A recent Stratus Prep article listed 10 things that can help you monkeys get into MIT Sloan. The following admissions tips are from a Sloan Alum who has counseled other students on the MBA admissions process for top schools throughout the country. What do you think of these suggestions? Too cliche?
- Demonstrating leadership, entrepreneurial-ism and vision are essential to gaining acceptance to MIT Sloan.
- An ideal MIT Sloan candidate understands and embraces the four H's: the Heart to strive, the Head to keep up, the Hands to get things done, and the Home to take risks in a supportive environment.
- Sloan MBA students are seeking the ultimate treasure chest of innovation-driven entrepreneurship, market disruption, and economic transformation.
- MIT Sloan prefers that MIT to be the candidate's top choice for business school, in some sense they want it to be your only choice.
- Take into account how the acceptance rate affects your application. This past year, applications were up 35 percent, which translates to 6,000 applicants for 350 slots in the MBA program -- an acceptance rate between 7 percent and 9 percent.
- Focus experiences and past successes on managerial skills, motivations, team work, leadership, grit, drive, and, entrepreneurship rather than on simple tactical skills.
- Think of the optional essay / additional information as mandatory.
- Give it to them again: perhaps another entrepreneurial example, or very specific reasons about why you chose MIT/Sloan/Kendall Square (Sloan's home).
- Sloan is highly focused on organizational behavior, and the best and most successful essays I have read focus on just this.
- Remember to speak from the heart and how esprit de corps matters, more so when you're pulling together the classic Sloan team for the start-up competition: the 19-year old undergraduate engineer, the French lawyer, the 33-year old African teacher, the Olympic rower and the woman who started the mountaineering business. After all, this is the type of company that is going to change the world.