Mission Admission is a series of MBA admission tips; a new one is posted each Tuesday.
“Do I need to take the TOEFL if I attended an English-language undergraduate institution outside the United States?”
“Do I need to provide a separate transcript from the institution where I studied abroad for my junior year, even though these grades show up on my ‘home’ university’s transcript?”
“I completed military service before my undergraduate education. Can I still count these years in my ‘full-time work experience since graduation’ total?”
These are just a few of the technical questions that can arise as you complete the short-answer portion of your application (depending on the nature of your candidacy). The reason these and many other questions can be so bewildering is that often, no clear answer can be found in the school’s application materials, and tremendous variation exists from one MBA application to the other.
Generally, candidates tend to think of the MBA Admissions Office as an impenetrable black box, but the truth is that these offices are open and available to applicants and indeed want to clarify these kinds of small technical issues that candidates may be encountering. Although you should take care to not be a pest and should definitely not repeatedly call the Admissions Office, if you have a small question or two that seem to have no clear-cut answers, do not be afraid to call. Why not take the guesswork out of the equation and be certain of what the admissions committee expects?
