Today is just a reminder that we’re at that time of year that feedback sessions may become available at certain schools!
If you tried making it in for the Class of 2024 and now you realize that those dreams are dashed… A few admissions teams have policies that are really designed to help encourage you to reapply to them, but also can be useful (to an extent).
If you’re going to approach a school for feedback, keep in mind that this is the exception. Unfortunately, most schools don’t offer this. You might think, “Heck, it doesn’t hurt to ask, right?” but actually it kinda-sorta might, because one of the qualities of an applicant that the admissions team is interested in is the ability to analyze things and make decisions. And the whole emotional intelligence thing. If your anxiety or your dejectedness (is that a word) pushes you to reach out to the admissions team wanting reassurance, that’s not a great look.
However, for a school like — somewhat surprisingly — HBS, for those who made it further into their process and got rejected after FC’ed (Further Consideration), then in past seasons they’ve made this an option.
Other schools that have offered this in the past include Darden and Tuck and a handful of others.
Now, what can you actually get from a conversation with the admissions team about why they rejected you?
The short answer is unfortunately: Not much.
At least, not much beyond what you should hopefully already know about how your applicant profile matches up to their class stats, with things such as years of work experience or GMAT score and GPA.
We can always offer you much more detailed (and actionable) advice through our Post-Mortem Application Review, which is designed for those in this exact situation.
There still might be some very good reasons to seek out feedback if it’s offered, the primary one being that if you are in fact interested in reapplying to this school, then you’re showing yourself as a proactive applicant if you take advantage of what they provide. It gets you on their radar. It’ll be noted in your file that you did this. That’s a positive, for sure.
The schools that offer this tend to be more applicant-friendly and they really do care about who they accept, and they want to get to know you in whatever ways that they can. So it’s a nice thing to have available… but recognize that its utility to you may be somewhat limited.
More on that tomorrow. For now, just putting this on your radar so you know that it could be an option!
Or, hopefully none of that is necessary and you already got admitted and are instead grappling with the quandary of which admit to accept!
Tell us what you think.