Did you know that 567 universities in the U.S. alone offer MBA degrees and courses? If you’re like most business school applicants, out of hundreds of programs, you’ll only apply to a handful of schools. On average, each candidate applies to 4-8 MBA programs. So, how do you figure out which schools might be right for you? How do you narrow down a list of hundreds to just a few schools that are worth investing your time and energy into? Let’s dive in. 

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What kind of applicant are you?

At a high level, applicants tend to fall somewhere on a spectrum between "Open" and "Focused."

• Open: You want to go to business school no matter what and can imagine yourself happy with a variety of programs
• Focused: You only want to go to business school if you get into a very specific program (e.g. dual-degree program, specific location, must be one of X schools)

Where do you personally fall on this spectrum? There’s no right or wrong answer—the most important thing is that you’re honest with yourself. Why do you want to go to business school? If you were holding an acceptance letter to X school right now, would you say yes? If it’s a no, don’t apply. If it’s a maybe, lean in and explore that a bit further. What would make it a yes or no?

Being an Open vs. Focused applicant is really a question of breadth vs. depth. If you’re more of an Open applicant, you might apply to a higher number of schools, spreading your time and energy across them. If you’re more of a Focused applicant, you might apply to a select few schools (e.g. 2-4), concentrating your energy deeply into those applications.

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What qualities are you looking for?

Every business school is unique. As you explore potential MBA programs that might be right for you, consider lots of different factors, such as:

• Location
• Size
• Cost
• Academic focus (e.g. general management, entrepreneurship)
• Culture
• Professors
• Clubs and extracurricular activities
• Brand and reputation
• Flexibility

Start with each school’s website, taking notes on things you like, dislike, or aren’t sure about.

Every business school also has its own unique process of vetting candidates, and you can learn a lot about each school’s values, beliefs, and priorities by looking at the types of questions they ask. To give a few examples…

• MIT Sloan notoriously wants to hear about what you’ve accomplished in the past (not what you want to do in the future), because they believe your past is the best possible indicator of what you might be capable of in the future.
• Stanford GSB's infamous essay question is, “What matters most to you, and why?”, because the GSB cares about deeply understanding people’s motivations, personal stories, and character.‍
• Wharton's interview process is a structured group challenge (rather than a traditional 1:1 interview), because the school prioritizes team leadership, hands-on project-based learning, and effective communication.

Remember, applying to business school is a two-way street—schools are learning about you, and you’re learning about them.

How does your GMAT or GRE score measure up?

Applying to business school isn’t all about the numbers—it’s personal, subjective, and influenced by many different qualities and parts of your application. Even if you have a low GPA and GMAT/GRE score, you can absolutely still get into top schools! On the flip side, many people with perfect GPAs and GMAT/GRE scores get rejected from top schools each year. The best thing you can do is make sure you’re putting your best foot forward in your application, so that you have no regrets!

Assuming your college GPA is already set in stone (i.e. you’ve already graduated from college), let's talk about what's still under your control—getting a GMAT/GRE score that puts you in the ballpark for your ideal MBA program. As a starting place, look at this chart with average GMAT/GRE scores of recent incoming classes for top MBA programs in the US (April 2022, Poets & Quants). How close or far are your scores from that ballpark? Take a diagnostic exam to get a quick pulse, and remember you can increase that diagnostic score with dedicated studying.

If you’re more of an Open applicant (versus a Focused one), you might want to maximize your chances of acceptance by applying to a range of schools across 3 different categories:

• Reach: seemingly hard for you to get into
• Target: seemingly within range for you
• Safety: seemingly easier for you to get into

If you’re a Focused applicant, things are a bit different. Let’s say that the only school you want to attend is MIT Sloan, because you love the school’s smaller class size and unique focus on technical rigor, hard sciences, and engineering-led entrepreneurship. 

At MIT Sloan, the incoming class’s median GMAT score is 730, and the middle 80% range is 700 – 760. If your GMAT score is much lower than this range, you might want to take the test a few more times—even if it means waiting another application cycle.

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Finally, how do your favorite schools stack up?

If you’re an Open applicant and struggling to narrow down your list of top MBA programs, try this exercise to figure out the closest match(es) for you:

Create a spreadsheet where each column is a category (like location, size, or cost), and each row is a school. In each box, rank each school from 1 to 5, where 1 is not at all what you’re looking for and 5 is a perfect match. Then, add up the scores for each school across categories, and compare your final scores across schools to find the best fit.

‍Pro tip: If some categories are more important to you than others, then you can create a weighted average score. Basically, assign a percentage weight to each category (e.g. 0.12, 0.3, 0.6) so that all weights add up to 1. Then, get a weighted score for each school by multiplying each category by its weight and adding up all the results.

Finally, don’t forget to speak with alumni about how they chose which school to attend, how their personal and professional experience has been, and what they wish they’d known in your shoes. If you’re looking to speak with people who have recently gotten MBAs (or are currently in business school) at places like Wharton, MIT Sloan, Chicago Booth, Harvard Business School, London Business School, Columbia Business School, Stanford GSB, and beyond, twenty could be a great fit for you!