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Hi Paxton/Kaplan team,

If you could take a few moments to have a look, it'd be much appreciated!

UGPA: U. Waterloo (repeatedly #1 by Macleans, Canada), 2005, Sociology major, Management Minor, 73%, about a 3.0 US conversion

Grad school: Cranfield SoM (#2 UK Business School after LBS, Financial Times, UK), 2008, Strategic Marketing, 2:1, about a 3.5 US conversion

Thanks in advance

Hi and thanks for the interesting question.

It sounds like you a solid thought not, perhaps, a spectacular profile. My first impressions / thoughts are roughly as follows:

- If you went to Cranfield, why are you you planning to apply to a US business school? It sounds like you got a graduate degree rather than a certificate or something similar and I feel pretty comfortable saying that this will be at the top of an admissions committee's mind.

- The 700 GMAT is a great goal and would, I think, "tint" the rest of your application in a positive way.

- I like the Canadian and UK experience: it's good to have international.


Taking everything together, unless your work experience is stronger than it first appears (and it may very well be), my take is that shooting for those top programs may be a bit of a stretch. To make that stretch I would focus on:

- Getting top notch work experience (managing people; managing projects; being on the hook for bringing in revenue) between now and then;

- Getting a very good GMAT score;

- Developing a very compelling case for how business school can help you on your career path.


Please let me know how else I can help. You're in an interesting place as an applicant and I can probably give you a bit more thinking with a bit more data.

Cheers--

Paxton