Assessing Your Odds of Getting In

Mr. International

720 GMAT (77% Quant)
3.4 GPA
Undergraduate degree in engineering from a German university
3.14 Master’s GPA
Graduate degree in engineering from an Ivy League school in the U.S. (drop in GPA due to culture shock)
Work experience includes two years at a top-tier U.S. bank, initially in IT followed by working as a quant on the trading desk for four years in New York and London
Extracurricular involvement as a board member of the alumni association of my undergraduate university
Applied to Wharton R2 for class of ’13 and was rejected after being put on the summer waitlist.
Goal: To become chief operating officer at a top financial services firm or to start my own firm supplying risk analytics
27-year-old Indian with vast international experience having studied in India, Germany, Australia and the U.S.

Odds of Success:

Wharton: 30-35+%

Stanford: 10%

Harvard: 10%

Chicago: 30+%

MIT: 30%

Northwestern: 30+%

Columbia: 25%

Sandy’s Analysis: You don’t need any help from me. It is all here. You got on Wharton’s summer waitlist doing what you did last year. Just apply there again, and apply to schools which are less selective. In your case that could include MIT, since they like quants, although not quants with a 77% Quant on their GMATs. Columbia might be hard for stat reasons as well, although you fit their finance profile.

My advice this past summer would have been Columbia Early Decision. That would have maxed out your chances for a Top-5 school. You are not getting in to Stanford or HBS, for reasons you note, although not age per se. It’s the six to seven years experience in finance IT and trading they don’t like. The traders who get into H and S usually have solid-gold pedigrees in terms of schooling, stats, and GMATs.

I think Wharton is going to be hard, nothing seems improved. At any rate, when you apply there again, try to come up with improvements. Booth and Kellogg should be doable.