Handicapping Your Dream School Odds

Ms. Public Health

• 720 GMAT (first try)
• 3.8 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in international relations from Brown University
• 3.7 GPA (graduate level)
• Master’s in education from Harvard University’ Educational Technology Program
• Work experience includes a Fulbright Fellowship in Taiwan in the 2008-2009 school year; a summer internship with
NPR in health reporting at KQED in San Francisco; two years at a non-profit communications firm consulting for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; currently working in communications at a major health foundation in California
• “Grew up working in mother’s tailoring business (yeah, lady entrepreneurs!) but not first in family to attend college”
• “Particularly interested in public health and labor issues. Also interested in news/media industry and design. Considering a joint MPP/MBA or MPH/MBA”
• 26-year-old Asian-American female

Odds of Success:

Stanford: 30% to 40%

Harvard: 30% to 50%

Berkeley: 50+%

Yale: 50+%

Sandy’s Analysis: Solid all around and each “element” (I‘ve been watching too much Olympics)  viz. grad degree, jobs with classy non-profits, and  goals supports your story–applicants like you get into HBS and Stanford depending on execution, luck, recommendations and not blowing the interview. I would try to make your goals–“Particularly interested in public health and labor issues.  Also interested in news/media industry and design” more focused on an actual career that an adcom can recognize, the one weakness in this profile is that you seem to be refuse to settle down, although you have jumped around at some pretty good places.

You got several halo brand names on this: Fulbright, NPR, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Brown, Harvard Ed School (often a nursery ground for the distracted  and over-caffeinated  but in your case it all makes sense and the Educational Technology Program is what passes for rigor over there). In fact, you sound like an NPR donor sound check, “this application made possible by a generous grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.”

I personally don’t know what the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is or does, but they are getting a helluva bang from their donations to NPR. (I realize you did not work for them but only consulted to them, which is even better somehow, since my guess is, they choose their consultants from a very plumy list).

As to your plans for a  joint degree, I’m almost always opposed to that. You already have  a grad degree and you can get about 90% of the value of those “soft,” joint degrees in MPP or MPH by taking electives your second year of the MBA program. Just remember to schmooze at both schools.  Also, saying you want a joint degree is more fuel to the suspicion that you are a prestige dabbler without a clear plan for the road ahead.  I would present a clear plan and drop the joint degree.

For the record, I’m also opposed to the MBA/JD degree since that is a good deal of cost and expense, and the vast majority of those grads, especially these days, wind up in business not law.  Any dissenting voices on this score, please post, seriously, I’m interested in what grads of those programs think down the road.

Getting back to the poster, “Grew up working in mother’s tailoring business . . .” Love it, you need a goal that specific.  Whatever the NPR equivalent to tailoring is.