Betsy Massar · College and Graduate School Expert

It’s the middle of the MBA applications cycle and some of you are working on essays, while others are preparing for interviews with admissions committee members or alumni. The goal of the interviewer is to figure out what kind of a person you are in the flesh. But there’s a question behind that question too—they want to know how you will fit in.

It’s about being different enough to add to the mix, being able to get along, and most of all, being able to contribute.

You can find lots of tips, and even questions that interviewers ask. But I’d like to frame it from a different angle

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A confluence of research in psychology, neuroscience, education and even genetics demonstrates that you can train to be very, very good at something—even taking standardized tests. Even if you think you are not naturally good at tests, you can improve dramatically. Here’s how.

The GMAT, or any graduate school admissions test, is a bear. No one needs to tell you how competitive it is, nor do they need to tell you how important it is to score within the target school’s range.

Some people are better at taking tests than others. They are natural test takers. We all know some of th…

Look at any business school’s website and you will see that the school’s primary goal is to teach leaders. “We educate leaders who make a difference in the world,” proclaims Harvard Business School’s mission page. Stanford’s leaders are “innovative, insightful, and principled.” Wharton says its leadership programs are “the heart of MBA life.”
Business schools want leaders coming in, and even better leaders coming out.

The good news for students applying for a business degree – and particularly for those who are struggling with their essays right now — is that the definition of leader…

A number of business schools are leading the charge in teaching, research and student activities related to sustainability. These efforts fall into three broad categories: environmental sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and social enterprise. Fifteen outstanding “green” programs are profiled below.

Even business schools are going green. Type “Green MBA” into Google and you get nearly 200,000 hits. Indeed, sustainability, green tech, clean tech, triple-bottom line, bottom-of-the-pyramid and a host of other fashionable terms have been making their way into business school cu…

I’m no fan of the Graduate Management Admission Test, the GMAT. It’s a tricky, exasperating standardized test that sorts MBA aspirants into two categories: Those who have to worry about their scores and those who don’t.

Critics proclaim that the test doesn’t measure success in business or business school and that the format (or content, or delivery, or something…) unfairly challenges certain groups of test takers. I won’t take the other side of that argument, because they may be right.

The Graduate Management Admissions Council, the power behind the GMAT, argues that the test is predic…

Interested in business school? If so, now’s the time to start thinking about your application, even if you don’t want to apply until 2010. Sure, that’s a long way away, but sometimes really good ideas take a long time to hatch.

Please note—I wrote “thinking about your application.” I’m not one of those admissions consultants that say you have to be rigorous with your timeline: if it’s the third week in June then you must be half-way through the GMAT quant section. No, that’s not me.

What I do to suggest, though, is to start thinking about starting to think about business school. Tha…