Top 8 Military MBA Applicant Mistakes

Here are the top 8 most common mistakes I have seen military applicants make this season. The good news is that just about all of these can be addressed...

8. Not coaching theirrecommenders sufficiently

It’s the applicant’s responsibility to coach and educate hisrecommender, but often this is a senior officer, and doing so is contrary tothe military chain of command and protocol. This awkwardness often leads tomiscommunication and a “hope for the best” approach that won’t cut it.

Recommenders should ideally show new perspectives on theapplicant, reinforce key applicant value propositions, and shore up perceivedweaknesses. Often none of these happen in a military letter of recommendation.Some senior military leaders have written many letters, and are familiar withthe process. Others however may not have a clue for what makes a good LOR, andmay revert to language found on an applicant’s military performance report, whichis often vague and full of not very useful hyperbole.

Applicants should coach their recommenders by making surethey understand what it is business schools look for, and educate them on theirown applications and aspirations so that the recommender can do his part. 

Lastly, applicants should follow up regularly with therecommender to make sure the LOR is turned in on time, as late recommendationsare unfortunately more common than they should be. If a recommender is waitinguntil the last minute to write your letter, that is also a bad sign he is notinvesting the time and thought necessary to write a compelling recommendation.

7. Thinking that theyshouldn’t try to communicate specific career goals because they don’t knowbusiness well enough

“I don’t know anything about business, so I can’t write aspecific career goals essay.” This is an initial approach taken by manymilitary applicants. Showing that you have sufficient introspection to knowwhat kind of career you want topursue, and the ability to follow through with research as to what thatactually means, is part of the point of a career goals essay. Not havingbusiness experience is not an excuse.

6. Not having enoughnon-military people review their application

A military applicant can write an essay that he is in lovewith, and all his military peers may also love it, but it might be confusing,offensive, or just completely incomprehensible to a civilian reader who has nevermet anybody from the military. If you have ever returned to your hometown afterlosing a member of your unit on a deployment, and heard for example,“Afghanistan? Oh, do we still have troops there?” – Then you already know whatI am talking about. There is a large part of America that is largely insulatedfrom the military. While we should give the admissions committee the benefit ofthe doubt, it is still to your benefit to get people who you would neverotherwise engage with to provide feedback on your essays. I mean people wholive far away from military bases, who don’t know anything about the military,and are a different gender and generation from you. Getting their perspectivemay point to serious holes in your assumptions about what some people actually know.

5. Writing a resumewithout a civilian perspective

This one is pretty straightforward. Translating yourmilitary accomplishments into civilian friendly language, getting rid of alljargon, and emphasizing what is important to a civilian reader necessitateshelp from a civilian who knows how to write proper resumes. Make sure you havea trusted advisor for this step.

4. Underestimatingthe GMAT

Never count on a GMAT score until you have taken theofficial test. I’ve seen applicants who sometimes consistently score 700 onpractice CAT exams end up walking out of the testing center with something inthe high 500s. That may be an extreme case, but it’s not uncommon for applicantto score 50-100 points less than they hoped for on the day of the actual exam.The reasons for this are outside the scope of this article, but the point isthat don’t count on a score until you have an official one in hand. This meansthat you shouldn’t go forward with your application with a plan to just takethe GMAT late in the ballgame and assume a top score. Taking such a strategyhas caused many to delay for a later round, or force an application with a poorscore.

The best thing to do is to take the GMAT well in advance….Well before even starting applications. Having a score in hand will free you upto completely focus on the application itself, and give you a better idea onwhich schools you should apply to as well. If it’s too late to take it well inadvance (at least 6 months prior to the application), then at least leave timeto retake the exam a second time after 4-6 weeks if needed. One’s first shot atthe GMAT really ought to therefore be an absolute minimum of 10 weeks prior tothe application deadline. I also advice applicants not to work on their GMATprep and essays at the same time if possible. Either is difficult enough on itsown and takes a full commitment.

3. Underpreparing forthe interview

Most military applicants have never had a b-school styleinterview in their lives. Knowing how to properly handle insightful questions,awareness of how to read and communicate body language, engaging theinterviewer in conversation (not just monologue), feeling confident speakingabout your history, your future plans, your familiarity with the school, andcurrent market events, all take some serious time and effort.

Between the GMAT and essays, some applicants may spendhundreds of hours towards their application. With the interview weighing in asmuch as a third of your overall application, spending an hour or two inpreparation shows a complete asymmetry in one’s planning. It would be likespending 200 hours preparing for ingress and egress on a mission, and spending2 hours for actions on objdctive. Make sure you get the support you need toprepare if you are unfamiliar with these styles of interviews.

2. Assuming theirmilitary experience is unique

Military applicants sometimes think that theirinternational, Pentagon, or MOS experience, by themselves, makes them unique enoughto stand out from the crowd. Similarly, some applicants with weak GPAs from aservice academy think/hope they will be cut a break from schools because lifeat a service academy is more demanding than non-service academies. All of theabove are poor assumptions to make.

Of all the military applicants at a school like HBS, it isunlikely any MOS or deployment experience is the first they have seen. It islikely there is at least one, if not a half dozen or more other applicants witha similar enough profile. Furthermore, there are plenty of applicants with topGPAs from military academies, so the thought that attendance at a serviceacademy, by itself, will mitigate a low GPA, is also a poor assumption. Inother words, one should not over-assume strengths or underplay weaknesses incomparison to his competition.

None of the above implies that one’s military orundergraduate experience cannot be leveraged to deliver a great application.Certainly some experiences can be very compelling; they just can’t be assumedto be enough. It will still take a lot of effort to find your voice.

1. Self-selecting outof top schools

“I don’t have the stats for my dream school, so I’m notgoing to apply.” – More often than not, this is wrongly assumed. GPA and GMATare not the only criteria… and why would you ever self-select yourself outanyway? At worst case, you lose the application fee and spent some timeadjusting/improving your portfolio of application essays. Why not let theschool make the final decision? The only way to guarantee you won’t get in is notto try.

Service Academy Representation at HBS

For those curious about historical military representation at HBS, I've done some research as to the number of military students at the business school since WWII. Historically the school did not have a way to capture military affiliation for its students, which makes precise numbers difficult if not impossible, but HBS does track undergraduate schools, which naturally includes military academies. I can therefore use military academy representation as a proxy for the total trends in veteran attendance at HBS. I'll explain more of this in a bit. For now, here is the data on US military academy representation at HBS (click to expand):

In the upper right hand corner of the above chart is the total number of military at HBS since 2000, which I have been able to calculate directly in the past (see note here). My data shows service academies  roughly represent about half of the military at HBS over the past 14 classes (to be precise 54% average with a 19% standard deviation), so if that rule stands going backwards pre-2000, we can interpret the above chart not just for service academy interest, but also by doubling the numbers for the total number of military veterans at the school. The one exception of this is probably in the late 1940s, when the number of veterans was probably extremely high, and dwarfed the service academy students.

Here are some observations:

• The peak years for veteran representation were during the HBS Classes of 1971-1973 (students entering from 1969 to 1971). It's unclear from the data whether the school was being proactive to admit Vietnam Veterans, or whether more veterans were applying. For those classes, it's likely there were over 100 veterans in each graduating class.
• The average military academy representation since WWII has been around 15 per year, which would support the argument for an average of ~30 military students per year. Since 2000, the average however has been 20 service academy students and 39 total US military per class, so slightly higher than historical average.
• The lowest representation was post-Vietnam, from 1975-1985.
• Except for the peak Vietnam War years, representation was very consistent and flat from 1955-1995. Since the mid 90s, there have been some periods of high variability, and a general increase.

Proportion of Service Academies at HBS

One can look at the chart above to see which service academies were represented when, but I also normalized the data to more clearly show the proportion within the academies themselves (click on the following graph):

Some observations:

• The dominant sources are USMA and USNA, which both have averaged around 7 per year since WWII, with a standard deviation of 5. 
• USMA slightly leads on USNA, with a total of around 500 USMA alumni versus 450 USNA alumni. 
• The third highest is USAFA alumni with 78, followed by USCG with 39, and Merchant Academy with 25, although the latter has only had 2 since 1990.
• Since 2004, USMA alumni have outnumbered USNA alumni by a factor of over 2 to 1.
• The greatest disparity occurred during the HBS classes of 1965-1969, meaning application years of 1962-1966, when USMA representation was only around 20% of the service academies. If one tries to analyze this as a phenomenon of the Vietnam war years, and compares it to post 9/11, it leads to inconsistent results, since USMA/USNA representation held largely steady post 9/11.

Before reading too much into any of this data, one needs to remember that:

• Admissions to HBS depends a lot on the philosophy and leadership of both the Dean of the school and the Dean of Admissions, which naturally change over time, and shape the makeup of the admission classes. It is therefore difficult to know if these results are more due to the school or the application pools changing.
• This data is not official, and while very accurate, it is not 100% accurate... it carries a slight margin of error, though it is the most accurate data I'm aware of.
• One should not interpret anything here to imply whether one undergraduate source is any more competitive than another, as from an admission point of view, all are highly respected, and one's personal and professional performance far outweighs the actual academy itself.

I hope this helps provide some historical context.

Military versus MBA and private sector careers

A lot of people ask me questions like: Why did you decide to get out of the military? Now that you've made the transition, what do you think of your MBA experience? What about your private sector career path? How do you compare a military career to one that an MBA and a private sector career may offer?

The purpose of this article is quite ambitious... to provide some insights onto the last question: comparing a top military career to a high trajectory civilian one.

All of the questions I listed have complicated answers and are really separate from each other, despite having a similar theme. Among my peer group, people generally got out of the military for the following reasons:

• Frustration with lack of meritocracy and lack of control over one's own career
  
• The inability of the military to match job positions that actually make use of one's individual skills and desires
  
• Being required to work for weak superiors
• General frustration with unnecessary bureaucracy

Certainly some people got out for opportunities to make more money and not have to deploy away from one's family, but those were much less influential decision factors, at least among my peers. After all, low pay and deployments was something we knew we were signing up for. The list I put forward above however, were not, and what's worse, are largely self-inflicted by the military.

A much more comprehensive study on why some of the best military officers leave the service was conducted by a friend of mine at the Harvard Kennedy School and is available for download. It revealed that many military officers believed that top officers would stay in the service if the best officers got the best assignments, were promoted faster, had more opportunities for professional development (such as graduate school), and received pay for performance instead of time-in-service. This is a list that the private sector is fairly good at accommodating, which is why I believe so many leave for the private sector, not because of absolute pay levels or deployments.

Top performing officers who decide to stay in despite these challenges do so because of an unbelievable devotion to duty and to their troops, despite the realization that they could likely contribute in many more ways to the world by untapping their potential in the private sector. This type of leader who decides to stay in the military is rare, but fortunately there are some who do. Many don't however, and that perpetuates the cycle.

Comparing a top military career and a top civilian post-MBA career

So now let me get to the original question I am trying to address: comparing military and top MBA civilian careers. For the purpose of this comparison, let's make the following assumptions about the individual we are applying this to:

1. If he/she stays in the military, he/she will be a top performer and is on track to achieve the pinnacle of all military positions as a field grade officer.
   
2. If he/she gets out of the military, he/she will go to a top business school and enter a high trajectory civilian business career.

So before we begin to "compare" the military and a top post-MBA career trajectory, we have to first agree on what exactly we are comparing. We can compare all sorts of things, such as job satisfaction and financial compensation. We already know that for financial compensation, the military loses, so that is not a very insightful exercise. But what about job satisfaction? That is extremely difficult to measure in such broad context, and people will certainly disagree about how to measure job satisfaction.

So for my analysis, I decided to use a rough proxy for job satisfaction: responsibility. Responsibility is something which, though not a perfect proxy, can be more easily measured (how many people do you command? How many jobs do you influence? How much money do you manage? How much impact do you have on those you manage/command?). I also believe that for the go-getter personality I am conducting the analysis with in mind, he is highly motivated by the impact he can make in his life, and therefore responsibility is high on that list which drives job and overall life satisfaction. This does ignore other things like work-life balance, but we have to start somewhere in answering the question.

As I began to think of how I could explain my thoughts on the subject to somebody who is even outside of the military, I realized how complicated it would be, and decided to capture the essence in one graphic, which is posted below.


An explanation of some of what you see:

• Job responsibility in the military is highly erratic. People who leave company command may wait in some cases 10 years before getting close to the level of responsibility they had before, even if they are the best performers in the entire military.
  
• Job responsibility in the military, given the assumption of a highly successful career, while fluctuating, is still much more predictable than the private sector. The blue military line is fairly predictable until one hits 22+ years of service, whereas the private sector career begins to significantly diverge and be much more unpredictable within a few years after business school. The dotted lines in both cases represent the upper and lower limits of, say, 90% of the target audience.
• Both the military (blue) and civilian (black) lines lead to similar highs and lows (in terms of responsibility) at the end of one's career. Whether one is running an entire military branch of service, or overseeing a company that employes 400,000 people and drives global innovation, both have very very high levels of responsibility.

What else can we see from this graph? We can clearly understand why people get out of the military when they do; either after their initial 4-5 year commitment or after approximately 8 years. Once somebody makes the commitment to go past 10 years, it doesn't make as much sense to leave at say, 12, 14, or 15, especially given guaranteed pension at 20 years:


Career Abyss: Losing responsibility with time

Another surprise that most civilians have when seeing this graph is the concept of diminished responsibility for significant amounts of time in one's career despite peak performance and output. For example, a Lieutenant who is done with his platoon leader/command time, may have to wait another 3-4 years before being in a position of greater responsibility. If an officer is a Company Commander deployed overseas in his 7th year in the military, it can be argued that he will not have that same level of responsibility until he is a Battalion Commander, or at least an XO or S-3, which will be at least 6-8 years no matter what. However, if somebody leaves the military after Company Command, he will have to actually take a step down in responsibility post-MBA, and many will also have to wait another 6-8 years before being back at a similarly high level of responsibility. The transaction cost of leaving the military and starting an entirely new career can therefore be very daunting.

Another consideration, is that if that same officer is not deployed while in his Battalion level positions, it's possible that an officer will never again have as much truly impactful responsibility as when he was deployed as a Captain leading a company, even if he stayed and performed at the top of his abilities for another 30 years. These concepts are foreign to civilian counterparts, which typically expect a gradual accumulation of responsibility through one's career, though the idea is probably at least subconsciously understood my most military officers.

Another consequence reflected in this graph is the divergence of professional progress in the civilian sector versus the predictable and limited growth path afforded in the military. In other words, in the civilian career, one's path has a lot of flexibility associated with it, and to a much larger extent, is driven by one's performance and goals:

Aligning incentives

So people who will tend to ride along the upper red line have incentive to get out of the military, while people who will ride closer to the lower red line, have some incentive to stay in the military. This creates a perverse environment encouraging the best officers in the military to get out, as highlighted in the Kennedy School study. That is not to say that many top officers don't stay in the military, but those who do generally do so knowing that they sacrifice many career opportunities... though when it comes to the honor of leading troops, this can't fairly be compared.

In Summary

• Military careers have extreme peaks and lows
  
• Military officers have very little to no control when they can serve in the peaks, and are subject to some very long periods of lows
• For some, the peaks make an entire career worth it
• For others, they see potential to perform at a higher level when unbound from the bureaucratic, time-based promotion system of the military.

Some may trade the responsibility of managing 100,000 people in a private sector career for the honor of leading 12 in combat in the military. Unfortunately, the latter can only be done for a relatively very short time out of a long military career. Furthermore, in the private sector, one can rise in responsibility and contribute roughly proportional to one's performance and capability, which is not generally possible in the military (whether justified or not), therefore driving many top performers out.

There are many tradeoffs with both careers, and one can do a lot of good in both. The ideas in this article are well understood by many junior and mid-grade officers in the military (though I'm sure some would add a very different perspective). Some decide to stay in and some decide to get out... much of it depends on one's personality and priorities. It is important for junior officers however to understand some of these dynamics as they ask themselves the key question of whether or not they will stay in the military for a career or not.


Disclaimer: One things that is difficult to capture in this article is the different type of responsibility one can have in the military versus the private sector. For example, if a young team member is responsible for 4 lives in combat, that is certainly more responsibility than a manger who oversees 4 people in a shop. But how does that compare to a manger that is responsible for 500 employees working in a factory? What about 5,000? Or 50,000? Or a business person who makes decisions that affects billions of dollars in capital, and the livelihood and income of potentially thousands of people? In short, it's difficult to compare and different people will have very different views... but instead of not going through the exercise at all, I made some general assumptions and presented one point of view.

"I'm getting out of the military in 2 or 3 years, and I think I want to go to b-school. What can I do now to prepare and make sure I'm competitive?"

For those of you that are asking questions like this, congratulations! You’re already ahead of the curve. Our obligated service periods have a way of flying by, and before we know it, we’re staring our transition in the face without a solid plan. This situation is avoidable. Two to three years out from separation is, in my opinion, the right time to begin reflecting on your goals, assessing your options, and positioning yourself for success.

For veterans, and for that matter, most non-traditional applicants, the path to business school is certainly not unheard of, but it’s also not laid out before us nearly as clearly as it is for some other professionals, such as consultants and bankers. In those professions, the default assumption is that high-potential individuals will jump on the MBA train with many of their peers three to four years after undergrad. Furthermore, as they look upward through their chains of command, they have literally dozens, or even hundreds, of exceptionally talented MBAs to use as examples and mentors. This clearly isn’t the case in the military. We have plenty of potential mentors in the military, but the organizational assumption, or perhaps hope, is that top talent will make a career of the military, pursue major command, and maybe even a star. I don’t say all of this to diminish what an accomplishment it is for consultants and bankers to gain admission to top schools. I say it, rather, to draw the distinction between their process and ours. We simply have to be a little more creative, and sometimes more discreet, in how we pursue this path.

In this article, I’ll discuss the three main phases of preparing for this transition: Phase I - Reflect on Your Goals and Cast a Vision; Phase II - Assess Your Options; and Phase III -Position and Prepare. Additionally, I’ll lay out what I believe are the most useful and effective tactics and questions to ask within each phase.

Phase I – Reflect on Your Goals and Cast a Vision
This is the softest of the three phases, and it involves something that we don’t do a lot of in the military…reflecting. We’re more comfortable receiving a mission-type order and aggressively putting it into action. I cannot, however, overstate the importance of this phase. Before you dive headlong into the almost all-consuming process of business school applications, you must do your best to make sure this is the right path for you. Though there are many questions worth exploring in this phase, three rise to the surface as the most critical:

1. What is my career vision? You don’t need to get too specific here (i.e. don’t worry about industry), but you should at least try to provide the broad contours of your vision by answering the following questions:
   
   >>Is business the best path for me? Or would other options such as law, government, or engineering be more attractive?
   
   >>What kind of career trajectory am I looking for? Do I really want to take a shot at being a CEO someday?
   
   >>What kind of lifestyle and work/life balance will I be comfortable with? Do I really want to find myself in a super-competitive environment where excelling professionally could entail travel and long hours? Or would I rather pursue something more low-key?
   
   
2. Is an MBA an important ingredient in my career vision? Business school is a great path, and it certainly opens up a range of new possibilities to many newly minted MBAs. But it may not be necessary for you depending on your vision and career goals. You may be able to jump squarely onto your ideal path straight out of the military, foregoing the two-year investment of time and money that top programs require. You may also conclude that an MBA is absolutely essential to your vision. Regardless of how you answer this question, you’ve made progress. You now have a little more clarity on how to proceed.
   
   
3. What type of MBA program is right for me? In today’s world, there are many different ways to get an MBA. For the purposes of this article, I’ll briefly discuss the two most common, and arguably the most useful, for veterans.
   
   Full-time: The first is attending a full-time two-year MBA program. This option is the most intensive and for many veterans offers the most benefits. You’ll acquire entirely new skill sets; you'll gain invaluable knowledge about not only your future profession but also yourself; you’ll lay the foundation for a robust professional network beginning with your classmates and alumni of your school; you’ll have at your fingertips a range of resources and services such as career coaching and professional development; you’ll be able to take advantage of unique experiences and opportunities such as business plan competitions and global treks; and depending on which school you attend, you’ll have a variety of high-caliber firms and companies eager to make your acquaintance during recruiting season.
   
   Part-time: Maybe the full-time option seems excessive and a part-time MBA is a better fit for you. For some people this is a fantastic option. In fact, if you land a job with the right company upon exiting the military, the company may have a program in place to put high-potential individuals like yourself through such a program…fully funded. Working full-time while you earn your MBA means a few things. You’re learning a great deal on the job, you’re instantly able to apply lessons from MBA courses to real world scenarios, you’re making money, and you’re building your reputation within your company and advancing your career at the same time.

As you can see, there’s a lot to consider in Phase I. It may take you anywhere between a few days and a few months to adequately explore and answer these questions for yourself, but I encourage you to take these questions quite seriously. If you give these questions their due diligence, and you ultimately determine that you’ll pursue a top MBA program, then I assure you that having already thought through these issues will serve you well when it comes time to start filling out applications.

Phase II – Assess your Options
For the purpose of the rest of this article, I’ll assume that after completing Phase I, you’ve decided that attending a top MBA program is your objective. This next phase, then, is all about getting smart on those programs, assessing your personal fit with each, and narrowing your list. In order to do that, I recommend doing the following:

1. Research school websites: It almost seems too obvious to mention, but you’d be surprised at how many people skip this. The fact is that most schools have put a plethora of valuable information on their sites that provides insight into everything from the school’s curriculum and culture to sample student profiles and data that will give you a sense of what it takes to be competitive.
   
   
2. Read MBA sites: There are too many MBA-related sites out there to read them all, but you should find a few that you like and begin to follow them regularly. In addition to our own blog, a few of our favorites here at MilitaryToBusiness are Poets & Quants, Clear Admit, and Stacy Blackman’s B-School Buzz. The benefit of these sites is that they serve as an unbiased third party. You’ll find articles and data on a variety of topics such as price comparisons of tuition for top schools, where graduates from each school end up in the job market, and how Stanford and Harvard stack up against each other.
   
   
3. Visit schools: Understandably, this could be difficult for a number of reasons, but if possible, visiting a school can give much deeper insight into what it would be like to be a student there. Meet and talk to students. Visit the admissions office and listen to an admissions brief. Visiting a school offers the added bonus of putting you on the admissions department’s radar screen…never a bad thing.
   
   
4. Reach out to current students: There are two good places to start when trying to contact current students. I recommend you begin by reaching out to the members of the schools’ veterans’ organizations. In my experience, because of the bond between fellow veterans, these are the most likely individuals to spend some time chatting with you. Most school sites have a public listing of their various student clubs and organizations, so check there first. If that doesn’t work for you, contact any current students who also attended your same undergrad. LinkedIn is the best way to find these connections. The bottom line is that it’s never too early to begin exploratory conversations to learn more about these schools, and current students offer a quick way to learn.
   
   
5. Network with alumni: Scour your current network to see if you can find an introduction to people who have graduated from the various MBA programs you’re interested in. It’s even better if you can find alumni who are also veterans. If you’re successful in making contact, in most cases they’ll be thrilled to talk to you. What you want to learn from these people is not necessarily what it’s like to go to school X, but rather, what it’s like to have graduated from school X. A sense of life after business school is an important insight to gain. Furthermore, these contacts can potentially serve as valuable resources in Phase III as well.

The objective of this phase is to gradually build a list of the schools to which you’d like to apply and to develop a strong understanding of what makes each school unique. Ideally, you'll begin this phase as soon as you feel confident with your answers from Phase I, but if you're struggling with the Phase I questions, then overlapping Phase I and Phase II just slightly may help you get off the fence. I should also say here that this phase really doesn’t end until you’ve completed the entire admissions process and have accepted an offer from a particular school. Up until that point, you should constantly be working to learn more about your schools in order to ascertain which one might be best for you.

Phase III – Position and Prepare
Finally, the phase that you’re all most eager to learn more about! So, what can you do now to get into your schools of choice? My apologies that you had to read about Phases I and II first, but I couldn’t in good conscience set it up any other way. Before I dive into the details here, it’s important to note that Phase III could and should run concurrently with Phase II. Many of the conversations that you’ll have with current students, for example, will not only help you learn about the school but will also give you insight into how to position and prepare yourself to be competitive…two distinct objectives that you’re pursuing simultaneously. So here they are, in order of importance, my recommendations for how to position and prepare yourself for top business schools when your transition is still two or three years away:

1. Excel at your job: This may not be what you expected to hear, but it’s absolutely essential. All of the top business schools will be looking for a pattern of excellence in each endeavor you’ve pursued. Your current job is your primary endeavor. Take on the most challenging assignments, push yourself beyond your comfort zone as a leader, and go after roles and responsibilities that you find meaningful so you can pour your heart into them. When it comes time to apply to your schools, the vast majority of what you’ll discuss in your resume, essays, and interviews will be related to what you’re doing right now. You’ll want to have something to talk about, and you’ll want to have done it exceptionally well. Beyond the impact your work performance has on your business school candidacy, you’ve still got plenty of time to make a big impact within and beyond your organization, so do your best and try not to get too distracted.
   
   
2. Crush the GMAT: The last thing you want to be worrying about two or three years from now when you’re applying to business school is either a GMAT score you’re uncomfortable with or no score at all. Take the time now to build a game plan to earn the score you want. To do this, start by reviewing your calendar and looking for the best 4 to 6-month stretch to prepare for and take the GMAT. Your calendar is likely full of things like workups and deployments, but the advantage of preparing early is that you should be able to find a relatively unbroken block of time in which to focus. For more strategy and tactics on defeating the GMAT, visit one of our previous posts here.
   
   
3. Assess and address the gaps in your arsenal: Your diligence in Phase II should give you a better picture of what it takes to be competitive for admission to your schools of choice. You should take the time to reflect on what you’ve learned and figure out where you’re coming up short. Every school is looking for something slightly different, but it’s safe to say that all schools are interested in candidates who are well-rounded and who excel at what they do. It’s this point of well-roundedness that often gives veterans trouble. After all, you’ve been exceedingly busy with pretty weighty responsibilities. Military life can be all-consuming, and if we’re not careful, that can be the only dimension that really shines through in our business school applications. So, start by thinking about what you’re currently involved in outside of your immediate job in the military. Do you do any volunteer or community service work? Are you involved with any non-profits? Have you written an opinion piece for your local newspaper? Do you have any hobbies or passions that you pursue? If the answer to all of these is “no,” and you can’t think of another way to demonstrate how multidimensional you are, then this is a gap you need to address. Pick something you care about or find interesting, carve out some time for it, and get involved. I think you’ll find that the benefits of rounding yourself out as a person extend far beyond your competitiveness as an applicant.
   
   
4. Time your exit: You need to consider your current schedule to depart active duty and then figure out if this timing is optimal for transitioning into business school. Separating from the military in May, for example, is far better than separating in November for obvious reasons. Since you’ve been diligent enough to start thinking through these issues so far in advance, you may be able to influence the timing of your exit to coincide nicely with potential matriculation dates. An extension is likely your easiest option. But depending on your circumstances and your service, there may be opportunities for early separation in order to pursue full-time education. Check with your personnel office on this one.
   
   
5. Disclose your intentions wisely: As we’ve already discussed, it’s not the most common or celebrated path for high-performing military officers to exit in order to pursue an MBA. So don’t be too quick to reveal your intentions. You certainly need to be honest and forthright at all times, but there’s absolutely no need to disclose your intentions before it’s required. Depending on your command climate, letting the cat out of the bag could impact the types of roles and responsibilities you find yourself in during your remaining service obligation. At some point your command will need to know your intentions so they can properly plan, at which time you may be reassigned. And in this case, that reassignment is entirely appropriate. The bottom line is that you should use your best judgment regarding when and how to make this announcement.

The last piece of advice that I’d give on this topic applies to all phases of this process. It’s simply this: don’t let this consume you. It’s so easy to get sucked into the MBA admissions vortex, and it’s really tough to get out of it. You’ll be sucked in soon enough once you get into the thick of your applications. Your work in the military right now is far too important to be neglected, and you still have time to accomplish a great deal. So, continue to do the amazing things you’re doing, look into a few of the things we’ve talked about today when your schedule allows, and when your transition rolls around, I’m confident you’ll be setup for success.

-Dave C., Guest Blogger and Senior Consultant with MilitaryToBusiness (bio)