Ask Admissionado

Hi,

Just wanted to see inquire about my profile and to see if you recommend taking the GMAT again.

I've taken the GMAT three times thus far, most recently scoring a 670 (IR7, Q47, V35), which is my best. My target schools in order of preference are:

1. Anderson
2. Marshall
3. Haas
4. Fuqua

About me: 29, African-American male living in Los Angeles, CA. Finance degree (3.25 GPA) from St. Bonaventure University (received an academic scholarship). Planning on applying through the Consortium for UCLA, USC, and Berkeley.

Experience: Currently I'm a Senior Consultant for a public finance investment management and advisory firm that works with municipalities (cities, states, hospitals, universities, etc.) and investment banks (all the major players) to provide analysis related to large-scale debt financing deals (the issuance of municipal securities to financial markets). I've been with my company for three years, and prior to that I worked as a financial program specialist for the US Treasury in Washington, DC for three years, implementing and managing e-commerce financial management systems that collect billions of dollars of non-tax revenue on an annual basis for all federal agencies worldwide. I've received numerous recognition awards at the Treasury and received the highest employee bonus last year at my firm for working on a huge SEC-initiated project in which the top five investment banks in the country hired us to conduct a 10-year financial compliance review for all of their municipal security deals (thousands each).

Extracurriculars: While in Washington, DC I coached youth basketball and started a successful charity campaign at the Treasury that earned the most donations agency-wide. Here in Los Angeles, I live and work downtown where I see the harsh realities of homelessness on a daily basis, which has led me to volunteer at numerous soup kitchens serving food, as well as tutor homeless children on a weekly basis.

Given my profile, do I have a realistic chance of being admitted to any of these programs? Would you suggest taking the GMAT a fourth time? I've studied for months and consistently score in the 700s on practice tests, but for whatever reason it hasn't translated to a 700+ on the real thing. Any advice would be much appreciated.


Thanks,
Zach