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[boyiiman]

Hello,
I was hoping some of you could take a look at my profile to see if my target schools are appropriate. I graduated from UCLA with a degree in math/economics with a 3.0 GPA. Furthermore, I recently took the GMAT and scored exactly a 700. However, I only have two years of full time experience. For the past two years I have worked on business development for a very small private company. I have been promoted once, however being such a small company there hasn't been much advancement opportunity. Furthermore, while in college I passed the level one CFA exam. For admissions purposes would you strongly recommend finishing this designation? my target school are:
NYU
MIT
Cornell
Carnegie Mellon
Yale
Columbia
Northwestern
Georgetown

I understand thise are all extremely good MBA programs, and I may not qualify for admissions to ANY of these. If you feel this is the case as well, could you please recommend the range of schools that would better fit my profile?
Thank you so much!!

:D :D

[Bryant@VeritasPrep]

Be encouraged! A cursory look at your core qualifications indicates you do indeed have the raw material for the top tier, in which the schools you are targeting reside. Especially given that you are not targeting the coveted penthouse rankings (Stanford, Wharton, Harvard...), which receive an insane number of applications each year, I would say you have been very reasonable in your goals. To get a 7-handle on your GMAT is excellent. In fact, you probably would not see too much more bang for the buck by trying to add a marginal extra 10 or 20 points to your score, and only risk posting additional scores below 700. If I were you, I'd stick with my 700 with no apology and not look back. Your GPA is not stellar, but you graduated from a marquee school with a good reputation, so as long as there are no glaring maladies on your transcript (ie failing calculus or finance or something like that) I would say coupled with your GMAT, the adcoms should not call to question your academic credentials. Your key will be couching your 2 years (I assume it will be three by matriculation) in as impressive a light as possible. Don't sell yourself short. You will need to dig into your experience at a small firm (which is unique in and of itself) and sell the merits of close contact with higher ups and access to information flow that you would not have had as a small cog in a big firm. The adcoms look for maturity, innovation, leadership and teamwork as a general rule, so craft your essays to speak to each of these broad areas. The most important thing is to have a solid story for why now is the best time for you to return to b-school. If they sense you would benefit from more time in the field, you will raise flags. Of course a good consultant or even a contact you may have who knows the b-school drill would be useful in helping you cast a vision to the commitees that will resonate and be memorable. Good luck!