Ask an MBA Admissions Consultant

Hello,

To tell you the truth, I'm in a frightful bind right now, so if you could toss around some ideas I'd like to hear them.

Let's get to the facts, and nothing but the facts.

Alright, I'm a 29 year old male from Spain (well, at least I'll be 29 in less than a week). I hold a degree in economics from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid.

I've spent the last 4 years of my life to pass a competitive examination to enter one of the elite specific corps of the Spanish senior civil service. (This is a reasonable amount of time, much in line with the average) So I am, in short, a top level mandarin. It is a very small and exclusive corps, the elite of the economic and commercial public administration, and members of my corps are normally ministers of finance and trade, undersecretaries of those ministries; and in the private sector they are CEO's, CFO's and Board members of various top Spanish companies. A rough equivalent, with all the inaccuracies it entails, would be to say I'm an "énarqué" (graduate from the ENA, École Nationale d'Administration).

I'm currently working in the Ministry of Economy and Finance as an Adviser for International Finance, since September 2009. What I basically do, is to prepare the Spanish position and policy in respect to the IFI's (IMF, World Bank, EIB etc.)

I also am a lecturer since September, at a public postgraduate academy that focuses specifically in international economics and internationalization issues for companies. I also am a tutor for graduate students that want to pass the competitive examination to enter my corps.

I shall also be awarded a scholarship from the Fulbright programme. Various colleagues of mine have followed the same route as Fulbright scholars and studied MBA's, MPA's and etc in most of the top ranked business schools in the US.

As it is, my father is a diplomat and I've been living all my life in different countries, I've been to various schools abroad, I was raised and brought up in English and in French. So I'm basically trilingual.

Now, I'm planning to get into an MBA programme in a top ranked business school in 2011(Booth, Kellogg, Wharton, Sloan, Harvard etc.). I have yet to take the GMAT; I'm just waiting for the official "aye" on the Fulbright scholarship in order to use it as a lever during the application process. This is by the way the advice my colleagues who have been in those schools told me.

I have one concern though, and that is my professional experience. It's a short one (only 6 months as per now), although at a senior level.

My strategy is basically to get the scholarship firstly in official terms and then apply for the MBA programmes.
With all that in mind, and with a tidy GMAT score of around 700 (by the way, this doesn't make me lose any sleep), ceteris paribus, what do you reckon my chances are?
Any thoughts or tips please?

Thanks a lot.

tough one. In short, you will be coming in way under the average in professional experience, which is approaching 5 years at top schools, but on the other hand, international applicants are down lately, so you may have an advantage there especially as the number of applicants from Spain is likely very low compared to East Asia or India. Remember schools want to be certain you bring good experince to the table so you can add meaningful business insight to discussions. If you don't have much experience, make sure you sell what you have done as intense, unique and potentially valuable to the class.