Learn From an Accepted MBA Applicant's Resume
[Originally published on U.S. News on May 1, 2017. Written by Ilana Kowarski.]
One common misconception about applying to business school, experts say, is the idea that you need to have a certain type of work experience on your resume to get accepted.
Although MBA students often have a finance or consulting background and some work for well-known companies, experts say this kind of elite pedigree is not a requirement for admission to a competitive MBA program.
[Read two successful MBA admissions essays.]
"You don't need that," says Barbara Coward, a Maryland-based MBA admissions consultant and former assistant director of recruitment at the Sellinger School of Business and Management at Loyola University Maryland. "Every work experience you have can be extremely valuable. It’s how you present it and what you’ve learned from it and what you’ve accomplished.”
Coward, whose company provides guidance to business schools on how to boost the quality of their MBA applicants, says there is no rigid template for creating a compelling MBA resume, but she says it is vital that the resume conveys the impact the applicant has made through his or her work.
[Find out the typical traits of MBA students at ranked programs.]
"A resume inherently is all about me, but in business school today, they’re looking for students who will be team players and contribute to the growth and learning of others," she says. "So make sure that on your resume, you’ve shown it’s not just all about me and what I’ve achieved but how I have helped my group and my community.”
J. Absinthia Vermut, an MBA student at the Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College, says when she crafted her MBA application resume, she chose to highlight her accomplishments as a business owner.
Vermut tailored her resume to her audience at Babson, a business school well known for its focus on entrepreneurship and ranked No. 1 in the U.S. News Best Entrepreneurship Program ranking.
[Learn how to turn failure into a great business school admissions essay.]
The key to writing a strong resume is telling a compelling story, says Judith Hodara, co-founder of the Fortuna Admissions consulting group and former acting co-director of MBA admissions with the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
"I would say it is not necessary to be an entrepreneur to do an MBA focused on entrepreneurship, but you need to have a story that really shows why this makes sense for you as a next step," Hodara says.
Below is the two-page resume Vermut used in her successful application to Babson. It is annotated with comments by Vermut about why she structured the resume as it appears, and it also includes expert critiques from Hodara and Coward.