Ask Stacy Blackman

Hello Tracy,
I went through your posts and was quite encouraged. I gave my GMAT last week and was dejected to see 560 (Q42, V25). I was getting on an avg 620-650 in practice tests. I'll brief my profile below and will appreciate if you can share some insight and suggest if I must give GMAT again.

I have 10+ years of experience (Both in Large companies such as Alcatel, Lucent and very small silicon valley startups). I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and thus geared my career accordingly. I started with software development in a couple of large companies to gain experience of a big corporation and then joined a mid size company to do Marketing/Product Management. Finally I joined a real small startup (Founder of the company called me to join as member of the core engineering team, so I moved back to software development). Then as the startup grew, I moved to different organizations such as Customer Support (Helped develop the support processes, issued RFP for CRM and project managed the CRM implementation etc) and finally I am currently into Sales as Sales Engineer for last two years. My short term goal is to get part time MBA from HAAS and then eventually start my own venture.

I have B.S in Compture Science from India (GPA 3.3 ) and Part Time/Distant Learning MS in Computer Science from USA (GPA 3.4). I had joined Toastmasters Club when I was in Dallas working for Alcatel (I gave 7 speeches and am 3 short of getting my Distinguished Toast Master). I have taken Steven Covey's work shops and courses in Marketing & Entrepreneurship from Stanford School of Continuing studies. I am a member of TIE (The Indus Entrepreneur) organization, SIPA (Silicon Valley Professional Association) and PMI (Project Management Institute). I had started a Cricket Club with my friends last year and was on the organization comittee.

I worked on a telecom startup earlier this year (in parallel to my current job), but wasn't fortunate enough to get funded. We developed business plan and pitched to investors, but couple of startups just beat us by 3 months.

I am on an advisory board committee of a couple of startups in India and helping them in Strategic & Business front. One of the companies was short listed this fall by student from Harvard University (Graduate School of Design) who was doing a research on startups in Architectural field in India. He's going to publish about this company in a report in Feb 2007. My contribution was echoed in the presentation given to him, but not sure if my name would be there in his report (boy, that would be awesome).

Being in Sales, I travel a lot for my work and have a 6 months daughter. Between the two, I am occupied and thus doesn't have time to apply in lot of schools. I was originally planning on applying in Berkley Part time and Wharton EMBA west program, but due to time, I don't think I'll be able to do justice to two applications.

I have the following questions
1. Based on the information provided above, what do you think is my chance to make in Berkley? I have two options, one is to wait for a year, polish my GMAT to 650/680 or work on my application and apply in Round2 or wait for one year. I would hate to delay my plans by one year. On scale of 1 to 10, what would be your take.

2. What would you consider as a good GMAT for my profile.

3. Does Toastmaster exposure help? Will it be value add to finish my remaining 3 speeches and get Distinguished Toast Master title.

4. Will it be plus to mention about the parallel venture (even though it didn't succeed). If yes, shall I attach the business plan with the application or will they just take my word for it??? I can attach the link of our beta website in the app, if that makes difference.

I am really puzzled and will appreciate any information that you can share. Also, if you can send me to some pointers where I can find out more about part time program at HAAS.

Thanks