Help! non profit applicant

[sungirl]

Hi,

I wanted to know what are my chances of getting into a top business school. Right now I would like to go to harvard, columbia, northwestern, ucla, usc, duke, berekely or stanford. I know that these all have stiff competition. I have three years of experience working as a manager in fundraising for a non profit. I started as an unpaid intern after college and have worked my way up to a manager, responsible for raising $900,000 per year. I have great recommendations from the chairman of the board and donors that I worked closely with. I graduated from UCSD as an econ major with a 3.1 and did significant volunteer work during college for my charity. Ideally, I would like to get an MBA to advance in the non profit field and make significant changes. I was planning on applying in second round this year, but I did not get a high enough gmat score (570, 32Q, 35V). I think I will probably retest and wait till 2010 to apply to schools.
What do you think would be a minimum gmat score that i could get in order to get into one of these schools?
Is there anything I can do before i apply in 2010 to strenghten my application? Should I volunteer for a similar non profit internationally?
Would it hurt my chances if I changed jobs in the next year?

Thank you for your input and advice!

[Linda Abraham]

Hi,

I wanted to know what are my chances of getting into a top business school. Right now I would like to go to harvard, columbia, northwestern, ucla, usc, duke, berekely or stanford. I know that these all have stiff competition. I have three years of experience working as a manager in fundraising for a non profit. I started as an unpaid intern after college and have worked my way up to a manager, responsible for raising $900,000 per year. I have great recommendations from the chairman of the board and donors that I worked closely with. I graduated from UCSD as an econ major with a 3.1 and did significant volunteer work during college for my charity. Ideally, I would like to get an MBA to advance in the non profit field and make significant changes. I was planning on applying in second round this year, but I did not get a high enough gmat score (570, 32Q, 35V). I think I will probably retest and wait till 2010 to apply to schools.
What do you think would be a minimum gmat score that i could get in order to get into one of these schools?
Is there anything I can do before i apply in 2010 to strenghten my application? Should I volunteer for a similar non profit internationally?
Would it hurt my chances if I changed jobs in the next year?

Thank you for your input and advice!

I think waiting a year a retesting is wise give your target schools and your GMAT score. . To answer your questions:

1) Aim for the highest score you can get. However to apply to these programs, barring URM status, you really need to have a 650 or more. Preferably 680 for the more demanding of them.
2) Yes, take graded, business-related courses and earn A's in them. Take accounting, econ, statistics for business, calc if you haven't had it and do have the pre-requisites for it. (Don't skip prerequisites or take classes you can't do well in. You are better off retaking a class to strengthen your quant foundation that floundering in a class that is above your head because you haven't done math in years. Then take the harder class after you have earned an A in the pre-req.)
3) Certainly international exposure would strengthen you profile, but that is frosting on the cake. First get the cake, and that is your academic qualifications best demonstrated through GMAT and grades. Show that you can do the math.

You may want to look at our GMAT articles or Best Practices for MBA Admissions, a webinar recording.

Best,
Linda