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Depressed, Scored a 590 today. Profile eval. Please help!

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GMAT Score:540

Depressed, Scored a 590 today. Profile eval. Please help!

by Simony104 » Mon Mar 28, 2011 11:45 pm
I need your help! Please help evaluate my profile. I just took my GMAT today and received a 590 score, I'm frankly a little disappointed. I was hoping to get high enough score to apply to UCLA FEMBA, USC PM or any top 20 school, but unfortunately my score only allows for USC PM.

Thank you in advance for taking a look at my profile, if you have suggestions of other top tier schools that you think I would have a shot with or you have heard of admission success stories with low GPA please share. Any words of encouragement is greatly appreciated at this point.

Male
29 y/o
Asian
Southern California Local

10 years management experience in Health Care (7 years managing a Radiology Clinic/3 years in Health Care staffing/sales)

3 of those 10 years I owned a Import/export recycling company part-time.

I have 2 internet start ups in development this year. Projected launch date for both is summer of 2011.

I will definitely have a great letter or reference from the current President of my company, current clients and also a reference for a Physician at my previous company.

Extracurricular/Military/Volunteer work- active member of the State Military Reserve

California State University - BA in Management GPA 2.9

GMAT 590

MBA Concentration: Entrepreneurship
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by Tani » Tue Mar 29, 2011 1:46 pm
Your background appears to be much stronger than your GMAT. The score alone can be a barrier at the very top schools, but there should be many that can still offer you the education you need to move ahead. Generally you should look to be within 30 points of the average GMAT score for a school. With a strong essay set and recommendations you can stretch that somewhat. Remember, schools, by definition, accept 12.5% with scores above and 12.5% with scores below their middle 75% statistic.

Your combination of healthcare and entrepreneurship should help you. I suggest keeping one or two dream schools on your list and then finding a couple of schools for which your stats are more in line with their average classes.


Good luck,
Tani Wolff
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by Simony104 » Tue Mar 29, 2011 2:58 pm
Wow Tani, thanks for the quick reply and a boost of confidence, its much needed at this point. I want to stay local so I plan on applying to USC part time and UCLA FEMBA, last round applicant. I have not considered other schools that are more in line with my stats. I haven't heard of any other well known top schools besides USC that would consider a gmat as low as 590. If you have any suggestions please fire away.

Also, I've heard on the forums that UCLA is one of the schools that does have the barrier that you mentioned. In your experience, have you found this to be true? If you have examples of students with low GMAT scores who were admitted to top programs, please share.
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by Tani » Thu Mar 31, 2011 9:09 pm
Harvard has reportedly accepted an applicant with a 540 GMAT recently, but that was undoubtedly someone with a truly exciting profile.

Part time and executive programs often are more lenient on scores because they draw from a limited geography, so they don't have as many applicants. On the other hand, the smaller the class, the riskier it is for the school to take a low-scoring applicant. I have had schools tells my clients that they would be accepted if they brought their GMAT up. They admit that they are measured on their rankings and the rankings are hurt if the GMAT average drops. Part time and Executive programs are often not as sensitive to average scores.

Good luck,
Tani Wolff
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by Simony104 » Mon Apr 04, 2011 2:29 pm
Thanks, I'll add UCLA Executive to my list of schools.
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