Hi Stacy/Linda -
I wanted to get your opinion on my situation and whether my outlook is realistic:
I began college at a fairly respected state university and did very well that year (3.9 GPA) and then transferred to a top undergrad. There, I double majored and wrote a thesis, studied abroad, built great relationships with professors, and had phenomenal extracurriculars but have an odd transcript. I dropped a couple of classes resulting in Ws, failed one, and my GPA over 3 years was in the low 3s. I took the GMAT once for a scholarship program, and took it blind and got a score in the upper 600s. I recently retook it (about a year later) and got an 800 after studying for about a month. My hope is that this would offset my GPA woes and ugly transcript. The only other thing is that I suffered a major injury while in undergrad and some of my academic troubles came from that. I'm not sure how I would include that in any apps going forward.
In terms of experience though, I spent my summers interning at 2 different bulge bracket investment banks, got some great, live experience and then landed a full time gig at a top consulting firm (McK/BCG) and plan to spend 3 full years there with a 3rd year in a up and coming office abroad. I decided to take a year off as I felt very burned out and am going to be interning with a very large NGO in the Middle East/North Africa for a few months before beginning full time.
I feel very blessed to have gotten the opportunities that I have and with that, my expectations remain high. I would love to attend a school such as HBS, Stanford, MIT Sloan, or INSEAD. Is that going to be realistic for me? I know I'm at least 1 or 2 years away from applying, but I want to do whatever I can once I'm on that job to put myself in a strong position to attend a great business school and ideally have my firm pay the way.
Thank you for your help!
I wanted to get your opinion on my situation and whether my outlook is realistic:
I began college at a fairly respected state university and did very well that year (3.9 GPA) and then transferred to a top undergrad. There, I double majored and wrote a thesis, studied abroad, built great relationships with professors, and had phenomenal extracurriculars but have an odd transcript. I dropped a couple of classes resulting in Ws, failed one, and my GPA over 3 years was in the low 3s. I took the GMAT once for a scholarship program, and took it blind and got a score in the upper 600s. I recently retook it (about a year later) and got an 800 after studying for about a month. My hope is that this would offset my GPA woes and ugly transcript. The only other thing is that I suffered a major injury while in undergrad and some of my academic troubles came from that. I'm not sure how I would include that in any apps going forward.
In terms of experience though, I spent my summers interning at 2 different bulge bracket investment banks, got some great, live experience and then landed a full time gig at a top consulting firm (McK/BCG) and plan to spend 3 full years there with a 3rd year in a up and coming office abroad. I decided to take a year off as I felt very burned out and am going to be interning with a very large NGO in the Middle East/North Africa for a few months before beginning full time.
I feel very blessed to have gotten the opportunities that I have and with that, my expectations remain high. I would love to attend a school such as HBS, Stanford, MIT Sloan, or INSEAD. Is that going to be realistic for me? I know I'm at least 1 or 2 years away from applying, but I want to do whatever I can once I'm on that job to put myself in a strong position to attend a great business school and ideally have my firm pay the way.
Thank you for your help!
