Beat The GMAT a GMAT & MBA community

Hey All!,

I just want to say that this is an excellent resource for people starting the MBA application process such as myself. I would like to give a little background about myself. I am currently a 25 year old white male and work for a start-up in Austin TX that was started by a group of McCombs MBA grads. I am also a level manager with the company and work closely with the C-level executives. My job focuses on handling all the operations of the company which is already involved internationally. I am two years out from undergrad and want to apply for MBA admissions by the time I am 27-28. I went to a flagship research state school for undergrad with a degree in Supply Chain Management and Operations. The school is ranked just outside of the public ivies and my degree is one of the top 10 programs in the field. But here is my unique situation:

In undergrad I went through not one but two different health scares that effected my overall GPA. My first health scare was that I found out that I had a learning disability while in college. This occurred in my Sophomore year but once I found out how to overcome this, my grades returned to normal. In my Junior year, I contracted black mold poisoning. This was by far the worse thing that has happened to me in my life. This lasted my whole junior year of college and well into the following summer. Doctors did not know what was wrong with me. The physical symptoms resemble pneumonia and bronchitis so I kept getting treated for those illnesses. Mold poisoning could eventually kill you as it weakens your entire immune system and I was no exception. As the mold grew inside of my body it also caused other worse side effects. This included short-term memory loss (absolutely made all of my studying useless), depression, severe anxiety, unhealthy shifts in weight, mind fatigue (brain fog), and phases of temporary blindness and hearing loss. Every day was so hard to live because I felt like I could keel over at any given moment. I had to give up a lucrative internship with a multi-national because I was so sick. I returned home and saw more doctors at a nearby university. They finally tested me for mold and the tests came back positive. After all of the months of struggle, I had a clear answer. The recovery took a couple of months but I was feeling better. In the end, this saga sunk my gpa because I was still enrolled while sick. I even got put on a academic probation because no one knew if I just had a bad cold or something worse. I still attended classes even though I was not all together in my mind. By the time I fully recovered, damage was complete. Since I was a Junior at the time of my sickness, I had accrued enough credit hours to where it was impossible to for me to bring my gpa back up to pre-sickness. I went from a 3.68 to 2.82 in one year and I graduated with a 2.87 (I was trying my hardest reach back above a 3.0). This is after I did well my last two semesters at school. I also had tons of ECs (president/treasurer of the largest social fraternity and a vice president of the largest community service student org) as well as working full-time to pay expenses that a scholarship did not cover. The sad aspect is that the university would not let me appeal my grades or probation and let me retake some classes. So my gpa is my major concern in my applications.


Fast forward two-years and I am will be taking the GMAT within the next 6 months. Like I said before, I live in Austin and I am the only employee in my office that does not hold a McCombs MBA and I feel that everyone has benefited from having a top MBA. I also feel that my coworkers' entrepreneurial spirit has rubbed off on me so I want an MBA to focus my ideas and have peers to bounce ideas off of. I do not want an MBA that focuses on Supply Chain so that rules out Arizona State, Penn State, and Michigan State mostly because I feel that is not the direction I want to head in. McCombs is my dream school and I could do it part-time but I am not opposed to doing a program full-time. I am intrigued by Oxford SBS but I feel that is a long shot. I am interest in mostly Texas schools but I am also interested in Darden and UNC, which I feel would be a far reach as well.

I know I should probably take some more quantitative classes after I see how I do on the GMAT. I am just looking for some guidance on what I should do given these circumstances. I feel that I would be an asset to a school, not only as a student but also an alumni. Sorry for the long story.

Thanks