent events in the business and political world, but also that you have a list of things that you need to know about the program. The questions that you ask can be as important as the answers that you give, so you need to put some real thought into this process.

GMAT was designed for entry to business school programmes, in particular MBAs. The tests were designed to make sure that students had the skills - numeracy and literacy, plus the aptitude to be able to study - other tests are to measure abilities such as spacial aptitude.

Today, I believe that they are almost universally used by MBA providers, although I'm sure that other programmes can also make use of the GMAT system. MBA providers use the scores in conjunction with interviews and references to make their selection.

Apparently there is a very close correlation between performance in GMAT and final results in MBA students, so although the GMAT tests may seem quite narrow, they are measuring things that are very necessary to the successful completion of your MBA.

Studying for your GMAT is rather difficult. Because of the nature of the test, it is not something that you can revise lots of information for; rather you have to practise the kind of problems that they set. Certainly for the numeracy parts you simply have to go over and over questions until you become used to the problem solving techniques that you need to be able to do them well.

The literacy tests are a little different in that they depend on your knowledge of the language that you are to study in - and usually for much of the business world this is English. If this is not your first language, this part becomes that much more difficult; you need to be able to write it well in order to express yourself well during the assignments that you will undertake while you study your MBA, so the expected standard for the GMAT is fairly high. However it's not impossible, and many of my acquaintances who's first language is not English have managed to score highly in their GMAT.