Breaking Through The Elite MBA Screen

Mr. Lawyer

  • 640 GMAT (suffer from severe ADHD)
  • 3.4 GPA
  • Law degree from Tel Aviv University
  • Work experience includes two and one-half years as a junior associate in the largest law firm in Israel, five years as the manager of a competitive tennis club, four years as an agent in the Prime Minister’s office, and three years of military service in the intelligence corps
  • Extracurricular involvement includes the founding of a non-profit tennis program for underprivileged children, also offered legal assistance to those without means and currently teach elementary children from Ethiopia
  • Short-term Goal: To join an energy/infrastructure company
  • Long-term Goal: To further develop family business (infrastructure consulting) and merge with a large corporation
  • 29-year-old male

Odds of Success:

MIT: 10%

Michigan: 20%

Chicago: 15%

Berkeley: 10%

Duke: 20%

Cornell: 20%

Sandy’s Analysis: Here is some tough love–retake the GMAT, either with accommodations, if they give it for ADHD or with medication, or with luck. Keep taking it until you get a 680+ if that is possible. I cannot really puzzle out your career path or the timing of when you did what, or what exactly you are doing now, or if you are mixing extra currics and full-time jobs.

Maybe it is one guy with ADHD (me, non-clinical, just extreme impatience) trying to make sense of scrambled account of another guy with same. Are you currently doing this full-time: “Today teach Elementary School Children of Ethiopian origin theories in law.” Or is that an extra? Or is that what you are doing? Anyway, it is not all that important to sort this out. The only way you are getting into business school is the same way I told the guy last week about family businesses. If your family business is BIG enough, some school might let you in, if you make a plausible case that you want to transform it and they believe you.

Otherwise, no offense, but this crazy-quilt career path and age and low-ish GPA and GMAT make you a real tough sell. I’d be very creative about how you describe your career so far, stressing the traditional stuff like Army and working for the government, and lawyering, and going light on managing tennis clubs. Then, really stress what you plan to do with family business AND DO NOT SAY SELL IT.  You don’t need an MBA for that. Being a lawyer should be enough to at least put you in touch with other smart lawyers who do stuff like that.

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