'Sure banker' questions the adcom will have about your MBA application

This photo came up on Page 1 of my search results when I typed 'Africans' into the Google Images search bar.

As I scrolled through the results, I came across similar images that made me cringe.

There is a whole world out there with an image, or in this case, images of Africa that reflect very little about our true potential. Before the advent of platforms like CNN African Voices, EbonyLife TV, Forbes Africa, the rest of the world had very little insight into how much potential truly lay in Africa.

And many still do. You may already know that some people from other parts of the world still get surprised when they realise that people from Africa can actually speak good English.

Whether we choose to accept it or not, there is a perception issue that we will all have to overcome if we plan on competing on a global scale, be it in business or in education.

My fellow Africans, prejudiced as this may sound, here are some questions I'm certain the adcom will have about your candidacy when you apply for an MBA at a top b-school.

Question #1: Can this candidate cope with the academic rigor of our MBA program?

If you are from Nigeria, you are probably aware of the level of skepticism that even our own employers have about we "locally-trained" graduates. This perception goes beyond our own borders and you will need to convince the admissions board of the strength of your intellectual horsepower if you want to gain admission into a top MBA program.

At schools like INSEAD, your academic performance as an MBA student is determined by a system that many of their students they refer to as 'the curve'. Broadly speaking, what 'the curve' does is that it plots each student's grade on a normal distribution curve to determine the arithmetic mean grade of the class and then screens for high or low performers by segregating the students whose scores fall outside the arithmetic mean of the curve.

In case this sounds like crinkum-crankum, what it means in simple English is that (for example) if you score 70% in a course where the average class performance is 80-something percent, you could be getting a 'fail' grade in that course.

Yes. Shit gets that real.

With the quality of students who will be your classmates at top schools, I imagine those average scores will get pretty high.

For the adcom to take a chance on some dude from some university in the corners of some town called 'Enugu', they will want to be confident that they are not accepting a candidate that will have a tough time coping with the academic demands of their competitive program.

How will they answer this question?

Whoever reviews your application will test for your intellectual horsepower first by looking at two main aspects:

a) Your undergraduate transcript

Not just your final degree designation i.e. 'first class' or 'second class', but your complete academic transcript.

A discovery I made in one of my chats with an admissions director during my application process was that whoever is reviewing your application will actually review your transcript line-by-line (Father Lord!) in order to have a good picture of your academic potential. They (with good reason) have a strong belief that your academic performance in your 4-5 years of undergraduate study will be an indicator of your performance in their 1-2 year MBA program.

Questions they'll ask as they review your transcript will include:

How strong was the overall CGPA?

I'm not an authority on this but I assume CGPAs less than 70% will not leave the adcom feeling very comfortable. Especially if you're applying from a third world country with an educational system they are not familiar with. There's a great temptation for them to believe that if you couldn't excel in an 'unknown university' from a third world country, you'll find it difficult to succeed in their world renowned program.

How rigorous was the program?

They'll usually answer this based on what course you studied and what school you attended. If there are any credible rankings of African schools out there, be sure that they will have at least glanced at them.

Also, I remember reading somewhere that in general, admissions officers tend to believe that average grades from analytically-rigorous (usually science-related) programs e.g. Engineering, were seen to be similar to high grades in less analytically-demanding (usually arts-related) programs e.g. Visual arts.

Fair? Probably not. A reflection of what they actually believe? Probably so.

Was there a progression or a regression in performance over the years?

In general, early years of university (100 and 200 level) are considered the easier parts of your degree. So, even if you finished with a 2:1, declining performance will leave them with questions about your true academic potential. They will surely favour candidates that showed improvement in performance over those who showed declining performance.

How well did the candidate perform in analytical/quants-based courses?

In your transcript, they will look out for course descriptions that indicate high quantitative content and will study the trend of your performance in such programs. Obviously, they'll want to see high performance in courses like Statistics and Quantitative Analysis because the MBA program will require strong analytical skills. If you did not take many analytical/quants-based courses, they will look to the GMAT for answers.

Were there any exceptions (D- or F-grades)?

I imagine that if they are reviewing your transcript line-by-line, they will have a red pen ready to circle exceptions and put big question marks beside them. The exceptions they will circle in your transcripts will be courses where you had Ds or Fs. Be sure that these will raise red flags with them. 

If the exceptions were consistently in quants-based courses, they will look to your GMAT quant score before they make a conclusion on your analytical ability. 

Similarly, if your course had heavy quant content, they will be curious to know how well you'll do with qualitative courses that require critical reasoning. This is where they'll look to your GMAT verbal score for answers.

If you are not familiar with what your transcript looks like, please request an unofficial one from your school as soon as possible biko. It may be too late to change your grades but knowing exactly what your reviewer will be looking at will help you proactively answer any questions they might have before you hit the 'submit' button.

b) Your GMAT scores

If your undergraduate performance was not great, you have an opportunity to 'show yourself' in the GMAT. 

A good way to know what GMAT score will keep you competitive is to google class profiles of the MBA programs you are applying to. e.g. 'Wharton MBA class profile'.

They usually tell you one or more of the following GMAT statistics for their incoming classes:

-the average score
-the median score
-the full range of scores
-the middle 80% range of scores

Of course, those in GMAT paradise are those who have scores sitting above the average.

However, remember that besides your 'over 800' score, there are some other questions they will ask about the GMAT.

How many times did you take the GMAT?'

While some schools (e.g. Wharton, Columbia) explicitly ask this question and some (e.g. Harvard) don't, most MBA programs will take your highest submitted GMAT score. I only know of few (e.g. Chicago Booth) who calculate the average of all your scores to arrive at a new total.

What this question does is that it serves as an indicator of two main things

-how willing you are to 'persevere' in order to improve your academic performance 

-depending on what your highest score is, whether or not you will struggle to get high grades during your MBA program

In which section was your performance stronger (or weaker)?

Most programs would prefer to see stronger performance in the quant section especially when the candidate is a native English-speaker or when the candidate has a non-quant background. 

The Integrated Reasoning section is also an aspect they are starting to pay attention to though haven't said very much about in the past years. Because it's still pretty new, they are taking some time to study how much to trust the results in making decisions. However, they are certainly not completely ignoring it.

In summary, if your grades from your bachelor's were strong (80% CGPA and above), you should aim to strengthen that position by nailing the GMAT. 85th percentile and above should keep you competitive.

If your grades were not great (average 2:1 and below), your GMAT becomes even more critical. You'll have a tough time convicing the adcom about your academic potential if you're average on both.

Whatever the case with your academic history, what you need to do is to convince the adcom that you are capable of dealing with the academic demands of the MBA program. If you believe your results in these two aspects (transcript and GMAT) do not reflect your true academic ability, you should take the opportunity to communicate this cogently in other parts of your application such as your essays, your recommendation letters, or the 'additional information' section of the online application.

Remember you are competing for a spot with highly motivated and highly competitive candidates from all over the world. You need to show that you deserve that spot that might easily be given to that 'magna cum laude' graduate from [insert name of globally-recognised university].

Top business schools are always looking for the strongest performers. Make it easy for them to make a case for why your application deserves to be in the 'Yes' pile.