Ask an MBA Admissions Consultant

International Applicant from Jordan (Middle East)

GPA: 3.74 (English Major)

GMAT: 760 (49Q/44V)

TOEFL Score: 118

Working Experience: 3 years

Current Occupation: Small business owner

Occupation Highlights:

Bootstrapped my business, a creative copywriting and digital advertising agency and landed over 30 clients in 2 years

Extracurricular Activities:

Founder of non-profit organization that helps young entrepreneurs bootstrap their businesses

Founder of non-profit organization promoting creativity in the workplace by reaching out to employers and employees and supplying them with information kits, creativity games, creativity boosting techniques, in addition to organizing monthly creativity workshops and seminars

References
Letters of reference from 3 of my long-term clients (all who have been in the market for 8+ years)

Reason for MBA:
Gaining new skills to manage my NPOs and forging relationships with a network of would-be entrepreneurs

Applying to:
HBS
MIT Sloan
Stanford GSB

I would love to get your input on the following:

I graduated from a top university in my home country (Jordan - Middle East) but majored in English Literature. Do I need to invest a pre-MBA program or online business courses to strengthen my application?

My ideal school is HBS, is my current profile competitive enough to gain acceptance?

Highly appreciate your time.

You have an excellent profile with several strong points. Your metrics (GPA and GMAT) are outstanding, and your entrepreneurial background should be very interesting to the admission committee. Having founded two not-for-profit agencies will also add to your appeal. For the past several years, around 40% of the students accepted to HBS have come from the humanities and social sciences and barely a quarter from undergraduate business programs. Your undergraduate major should not be a barrier. In fact, it should allay any concerns over your English abilities. The school will want to know how you have shown quantitative proficiency. If you do not have coursework in the area you might want to take a course or two, but you can always cite your successful financial management of your business and your excellent GMAT score as evidence of your quantitative ability.

You are clearly the sort of candidate who should be applying to the schools on your list. However, and I tell all my clients the same thing, these schools have many more outstanding candidates than they can accept. They start with a strong pool (there are few really weak applicants to these schools) and then reject 85-95% of them. No one is guaranteed admittance under those odds. Much will depend on the balance of applicants in the pool. Being from Jordan should be helpful as there are fewer applicants from your country than from many of the South and East Asian countries.

At this point you need to ask yourself whether you are committed to the education and skills a top MBA can afford and are determined to attend school in the next year or so. Or, are you sufficiently pleased with your career progress and prospects that you will only give up two years of time and income and spend over $100,000 if you can go to the schools on your list. The latter is a perfectly reasonable position, but you need to recognize that there would be a possibility of not being accepted to any of your schools. On the other hand, if you are committed to going next year, you should add one or two "safety schools" to your list. An experienced admissions consultant can help you put together the strongest possible application and guide you in the selection of schools.

Good luck,