Tip 3: Scrutinize schools' brochures
L: Loan is available and no require for cosigner
N: No scholarship/fellowship in the first/second year
T: tuition waiver or partial waiver
G: Generous scholarship, graduate assistantship
S: Small amount of financial assistance
U: Scholarship with unspecified amount
N/A: Data not available
请各位注意以下学校的分级：Rank Name of School Scholarship Status
1 Harvard University L
2 Stanford University L
3 University of Pennsylvania (Wharton) L
4 M.I.T (Sloan) N
5 Northwestern University (Kellogg) N
6 Columbia University (NY) N/A
6 University of Chicago U
8 Duke University (Fuqua) N
9 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor T
10 Univ. of California-Berkeley (Haas) N
11 Dartmouth College (Tuck) N/A
11 Univ. of California-L.A (Anderson) N
11 University of Virginia (Darden) U
14 New York University (Stern) N/A
15 Cornell University (Johnson) U
16 University of Texas-Austin N
16 Yale University U
18 University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill N
19 Carnegie Mellon University N
20 Indiana University-Bloomington S
21 Emory University (Goizueta) T
22 University of Southern California N/A
23 Purdue University (Krannert) N
24 Vanderbilt University (Owen) T
25 Ohio State University (Fisher) T
25 University of Rochester (Simon) U/T
25 Washington University (Olin) U
28 University of Minnesota (Carlson) N/A
29 Georgetown University (McDonough) T
30 Michigan State University (Broad) N/A
31 University of Arizona (Eller) N/A
32 Arizona State University G
32 Tulane University (Freeman) T
34 Case Western Reserve University N/A
34 Penn State University-(Smeal) T
34 Rice University (Jones) N/A
34 Thunderbird Graduate School T
34 University of Maryland (Smith) G
34 University of Wisconsin-Madison T
40 Boston College (Carroll) T
40 University of California-Irvine N
42 Brigham Young University (Marriott) G
42 Georgia Institute of Technology N/A
42 Southern Methodist University (Cox) U
42 Texas A&M University (Mays) G
42 University of California-Davis N
42 Wake Forest University (Babcock) N/A
48 University of Georgia (Terry) T
48 University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign U
48 University of Notre Dame T

Think about Harvard and Stanford for a while. These two schools provide loans without having to find a cosigner. Also, if you are admitted, they will promptly provide you with such loans just to facilitate your visa application. Both schools admitted a large number of people, which means that you might have a better chance to be accepted. Just do not waste the chance, if you are really elite!

Tip 4: Apply for only 2 to 6 b-schools
MBA applications differ from application to other graduate programs because they should be TAILOR-MADE to different schools. Especially when you write essays, you would find it really exhausting to write 3 or 4 tailor-made essays for each school, not mention that if you want to apply for 10 or 20 schools.

Think twice, if Columbia and Wharton admit you simultaneously, which one will you choose? Maybe Wharton. Well, just forget your Columbia dream. It will save your time in your painful application process. As a matter of fact, if one school gives you the offer, most others will also do, and vise versa. I applied for 7 schools this year, and only Duke turned me down after putting me in wait-list for a few months. Declining the other offers made me feel sorry.

Tip 5: Choose schools in different tiers
MBA applicants tend to overestimate or underestimate their capacity. Also after reading above information for scholarship, many Chinese students would directly apply for schools which offer more financial assistance, such as University of Maryland, Texas A&M, etc., making the chance for getting admission for certain schools slim.

So, why not widen your perspective? Think about the tense competitions you are going to meet from your Chinese peers for those "hot" schools. Try different schools in different tiers may increase your chance

Tip 17 Make essay drafts as early as possible
Normally, you will need to have a draft a month before you hand in the final version of your essays. However, the brainstorming for the draft could also be very time-consuming. In this stage, you should jot down your strengths and weaknesses, your team experiences, some achievements, etc.

Tip 18: Read sample essays and take notes
Before my application, I had read about eighty MBA application essays. While reading, I kept my Excel spreadsheet open. Whenever I found a good phrases or a B-school lingo, I would "copy and paste" them to my spreadsheet. This learning process is beneficial in both idea and phrase collection.
When revising my plain MBA application essay drafts, I also kept my spreadsheet open and "copied and pasted" those phrases (Warning: not sentence and paragraphs; otherwise, it would be considered as "plagiarism", see Tip 20) to my essays and makes them integral but shining parts of my essays.

Tip 19: Find some advisors/proofreaders
I passed my essay drafts to the following group of people for their critique:
4 colleagues, 3 classmates, 2 MBA students, 2 friends in Wall Street, 2 English teachers.
All of them had fluent English and most of them had similar experiences as I did. They offered valuable comments and suggestions to me from different perspectives, which substantially helped to sharpen my essays.

Tip 20: Tailor-made your essay
Two common mistakes many applicants make are plagiarizing and using general version of application essays!
Remember, the officials in B-schools are not idiots. They may easily sense trails of plagiarism or proxies in the essays from mismatched tones, fragmented contents, and their previous readings. Also, they can tell whether an essay is tailor-made or simply generated by changing school names in a common template
The only shortcuts are those mentioned elsewhere in this section.

Tip 21: Strategy differentiation
You may take the risk to write some "weird" essays to top-10s. A plain essay will do nothing but to bore those already exhausted school officials.
On the other hand, the 2nd-tiers and 3rd-tiers schools are where conservatism rules. Your experience and your GMAT scores have already proved your achievements. They are eager to give you the offer to increase their average GMAT scores and diversify their student body. In this connection, an essay illustrating your work experience and your motivations well will leave them deep impression. It is simply not worthwhile taking the risk to write "weirdly".

Tip 22: Be specific
Judgment is a critical characteristic for an MBA applicant. Unfortunately, I myself devoutly read a lot of pointless essays instead of tossing them into my garbage can. It is strange that many essays full of bullshits are highly recommended by some greedy publishers. What we have seen in these essays are:
"Born in 19XX in ABC city, DEF province..." "I am creative, energetic and diligent." Blah, blah, blah....
I bet the admission officials have to turn up the volume of their **-players, drink several cups of coffee, and watch dirty talk-show programs at the same time to keep themselves awake while reading these essays.
Please show them specific events, situations that can be visualized, vivid illustrations to spark their interests in you.

Tip 23: Be confident
I think . has a very good article demonstrating the importance of confidence. Please refer to Confidence, GRE, and Visa
Sorry, Jinbo, I did a lot of reference here. It is true that I am quite lazy these days. But this does not mean that confidence is a factor I do not care. Rather, if I were to choose only one tip from my article, I'd recommend this one. As a matter of fact, self-confidence is the only tip that is applicable and critical to every application process. Even in B-school, we are trained to be 100% self-confident even if we are actually dummies in certain areas.