Read on for real stories from MBA applicants and students…

In QS Top MBA’s Diary of an MBA candidate, IE Business School MBA student Remy Carera ponders the pressure of exams, what to do in his summer break, and the concept of selling his professors for charity.

Stacy Blackman welcomes new B-school blogger/applicant MBA Shuffle, who is deep into GMAT study mode and writes this week about reading comprehension and other tales of woe. Because this area seems like a gimme, he thinks a lot of people don’t really spend the time to practice and develop a strategy for getting these done quickly and efficiently.

En Route to MBA is convinced that when it comes to school selection, it’s all about the brand name. En Route…says an MBA is a one time activity, so it better be at a school with a collateral life long brand value!

Greek Entrepreneur looks at cause and effect this week. Does graduating from a top university make one successful, or is one accepted into a top university because one has already demonstrated success? He thinks all the people who have graduated from the top programs would be successful even without doing an MBA.

Omne’s MBA Journey checks in with a potpourri post covering studying, scandals and puppies. With his GMAT appointment in just two weeks, Omne has his own test-taking strategy and the recent cheating scandal on his mind.

Tinydancer also weighs in on the GMAT cheating scandal. She thinks whoever purchased the actual, live GMAT questions deserves whatever punishment is handed down to them, although the harshness will vary by school. Tinydancer won’t be the only one watching and waiting for the fallout.

Now that she’s half-way through her internship, MBA Salsera gives up the pros and cons of the experience but the jury’s still out on how she feels about it.

Mission MBA is feeling glum over his lack of cosigner for a massive student loan. After much frustration, he’s realized that any school that needs a cosigner for any loan is definitely a no-go, and programs that offer a no-cosigner loan up to the cost of attendance remain on his list.

Stacy Blackman’s Weekly Roundup of B-School Intelligence

The Graduate Management Admissions Council reports a 56% surge in applications to part-time MBA programs from 2006 to 2007. Whether returning to school to move up at work or to make a career change, being a working student can be intense. The Wall Street Journal offers some ways to smooth the transition.

The Stanford School of Business’s graduating MBA Class of 2008 left One Million Dreams, the name adopted as they set out to raise one million dollars as a class gift to the School. Their record-breaking $1.2 million gift exceeds previous records both in the percentage of participation by the class and dollar amount pledged and raised.

HEC School of Management in Paris is to establish a “Real Estate Chair” to promote business education in the fields of real estate economics, finance and management.The chair has been formed in partnership with Morgan Stanley Real Estate, Unibail-Rodamco, the commercial property investor and the HEC Foundation, a body of more than 45 international companies that supports the school’s ambitions.

The Aspen Institute, whose work on corporate responsibility and environmental issues on MBA programs is arguably the gold standard on the subject, is publishing its first guidebook for prospective students. The Aspen Institute Guide to Socially Responsible MBA Programs 2008-2009, published on Wednesday, will primarily be distributed as an electronic download, though print editions will be available through Amazon.com.

Potential employers enjoy asking MBA applicants off-the-wall questions, says BusinessWeek.com in a piece offering advice on how to keep your cool when the queries come from left field.

A group of 15 students enrolled in the Whitman School of Management’s iMBA program have just spent five days soaking up information about financial markets, global management, foreign exchanges, and economics in London. Associate Dean for MBA & MS programs, Maurice Harris, says “These international residencies, undertaken several times a year by the iMBA program, embody Whitman’s commitment to giving our students first-hand global experiences to enhance their understanding of today’s rapidly expanding business world.”

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania announced that its award-winning business analysis journal, Knowledge@Wharton, has published “A Knowledge@Wharton Special Report: Inside the Subprime Crisis,” a deeply layered analysis of one of the most devastating economic challenges to face the US economy in years.

Economist.com wonders whether executive-education programs are finding that China is not the land of milk and honey after all. Recently several schools, including the University of Maryland’s Smith School of Business and China Europe International Business School (CEIBS), have been reported to be scaling back, in both cases, curtailing their Beijing operations while continuing in Shanghai.

And finally, both the Haas School and Kellogg School of Management posted their 2008-2009 essay questions online this week. Now there’s no excuse for procrastinating!

This week’s GMAT challenge from PrepForTests.com is a problem solving question.

Have a go at answering this and then review your answer.

In our blog, we provide news, tips and tools to help you navigate the MBA admissions process. Despite the high volume of information that gets printed every week, we do not regularly address the fact that many applicants face a set of challenges that are very different from GPA, GMAT and resume. I want to help applicants work through road blocks to success that may include self-doubt, anxiety, procrastination and generally feeling overwhelmed by this process. Hopefully with a bit of “Vitamin MBA” I can help you to overcome these challenges so that you can put our other resources to work and truly excel on your applications. I now present you with a dose of “Vitamin MBA”:

If you want to be successful, a good place to look for advice is with other successful people.  According to lifehacker, Jerry Seinfeld has a productivity secret that helped him as a young comic in need of great jokes.  His advice followed like this:

1)  buy a big wall calendar and a magic marker
2)  for each day that you accomplish your task (his was writing jokes), put an X over the day
3)  after a few days you create a chain of X’s, and you will be inspired to keep the chain alive
4)  DON”T BREAK THE CHAIN!

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I think this is very helpful advice for those applying to business school.  Many people procrastinate like crazy and set themselves up for failure by targeting one weekend where they will work around the clock on applications.  I have found that slow and steady is a much better way to go.  Sure, you might have your marathon essay sessions.  But on a day where you are working late, just be sure to spend 30 minutes before bed brainstorming, outlining or revising your resume.  Every little bit helps and the consistency will help to keep this very important goal alive.  Daily action can also help to eliminate the anxiety that grows when you push things to the future and put a lot of pressure on what you can accomplish in one specific day.