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Hello,

First, let me say how great I think it is that you take your time to answer these questions for us. It truly is greatly appreciated.

I have question that I thought would be common, but I have not seen it come up many times so I'm hoping that you can provide me some insight.

I took the GMAT about a month ago with what I believed to be realistic expectations of scoring around a 630/640. I have always been fairly good at sentence correction, reasoning and reading. Math has been the Achilles' heel for me all my life. Long story short, I scored a dismal 540. I scored a 69 Verbal and a 29 Quantitative. I did however score a 6.0 on the AWA Needless to say I was rather disappointed and immediately made another appointment for this upcoming week.

My question is this; on Saturday I received a packet from Notre Dame along with a letter from the "Dean of Admissions" saying that I was a "PERFECT" match for Notre Dame and that while they can't make promises , based on my profile I will likely be admitted and receive scholarships. I should mention I did not list Notre Dame as a school I wanted to attend, I did not chose them as one of my 5 schools to receive a report. Furthermore, I have never had any contact with anyone at Notre Dame at any point in my collegiate career, or in my working career. Notre Dame is a top 20 school, why do they want me when I scored so low on the GMAT? The cynical part of me want to assume that they send these out to many people in hopes that people will send application fees and make money, yet, I don't see a school like Notre Dame doing something like that. Is this common practice? I did a year of law school and scored reasonably well on the LSAT, but I also know that while other things in law school are looked at, the truth is the LSAT score is what really places the student. Are MBA programs different?

There is only one thing I can think of (and if this is the case, I'm completely fine with it) for Notre Dame to contact me. While reading the various rankings the Financial Times does, Notre Dame was 100 out of 100 when it comes to diversity. I'm a Basque-American and write Basque as my ethnicity. Let me give you a quick summary of my profile:

26/M
Basque American
Bilingual in English and Spanish (I also can read and understand some French and Italian)
B.A., International Business at a fairly reputable Liberal Arts school in the west (Westminster)
GPA 3.5
Lived and worked in the US and Spain; Lived in the US, Spain, Chile and Argentina
Worked for a law firm, accounting firm and the past two years as a Business Analyst for an international IT firm.

Can you comment on a possible remedy for what I view as a large discrepancy in my score and Notre Dame's interest? I thank you in advance and apologize for the long-winded explanation.

Regards,

Hello,

It’s an interesting question. Would Notre Dame have known about your Basque heritage? I just don’t know the reason they sent you the package, i.e., where they got their information about you. It may have been the GMAT, but I agree your score is low for ND. Still, they may have a low threshold to encourage people to apply, figuring that they can screen more closely later. It’s also possible that they got your information from the test company before you took the test. Or they may have gotten it from some other source that you don’t remember or even know about. Unfortunately I can’t advise on how much weight you should give to that letter.

One thing you could do to shed some light on the matter is to call the adcom and ask about the letter -- their policy, where they got their information, etc. You could say you are flattered by their interest but want to confirm it before applying. With the right tone it shouldn't have any negative consequences at all.

In any event, good luck with your MBA plans. I wish I could be of more help on this point.

Best regards,
Cindy Tokumitsu
Senior Editor, Accepted.com
www.Accepted.com