Handicapping Your MBA Odds: Ms. World Bank, Mr. Teacher, Ms. Healthcare Tech, Mr. Military Banker, Ms. Google

Ms. Google

760 GMAT
3.85 GPA
Undergraduate degree in computer science and philosophy from No. 1 ranked university in Israel
Work experience includes two and one-half years as a software engineer at Google after a two-year term in the Israeli Airfare as a flight coordinator
Goals: Entrepreneurship in the e-commerce spectrum, providing software optimization for small-to-medium size brick & mortar retailers
26-year-old female Israeli

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 40% to 50%

Stanford: 30% to 40%

Sandy’s Analysis: There’s lots to like in your profile, including your gig with Google and your time in the military as a woman, whether it was required or not. Your stats are in nosebleed territory from the 760 GMAT which puts you in the 99th percentile of testers to the 3.85 grade point average in a dual major. That means only 1% of the people who sit for the GMAT did better than you.

So with proper execution, you stand a good chance at Harvard Business School. You can never be sure about Stanford, mainly because they admit a much smaller class and the acceptance rate at the school is just 6.1% compared to Harvard’s 10.7%. One key question is, Do you know size of Israeli cohort there? It would not surprise me if it is smaller than you might expect, but hard to prove any bias unless it is sorta zero. At HBS, the Israeli cohort kicks in from three to eight or so each year.

At INSEAD, you should be a walk in. They have a much higher acceptance rate, in the low 30s, and would love to have someone with your stats and profile.

One important suggestion for you regards your career goals. Saying that you want to do “entrepreneurship in the e-commerce spectrum, providing software optimization for small-to-medium size brick & mortar retailers is way too wonky and over specific. Clean it up. Just say you are interested in e-commerce and e-commerce tech and analytics which could mean having a career in one of three areas.

Otherwise, you’re in great shape with that 760 GMAT and a 3.85 from the best university in Israel.