What are They Thinking? How to Get Ahead of Your Peers During the B-School Application Process
Each year, thousands of ambitious learners apply to business schools across the globe, seeking career enhancement, personal development, and a chance to broaden their networks.
And numbers have risen in recent years, with total applications to master’s programs of all types growing by 12% in 2024, according to the GMAC Application Trends Survey. It’s clear, then, that applying to business school is competitive, and increasingly so.
Competition can make the business school admissions process—which involves organizing documents, writing essays, and preparing for interviews—challenging to navigate. But it doesn’t have to be this way; by exploring up-to-date research into the minds of prospective business school students, you can find out what your peers are thinking, and learn how to get ahead of them.
The recently published 2025 GMAC Prospective Students Survey provides just such research, based on responses from nearly 5,000 prospective students collected across 147 countries. So, what is the next generation of business school students thinking today? And what key actions can you take to beat the competition?
1. Get upskilled in AI
Among those business school hopefuls participating in the survey, 46% said AI was an essential component of their ideal curriculum, an increase of 6% compared with the previous year. This popularity was consistent among respondents of all demographics.
In recent years business schools have ramped up their investments in the rapidly developing technology, incorporating it into the curriculum, the learning environment, and even into how students navigate campus life. As of January this year, just 22% of global programs reported they hadn’t implemented AI into the curriculum in some form.
With AI quickly becoming a core part of the business school experience, you can be sure that schools are looking for individuals who can quickly adapt to using the technology and even help drive experimentation to develop new use cases.
Within a competitive landscape where many other applicants will be seeking to refine their AI knowledge, upskilling before you submit your application is one way you can seek to impress admissions teams.
There are several ways you can achieve this, including taking online certificates or short courses covering relevant topics, or by downloading key tools and experimenting with different prompts and use cases. You can also find a wealth of reading materials available online.
2. Explore all funding options available
Gaining a quality education that can unlock your career potential has always required significant financial outlay. However, inflationary pressures, geopolitical concerns, and other factors have led to a global cost of living crisis in recent years, and many business schools have raised their tuition fees in response to the challenging economic environment—though it’s not uncommon for schools to raise the cost of study by 3-5% annually.
It’s no surprise, then, that prospective business school students are increasingly seeking financial aid to assist with the cost of enrollment. The Prospective Students Survey reveals the average learner today expects to pay 30% of their degree through scholarships, grants, or fellowships, a 5% increase compared with 2019.
Depending on your personal and professional background, you can find a wide variety of options available to help with funding your degree. There are merit-based scholarships available for those who excel on the GMAT exam, for example, as well as opportunities for those who have a strong academic profile with a high GPA and evidence of past achievements. Those requiring financial support can apply for needs-based assistance, while there are also scholarships and fellowships available for applicants who hail from specific communities. Elsewhere, organizations such as Prodigy Finance and Juno provide loans to help business school students finance their studies.
As well as helping overcome barriers to entry, being accepted into a scholarship or fellowship can provide further opportunities to become part of a network and establish connections with other like-minded students and alumni. So, if your peers are increasingly looking to gain assistance, you should be doing the same.
3. Use all available channels when researching target schools
When compiling your list of target schools, there are helpful information sources you can research such as school websites, brochures, and business school rankings provided by reputable organizations such as the Financial Times. However, the Prospective Students Survey shows you need to look beyond these formal channels.
Across the globe, aspiring students are turning to informal channels such as social networking sites and even friends and family to find out more information about schools and gain advice on where to study.
The benefits are clear. With LinkedIn, for example, you can connect with current students and alumni from your shortlisted institutions and ask for insights on the learning environment or advice for the application process. Using TikTok and Instagram meanwhile could help you find content that draws back the curtain on your target school.
Using GMAC Advancery, which features a business education planning tool that draws on data from sites such as Reddit to provide insights into different schools and programs, can also help you find programs that fit with your needs.
Of course, your friends and family know you best and can provide candid advice on whether they feel a particular program type, location, or learning environment will suit your needs.
Using these channels, as many others are doing today, can therefore help you become more knowledgeable and better prepared for the admissions process.
So, by learning about some of the strategies your fellow applicants are using as they get ready for the application process, you can in turn refine your own plan and better prepare yourself. This can help you find the right program, get informed about the admissions process, and gain the best chance of success.