This post originally appeared on Stacy’s “Strictly Business” MBA blog on U.S.News.com

Almost every day, I receive E-mails and phone calls from new clients that go something like this: “I have a 2.9 GPA, 680 GMAT, and four years of work experience in consulting. I’ve been promoted twice; I have good extracurriculars. What are my chances?”

MBA hopefuls then want to find out what is the most important part of the business school application. Is it the GMAT score, undergraduate transcript, essays, interview, letters of recommendations, or something else entirely?

Everyone wants to know what to focus on in their application, and how their personal circumstances rate. Top business schools don’t admit you based purely on your statistics, though.

It’s true that solid numbers can help your application be considered. While a 550 GMAT or a 2.5 GPA will raise a red flag at an MBA program like the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, a 700 GMAT and a 3.6 GPA make you a solid candidate. But even an 800 GMAT score and a perfect GPA can be rejected at an elite MBA program.

Ask most admissions committee members and they will tell you that it’s the sum of many pieces—there is no one “most important” part. The top schools want to know who you are, and statistics and a résumé don’t tell them that. It’s the essays, interviews, and recommendations that ultimately reveal the person beyond the paper.

Compelling essays, recommendations, and interviews can provide context for a low GMAT score or GPA—but the reverse is not true. Strong numbers will never make up for weak essays or a disorganized, negative recommendation.

Some say the most important part of the application is your so-called “weakest” part—one weakness could completely change how admissions committee members perceive your application. In fact, in a recent blog post, Yale School of Management‘s Assistant Dean and Director of Admissions Bruce DelMonico urged applicants to be up front about their weaknesses.

“Everyone has weaknesses,” he stressed. “We’ll see them, so you’re better off acknowledging them and incorporating them into your application than hoping we’ll miss them.”

While I doubt that any business school admissions committee would formally support this statement, I would have to cast my vote for essays as the most important part of your application. The essays allow the admissions committee to truly discover who you are. It’s where you write why an MBA makes sense as the next step of your career path, and how you differentiate yourself from all of the other individuals who also scored in the 700s on their GMAT.

The essays are your opportunity to present your strengths, explain your weaknesses, and generally convince the admissions committee members that you have a lot to offer the program and that you belong in their class.

The essays are also consistent among all applicants, so in that way they are less difficult to evaluate and compare. All candidates are given the same set of questions, and are reviewed by the same group of admissions members, creating a level playing field that can simplify the review process.

[Learn to strike the perfect tone in MBA essays.]

Interviews are very different; some are conducted over the phone, some at the business school, and all are handled by different types of individuals with different approaches.

Recommendations vary as well. While all applicants do their best to find great recommenders, some individuals work with MBAs who understand the process. Others work with people who have no idea what to write.

The essays are each individual’s opportunity to talk about their true self. You should know that most applicants to the top schools are qualified, in the sense that they would be able to handle the curriculum and benefit from the program.

However, to be admitted, you need to demonstrate that you are more than merely qualified. It’s the story that you put together about your goals, passions, and prior experience—and how business school fits into the mix—that will make the difference for you. Once that story is assembled, I can better answer the question: “What are my chances?”

For applicants contemplating an executive MBA from INSEAD, know that the school introduced its own specially designed EMBA admissions test in February of this year that seems to be garnering a very positive response from test-takers.

If you’re still wondering whether to do the GMAT or the INSEAD test, take a look at these points of comparison INSEAD has shared with us, which may inform your decision.

The final decision is yours, and INSEAD assures applicants that your choice won’t affect how the school views your candidacy. Keep in mind that testing is ultimately to your benefit, as it guarantees all of your classmates will have strong analytical and linguistic abilities.

To learn more about INSEAD’s alternative admissions exam, take at look at these FAQs, which offer insight on preparing for the test and lay out the five components that make up the test.

 This article was written by Mike McGarry, GMAT expert at Magoosh GMAT Prep, and originally posted here.

For the GMAT Verbal section, on Critical Reading and Reading Comprehension, you are not expected to have specialized expertise in the topics they discuss.  Sometimes, though, it is particularly helpful to have general real world knowledge.  If you make a habit of reading regularly– either a good newspaper (the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, etc.) or the Economist magazine– then probably you will have a very good sense of the “push and pull” of real world situations.

If your GMAT is soon, and you don’t have time to get up to speed with everything about the practicalities of business, economics, and politics in the real world, this is the first post in a series of five real-life areas you should be familiar with: knowing these can only help you interpret these verbal questions.

Each article will have hyperlinks to articles with more information, if you find the content new or unfamiliar.  Again, no question will automatically expect you to know any of these inside out, but insofar as you understand these, they will provide germane background,  help you interpret the question, and help you to spot unrealistic incorrect answer choices.

Here’s the full list:

• Economics: Supply and Demand (below)
• Economics: Labor and Wages
• Economics: Inflation, unemployment, and interest rates
• Law: “beyond any reasonable doubt”
• Statistics: Statistical significance

The Law of Supply and Demand

This is a must-know idea if you are heading toward business school.  If you studied business or economics in your undergrad years, supply and demand should definitely be familiar ideas.  When a product or service is for sale in the free market, as a general rule, there are two forces determining how much it will cost.

Demand concerns how much the potential consumers want the product or service — how willing they would be to pay a certain price for it.  High demand means: people would simply line up to buy this product, even at a high price; low demand means that the product is hard to sell, that even lowering the price does little to spur sales of the product.

Supply concerns how easy it is to bring a certain product or service to market: for a given price, how willing/able would producers be to bring this product or service to the market for sale.  High supply means: the producers easily can bring tons of it to the market. Low supply, or short supply means:  it’s harder to produce the product, and producers can’t make as many or as much as consumers would like to buy.

The Law of Supply and Demand says that, in a free competitive marketplace, the price will come to equilibrium at that level at which supply equals demand.  In other words, at this equilibrium price, the producers are willing to make N units, and the consumers are willing to buy N units.

The Law of Supply and Demand implies — as a general rule, if a product or service becomes scarcer, harder to get or provide or make — i.e. supply drops — then usually the price will rise; and if a product or service becomes more plentiful, easier to get or provide or make — i.e. supply rises —- then the price will tend to fall.  For example, when world events threaten the supply of crude oil to the US, then the price of gas in the US rises.

Similarly, when demand is very high, the price typically will be high, and when demand drops, usually the price will as well.  Think of a new CD or DVD — when it’s first released, everyone wants it — it’s the new “hot” thing — and since demand is high, the price it typically high; then wait a while — a few months, or certainly a few years later — inevitably interest in the item drops, and so does the price.

The Law of Supply and Demand is not a universal rule.  There are some rare example of items that do not follow the Law of Supply and Demand, for instance, a Veblan good or a Giffen good.  You do not need to know the technical details about these exceptions, but it’s good to know that there are exceptions.

Summary

Knowledge of any of this is not “required” for the GMAT, but the more familiar you are with these facts, the easier it will be to place arguments in context and identify unrealistic incorrect answer choices.  Furthermore, if you want to demonstrate your competence in business school and beyond, it certainly would be a good idea to understand all of these things well!

According to a recent poll of 265 business school admissions officers, early opinion of the GMAT’s newly introduced Integrated Reasoning (IR) section is decidedly mixed. As a new season of applicants prepares to submit the first set of applications with GMAT scores that include the IR section, Kaplan Test Prep‘s 2012 survey reveals that more than half of MBA programs still aren’t sure how important IR scores will be in the evaluation process.

While 54% responded “undecided” to the question “How important will a student’s Integrated Reasoning score be in your evaluation of their overall performance on the GMAT?”, 22% say IR scores will be important, and 24% say IR scores will not be important.

The four question types found in GMAT Integrated Reasoning – table analysis, graphics interpretation, multi-source reasoning and two-party analysis – feature scatter plots, sortable tables, and multi-tabbed data.  Such question types, introduced in the new section in June, 2012, are novel compared to the formats traditionally seen on graduate school-level admissions exams such as the GRE, LSAT and MCAT.

Among the major findings:

• In Kaplan’s 2012 survey, 41% said IR would make the GMAT more reflective of the business school experience, a big drop from the 59% who answered that way in Kaplan’s 2011 survey.
• Those who weren’t sure if IR would make the exam more reflective rose from 37% in 2011 to 49% in 2012.
• Admissions officers who said IR would not make the exam more reflective increased from 5% in 2011 to 10% in 2012.
• Somewhat similarly, 54% “do not know” if Integrated Reasoning makes the GMAT more reflective of work in business and management after business school; 36% say it does; and 10% say it doesn’t.

“Schools generally prefer to gather performance data on a new test or test section before fully incorporating it into their evaluation process,” says Andrew Mitchell, director of pre-business programs at Kaplan Test Prep.

“Not all applicants in 2012 will submit GMAT scores with an IR component,” Mitchell adds. “We can expect that, as more data is available, schools will determine clear policies, in which Integrated Reasoning may play a key role. In the meantime, GMAT test takers should not take GMAT Integrated Reasoning any less seriously than the Quantitative or Verbal sections.”

Mitchell notes that because test takers receive a separate score for the Integrated Reasoning section, poor performance can’t be masked by stronger performance on other sections of the test.

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), owner of the GMAT exam, has announced that last year was a record year for the exam. Volume for the 2012 testing year (July 1, 2011, to June 30, 2012) was up 11 percent from the prior year, and eight percent higher than the previous record of 265,613 in 2009.

A total of 286,529 GMAT exams were taken, with 831,337 score reports sent to 5,281 graduate business and management programs around the world — all historic highs, says GMAC.

The record volume partially reflects increased interest in the exam brought on by the addition of the Integrated Reasoning section on June 5, 2012. Historically, test volume rises just before changes are made to a standardized exam as test takers opt for a familiar format at the transition.

GMAT testing outside of the United States continues to grow quickly. Tests taken by non-US citizens rose 19 percent in 2012 and represented 59 percent of global GMAT volume.

Chinese test takers, the second-largest citizenship group after the US, represented 20 percent of global testing. In 2012, the number of exams taken by Chinese citizens increased 45 percent to 58,196 exams. Meanwhile, Indian citizens, the third-largest citizenship group, took 30,213 GMAT exams, a figure that increased 19 percent in 2012.

The percentage of exams taken by women hit 42.9 percent in 2012—a record for the third straight year.

“Today’s global students — who may be a citizen of one country, study in second and choose to work in a third — recognize the significance and the superiority of the GMAT exam in gaining admission to the best management programs around the world,” says David Wilson, GMAC president and CEO.

“Business and management skills are needed more than ever in an ever increasing variety of organizations. Business schools have responded by offering a deeper portfolio of programs to meet these diverse needs,” Wilson adds.

In a recent update to its MBA admissions blog, Stanford Graduate School of Business attempts to ease the concerns of some applicants wondering how the school will view their scores in the GMAT’s brand-new Integrated Reasoning section.

“Rest assured that IR is is new to us, too, and it’s going to take us (and our peer schools) some time before we know how to interpret it as it relates to the Stanford MBA Program,” writes Allison Davis.

According to the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the GMAT, the new IR section measures test taker’s problem-solving skills when presented with data in different formats and from multiple sources.

The section is scored on a scale of 1 to 8 in single-digit increments. Like the Analytical Writing Assessment score, IR will be reported as an independent score that does not affect the computation of the GMAT Total Score.

While schools will see your IR score if you’ve taken the new GMAT, Stanford GSB says that for this application year, at least, MBA admissions will focus on the verbal, quantitative, AWA and total scores.

Applicants have plenty of things to juggle and worry about throughout their journey to business school, so don’t lose a wink of sleep over the new Integrated Reasoning section. We’ll have a better idea next year of how the scores play in the evaluation process.