Getting into a top business school as an international student is no walk in the park. To do so, one must win over a school’s admission committee (AdCom) – up to a dozen individuals or so – who have little to no understanding of his or her language, history and culture, nor of at least some of their professional and academic credentials. The challenge is compounded by the fact that an application’s strength is always relative – never absolute – meaning that international applicants have to perform up to par with local applicants, whose credentials are often easier to verify.
Fortunately, however, that is only half the story. As businesses grow evermore global, MBA programs have long been striving to create diverse classrooms infused with international perspectives. Further, as economic entities, business schools also have a deep-seated interest in expanding their applicant base to as many geographic locations as possible. It follows, therefore, that international applicants are not only high-risk, but also extremely high-reward in the AdCom’s eyes.
With this, here are six tips for international applicants – and Turkish in particular – to mitigate the risks embedded in their candidacy, and better communicate their strengths.
There are many reasons for one to prefer attending one school over the others; being atop an MBA ranking should not be one of them. AdComs are adept in weeding out those who apply with no genuine interest in their program, knowing full well that such applicants, however capable, will probably be modest contributors to their school’s community, if they attend and not opt for a “better” program that admits them altogether. What is more, international students often do not realize that in the country, area, or industry that they are targeting, some top-25 business schools may have comparable or even stronger brand equity than M7s.
The decision to apply to a particular school should be determined by subjective factors uncovered via research that are verifiably important to you. Begin by building your own framework for school analysis, which can be filled with any number of more than 30 factors. You may also want to participate in events held by the school, either online or in-person. Lastly, take advantage of the hard data found in schools’ employment reports, especially about graduates’ industries, functions and geographic locations, and compare it with your professional aspirations.
Türkiye Tip: try to attend at least one event for Turkish applicants held by your target business school, either in person or online. Some near-future ones are held by AccessMBA and QS, specifically for Turkish applicants. Another by MBA Tour targets Europeans. You may want to also follow the event section in the website of your target business school.
The standard way of pre-MBA networking may look like this: you send out emails to a few grads, schedule a few short calls, and pen down a few takeaways about their respective programs. As an international applicant, you are advised to hold yourself to a higher standard. Try finding at least one graduate of every school you consider applying to who had similar credentials to you back in the day, and whom you would want to follow in their professional footsteps post-MBA. Interviewing with that person(s), studying their journey and heeding their advice proves to the AdCom not only that your career goals hold water, but that you are already connected to industry insiders that will possibly help you realize them.
Your best friend when it comes to researching graduates is LinkedIn. While it does not allow you to search by nationality, there is a way around it. Go to “Search”, mark “People”, then click on “All filters”. In the sidebar, you will find two options to search by school, one in the middle and the other at the very end, under “Keywords”. Placing your undergraduate university in one, and your target business school(s) in the other, will return you graduates of both. Then, add additional filters (e.g. industry, title, company) to find the grads closest to your background, whose current roles are of genuine interest to you. From there, it is up to you to connect with them and earn their advice. Bonus: if you do so persuasively and enough time in advance, you may also will have earned yourself a support letter when application time comes.
Türkiye Tip: some business schools have alumni associations in Türkiye; the list includes Harvard, Wharton, Columbia, Chicago Booth, INSEAD, London Business School, and HEC Paris. Try to get in touch with some of them, stating your interest in applying to their school in the near future, and asking to be connected to graduates from your areas of interest.
Global perspectives are a hallmark of top MBA programs. A typical week of a student may include, for example, a course on investing in Asia, an exercise in entrepreneurship in developing markets, a consulting project for a European company, and after-hours Latin American festivities, ending in a weekend getaway abroad with classmates. They do not explicitly tell you this at business school, but the expectation is that all of these global elements will be enriched, if not driven by international students.
As an applicant, you want to take this into heart, and try to become an ambassador of your country. Start with the obvious: stay abreast current business and political events, and be able to educate others about them. As a rule of thumb, any piece in The Economist and Financial Times from the past three months is probably of global interest. The same applies to salient features in your nation’s history and culture.
Of course, ambassadorship is more than merely “knowing what’s up”. To go deeper, try to reflect on how you – personally – have been shaped by national-level events, or shaped them yourself. Maybe you took part in modernizing a staple industry. Perhaps you helped your company, or family, persevere through tough times. Whatever your background, look for factors of higher orders – industries, economics, politics, history, culture – and examine to which extent your story ties with them. If it does, weave them into your application, where appropriate.
Türkiye Tip: with prices expected to soar by almost 80% throughout 2022, Türkiye’s inflation is drawing worldwide attention. Consider how it has affected your industry, company, and family, what you have done to cope with it, and whether it belongs in your application materials.
When AdComs come to assess an applicant’s ability to handle their program’s rigorous curriculum, they look to past academic performance at undergraduate studies as a predictor. This is where it gets tricky for international students, whose alma maters are not as well known as those of US-educated students. AdComs simply have more data to pull from – and be assured by – when evaluating an applicant with Ivy League transcripts than without them.
Seeing this predicament for what it is – limited academic data – offers international applicants a few ways of addressing it. First, try inquiring about your undergraduate’s selectivity; if admissions rates are in the lower tens or less, be sure to mention it. Next, you want to highlight all academic distinctions, whether it be your GPA, GPA as a class percentile, merit scholarships, honors programs etc. Further, with the advent of remote learning, consider taking an online MBA foundations course such as Harvard’s CORe and MBA Math; While they cost time and money, completing one with a good grade signals your readiness for an MBA program, especially if you come from a non-quant background. Last but not least, if extenuating circumstances, financial or otherwise, have affected your academic performance during university, consider explaining them in an optional essay.
Türkiye Tip: if you have scored in the very top percentiles of the TYT – AYT national university entrance exam, be sure to mention it in your resume.
From the verbal section of the standardized test, to the language exam, to the written essays, to the video ones, to the interviews, there is no getting around it: English comprehension and communication runs deep into the MBA application. While there is no expectation of international students to be perfectly fluent in English, AdComs certainly have a threshold of communication level they hold applicants to, in order for them to be meaningful contributors to their MBA program and beyond.
If you are reading this and are looking to apply to business school in the next 6-12 months, you might be thinking that your window of opportunity for improving your English has closed. But you would be wrong. While there may not be enough time to go on a grand-scale language improvement mission, you could still improve one key skill: your confidence in speaking. Boosting it can be done in a matter of months, and it may prove decisive throughout your application, not least in the interviews.
A good start would be to explore English-speaking courses on offer; check out both local language schools and online platforms like Preply. You may complement them by reading books and business journals, so as to enhance your English vocabulary. Next, explore language exchange platforms, such as Tandem, where you could converse with native English speakers interested in practicing your mother tongue. Finally, look for English-speaking communities in your city or country, which occasionally provide opportunities to practice English in-person.
Türkiye Tip: Look into local language schools like Cambridge Academy and English Time for advanced-only speaking and business English courses. If you reside in Istanbul, check out Istanbul Community for Foreigners and English Speakers as well, and consider hopping to some of their free language-exchange events.
The last tip is not about the admissions process, but what comes afterward: paying for your MBA. While scholarships and student loans are on most students’ minds before enrolling, international students are called to pay extra attention. One reason is that they have fewer burrowing options than local students because they lack local credit scores in their country of study. Furthermore, as a partial compensation, they have access to certain scholarships and financial aid that are not available to locals. The planning of funding in advance is therefore strongly recommended, especially for students from developing countries or who have little ability to self-fund their studies.
Start with scholarships. Almost every business school would have a scholarship section; make sure to go over it, marking the ones that are dedicated to applicants of your nationality, region, or other affiliation groups. You may complement this by performing a Google search for MBA scholarships in your native language. When it comes to financial aid, applicants from emerging economies are usually prime candidates, provided they play their cards right. Start by making sure you are not omitting any extenuating circumstances from your application and that your financial situation is clear to the AdCom. Then, be sure to learn the financial aid policies of the schools of your choice, which oftentimes require explicit and separate applications. Lastly, after receiving the institution’s financial aid decision – whatever it may be – know that it is ok to negotiate it. Ensure that you prepare your arguments and supporting data in advance, and do this in a respectful manner over the phone or via video chat.
Then there are student loans. Assuming you are not a citizen of your country of study, nor has someone to co-sign your loan, your burrowing options are likely limited to either Prodigy Finance, which lends globally, or MPOWER, which lends to students in the US. In this case, starting the process early is advisable. If your studies take place in the US, have both lenders compete for your business. Last but not least, note that international students attending Harvard Business School or MIT Sloan can obtain a co-signer through their respective credit unions, which opens their doors to most US lenders.
Türkiye Tip: be sure to check out scholarships by the Türk Egitim Vakfi Education Fund, as well as Jean Monnet Scholarship Program. Female Turkish applicants are also eligible for Margaret McNamara Education Grants. Additionally, you may qualify for certain scholarships directed at global diversity or emerging markets by the universities themselves.
