Breaking Through The Elite MBA Screen

Mr. P&G

770 GMAT
2.5 GPA (top 5% of my peers)
Undergraduate degree in engineering from a top engineering school in Spain
Work experience includes five years with Procter & Gamble in Spain, half as a business analyst on a business development team and half as a marketing manager; also worked for six months in France in R&D
Extracurricular involvement includes the leading the university drama club for several years, slight collaboration with NGOs
Goal: To acquire business knowledge to set up my own company.
29-year-old Spanish male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 40+%

Stanford: 10% to 30%

MIT: 50+%

Northwestern: 50+%

Chicago: 50+%

NYU: 50%*******

******all premised on your claim that a 2.5 GPA at your top school in Spain is also in the top 5 percent. Otherwise, all bets are off.

Sandy’s Analysis: You really, really need to prove that a 2.5 GPA is also in the top 5% of your class, if that is what you are saying above. Get the registrar of your university to make that clear. This is absolutely critical.

After that, this brightens considerably: We got a 770 GMAT, and five years at P&G, a company all B-schools respect. Play up the NGO connections or build them up. The rest of your extras are all college stuff, and while interesting, they don’t impact adcoms much, especially since you are now 29. Guys at P&G are expected to have more extras because it is not exactly like working at an Investment Bank in terms of spare time.

OK, all that said, HBS and Stanford take P&G guys, even older ones, and especially from Spain, which is not a frequent supplier of admits. For example, in a typical HBS class there will be seven to eight kids from Spain versus 12 from France and 14 from Germany (and five from Portugal). Most of those Spaniards will be from Blue Chip companies like yours or international IB and consulting companies. I’d say your chances at Stanford are weak because there is no do-gooder jive driving you in, and they are less interested in international P&G–type applicants per se, versus using companies like P&G as a source of talented minority candidates (along with Big 4 auditing companies).

HBS is bigger and feels a kinship with P&G in terms of size and age. So chances there are better, although age and lack of extras could be an issue. MIT will just about admit anyone with a 770 GMAT with a pulse who can also make a credible case that they want to come, which actually might be difficult for you because although you say you want to start a business — which they like — you don’t have much cred in that field given your resume and long-ish history of working for a “stodgy” company.

Kellogg will go for you and so too will Chicago just based on marketing background and stats (again, assuming you get a YouTube tape of Registrar of your University swearing on a Bible that 2.5 is top 5 percent). I might tell those places you are interested in product management and marketing and not starting your own company so you don’t sound like a burn-out, which is a real issue with a story and too-long career like yours.