The Second Round Ding Report

Mr. Blue Chip (Dinged Without Intvw)

• 760 GMAT
• 3.95 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in psychology and finance at a Top 100 private university
• 3.8 GPA
• Master’s degree in applied mathematics from a Top 10 private university
• Work experience includes there years at a Fortune 100 Blue Chip company in applied analytics, with two promotions to manager within two years ((90% of people never get to manager; the ones that do typically take four to six years)
• Extracurricular involvement as a college athlete, volunteer on trips to Africa, youth running coach
• “Worked with consultant on application and recommenders were very enthusiastic about what they had written; People have gone from my company to HBS before, all of with lower GPAs, GMATs, and position at work)”
• Bilingual
• “I wrote about three formative experiences and significant achievements that have shaped my worldview and aspirations. It may have been a bit dry, but I don’t think I made a big deal about the “corp strat in entertainment” goal – I really just wanted to demonstrate how I operate and some success that it has led to.”
• Goal: To transition to corporate strategy in the entertainment industry
• “Accepted at MIT and waiting on decision from Stanford”
• 27-year-old white male, first generation American and college grad bilingual

Sandy’s Analysis: I am real glad you got into MIT. Your dreams can come true there. You are also proof of the fact that a 760 GMAT at MIT really cuts a lot of mustard, much more so than at H and S.

Not sure what happened: but if you made a big deal out of “corporate strategy in entertainment industry” as your goal, given that it seems to come out of no place and is a wet dream of many far less qualified people than you, that could be a trigger for every other annoying and uninformed issue in your app.

Sounds like you wrote a break-even essay to me, and outcome a small mystery, Could be that your application just did not stand out, nothing super driving you in, amid no driving need for an MBA, given your success. What is your thinking about why you got dinged vs. others in your company who got in? that could be helpful.

HBS is always looking for diamonds in the rough. This guy is first generation college so a school like Drexel would be fine for HBS. I don’t think your undergraduate pedigree was a big issue in this story, especially given the fact that you are first generation and you have a solid GMAT score. It might have screwed you in a different way–e.g. he never learned to walk the walk or talk the talk of the “sophisticated” analyst. But your career after college was pretty blue chip–another reason why college pedigree was not a factor. We’ve got a high ranking grad program and a Fortune 100 company. It could be that both top 10 private grad programs and F-100 company were little knowns. There are a lot of odd companies on the F-100. But he said company has history of sending kids to H. A bit of a mystery overall, but I don’t think college pedigree was a big issue.