Hi,
I recently took the GMAT and am looking at applying for business school this fall. I have been a software developer since graduation, working on products that I personally loved before employment. I moved from a narrower market and larger company to a small startup with a huge potential market to increase my impact and widen my skill set, but I am interested in business school to increase my impact further, perhaps by learning how to properly start my own company, joining an established company in a managerial capacity, or bringing my ideas to many companies through consulting/VC.
Here are my stats:
27 year old Asian American male
GMAT: 750 (Q50 V41) AWA 5.5
Education: BS in EE/CS from UC Berkeley, 3.45 GPA - got straight As my first semester (including mutivariable calculus), then did pretty badly (~2.6) for 3 semesters due to fraternity duties and admittedly a lack of focus, but finished strong my last 2 years with a mixture of As and Bs, including As in statistics and some of the consensus most difficult CS undergrad courses at Berkeley.
Work Experience (in order):
Summer internship in software development at a large international conglomerate.
Summer internship in software development at a federal government lab.
3 years developing AAA console video games, several of which sold 500k+. Sole ownership of many features with input in design. Brought my employer back with me to my alma mater to recruit a few times.
2.5+ years as key developer at a high profile Internet startup of ~20 employees with 50M+ active users. Ownership over multiple products, more involved in overall company strategy (we didn't know what we were doing or how to make money for a while). Some direct communication with partners, customers, and large user community. Published an open standard for the open source community.
Extracurriculars:
Multiple leadership positions in fraternity, volunteered to tutor and mentor kids in the evenings a couple semesters, member of CS honor society, recruited top high school scholarship recipients to university. After college, both jobs did not leave much consistent time (at normal hours) for much organized outside my usual hobbies.
With my career goals in high technology, I've looked at various rankings and researched alma maters for established leaders in the field, and come up with a preliminary list of potential programs: HBS, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, UCLA, USC, Carnegie Mellon, Chicago, Northwestern, Columbia.
I've got a couple questions:
* Does my list of programs seem realistic? Are there any other good programs for me to consider?
* I understand that adcoms know certain universities grade tougher, and certain majors are tougher, but do they know specific courses within universities that are difficult? Do I need to stress that some of my best grades occurred in some of the toughest courses, or will they already know?
* On a similar vein, are adcoms familiar with the amount of time necessary in my fields of work (to explain my lack of significant ECs after college)? I know the time requirements for some finance fields are well known, but I don't know if the same is true for specific engineering fields.
Thank you for your help!
I recently took the GMAT and am looking at applying for business school this fall. I have been a software developer since graduation, working on products that I personally loved before employment. I moved from a narrower market and larger company to a small startup with a huge potential market to increase my impact and widen my skill set, but I am interested in business school to increase my impact further, perhaps by learning how to properly start my own company, joining an established company in a managerial capacity, or bringing my ideas to many companies through consulting/VC.
Here are my stats:
27 year old Asian American male
GMAT: 750 (Q50 V41) AWA 5.5
Education: BS in EE/CS from UC Berkeley, 3.45 GPA - got straight As my first semester (including mutivariable calculus), then did pretty badly (~2.6) for 3 semesters due to fraternity duties and admittedly a lack of focus, but finished strong my last 2 years with a mixture of As and Bs, including As in statistics and some of the consensus most difficult CS undergrad courses at Berkeley.
Work Experience (in order):
Summer internship in software development at a large international conglomerate.
Summer internship in software development at a federal government lab.
3 years developing AAA console video games, several of which sold 500k+. Sole ownership of many features with input in design. Brought my employer back with me to my alma mater to recruit a few times.
2.5+ years as key developer at a high profile Internet startup of ~20 employees with 50M+ active users. Ownership over multiple products, more involved in overall company strategy (we didn't know what we were doing or how to make money for a while). Some direct communication with partners, customers, and large user community. Published an open standard for the open source community.
Extracurriculars:
Multiple leadership positions in fraternity, volunteered to tutor and mentor kids in the evenings a couple semesters, member of CS honor society, recruited top high school scholarship recipients to university. After college, both jobs did not leave much consistent time (at normal hours) for much organized outside my usual hobbies.
With my career goals in high technology, I've looked at various rankings and researched alma maters for established leaders in the field, and come up with a preliminary list of potential programs: HBS, Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, UCLA, USC, Carnegie Mellon, Chicago, Northwestern, Columbia.
I've got a couple questions:
* Does my list of programs seem realistic? Are there any other good programs for me to consider?
* I understand that adcoms know certain universities grade tougher, and certain majors are tougher, but do they know specific courses within universities that are difficult? Do I need to stress that some of my best grades occurred in some of the toughest courses, or will they already know?
* On a similar vein, are adcoms familiar with the amount of time necessary in my fields of work (to explain my lack of significant ECs after college)? I know the time requirements for some finance fields are well known, but I don't know if the same is true for specific engineering fields.
Thank you for your help!
