LFM Application Process

So I have created a new category for my blog, LFM - Application Process.  Since this blog is primarily for incoming students, to give them my interpretation of LFM, I wanted to cover the stressful process of applying.  Generically I wanted to outline the time line I used for applying and anything I took from my experience.  First I will start out with a little more background about myself.

It may seem silly but I have known that I wanted to get an Engineering degree and an MBA since high school.  I am one of those nerdy people who was thinking about job security, salary ranges, and other fun words that are both incredibly important and unimportant all at the same time.  In high school, my dream job was to be a 3D movie animation person (think Industrial Light and Magic, ILM, or Pixar) but I decided that it would be difficult to be successful in such a niche market.  I was in high school when the whole dot-com thing was going on and I knew that it could not last...and then there would be a ton of computer trained people with nothing to do, which would limit my escape options if the animator role did not work out.  Right or wrong..smart or stupid...I picked engineering plus MBA.  Why did I select chemical engineering?  It had the highest exit salary for undergrads.  Its as good a reason as any and how was I supposed to know at 18?  Anywho, I knew I wanted the MBA from my work experience in a chemical plant during high school.  In high school I worked in a chemical plant for a specialty chemicals company entering data and helping out wherever necessary (driving the forklift, mixing batches of chemicals and distributing the product into drums, etc.).  The manufacturing facility where I worked was next door to the main office so I also interacted with the company management.   From talking to a number of people about what they did, I felt like I would enjoy working in a manufacturing facility in some type of managerial role and the degrees that I needed to acquire to get to that position were an engineering degree and an MBA.

Fast forward to undergrad.  I took some business classes in undergrad along with my engineering classes.  Engineering was tough but fun...business was laughably easy.  At one point I thought about taking a 5th year to get a business degree as well as a chemical engineering degree which would allow me to get a 1-year MBA.  In the end I ruled it out because I wanted to get work experience as soon as possible.  I think this shows where I expected to get my MBA from.  Some college located near wherever I was working.

Fast forward to the GMAT.  I spent about a month studying for the GMAT.  I actually spent three months, but the first two were so on and off that I ended up going back over the material I covered and so I don't count it.  I purchased both the Kaplan books and the Princeton books.  The Princeton books were good at talking about the strategy and generic topics to study and were the most useful for studying.  The Kaplan books had a ton of examples for practice and were good for getting experience with problems.  The GMAT is NOT that hard of a test.  Given time, most people could figure out just about any problem in the GMAT (especially if they read the problem VERY carefully).  What makes the GMAT difficult is the time constraint.  I highly recommend spending about a month doing practice problems.  The point here is to get to a point where you can work the problems out quickly and really to just get used to the test format.  Don't practice with a calculator.  Get used to estimating and multiplying things out.

I had a 30 min commute to and from work so I used that time to study flash cards for the month I studied.  I found this to be very useful for the grammar part of the GMAT.  For practice problems, I spent about an hour a night for two weeks and did two crash days (8 straight hours) the weekend before I took the test.

I took the GMAT late in May (which makes this blog quite late, but I had to start somewhere) and boy was I surprised.  I scored very well and all of the sudden new options were opening up.  Could I make it into a top B-school?  Somehow I did.

On to the time line.  I applied to three top B-schools and I allocated about 2 months to my essays and applications.  I was able to reuse one or two essays, but basically it meant I had to write about 12 different essays.  My due dates ranged from the end of October to mid December, so I was working on my applications from early October to mid November.  I did not want to be rushed for something THIS important so I deliberately finished with a few weeks to spare for each deadline.  I'm sure LFM does not advocate this, but I am perfectly willing to say that my work suffered slightly during this time period because I focused heavily on my applications.  I'm certainly put in my hours at work, but I was not putting in anything extra.  Your LFM application is due on December 15th, see the LFM FAQ for more information, so I would recommend you plan to use the month of November to write and edit your essays, get your recommendations, and to fill out your application.

This leads us back to the GMAT.  If you have not already taken it, I would recommend signing up for it immediately.  I talked to some people today who did not take the GMAT until later in the year (November/December) and I am glad I did not do that.  Commit to a date and spend the money on the test.  That will force you to start studying and stop putting it off.  You don't want to be distracted by the GMAT while you are working on your applications, get that out of the way now!

When we get closer to the dealine I will write more about how I approached my essays, recommendations, and application.