Handicapping Your Elite MBA Chances

Ms. Adventure Travel

• 740 GMAT
• 3.5 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from Michigan/North Carolina/Virginia
• Work Experience includes two years teaching high school math for Teach For America; currently an adventure travel guide in the U.S. (for the last 8 months)–my current employer is not a business school feeder; had been an intern for two summers at a hospital working on medical devices and research project (one study was published in a medical journal) and also a summer working as an intern for a medical records company
• Extracurricular involvement includes hundreds of hours of tutoring in under-served communities, started a paper recycling program at the school where I worked
• Goal: To combine technical background with business and managerial skills to help bring medical devices to the marketplace at an established company such as GE Healthcare, J&J; Medtronic or a start-up

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 20%

Stanford: 10%

MIT: 30% to 40%

Northwestern: 40% to 50%

Berkeley: 30% to 40%

Virginia: 40% to 50%

Sandy’s Analysis: Hmmmm, you’re the funny mirror image of the gal right above you, with a few added pluses. Schools will swallow Teach for America, since that is a highly selective and well-regarded program and you seem to have accomplished a great deal there. I don’t mean to knock being an adventure travel guide, but that will raise a real question, which can be shortened to WTF!!!

You would probably do best to say it was always your plan to apply to business school and wanted to use the year after TFA to work on environmental issues, and spin your job that way, along with teaching, if that is what you do as well. I sure hope you are not taking plutocrats on hunting trips to bag trophy game for their dens. That would be hard to explain away.

Doing two years of TFA and then becoming a travel guide is sometimes a hint of spoiled rich kid, or more charitably, taking-her-time rich kid.  There is a pipeline at places like Stanford, although small, for TFA kids from legacy families and connected alums, if you are part of that crowd, well, your chances there just got better, if not, well I’m not seeing your odds there as very high.

Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, the rest of your evening at the B-school admissions theater is real solid– 3.5 in Biomedical Engineering, 740 GMAT, and some rock solid internships at hospitals and a medical records company. Your goal: “To combine technical background with business. . . to help bring medical devices to the marketplace (at an established company such as GE Healthcare, J&J, Medtronic  or a start-up)” is right on the money.

You are a case where execution and explaining why TFA and why adventure guide is going to make a real difference. I don’t see this as Stanford, unless you are a ‘made’ man, as per above. They like their weirdoes to be weird in only one way, e.g. violin maker from Princeton with a 3.8. You are weird in 2 ways (TFA and adventure guide), HBS might say the same, although biomedical engineering is something Dee Leopold is super focused on and you have impressive extras and internships, and their Weirdo Locker has a few more cubic meters. MIT could go for the 3.5, science background and 740 and say, “Heck, that’s enough for us, and the baseline for oddballs here is pretty high to begin with, so come on down.” Kellogg might go for the stats and TFA, and at Berk and Darden you just need to sell them a story that explains but does not fixate on Adventure Guide and let all you other positives take over.