The following comment was left on my last entry and I thought it was a good candidate to be made into a posting:

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Helen wrote:

Hi,

This isn’t really related to your entry…but I’ve been reading some of your posts and wanted to ask about your thoughts on pursuing an MBA straight out of undergrad? I just got an offer for a Bain internship this summer (I’m an engineering student at Caltech) and I’d like to try to apply to business school in the fall. Some have advised against it saying that the top business schools require you to have work experience. I don’t know, just debating my choices. What do you think?
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Helen,

I wouldn’t say that it is a bad thing to make a run at business school straight out of undergrad, but you have to do so knowing that it’ll be more difficult to gain acceptance without any post-undergrad work experience. Many business schools won’t consider anyone without at least a couple of years of work experience, but I know for a fact that Stanford GSB and HBS are willing to give college seniors a shot at moving right into Bschool after graduation. In my class, I believe there were 9 or 10 students who went straight into business school. I’m not exactly sure how they were able to make a case for getting in, but whatever they did obviously worked out very well for them. One thing that you might want to consider is that it may be a little more difficult to deal with potential post-MBA or summer MBA internship employers because of your lack of work experience coming in. Just be ready to tell your story well and explain why these firms should give you a spot instead of someone else who has had more professional experience.

For now, if you are seriously considering applying to business school next year, I would recommend that you do the following:

- Take the GMAT sometime over the summer –> A lot of folks who struggle on the GMAT have a hard time because it’s been so long since they took the test. Get it out of the way now and you’ll thank yourself later.
- Start talking to professors and others who can write recommendations for you now –> Recommendations are highly important in the application process and they’ll be even more important for you since you’ll be coming in out of college. You’ll need to pre your recommenders on what to write and also get them to emphasize your maturity and readiness to enter a grad program with people who will mostly be 5+ years older than you.
- Figure out how to “tell your story” –> The natural question that anyone looking at your application will ask is “Why do you need to go to business school now instead of waiting a couple of years?” Make sure you start developing that story as soon as you can so you can write about it in your essays and make it sound convincing.

I hope this helps. Congratulations on the summer offer from Bain and good luck on the rest of your semester.