Assessing Your Odds of Getting In

Mr. Financial Planning

• 640 GMAT, 112 TOEFL
• Graduated in top 1% of my class
• Undergraduate degree in business administration from Universitat Pompeu Fabra and Autonoma de Barcelona
• Work experience includes one year in General Electric’s finance management program and three years as a financial planning and analysis manager in Spain and one-plus years in Denmark for a major European food company
• Extracurriculars include teaching a finance elective at a university in Spain for on-finance majors.
• Fluent in English, Spanish and Catalan with a good working knowledge of French
• Goal: To get into strategy consulting at McKinsey, Bain or BCG
• 28-year-old Spaniard

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 20-30%

Wharton: 30-40%

Stanford: 10%

Dartmouth: 30-50%

Northwestern: 30% to 60%

INSEAD: 30% to 50%

IMD: 30% to 50%

Oxford: 30% to 50+%

Cambridge: 30% to 50+%

Sandy’s Analysis: Some tough love right off the bat: McKinsey (and I think Bain and BCG) request your GMAT scores and they look for 720 or 700 (depends who you ask) as sort of a minimum. They may make exceptions for people with your language skills and geographic expertise, but that is worth looking into. A 640 would be a deal breaker for McKinsey and I suspect Bain and BCG. If any readers have more intel on this issue, please post.

Aside from that, what we got are good grades, low-side TOEFL (112) and mixed work history with 1. 1 year GE, 2. 3 years with no-name financial planning outfit in Spain (do I have that right, another example of confusing account of job history) and 3. 1 year with a big Euro food company –lots of diverse experience in Europe.  As to U.S. schools, I am not seeing this as H/S/W just based on the fact that there is no WOW factor unless you have not posted impressive extras, which would make you stand out there.

On the other hand, if you somehow got a 700+ GMAT, and you have extras, which are unlisted, well, maybe Harvard or Wharton. I just don’t see Stanford somehow, unless your company is a feeder to them.  The work pedigree is super important at HSW for International students, so this really counts for you.  My guess is the Stanford admits with Spanish passports are all deeply pedigreed, as are the Stanford admits from Latin America (calling Cemex and the big IB’s) of whom there are mucho.  Your first job at GE was the right track for Stanford. The issue is how much pedigree your current employer has.  Tuck and Kellogg certainly seem in the running, if you can get ~700 GMAT.

I think you would be a strong candidate at most Euro schools.  For me, the Euro vs. USA question is pretty simple: Where do you want to work after getting your MBA? If in the USA, then you have to go to a U.S. school because any consulting company that scouts you at a Euro school is going to want to assign you to Europe. And my guess is, not many U.S. food giants recruit in Europe either.