What Categories are the Most Competitive?

MBA is a program that teaches managing people and resources effectively. It has no stringent rules on focusing on specific categories. It invites applications from people belonging to diverse streams as the B-schools aim in creating an all round class consisting of people from various work backgrounds. The top business schools believe that diversity of knowledge is the basis of learning. 

Although the MBA program is a learning platform for all, but investment banking and management consulting are probably the most competitive categories. Almost everyone who works in those fields needs to go to B-school in order to move up in the industry. On an average, accepted candidates from the very competitive finance and consulting backgrounds have higher GMAT scores than the accepted candidates from less competitive categories. The reason being, almost all investment bankers and management consultants undergo a prep GMAT as a part of their work culture, as motivated by their firm.

What are the Less Competitive Categories?

Usually 70 percent of the applicants every year, come from a finance or consulting background. But the admission officers do focus a lot in the selection procedure to include applicants from other diverse streams too. They need some marketing people and some people from technical backgrounds. And every class also has a few dissatisfied lawyers and doctors along with some real odd but unique experiences that will be valuable to their classmates. But none of these is the easiest category. 

Very few people from nonprofit firms apply to top business schools, and that makes them the easiest category of all. Every B-school is believed to be a very competitive place, and competition isn`t part of the culture of the average nonprofit firms. People with average GMAT scores often get accepted at top B-schools because those schools are trying to broaden the perspective of their classes and, at the same time, promote what is becoming an increasingly significant business division. A number of schools have even developed considerable nonprofit set of courses to address the needs of managers in such sectors.

A fair number of people from government and military backgrounds also get into top programs even though their GMAT scores are pretty below their schools` median 80 percent range. But admittedly, these people add depth to the class, and admitting them allows business schools to reach into important public sector organizations to influence the ways in which they are run.