Handicapping Your Shot At A Top School

Mr. Mandarin

• 680 GMAT (plan to retake)
• 3.3 GPA
• Undergraduate degree from a Top 20 business school
• Work experience includes three years as an analyst for a bulge bracket investment banking firm (“Great reviews and plenty of extra curricular experience (recruiting and analyst committees”); currently on a Fulbright scholarship in China, working with underprivileged kids to improve English proficiency in remote areas of country
• Extracurricular involvement as a varsity basketball player for four years in college and a marathon runner twice
• Goal: To work for an international investment fund with a focus on Asia or start my own business with focus on Asian investments
• 25-year-old white male studying Mandarin

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 20+%

Stanford: 10%

Dartmouth: 30-40%

MIT: 30%

Duke: 50%

Chicago: 50%

Berkeley: 50%

Sandy’s Analysis: This is just too shaky (3.3 GPA, so-so GMAT, 2^nd-Tier college) for Stanford, especially for a white, male. But despite all that, there is lots to like, including your varsity college career and Fulbright in China. Guys like you sometimes get into HBS if they like your BB firm, and your recommenders really go to bat for you. Goals make sense and flow nicely from career and Fulbright, so that is another plus.

You seem the Tuck type so my advice would be visit, make friends, show a lot of interest.  They really work for the grads, and have a lot of banking contacts, so that would be a real good match. MIT is more stats focused, although they are always happy to get a “manly-man” banker-athlete, but there is not much here they really go for besides that.

You could have trouble there, especially if ‘final’ GMAT is 700 or below. Duke and Chicago are strong possibilities because they like people like you (athlete, banker, China) enough so that the gap in your GPA stats (3.3 for you, 3.5 is average for them, and GMAT, ~700 for you,  they average 715) will not be a deal-breaker. Ditto Berkeley.