Beat The GMAT - the MBA Social Network

This 25-year-old has the perfect background for an elite MBA: An undergraduate degree from an Ivy League university and a prestige job with Google. He also co-founded a non-profit that teaches software coding to under-represented high school students in New York. But his first try on the GMAT led to a 620 score.

He works as a project manager for a leading health care IT company. With a 760 GMAT and a 3.76 grade point average from a top ten liberal arts college, this 23-year-old wants an MBA to move into strategy consulting.

He’s a 25-year-old consultant at a second-tier firm who has helped lower income families with tax prep and legal issues. With a 750 GMAT and a 3.95 GPA, he hopes an MBA will allow him to land a job with McKinsey, Bain or Boston Consulting Group.

What these would-be MBA candidates share in common is the goal to get into one of the world’s best business schools. Do they have the raw stats and experience to get in? Or will they get dinged by their dream schools?

Sanford “Sandy” Kreisberg, founder of MBA admissions consulting firm HBSGuru.com, is back again to analyze these and a few other profiles of actual MBA applicants who have shared their vital statistics with Poets&Quants.

As usual, Kreisberg handicaps each potential applicant’s odds of getting into a top-ranked business school. If you include your own stats and characteristics in the comments, we’ll pick a few more and have Kreisberg assess your chances in a follow-up feature.

(Please add your age and be clear on the sequence of your jobs in relaying work experience. Make sure you let us know your current job.)

Sandy’s assessment:

Mr. Would-Be Social Entrepreneur

• 740 GMAT
• 3.8 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in business from Brigham Young University
• Work Experience as a sell-side research analyst at a top-tier middle market investment bank
• Extracurricular involvement includes two years on an LDS volunteer mission in Chile, five years as a middle school boys’ basketball coach, and one year in student government; also founded a new BYU organization to help sophomores prepare for business school
• Goal: “To couple my quantitative and analytical skills gained through work as a research analyst with a broader understanding of management in order to pursue international work as a social entrepreneur and enable Latin American business leaders to become great employers in their communities”

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 20% to 30%
Stanford: 10%
Wharton: 30% to 45%
Northwestern:  40%
Chicago: 40+%

Sandy’s Analysis: Well, I like you, but as noted before, 3.8 is considered a “low-ish” GPA at BYU (only partially kidding, but lots of BYU accounting majors apply with 3.9-4.0) and being a sell-side research analyst is not something that puts a fire in the hearts of many adcoms. Neither does your goal to work as a research analyst post-MBA and “somehow” turn that into social entrepreneurship in Latin America. Your extras, including the LDS mission to Chile and internal BYU activities are OK but not exciting to adcom beyond the usual value they place on LDS missions. Adcoms prefer extras which impact communities beyond yourself, the Chile mission partially does that, but the BYU stuff was all “inside baseball.”

Those are the reasons you will have a real hard time at Harvard and Stanford. There’s nothing really driving you in, and you have a mildly boring story. Your social enterprise plan for Latin America does not have a enough reality traction from your past activities and sounds tacked on to sound good.

Wharton takes guys like you based on solid stats alone, but you need to clarify your post-MBA goal ideas. Try saying financial consulting, possibly with a focus on Latin America, based on your mission to Chile and leave out social do-gooder ideas for the time being. Guys like you get into Kellogg and Booth all the time. I might change my mind on HBS if your firm has a history of placing kids there, and they have decided that this year, YOU ARE THE ONE, or some version of that.

Mr. Tax Prep

• 
750 GMAT
• 3.95 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in economics from a top 15 U.S. News University
• Work Experience includes three years in management consulting at a firm slightly outside the top tier (i.e. Deloitte, Oliver Wyman, L.E.K)
• Extracurricular involvement as president of the consulting club and treasurer of a fraternity as an undergrad; currently active in recruiting with my firm and volunteer with a local charity that helps lower income families with tax preparation and legal issues
• Goal: “To return to my firm or pursue a position with McKinsey, Bain or BCG
• 25-year-old white male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 25% to 30%
Stanford: 20%
Wharton: 30% to 45+%
Northwestern:  40% to 50%
Chicago: 40% to 50%
Dartmouth: 40+%
Columbia: 40+%

Sandy’s Analysis: Read my analysis of the guy right above you, with the 3.8 from BYU and the 740 GMAT. You are him with 15 basis points of better GPA (been hanging around with too many bond traders), 10 points of increased GMAT, and no  added X-chromosome or added X-factor in terms of extras, firm prestige, or ‘stardust.’ In other words both you are two high-scoring white guys doing OK but not exciting things.

What could make the difference for you is that folks from LEK, Oliver, and Deloitte DO get into HBS, and if so, why not you, given your very strong stats? I think your extras, especially volunteer tax prep for lower income families, and some service work for the firm are marginal but they might be enough, if your firm really gets behind you in terms of both formal recommendations and possibly a phone call or tete-a-tete with Dee (be still my heart). This is a case where your recs will need to be super powerful.

Jeepers, saying you want to return to your firm or go for McKinsey, Bain, or BCG is a little unexciting. You need to develop a shtick about what kind of consulting you want to do, even if it is an artifact based on bread crumbs in your past life. Once again, see above profile, where I suggest that guy combines his mission to Chile and a finance major into a job in finance consulting with a possible Latin American focus. That would help.

Mr. Google

• 620 GMAT (will retake)
• 3.53 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in psychology and political science from Harvard/Yale/Princeton
• Work experience includes two and one-half years at Google working in a technical consulting role
• Extracurricular involvement includes assisting diversity outreach and recruiting at Google as well as co-founding a non-profit over the last year that teaches under-represented high school students in New York software coding; also was a tutor in college and worked as a research assistant in my school’s organizational behavior department at the business school
• Goal: “Interested in moving into higher level roles at the intersection of business and technology. In long-term being a CTO or starting my own technology consulting company”
• 25-year-old black male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 40% to 45%
Stanford: 20% to 30%
Wharton: 40+%
Dartmouth: 40% to 50%
Columbia: 40% to 50%
Berkeley: 30% to 50%
Yale: 50+%

Sandy’s Analysis: Dunno, dude. Retake the GMAT and try to get a 680, which may put that issue to bed. A 700 would be great. You could possibly get in with a 620. Some do, and why not you?  But this is a strong profile, including H-Y-P and Google, and what sounds like a lot of exciting extracurricular work — especially teaching underserved high-school kids computer coding (man, that is a WINNER!).  Schools are always looking for black male technical types,  so you got a lot going for you.

Goals: “Interested in moving into higher level roles at the intersection of business and technology. In long-term being a CTO or starting my own technology consulting company” are right on the money although could be refined to include your focus on education. Ed-tech is a big buzzword these days, and you could be the guy to do it. Or say you will.

Stanford is always threading the needle, but if you do raise your GMAT to 680 and get solid Google support, you might be on your way. HBS takes guys like you all the time. Wharton might choke on the GMAT. They are real picky about that. Other places take guys like you all the time. It’s a real solid story, just get in some zone, and keep taking the GMAT until you get 680 or so, even if you have to take it four or five times. Schools don’t care. They just want the number, and they admire guys who take it five times. It shows the kind of attitude they like.

To wit, “I can take the stinking GMAT five times, and I can sit through your boring program and classes because success matters to me.”

Mr. Oil & Gas

• 760 GMAT
• 7.1 GPA on a 10.0 scale
• Undergraduate degree in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology
• Work experience includes three years at Indian’s largest natural gas transmission and processing company with a revenue of $7.37 billion as a factory manager and then a team leader in gas distribution. “(In charge (Part of the team), Gas T&D, North India – Gas sale worth 120 million USD per month). Zero cross country experience.”
• Extracurricular involvement as an advisor to a startup in education consulting; also associated with social service institutions since childhood and have worked for an NGO that helps under-privileged children
• Played Cricket at university
• Goal: Oil & Gas Consulting/General Management
• 25-year-old Indian male

Odds of Success:

Northwestern: 40% to 50%
Dartmouth: 40% to 50%
Berkeley: 30% to 50%
Yale: 40% to 50%
Duke: 40% to 50%

Sandy’s Analysis: Your story  is totally in-line with Kellogg, Tuck, Haas, Yale, and Duke–and a bit off for Harvard, Stanford and Wharton due to what looks like OK but not super GPA and some issues around your job and your company.  A big issue here is what schools think of your company. You say, “three years (at the time of applying) at country’s largest Natural Gas transmission and processing company with a revenue of 7.37 billion USD.”

Is that a brand name globally, or a well-known national firm? Sounds like the latter, but the key question is does that company often send kids to US business schools (for future profile writers, that is something I would include in the profile, since I have now mentioned it about 4,568 times, and it is often a vital piece of information).  I am not totally sure exactly what you do, or what you mean by  “(In charge (Part of the team), Gas T&D, North India – Gas sale worth 120 million USD per month). Zero cross country experience. ”

But moving right along, sounds like you have some responsibility for regional sales of gas, transmission and distribution. Hey, that is about what most guys who work for gas companies do, but it is not as gripping as working on an oil rig for a month straight for Chevron, which is the more typical H/S/W oil and gas profile, along with client services.

Extras beyond that are unclear as well, but they sound OK.  So we got a ‘so-so’ to ‘maybe’ good job, 7.1 at IIT (which I don’ t think is super-duper but someone correct me if I am wrong, and YET ANOTHER NOTE TO PROFILE WRITERS, INCLUDE SOME SENSE OF WHAT GPA IS ON 4 SCALE OR WHERE YOU STOOD IN CLASS IN PROFILES).

Plus a 760 GMAT. All in all, OK, and with proper presentation you should have a solid chance at those schools, with the usual, goals, how career fits with goals, how you fit with the school. Make it real clear in your application the size, range, and selectivity of your company. Most schools are used to seeing IIT applicants who work for Shell, BP, Schlumb, and they penalize you unfairly for working at a national not an international company, despite your company being No. 1 in some ways in India in gas.

Mr. Health Care

• 760 GMAT
• 3.76 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in international relations from a top ten liberal arts college
• Work experience includes 28 months as a project manager at the dominant healthcare IT company (35-40% of Americans receive care using our software) working with the billing module; Worked first 16 months as a coordinator, splitting my time between two clients and was primarily responsible for leading a team of 10 client-employed analysts for each project and guiding them through the process of designing and implementing our software. Now mainly work with our clients’ CFO and Director level staff to help them manage the financial risks and leverage the opportunities for efficiency that come with the roll-out of an electronic billing system. Extracurricular involvement as editor of the student newspaper, writer on two other papers, plus a volunteer and eventually a paid tutor for first-generation college applicants and underprivileged students; also president of a small political club (not Dems or Reps)
• Goals: “To move into strategy consulting for health care organizations. The industry is at a major turning point right now when it comes to technology, regulations, and business models and I want to make a difference in how hospitals do business.”
• 23-year-old white male

Odds of Success:

Northwestern: 40% to 50%
Harvard: 35%
Stanford: 20%
Berkeley: 50%
Chicago: 40% to 50%
MIT: 50+%

Sandy’s Analysis: Hmmmm, a 760 GMAT and a 3.76 from a Top 10 liberal arts college is a good start, and being at the intersection of health care and IT is a good place to be, since that is getting a lot of attention. You seem to have had a successful run at this company, which you claim is the “dominant health care IT company (35-40% of Americans receive care using our software).”

Say, do you mind if I ask a question that may not have occurred to anyone who has read these last 150 profiles: HAS ANYONE FROM YOUR  COMPANY IN A JOB SORTA LIKE YOURS APPLIED TO A FLIPPIN’ BUSINESS SCHOOL AND WHAT WERE THE RESULTS???? This shouting is not so much directed at you as to future profile writers, it would really help if you included that as part of the metric, but I have a feeling many of you do not because it is TOO predictive and you want to see if somehow you can jump the shark, as it were.

Given your ace grades and GMAT, and what appears to be increasing levels of responsibility, if anyone from your company from a similar job got in to school X, Y or Z, well, so will you. If not, you are still in solid shape, since I assume your company is a brand name of some kind, and you have interesting and varied college extras, viz. “Lots of volunteer hours and eventually paid employment tutoring first-generation college applicants and underprivileged students. President of small political club (not Dems or Reps).”

Lack of current extras, could be an issue at HBS and Stanford, but could be overcome with exciting execution of your total application and some spit on the ball from execs at your company. Sounds like you deserve strong recs.  At other places you note, Kellogg, MIT, Booth, Haas, you should get in on stats, solid job and excellent career advancement alone, plus the hot field of IT/Healthcare.

Your goals as stated, “I want to move into strategy consulting for healthcare orgs. The industry is at a major turning point right now when it comes to technology, regulations, and business models and I want to make a difference in how hospitals do business,” is right on the money.  Although don’t limit yourself to hospitals. You mean health care delivery in general, but you knew that.

This is a real solid profile, just make sure your company gets behind you big time.

Handicapping Your MBA Odds–Latest Posts

Part XXVIII: Handicapping Your Shot At A Top School
Part XXIX: Can You Get Into A Great B-School
Part XXX: Handicapping Your Odds of Getting In