Ask an MBA Admissions Consultant

I am planning to apply to both Fully Employed programs at USC and UCLA and recently took my first GMAT. I scored a 610 and have an undergraduate B.S. in Chemistry GPA of 2.95. However what I do have is a PhD in organic chemistry and a Post-Doc from UPENN. After school I have been in industry now for 6 + years in pharmaceuticals/biotech. When I look at the FEMBA program scores vs full time I noticed that the GMAT score ranges are quite a bit different. I am curious if more emphasis is placed on ones work experience and success after undergrad instead of GPA and GMAT score. Basically do I need to retake the exam and hope to gain 30-40 points having only a few weeks to do so as the application is due in Jan? I have never been a strong test taker and excel more in work than I do on standardized tests and I am not all that confident that I can raise my score much in a few short weeks. All things considered I did score better in verbal than I did in math which is quite rare so I probably made a few dumb errors that cost me quite a few points.

Any advice (as blunt and honest as possible) would be greatly appreciated.

thanks

geckoutca

Hello, Geckoutca,

There is indeed a lot more variability in the GMAT for the fully employed programs. And you present quite an unusual situation, with both GMAT and undergrad GPA relatively low, yet a PhD in organic chem plus strong work experience. I think you might well be a viable applicant, but I can't say for sure. Actually, when you have an unusual set of factors like that, especially for fully employed programs, I suggest calling the adcoms and have a preliminary chat. Often adcoms of such programs are glad to give you some guidance on the advisability of applying or whether you'd really need to raise the GMAT to be seriously considered.

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