CS @ HBS

After an amazing surprise party on Saturday, I’m leaving for Boston on Wednesday. So I guess the next post will be from there (unless I find myself bored at the airport…).

As many applicants are currently working hard filling in online applications, in this post I have a few practical tips for making the process faster and simpler. No deep application philosophy this time, only simple technical tips. :)

1) Use gmail as your email for your applications: aside from advantages such as huge storage space, reliability and speed, gmail has particular advantages with regards to using it for MBA applications:
- Its spam filter is very good, and it won’t accidentally filter emails from schools. That way you can rest assured that the coveted HBS interview invitation hasn’t been filtered, it’s just, em, going to arrive at a later time…
- You can install gmail Notifier and get immediate notifications each time you receive a new email, thus avoiding constant refresh of your inbox, waiting for that same coveted HBS interview.
Even if you don’t use gmail now as your email address, it’s worth setting up as an additional address just for the MBA applications stuff.

2) Use firefox as your web browser. In addition to simply being a better browser, it has two neat features that I found useful while filling in the applications:
- It has a built-in spellchecker that automatically checks anything you type in any input field, marks spelling mistakes with a red squiggly line and suggests corrections (like Word). Excellent!
- many schools use the ApplyYourself platform for their online application, and naturally many of the input fields you need to fill in are common to most applications (name, address, workplaces, academic institutions etc.). Firefox has a cool feature that “remembers” what you typed in any input field, and when you start typing in the same input field – even if it’s in a different school – it’ll suggest the previously typed content and save you the typing time and the risk of typing errors… small, but helpful when you’re doing a number of ApplyYourself applications.

3) Save common application answers in a (Word) document: things like start and end salaries, short job descriptions, short extracurriculars descriptions. This way you’ll be able to copy & paste them (with minor modifications due to different required length) between applications.

4) Get necessary documents well ahead of the deadlines: you don’t need many documents for the applications, but still there are a few – academic transcripts, salaries and more. Getting them might take longer than you expect, so don’t leave it to the last minute.

5) Drink a lot of water.