Calculating Your Odds of Admission

Mr. Google

• 620 GMAT (will retake)
• 3.53 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in psychology and political science from Harvard/Yale/Princeton
• Work experience includes two and one-half years at Google working in a technical consulting role
• Extracurricular involvement includes assisting diversity outreach and recruiting at Google as well as co-founding a non-profit over the last year that teaches under-represented high school students in New York software coding; also was a tutor in college and worked as a research assistant in my school’s organizational behavior department at the business school
• Goal: “Interested in moving into higher level roles at the intersection of business and technology. In long-term being a CTO or starting my own technology consulting company”
• 25-year-old black male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 40% to 45%

Stanford: 20% to 30%

Wharton: 40+%

Dartmouth: 40% to 50%

Columbia: 40% to 50%

Berkeley: 30% to 50%

Yale: 50+%

Sandy’s Analysis: Dunno, dude. Retake the GMAT and try to get a680, which may put that issue to bed. A 700 would be great. You could possibly get in with a 620. Some do, and why not you?  But this is a strong profile, including H-Y-P and Google, and what sounds like a lot of exciting extracurricular work — especially teaching underserved high-school kids computer coding (man, that is a WINNER!).  Schools are always looking for black male technical types,  so you got a lot going for you.

Goals: “Interested in moving into higher level roles at the intersection of business and technology. In long-term being a CTO or starting my own technology consulting company” are right on the money although could be refined to include your focus on education. Ed-tech is a big buzzword these days, and you could be the guy to do it. Or say you will.

Stanford is always threading the needle, but if you do raise your GMAT to 680 and get solid Google support, you might be on your way. HBS takes guys like you all the time.  Wharton might choke on the GMAT. They are real picky about that. Other places take guys like you all the time. It’s a real solid story, just get in some zone, and keep taking the GMAT until you get 680 or so, even if you have to take it four or five times. Schools don’t care. They just want the number, and they admire guys who take it five times. It shows the kind of attitude they like.

To wit, “I can take the stinking GMAT five times, and I can sit through your boring program and classes because success matters to me.”