Know Yourself, Know Columbia Business School

It has been only three months since I graduated from Columbia Business School (CBS), but already I am homesick for the beautiful Upper West Side campus, days filled with executive guest lecturers, and nightly club events. For those in the midst of the application process, or those just considering a future MBA, I envy your position only in that you still have two great years ahead of you. Knowing the application process is a stressful time, I urge you to seek out as much advice as possible. Below is guidance I have given to other CBS hopefuls in the past (all of whom were accepted), built on my own experience, tips from classmates, and insight from alumni I consulted when applying to Columbia.

Know Your Story

If you have ever spoken to an admissions consultant (like HBS Accept), they will stress the importance of having a strong story that clearly ties together your background and career goals, and explains how Columbia can make that connection for you. For some applicants, this may come easily, but I spent hours poring over job descriptions, LinkedIn profiles, and interviews with people who held positions I thought I wanted one day. Doing this helped me to understand what certain career paths looked like, and what it would take to attain that dream job. Though at first it seemed overly prescriptive, having a specific goal in mind for both a five year and ten year plan made it all the easier to explain how I was going to get there.

One main benefit from this exercise is the ease at which you will be able to write your essays for Columbia. The first two questions ask about career goals, and they have respective limits of 50 characters and 500 words. To both stand out and paint a clear picture in 50 characters requires a firm understanding of one’s own future. These questions will come up in conversation during school visits and interviews, and the more defined the answer, the better prepared and knowledgeable you will appear. Additionally, though business school is a place to find yourself professionally, those two years fly by quickly; hit the ground running with a clear idea of where you want to go and what you need to get out of school.

Know the School

While it may seem obvious, it cannot be stressed enough how important it is to understand Columbia to the point that you feel as if you are already a student walking through campus. When I was applying, there were spots in the application to list which admissions events you had attended, names of faculty or staff you had met with, and current students or alumni you knew, not to mention if you were related to a CBS alumni. Business school is about networking, and the admissions team wants to see that you as an applicant have made the effort to learn as much as possible about Columbia and met people who understand the CBS experience well. Doing this will also shed light on which specific clubs, classes, and initiatives you should get involved with to further your career goals, should you be accepted. Many clubs have a Vice President of Prospective Students or Membership, and they are there to help answer questions about what the club provides in professional resources, and the leadership positions offered in the organization.

The city of New York is an integral part of the Columbia experience, and should be a reason why you are applying. Having completed my undergraduate in a college town, and then worked for four years in Chicago, I don’t believe I fully understood the benefits of attending business school in New York until I was here. C-suite executives are in class on a weekly basis, as a visit simply requires hopping in a cab outside their downtown office. Most students interested in a career in retail, venture capital, private equity, or at startups, have a part time internship during the school year. The abundance of networking and career-building events in the city is never ending. Simply put, Columbia thinks being in New York is amazing and believes you should share that enthusiasm to both get the most out of your two years, and to be an integral member of the CBS community.

Applying for business school can be stressful, but the professional and personal experience is well worth it. When in doubt, ask for help and seek out resources like HBS Accept that can provide opinions from those who have already beat a successful path. Best of luck!

Kendall Miller

Kendall Miller (CBS MBA 2017)

Columbia MBA working at the intersection of strategic, creative, and operational roles and solutions. She is an avid traveler, design world enthusiast, and devoted NYC transplant. As a consultant for Fortune 100 companies, startups, and NGOs, she worked in strategy development, performance improvement, and business model design. Her interests lie in understanding where customer experience design and digital innovations can help companies grow and adapt.  Kendall has recently returned to Deloitte Consulting where she is a Senior Strategy Consultant.

Know Yourself, Know Columbia Business School

It has been only three months since I graduated from Columbia Business School (CBS), but already I am homesick for the beautiful Upper West Side campus, days filled with executive guest lecturers, and nightly club events. For those in the midst of the application process, or those just considering a future MBA, I envy your position only in that you still have two great years ahead of you. Knowing the application process is a stressful time, I urge you to seek out as much advice as possible. Below is guidance I have given to other CBS hopefuls in the past (all of whom were accepted), built on my own experience, tips from classmates, and insight from alumni I consulted when applying to Columbia.

Know Your Story

If you have ever spoken to an admissions consultant (like HBS Accept), they will stress the importance of having a strong story that clearly ties together your background and career goals, and explains how Columbia can make that connection for you. For some applicants, this may come easily, but I spent hours poring over job descriptions, LinkedIn profiles, and interviews with people who held positions I thought I wanted one day. Doing this helped me to understand what certain career paths looked like, and what it would take to attain that dream job. Though at first it seemed overly prescriptive, having a specific goal in mind for both a five year and ten year plan made it all the easier to explain how I was going to get there.

One main benefit from this exercise is the ease at which you will be able to write your essays for Columbia. The first two questions ask about career goals, and they have respective limits of 50 characters and 500 words. To both stand out and paint a clear picture in 50 characters requires a firm understanding of one’s own future. These questions will come up in conversation during school visits and interviews, and the more defined the answer, the better prepared and knowledgeable you will appear. Additionally, though business school is a place to find yourself professionally, those two years fly by quickly; hit the ground running with a clear idea of where you want to go and what you need to get out of school.

Know the School

While it may seem obvious, it cannot be stressed enough how important it is to understand Columbia to the point that you feel as if you are already a student walking through campus. When I was applying, there were spots in the application to list which admissions events you had attended, names of faculty or staff you had met with, and current students or alumni you knew, not to mention if you were related to a CBS alumni. Business school is about networking, and the admissions team wants to see that you as an applicant have made the effort to learn as much as possible about Columbia and met people who understand the CBS experience well. Doing this will also shed light on which specific clubs, classes, and initiatives you should get involved with to further your career goals, should you be accepted. Many clubs have a Vice President of Prospective Students or Membership, and they are there to help answer questions about what the club provides in professional resources, and the leadership positions offered in the organization.

The city of New York is an integral part of the Columbia experience, and should be a reason why you are applying. Having completed my undergraduate in a college town, and then worked for four years in Chicago, I don’t believe I fully understood the benefits of attending business school in New York until I was here. C-suite executives are in class on a weekly basis, as a visit simply requires hopping in a cab outside their downtown office. Most students interested in a career in retail, venture capital, private equity, or at startups, have a part time internship during the school year. The abundance of networking and career-building events in the city is never ending. Simply put, Columbia thinks being in New York is amazing and believes you should share that enthusiasm to both get the most out of your two years, and to be an integral member of the CBS community.

Applying for business school can be stressful, but the professional and personal experience is well worth it. When in doubt, ask for help and seek out resources like HBS Accept that can provide opinions from those who have already beat a successful path. Best of luck!

Kendall Miller

Kendall Miller (CBS MBA 2017)

Columbia MBA working at the intersection of strategic, creative, and operational roles and solutions. She is an avid traveler, design world enthusiast, and devoted NYC transplant. As a consultant for Fortune 100 companies, startups, and NGOs, she worked in strategy development, performance improvement, and business model design. Her interests lie in understanding where customer experience design and digital innovations can help companies grow and adapt.  Kendall has recently returned to Deloitte Consulting where she is a Senior Strategy Consultant.

Choosing Where to Apply to Business School

There are two separate decisions you will need to make during your application process.  Where should you apply?  Where do you want to go?  You will struggle to differentiate between these two questions at some point.  Just trying to get into “somewhere” and confirmation bias could influence you.  Use this simple rule to separate these two questions:  where you want to go is agnostic of your chances of getting in, where you should apply is not.  If you are not sure you want to go to business school, are willing to wait a year if you do not get into your top choice(s), or are unwilling to go to a runner-up choice, your list of schools can be the same for both questions (“Flexible Applicant”).  If you are sure you want to business school next year, you definitely need to consider your chances of getting in when deciding where to apply (“Committed Applicant”).

Where do you want to go?  There are basically 2 schools of thought:  First, go to the best school you can get into. Second, go to the school that is the best “fit”.   Determining “fit” is tough, the best schools are a little easier.  Take rankings with a grain of salt; remember that if magazines published the exact same list every year, no one would care.  They are incentivized to change their rankings every year and publish ridiculous things, like “HBS is #8” (that’s stupid) and “What is wrong with Wharton?” (absolutely nothing).  As far as rankings go, I believe the simpler the better.  I am partial to Forbes, which calculates a simple ROI and shares their criteria.  Viewing composite rankings (BusinessWeek and US News) only shows you what others think is important, not what you think is important.

Regardless of what the rankings say, you should do your own research.  Talk to mentors you respect.  Interview leaders in the area you hope to move into.  As a general rule:  For general management, Harvard and Stanford are your best bet. For finance, Booth and Wharton (throw in Columbia and NYU, if you want to end up in NYC). For marketing, Kellogg is the best choice. For technology, throw in Berkeley and MIT. (If you want to end up in a certain region after graduation, you may also want to add Tuck and Cornell for the Northeast; Ross and Kelley for the Midwest; Duke, UNC, Darden, and Texas for the South, or UCLA for Southern California.)

The second school of thought is about finding “fit”. For this I recommend making a “Fit List” of what is important to you and ranking schools on each item on your list.  The best way to experience fit is to do an official school visit (this also has the added benefit of making your application easier).  For me, I chose 4 categories (each with several criteria):  Lifestyle and Environment, Perception and Salary, Teaching and Curriculum, and Innovation Atmosphere.  I then took the added step weight each category and criteria based on its relative importance to me. This was minimally helpful. Essentially, the only value gained from this step was ranking each criterion by importance (not the actual quantitative result, which seemed too arbitrary to be useful).

My Fit List (including Difficulty to Get Into):

Where you should apply?  For Flexible Applicants, I recommend narrowing your list to 2-3 schools.  This should be the best schools for what you want to do or the top schools on your Fit List.  For Committed Applicants (definitely going to B school next year), you should be thinking 4-6 schools.  This should be your top 2-3 schools, plus 2-3 “Bumper Schools”.  These schools will help ensure you knock down at least one pin.  They are still high on your list, but where you will be a very competitive applicant.  You should also get at least one application done during Round 1 to ensure that there is time to finish or adjust strategy in Round 2.  To find your Bumper Schools, consider creating a two-part metric that utilizes both your personal ranking and difficulty to get into, such as selectivity %.  Schools in the South and Midwest such as UNC, Ross, Duke, and Booth, have high selectivity % relative to their perception and brand.  Schools in California and the Northeast, such as Berkeley, MIT, and Yale, have low selectivity % relative to their brand.

Ultimately, think of the application process as a “funnel”, where schools attrit at each step.  I hoped to get into two schools and allow the admit weekend to be the final deciding factor.  For this reason, I chose to submit 5 applications and ended up accepted at three (1 more than I had hoped).

My Application Funnel:

So when you are applying to business school, remember “where you want to go” and “where you should apply” are not the same thing.  Where you should apply depends on two criteria:  Are you a “Fit Lister” or a “Top Schooler”? And are you flexible in your application process?