Similar to undergraduate admissions, MBA applications are typically evaluated holistically — which means extracurricular activities are just one of many factors considered in the decision process. Admissions officers also assess other application components, such as GMAT or GRE scores, GPA, essays, recommendation letters and interviews.
“From the applicant’s perspective, one of the best things about the MBA application process is that everything matters,” Brett Twitty, interim co-executive director of admission at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, wrote in an email. “But that’s also the challenge — everything matters. As a result, candidates need to be intentional in how they are approaching the application process and leveraging the various parts of the application to tell their story.”
Here’s what business school hopefuls should keep in mind before adding extracurriculars to their resume.
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How Important Are Extracurriculars in MBA Admissions?
Graduate school admissions is competitive, so — “within your means” — find ways to differentiate yourself from other applicants, says Julie Storing, director of MBA Programs at the University of Arkansas’ Sam M. Walton College of Business.
“Undergraduate admissions can be competitive, especially based off of where you’re applying to,” she says. “But when we get into graduate admissions, we are truly seeing the best of the best applicants. You can have a great GPA, but if you’re lacking some leadership skills or outside extracurricular activities, that can be the thing that sets someone else apart from you.”
Extracurriculars “help to fill in a picture of who an applicant is,” says Daniel Snow, associate professor and director of MBA programs at Brigham Young University’s Marriott School of Business in Utah.
?”What an MBA program really is about — if it’s a good program — is training future leaders,” he says. “People that are going to go and make an impact in the companies where they go work or the companies they start. So what they choose to do with their spare time is an important indicator of what kind of a person they are, how driven they are, how much they want to build and how much they want to connect with people, those sorts of things.”
Treat the MBA application as an “initial introduction” to admissions officers, so consider what’s important for them to know about you, Twitty says.
“We are often asked what makes a candidate stand out in the application process,” he says. “The answer? Self-reflection. Strong applications are the product of a great deal of introspection. Candidates who understand their story and can translate that narrative across both the application and the admissions interview distinguish themselves in the application process.”
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Involvement That Stands Out to MBA Admissions Officers
Undergraduate Years
There’s no one extracurricular activity that guarantees admission to an MBA program, experts say. However, business schools typically look for students who demonstrate leadership abilities.
“The MBA is a leadership degree, and, when reading an application, we are looking for evidence of leadership potential as well as potential for impact in our community and beyond,” Twitty says. “Being meaningfully involved in a club or organization, volunteering or holding an elected office are just a few of many ways an applicant can demonstrate this potential.”
However, don’t overload your resume. Prioritize quality over quantity, Storing says.
?”When you’re seeing a lot of bare minimum participation in an extracurricular and there’s several of them, it does tend to look like the student’s only doing this for their application. Whereas if you have a student that’s been involved with an organization for several years or has held leadership positions within an organization, that speaks a lot more highly.”
Post-College
Some research indicates that people spend an average of about five years in the workforce before applying to graduate business school. Highlight your career path in the application, including skills learned and promotions, experts say.
People in certain industries with work expectations of 80 hours or more a week, for instance, “probably don’t have time to volunteer,” says Shelly Heinrich, senior assistant dean of career management and graduate admissions at the SMU Cox School of Business in Texas. “They’re barely having time to sleep. We won’t penalize those people for not having extracurriculars. But what we will want to know is what they’re doing within their company.”
Engage in activities that are meaningful to you rather than what you think admissions officers are looking for, Twitty says. “As a working professional, you will have limited time outside of work, and how you spend your free time can offer real insight into your values and priorities, all things in which admissions committees are interested.”
[READ: MBA Timeline: When to Apply to B-School]
Snow says he looks for evidence that someone is “striving to improve, change and make things better.”
If you started a nonprofit or “volunteered at a shelter or something like that, that’s great,” he says. “I want to see that you volunteered at a shelter and then while you were there, figured out that they had some operational problems with the way they allocated beds or the way they greeted people when they came in. And then you fix those problems. ?… When I look at extracurriculars, that’s kind of the lens I’m using: What does this show about their trajectory?”
If pursuing an MBA is part of a desire to change careers or industries, extracurriculars can be used to show why “you’re qualified to make that leap and/or you have demonstrated interest in making that leap,” Heinrich says.
“Say you want to go from aerospace to health care and you’ve only ever worked in aerospace,” she says. “It would be good if you have some type of extracurricular experience on your resume that’s in health care. So that when you’re interviewing for the program and they’re saying, ‘Why are you looking to make this switch?’ You could say, ‘Outside of work, I volunteered 10 to 20 hours in this health care nonprofit association. That’s what really has sparked my interest in transitioning to health care, and that’s why I want to do it.'”
When evaluating applicants, Heinrich adds, MBA admissions officers are “trying to understand why they want to do an MBA, if our school is the best fit for them and if they really thought through how they’re going to make that leap.”
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How Extracurriculars Affect MBA Admissions originally appeared on usnews.com
