Are you starting to wonder if you might end up as a reapplicant in the fall? We hope not!!!! But if you are – or, if you’re just beginning the process of researching schools and planning your strategy for your very first set of apps – we have a great solution for you.
It’s called Foundations and it’s essentially our Complete Essay Package without the essays. It’s the ideal set of services to get started with your strategy – career goals, accomplishments, everything that you will later need to develop strong essays to the top schools. Once they release their questions, that is. Which won’t be until May at the soonest for the earliest schools. (Here’s a comparison of the Complete Essay Package with Foundations to see what you get with each one.)
There are parts of your profile that are already set – things like your college academics, your career achievements, your prior extracurriculars. Those comprise the material that you will be mining (to some extent, at least) to develop your pitch to the schools.
And career goals? Yeah, they matter a lot at many schools. Like, a lot. We can tell you this even without knowing the specific questions that any schools will be asking in the coming season. Getting those sorted through and nailed down early will help you throughout your process. Not only do your goals help guide you on what other material in your background you should best be focusing on as a way to present the adcom with evidence that you’ll be successful in pursuing your stated future endeavors, but guess what? Goals often come up in discussions with the schools. Like with adcom and students, at info sessions and campus visits. Or with alumni, as you seek to do some informational interviews, to learn more about your targets.
What, you didn’t realize you should be doing informational interviews? Well guess what: You should be! It’s one of the best ways to discover which school is a fit for you and figure out whether you should be applying.
If you’re a reapplicant, then you (hopefully!!!) did a lot of this already – but if you feel like your essays were the weak spot in your app (which, a high percentage of the time with rejected candidates, they are) then Foundations could definitely be of value to you in your next go-round. Or, you could look into our Reapplicant Roadmap package instead, which offers an in-depth review of your original app and our unbiased assessment of where things went wrong, along with guidance on what you should do to fix it.
Very frequently we get people coming to us in mid-summer saying, “What can I do to improve my profile?” Summer is way too late to be asking that question – yet that’s when most people finally get a fire lit under their butts to start their app process.
You will be at a massive advantage in this process if you start NOW. Many of the actions that you can take to improve things and increase your chances of success are only available to you with enough lead-time to execute on them. That clock is ticking. Getting some outside assistance on setting that strategy TODAY is one of your best insurance policies against being one of those guys (or gals) who comes up short in a year’s time. (Here’s a tip: At the time of this writing, the Foundations package is also priced ridiculously low – way below purchasing the individual services separately. That situation is not likely to stay the same for long.)
If an application to a top business school is in your future, then you’re sitting in a sweet spot right now. We’re here to help, if you’re ready to go to work!!!!
You may also be interested in:
- Speaking of starting early… (March 2014)
- The perils of asking for recommendations too early (July 2013)
- Why you want to start early: A True Tale (July 2012)
- More on those early birds (April 2011)
Tell us what you think.