How To Get Into the Top MBA Programs, 4th Edition,   ISBN:9780735204232

Customer Rating: 

Having had the opportunity to speak to many admissions officers/directors and get their advice about the application process, I found that a lot of what they told me was captured in this book in greater detail. It's a great guide for anyone trying to maneuver this difficult and competitive process but as with everything in life, you must take it with a grain of salt.

Customer Rating: 

This is one of the best books out there to help you understand MBA admission process. It helped me understand what I needed to do to secure admission - both from process perspective and how schools evaluate a candidate perspective. Recommended to many friends and everyone loved it.

Customer Rating: 

Good summary of preparation plan for business graduate school. Good sets of questions that walk you through various processes. If you love things that are politically incorrect, check out his chart that shows "what admissions officers presume to be strengths and weaknesses unless evidence is presented to the contrary," which says Germans will be presumed to be arrogant, the Irish will be presumed to lack drive, and older people ("mid-thirties or order"---his typo, not mine) lack energy. His justification for sharing this bigotry that he appears to agree with is that he's German and Irish too. Oh, please.

Customer Rating: 

Written in a complete primer style, good to clear your concepts of MBA admissions. Since almost every applicant has this book, be careful while reading its essays and make sure that yours do NOT have anything remotely similar. Adcom people have read hundreds of essays over the years and are too sharp to identify the patterns and similarities.

Otherwise, the book is good to know the importance of different elements of an application. Good bedtime reading, if you start your planning an year ahead from the app deadlines. Otherwise, depending on your schedule and deadlines, you can use the book per author's guidelines.

Essays: There are a lot of essays in it from different B-Schools and different type of candidates. I found some of them to be too long and sort of boring sometimes. Word-limit is a biggest constraint for some schools and they are strict on it.

Recos: The chapters on Recos was really very useful with Do's and Dont's, how to approach your recommender, sample recos, and their pros and cons.

General App guidelines: generally useful in organizing yourself and your tasks for this process.

MBA: General information on different type of MBAs and how to choose the right one for you. This is very subjective topic though and depends on the individual's career planning and objectives.

Comments from Adcom members: There are lot of comments from adcom members, Deans of different schools in each chapter on almost every topic. Very helpful in customizing your app and essays for those schools

Customer Rating: 

The book is so useful if you want to write your essays in a hurry. It points out a lot of good points from the point of view of an admission director. You'll get a good idea about what they are looking for and what they don't care about.