What is The Consortium?

The name of this post should really be - The Consortium application process through the eyes of an applicant.

Last week I was asked by a blog reader what The Consortium was, so I wanted to address this topic since I've spoken so much about it and relatively, not many people would know about it unless they were applying through it.  So I'll give a little bit of background on The Consortium and then go into the application process because it's definitely SOMETHING ELSE!

I first heard about The Consortium from a friend who was applying through it two years ago.  I had never heard about it before but then when I started seeing it referenced on the school's websites that I was interested in I began to inquire further.  Here is evidence:  NYU Stern, Dartmouth Tuck, UC Berkeley Haas, Cornell Johnson, Michigan Ross (whew that took a lot to find all those links!)  So yeah I saw a reoccurring theme going on here.  Now some people may ask "Where is Harvard, Wharton, Columbia..."  Well... from what I hear... in order to become a member of The Consortium, the other member schools must vote you in.  So ask yourself this...Would NYU want to vote in Columbia?  Would UNC want to vote in Duke? Would any school want to vote in Wharton, Stanford, or HBS?  :-)

The Consortium Mission: The mission of the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, an alliance of leading American business schools and some of our country’s top corporations, is to enhance diversity in business education and leadership by helping to reduce the serious underrepresentation of African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Native Americans in both our member schools’ enrollments and the ranks of management. 

To this end there are 17 schools that are members of The Consortium meaning they're dedicated to the mission stated above!  Here is the list of Consortium Member Schools (go take a look at the list and then come back to my blog and you'll understand later why I wanted you to see the list of schools.)

There are four main benefits of applying through The Consortium and here's where I will add my perspective as an applicant.

1.) Common Application - One application allows you to apply to up to six Consortium schools.

My 2 Cents - So yes there is one application which a lot of people find amazing (myself included).  There are only two rounds though.  R1 was Nov 15th and R2 was Jan 5.  The only "downside" to this is that all of your applications are due on the same day, hence the reason for the madness I went through last week.   Here is what the application entails:

- 3 Recommendation letters - 2 professional and 1 that is from someone who can speak to how you support the Consortium Mission.

- 2 Mandatory essays - 1 about career goals and 1 about how you support the Consortium Mission

- 1 Optional essay - is there anything else you'd like for us to know?

- School specific essays - So each school has a topic or topics that they would like to use.  In a lot of the cases the school specific essay mirrored the school's "normal" application, but in some cases it did not ie. with Tuck - remember my video essay?

- School Rankings (fun times with this one...see Fellowship below)

2.) Tiered Application Fee - Using The Consortium common application significantly reduces your application fee costs. You may apply to up to two member schools for $150, three schools for $200, four schools for $240, five for $275, and six for $300.

My 2 Cents - nothing really to say about this other than it was simply INCREDIBLE!  Had I applied to 6 schools outside of The Consortium it would have cost at least $1200, but when I hit submit I had to pay $300 total, so that's a blessing.  This is why I added one more school to my list the Sunday before hitting submit.  My friend said "Richard what's another $50 and 2 essays?"  He was right too!  It's not like I needed to find new recommendation letters and what not.

3.) The Consortium Fellowship - Last year, Consortium member schools offered more than 330 fellowships covering tuition and mandatory fees for two years of full-time study. Applicants who are admitted through The Consortium process and become Consortium members are considered for these prestigious fellowships.

My 2 Cents - so when you apply through the consortium, you HAVE to rank your schools in order of preference should you be accepted.  Do the schools see your rankings?  The consensus is that they don't, so I'm going to go with that.  Why do you need to rank them?  Well it's all for fellowship consideration.  I believe in March the schools Consortium representatives get together in a room and practically "duke it out."  Here's an example of what happens to the best of my knowledge.

All of the acceptances and decisions go out with the rest of the people who applied normal R1 and R2.  If I am accepted to my first choice school they get the first chance to offer me a fellowship.  If they decide to forgo giving me a fellowship, I can still attend, but have to find other means of financial aid.  Also, if they decide to not give me the fellowship, then the school that I ranked 2nd gets the option to offer me one of their fellowships.  This continues all the way down the line.  At this stage in the game I do believe the schools know where they fall in your ranking.  Cool Right?  Well no not really because us applicants know which schools tend the have more fellowships available so that factors in to people's ranking decisions.  You can only be offered 1 fellowship because of the trickle-down effect works.

For instance, Michigan has a large Consortium cohort and I have many friends who are applying to schools outside of the Consortium who ranked Michigan first.  So now when doing my rankings I need to factor that in.  Also, one would think that a school would choose to give the fellowship to someone who ranked them first, but they don't BUT if you rank a school too low, the chances of getting a fellowship dwindle.  And then you get into a situation where you know that there are a couple schools out there who will not give a fellowship to anyone who does not rank them 1 or 2, a couple won't if you rank them below 1. So then you think to yourself.. hhmm if I won't get it if I don't rank them first then I'm just going to put them last so that I have a better chance with another school who likes to see themselves 1st or 2nd.

Now you see the trickiness of it all....  But once accepted you become a Consortium member.

Furthermore - If you've applied in R1 for any non-Consortium schools, your deposit will be due before you find out if you've received the fellowship, or acceptances for that matter, from any Consortium schools.  So you get into a situation where you may have to send a $2k deposit to school X before you know if you're admitted to schools A,B,C,D,E, or F.  

4.) Consortium Membership - Consortium members gain many benefits, including access to over 70 corporate partners, a mandatory Annual Orientation Program & Career Forum (OP) prior to beginning their MBAs, and access to nearly 6,000 Consortium alumni across member schools.

My 2 cents - This orientation program occurs in the summer and a LARGE percentage of students who attend walk away with an internship before the start of the school year!  This is huge because as we all know the recruiting process is grueling and pairing that with school work and activities is tough, so I've spoken to many students at schools who already had their internships when they started so they never had that recruiting headache.  You may be asking, well which companies recruit that soon?  Well... companies who are dedicated to increasing diversity.  All of the big MBA recruiters are there so it's not like these are just Tier 10 (are there Tier 10?) recruiters.

Also if you're a Consortium Member, you get a huge network!  HUGE! Networks are always fun!

Read and re-read this post if necessary, I know it's confusing.  That's all folks