The most important aspects of your profile relates to your social contribution. Your MBA application needs to touch upon these 3 aspects:

·                     Professional (Promotions, Recognition, Referrals/Recommendations, etc.)

·                     Social (Volunteer  work, social campaign contribution, sponsoring someone in need, etc.)

·                     Academic(GMAT Score, GPA, etc.)

If you're like me you probably did not get a lot of time to personally contribute to your favorite social cause. Maybe you were just able to contribute a few hours or days. Maybe you were just able to contribute monetarily. But, every once in awhile there comes a time when you cannot hold yourself back. For example, the recent disaster in Nepal prompted me to take action. I wanted to be there as soon as possible, but was convinced to wait for a few weeks while the professionals carry out emergency and disaster relief work. Instead, I took up the task of promoting campaigns online and mobilizing resources locally.  In my desperation to contribute, I discovered many new ways to make an impact:

·                     Become an online volunteer: You can visit http://www.onlinevolunteering.org  and connect with numerous NGOs that require a helping hand.

·                     Register to be a UN volunteer: http://www.unvolunteers.org

·                     Help by starting/organizing or managing local fundraising events.

·                     Help an NGO manage online crowd-funding campaigns

·                     Become an activist and/or contribute intelligence related to a war zone or an area affected by natural disasters.

As you can see, there are many ways to contribute. We don't always have to be on the ground. Sometimes it is best to leave disaster relief work to the professionals.

 Of course, when the time comes, you can actually help in the field in the following ways:

·                     Lend a hand in relief camps.

·                     Help reconstruct houses and infrastructure.

·                     Conduct field surveys for an organization.

As you can see there are many ways to contribute. It will help your MBA candidacy, although that should not be the primary reason for volunteering. Volunteer work is very tough. So, you must try to contribute for a cause for which you are truly passionate.

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If you're preparing for the GMAT, so that you can apply in the first round, you need a lot of focus. And if you're facing a problem like this guy, then you need to read what I have to say.

Its very normal to go through what you're going through. We're surrounded by distractions. So you need to put away your phone, shut down your mail clients, stop any notifications from distracting you and isolate yourself for a few minutes or hours that you practice.

There are 2 other reasons for losing focus:

1. Stamina: You just aren't used to taking long tests or have lost touch with academic preparation. This is an easy one to solve, since all you need to do is will yourself to sit for 4-4 hours of practice tests while giving the test all of your focus. Practice sitting for that many hours while keeping your mind engaged.

2. Psychology of Sabotage: Psychologically, your mind is not yet ready to take the big leap. It wants to sabotage your chances. Tony Robbins talks about this a lot. And its a very real thing. If this is a problem that you're facing (and no one but you can tell if you are), then you just need to remind yourself about why the GMAT is important for you. A high GMAT opens doors to opportunities, helps boost your career, and lets you compete with the world and succeed.


So, those are the reasons why you lose focus. And I've also given the solutions.

A lot of emphasis is put on utilizing scholarships, assistant-ships and federal loans. But, the cost of the MBA usually exceeds what many of the programs offer. Also, there is a lot of competition and little guarantee that you'll be able to obtain as much financial aid as required. So, people usually go for loans. But as I have discovered in the past, obtaining loans from your native country or for that matter from any US-based financial institution is not the easiest of tasks.

Thankfully, there are alternative ways to finance an MBA. Today, peer-to-peer lending is gaining traction. The reason why it's becoming a popular option is because there are less stringent formalities and you actually get a loan from an alumnus of the business school you're going to attend. You don't need to provide collateral or have a cosigner.

And most importantly, if you're planning to fully utilize your time at a certain B-school (by attending events or visiting foreign countries), you will find yourself appropriately funded by the peer-to-peer lending networks.

For international students, Prodigy Finance is a godsend. Prodigy Finance provides peer-to-peer loans without the requirement for cosigner or collateral and helps you connect with alumni from the school you plan to attend. If you're an investor, no need to worry about getting your capital back because prodigy has more than 99% student repayment rate. 75% of the loans are given to students from developing countries.

If you're a US citizen, hoping to pursue an MBA in Europe, you have even more options. Not only do crowdfunding platforms successfully help a lot of students, but there are even more P2P networks that are available to you. A great peer-to-peer lending website is Commonbond. They offer a similar program to prodigy, but only for US citizens. There are many more such websites, but the two above are the most popular.

Crowdfunding is another great way to fund your education. Indiegogo is a popular choice. It allows you to receive funds across the globe.

So, there are many more alternatives available today to finance your business education.

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Entrepreneurs, family business members and self-employed professionals are a completely different set of applicants who have their own unique application-related challenges. One of the most daunting of these challenges for an entrepreneur is finding recommenders would not be disregarded by the admissions committee.

So how do entrepreneurs get their recommendation letters? How do you find a recommender who can talk about your leadership style, your management abilities, and your personal qualities?

Here is a small list of people you can ask to be your recommenders:

Your best clients or customers.
Your mentors.
Your ex-colleagues.
Your investors.
Your business partners.
Your teammates from any social organisations that you may be associated with.
Your Peers.

People who should not be used as recommenders:


1. Family members.
2. Junior employees of the firm.
3. Anyone else whom you can pressurize to produce a recommendation according to your requirements.

It's hard for entrepreneurs to find recommenders. But, recommendation letters just have to be obtained and that too from the right people.

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If you wanted to score an 800 and studied exactly as you have always done, do you think you'd be able to score an 800?

Can you truly predict your exact score on the Gmat even after hundreds of hours of preparation?

The fact is that you might not score exactly what you want. So what's the point of setting a target score? Instead you should be focused on how to improve your knowledge base and your test taking skills. The score will take care of itself.

Unfortunately, we have been programmed from a very early age to set targets, so it takes some effort to follow a process instead of obsessing about a goal. Process and habits get you a high score that will eventually help you get into your dreams school.

The preparation for scoring less than 600 is different than that required for scoring between 600 and 700. And scoring up to the 95th percentile requires a different process and a different set of habits than scoring 96th percentile or more on the test. Here is a basic table from my upcoming report that gives you an idea about the skills, process, and habits required for scoring in different ranges:

*The blue dot above implies that the person has partial skill set or habits or follows some processes.

We'll go into further detail about this table in the next post.

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As already mentioned in a previous post, one of the most important Tactics to keep the mind fresh during the Gmat is to LIMIT your choices. As you know, the paradox of choices says that the more choices you have the less likely you are to focus on the important things and less likely you are to achieve your goals. The same applies on the Gmat. Although the process of elimination is one of the best and most widely used techniques, there are a few other methods that one should know.

The first method consists of a process of elimination that begins with the last option for a question. This is done, because a lot of times the test makers deliberately provide seemingly correct answer choices within the first three options. For example, on a quantitative question, you may have to provide an answer in 'meters' while every quantity given in the question is in 'feet'. The test makers will deliberately put an answer choice in 'meters' because they know that people tend to make those sorts of mistakes. Although this is a simplistic example but it conveys the point.

The second method consists of guessing when you don't know how to solve a question. It is better to "guess" and move on during the first few sections so as to keep your mind fresh during the verbal section, which just happens to have two kinds of questions that you can't really prepare for-reading comprehension and critical reasoning. You need a fresh mind to solve these, which is a hard thing to accomplish in the last hour of the test. So remember to guess/quit wherever necessary in order to be able to apply your mental faculties questions that deserve your attention.

Reduce the number of choices to ensure you can focus on a few worthy options.

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If you're thinking about getting into one of the top tier B-schools, and you haven't taken the GMAT, NOW is that moment when you should register for the test!

Although I prefer that before you join any course, you should try to study on your own and see how you do on the GMATprep tests that are available free of cost - here.

Of course, if you're interested in boosting your score, most top test prep companies out there will help you boost your score. Personally, I'm biased towards using Manhattan Prep's materials, but that's mainly because there practice test analysis and the way they organize question types helped me a lot.

Another good course is the one offered by gmat pill guys, available here. When I ran out of old GMAT questions, i.e. OGs, official verbal guide, etc. I used the product they offered back then. Again, I am biased, but you can try some samples yourself to find out which test prep course suits your study style.

But, I definitely don't recommend spending thousands of dollars on test prep. Also, make sure you read reviews for various courses so you can make an informed choice.

But, I cannot stress the importance of registering for the test now, so that you may take the test in June or July, and hence be able to prepare and submit your applications before anyone else.

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