Handicapping Your Elite B-School Odds

Ms. Biotech

700+ GMAT (not yet taken)
3.9 GPA
Undergraduate degree in biochemistry and cell biology from UC-San Diego
3.9 GPA
Master’s in biology from UC-San Diego
Work experience includes time at a small biotech company after graduation, but contract ended due to economy crash in early 2009. Was unemployed for six months so enrolled in a teaching program. Have been with Wells Fargo since fall of 2009 in software quality assurance, first as contractor, then analyst and hired as a full-time employee a year later in midst of a hiring freeze
Extracurricular involvement as vice president of public relations for my sorority in my senior year and now on the communications committee for the young professional network for Wells Fargo
Goal: Want an MBA to increase my business knowledge so I can eventually get back into biotech on the business side
“My real interest there is business development focused on utilizing bioinformatics in the biotech industry”
27-year-old white female with a passion for science

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 20% to 30%

Stanford: 10 to 15%

Wharton: 30% to 50%

MIT: 30% to 50%

Chicago: 40% to 60%

Berkeley: 30% to 50%

Columbia: 40% to 60%

Sandy’s Analysis: Phew, what we got here is a great beginning, a happy ending and a so-so middle. To wit

the beginning: 3.9 in Bio both B.A. and M.A., a projected solid GMAT score, plus an excellent first job at biotech
the happy ending: as you put it, “get back into biotech . . . .My real interest there is business development focused on utilizing bioinformatics . . . .”
with a so-so middle: the actual four years you spent at Wells Fargo doing software Quality Assurance, which is a real snooze area at top tech firms like Oracle and Microsoft, and at 2^nd-tier banks approaches Rip Van Winkle territory in terms of sleepiness.

I would not overly worry about the six months you spent unemployed getting a teaching certificate. That could be spun as a positive, and there’s not much you can do while unemployed. Also, not that much looks good anyway, except maybe body building or working for an NGO, which makes you employed.

I would worry more about how come you never landed another job in Biotech and apparently stopped looking. On your resume alone it appears that you drank the Wells Fargo iced tea–it wasn’t even Kool-Aid, since they were not really promising you anything. You just felt comfortable getting approval, and having a job, and learning new things. Not perverse motives for staying by any means, but by that time the Biotech market had recovered. Adcoms may wonder why did not hustle to get a Biotech job instead of remaining comfortably numb at Wells Fargo. Especially in light of the fact you already had worked in Biotech.

On the plus side, you are a woman in science and that is a plus. Extra-currics are vanilla.

I’m not seeing this as Stanford. They just won’t buy your story and they can get their full of Biotech biz side people from blue chip Biotech companies. They go to Wells Fargo QA for minority candidates, the same way they go to the Big 4. Plus a lack of extras won’t help there. HBS is bigger and the “snow globe” you have created about your goals– bio-infomatics– would appeal to them, as would the woman in science shtick. Hashing around so-called Big Data is a real hotspot at HBS, see this recent article, How Will the “Age of Big Data” Affect Management? in a recent HBS Working Knowledge.

At other schools, you become competitive based on stats alone, assuming some kind of 720 GMAT, and just presenting yourself as someone interested in what they have to offer. E.g. I’m sure MIT does bio-data in some way. You seem to be convincing in your profile note about your knowledge of the field and your burden in the application would be to sound very convincing about the field and its variants and how you fit in.

Ms. Biotech

Handicapping Your MBA Odds–The Entire Series