The best thing you can do right now if you’re interested in going back to school.

Visitors to the EssaySnark blahg tend to be go-getters. You want to make something of your life. Go big. Improve yourself.

Well check it out: We just turned the page on a new year, and a new month – and a new semester at school.

If you’re currently submitting applications because you want to go back to school… Why not go back to school? Like, now?

January is an EXCELLENT time to sign up for a course.

We’re not saying, “Take a class to help your chances of getting in.”

We do say that a lot. Like, for low GPA peeps and such.

That’s not what this is about.

This is about, what are you going to do with your life?

What will 2022 become for you?

This is about, you’re into this go-back-to-school thing… at least, you’re telling all these bschools that you want to go back to school. You’re claiming that education is important to you. That is, it’s implicit in the fact that you, uh, applied to go get an education. You’ve been focusing on school for like probably at least more than a year, with GMAT and then ugh the essays and finally it’s done. You’ve been broadcasting to the Universe through this series of actions that school is a priority for you, so much so that you’ve wrecked your health and neglected your boy/girlfriend/dog and haven’t seen sleep in a a week.

You want to CHANGE and TRANSFORM and BECOME A BETTER PERSON through the experience of education.

So then, go do it!

Find a local university offering extension courses. Grab one of those flyers you see on the street corner advertising acting classes, or improv. Sign up to learn singing. Or sign language. Or calligraphy.

Or, go for something challenging like Ancient Civilizations. Or Shakespeare. Or Oceanography. Stanford, UCLA, UC Berkeley, NYU, Wharton, MIT and Harvard all have online offerings. Lots more of them too.

Do a Coursera class, or three. Why not?

What else are you going to do with your life?

Once the mad rush of getting those apps in is over, you are going to feel a little bit dazed and confused. You’ll come up for air and not know what to do with yourself. You need a project.

Especially since you’re about to enter the absolute WORST PHASE of the entire MBA admissions experience: THE WAITING.

Ask anyone who’s gone through it: The time from app-submit to interview invites is EXCRUCIATING. Perhaps even worse from there to decisions. You have a whole bunch of weeks stretching out in front of you – a whole semester’s worth, in fact.

Why not make the most of it and apply some of this rambunctious go-get-’em energy into some self-improvement?

Or just something you’ve always been interested in, and toyed with the idea of, but never executed on?

There’s so much fun stuff out in the world.

And guess what? For all of you analytical will-this-help-me-get-in types: What a cool way to impress your interviewer when you’re having a conversation about you and your goals and your interests, and she says, “What do you do for fun?”

And you tell her, “Well, in January I started this class…”