Profile Evaluation

[mwil]

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[Graham]

Dear mwil,

Thanks for your post!

I've offered my thoughts on your candidacy below:

Academics
This area is absolutely stellar. Your 760 GMAT, 3.90 GPA, caliber of undergraduate institution and combined degrees are all going to place you towards the top of the applicant pool. You haven't been specific about your area of study, but I'll presume that it was quantitatively rigorous and that your real challenge may be more in showcasing that you have softer skills too (since English isn't your first language and you've been working in finance too).

Work Experience
Your path here is sound. While there are many applicants in the pool who have done the 'two years in banking, two years in PE' circuit, this tends to be a strong segment of the pool. It wouldn't hurt if the bank was top-tier (Goldman Sachs, etc). I'd be curious to know if you've had much in the way of leadership experience and/or client-facing roles, since the adcom places a high value on this. They often worry that bankers and PE folks can be number-crunching types with limited interpersonal skills. Showcasing leadership and client-facing roles can counter this.

XCS
This looks to be your achilles heel at the moment. It sounds like you have a good reason for a lack of involvement in undergrad (working to pay your expenses, juggling two degrees and a 3.90 GPA), but I'm curious what you've done with your spare time for the past four years (since graduation). If your excuse is that you "work in finance and have no time" I want to stress that there are bankers/PE folks in the pool who have found time - and these folks will be your competition.

Intangibles
The fact that your recommendation letters will come from HBS graduates could be a positive - as they will be able to compare you to their former classmates and speak to the adcom in a language they understand, etc. Of course, what's most important is that they are supportive of you, know you well and have worked closely with you.

Your green card holder status will not hurt you (if anything it will help showcase the fact that you aren't a liability in terms of working in the US after graduation).

As far as your heritage is concerned, this might be a nice addition to your profile. I am curious to know which South-Asian country, since some are more represented in the applicant pool than others. In other words, if you have an Indonesian background, that may be more intriguing to the adcom than if you are Sri Lankan. [Note: I wouldn't rest your hopes on high-school era achievements - like the academic olympiad- as most schools are focused on college and beyond when it comes to assessment of candidates. In fact, candidates who rely on high-school achivements are usually dismissed as either immature or labeled as not having done much of late.]

Conclusion
You should clearly be competitive at the two schools on your list, but my biggest fear is that your liabilities with XCs or the adcoms concerns about your communications skills (non-native speaker, jobs and studies have all been quantitatively-oriented) could come back to haunt you if you don't present your candidacy properly.

Of course, I've made the assumption that you are only looking at HBS and Stanford. Is this the case? If so, you should know that any candidate taking that route is clearly risk-seeking, given the low odds of acceptance. In other words, if your goal is to start b-school next fall, you may want to expand the scope just slightly.

Feel free to contact us with your resume ([email protected]) if you'd like to chat further about your background.

Best of luck,

Graham

[Paxton Helms - Kaplan]

It looks like you have a solid candidacy.

Academically, you are very strong and the fact that you pulled a 3.9 in an engineering / science major (rather than a liberal arts major) says good things about your ability to hack the quantitative side of a top MBA program.

Your work experience is similarly strong but --given the status of that industry-- also a potential weak spot. There are going to be many, many very bright people from finance and I-banking applying to business school this year (including, unfortunately, significant pent-up demand from people that postponed during the fat years) and you are in the fat part of the curve in terms of years of work experience.

So, you are certainly competitive at Stanford and HBS but, as I tell my clients applying to those schools, there are simply no guarantees.

I would not worry terribly much about extra-curriculars. They are certainly nice to have but persuasive cases can be made for why you don't have them. Good positioning of this issue should make it net-neutral in terms of your application.

At a deeper level, I am a bit concerned about how you selected HBS and Stanford. Yes, both are top programs but they are also very different.

Your choice of business school should reflect many, many factors including geography, culture, size, urban / rural / suburban, etc. Even if you can get into the "best" business school (a description that I hotly dispute for ANY school), the real question is which is the best business school for you. Be sure that you have given all of the relevant factors due consideration before applying and ultimately matriculating.

Good luck and feel free to contact me with further question--

Paxton Helms
Kaplan MBA Consultant

[mwil]

Paxton and Graham,

Thank you for your detailed responses. This is very helpful.

On the question about why I chose Stanford and Harvard, Stanford is my top choice, I would like to change careers and head into a management role at a technology firm post MBA, and Stanford serves that purpose well. HBS, obviously is much more generalist, the reputation and network should help regardless of what I choose to do. Additionally, I thought that the access to the HBS alumni network at my workplace might be helpful.

In the end, I think the network and reputation is the most significant part of what you get out of B School, and I think in that respect they are both similar. I might add Berkeley and Wharton into the mix just to make sure I'm not left without an option next year. Berkeley because of my preference to head towards the warmer climes of the west coast if I can, but this is not an absolute as my choice of HBS indicates.

[Paxton Helms - Kaplan]

Hi! Your reasoning is solid but I do have a few thoughts as a person with a West Coast MBA (UCLA).

Stanford does serve the technology management purpose very well but it is also very California-centric. Not totally by any stretch but, when I recently asked a Stanford alum how many friends she has on the East Coast, she kind of smiled and said, "Not many. Almost all of them are on the West Coast."

You're exactly right about HBS (which is also much bigger than Stanford which means more classmates and a bigger network) and its network. I would not really think about the HBS network at your workplace as a factor: there are too many others that are far more important.

In terms of focusing on "network and reputation" as your criteria, I would strongly urge you to back off of reputation as a factor. There are more than two very, very good business schools out there and location, where you want to live short- and long-term, culture of the program, and specialization of the program, will all have far greater long-term impact than reputation.

Reputation can help you get positions and entree into social networks but any of the top 15 will do that for you. Think very carefully about selecting a school on reputation rather than other fit factors.

Cheers--

Paxton



In the end, I think the network and reputation is the most significant part of what you get out of B School, and I think in that respect they are both similar. I might add Berkeley and Wharton into the mix just to make sure I'm not left without an option next year. Berkeley because of my preference to head towards the warmer climes of the west coast if I can, but this is not an absolute as my choice of HBS indicates.