Getting graded. It’s been a necessary evil in everyone’s life since we were all old enough to hold a crayon. At every stage, we either cut the mustard or we don’t and then progress to the next level of grading. For those applying to graduate school, you may have thought those college grades were all but forgotten, but now find yourself having to face them once again. And guess what? The grading doesn’t stop with the application process, because very soon you’ll be back in the classroom. This begs the question…do grades really matter?
In case you haven’t noticed, Kellogg recently launched a new “motto” that reads: “Think Bravely: we believe that business can be bravely led, passionately collaborative, and world changing.” The introduction of this laboratory-cooked slogan caused much hand-wringing among Round 1 applicants, so now that we have a moment, we wanted to address it and help out those of you applying to Kellogg in Round 2. So, should you focus your applications on “Thinking Bravely”? Let’s break it down.
MIT Sloan is one of “those” schools – the ones that seem to slip into the nooks and crannies of the admissions process. People don’t talk about Sloan as much as its elite counterparts. Nobody immediately thinks about it in terms of being a top 5 program until you start digging and realize, wow, this program is insanely good. Most importantly, because of its unique end-of-October deadline and equally unique two-round admissions process, we would wager that application quality on Sloan apps is far lower than on other top programs (which is a *massive* problem if you want to be admitted there). Candidates often don’t even start on their Sloan apps until after the October 3-16 gauntlet of deadlines and then they race to finish because they fear waiting until the “last” round.
