Ask an MBA Admissions Consultant

Age: 25

GPA : 3.0 . Top 10 engineering school. Chemical Engineering
GMAT : 680 (plan to take it again)
work experience:1 year start up consulting, 3 years financial analyst for top bank/investment bank
Graduated as I was working since I finished my core classes and was offered full time position by my current employer with one class left to take so I didn't technically graduate till 2008 even though I have about 4 years total full time work experience.

I own and operate two profitable businesses: one is education consulting for families that want to send their children to usa but can't communicate the language. The other is a highly successful online retail niche business. Both have margins over 80% and the only "employee" that I have is my wife. I've had both businesses since late freshman year and have been working full time at work and full time at home. I am very interested in the financial securities field and that's the field I would like to go into so I am interested in going to a top 10-15 school

My top school choices are

Chicago
Upenn (legacy on both sides of family)
NYU
Harvard

back up would be Texas and UVA.

Based on my scores I'm guessing the schools above may seem like reach schools but I think I would only like to attend a school if it's ranked highly.

I understand I need to work on my application but my time is quite limited. Would it be best to concentrate on an alternative transcript (did get some b c d in some quant classes), higher gmat, or just my overall application. I would like to attack them all but I am unsure if I will have enough time to. Any feedback would be helpful.

I plan to use a combination of accepted for my reach target schools and stacey blackman as well. Any feedback would be useful.

Hello,

Although your work experience appears to be strong (I say "appears" because you would need a standout performance in the analyst role, and I don't have that information) and related to your goals, I believe the combination of relatively low GMAT (for those programs) plus low GPA will make it difficult. Being a double legacy at Penn could possibly help there. An alternate transcript also would definitely help. It's late for this season, but perhaps you could start and provide evidence of taking the course and note that you'll provide grades/transcripts accordingly.

That said, I still think it would be a hard go at the top programs. HBS would be particularly tough; I suggest focusing on the other schools first. In shaping your message and strategy, ask youself: what can you say to make the adcom want to choose you among other well qualified, and probably better qualified, applicants? You're not in the "impossible" range for NYU, Chicago, and Penn, but you have the burden of giving them a good reason to admit you over your competitors.

Best regards,
Cindy Tokumitsu
Senior Editor, Accepted.com
www.Accepted.com