Your Odds Of Getting Into A Great School

Mr. Politician

  • 770 GMAT (Q50, V44)
  • 3.57 GPA
  • Undergraduate degree in accounting from a top 75 B-school in the U.S.
  • Work experience includes Big Four consulting and Fortune 500 internal audit internships with job offers that I turned down; one year as a fleet analyst for a privately owned consumer goods distributor and three years as a policy analyst for a state government’s Economic Development Department
  • Extracurricular involvement as a runner, beer home brewer and in after-work sports leagues
  • “I’ll be seeking a dual-degree, MS in Public Policy, at any university that offers that program and doesn’t require separate GRE scores (HBS/Kennedy is top choice). I want to do consulting in economic development/economic policy immediately after MBA; long term I want to be a politician”
  • 26-year-old white male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 30%

Stanford: 20%

Berkeley: 50+%

UCLA: 50+%

USC: 50+%

Columbia: 40% to 50%

New York: 40%

Northwestern: 30% to 45%

Sandy’s Analysis: You should not have any trouble at Public Policy schools given your solid grades, solid GMAT, and current job in state government. You are the ideal candidate. Your fate at places like HBS and Stanford will turn on how well you execute and, to some degree, what state you work for. Not all states are created equal and being a big deal in New York or California state government is way more impressive than being the same in North Dakota or Nevada. Although dudes from those states get in as well–just saying, the state counts a bit.

It would also help if you had recs from well-known political types. If you cannot snag the Governor, try to get someone from leadership, e.g. House Speaker or Senate President. Another issue is whether, given your goals, you need an MBA at all. A lot of kids from Harvard’s Kennedy School wind up working for Big 3 consulting firms, and during the financial heydays, also wound up at investment banks. Just a thought, although, sure, your chances of landing a Big 3 consulting job go up if you go to a top eight B-school.

Your real issue will be convincingly building a case for an MBA and after that a career map which seems to need an MBA, but anyone applying to a joint-degree program faces that problem. I’m not seeing this as Stanford because your profile, as written, does not have any “wow” factor, unless you work in California and have Jerry Brown put some spit on the ball. HBS takes kids like you if somehow you can convey excitement about your career and goals within the confines of their anorexic application. The joint-degree essay may be a lifesaver there, although I am not sure if HBS adcom ever reads that.

If they do, Jeepers,  giving you 400 words to talk about why you want a joint-degree compared to all those other suckers getting 500 characters to talk about how an MBA will help them with their goals seems deeply unfair, but hey, go with it.

Other schools you mention–Berkeley, UCLA, USC, Columbia, NYU, Northwestern–should be in line if you can craft that convincing stump speech about why you want a joint degree, why the MBA, and the roadmap ahead. Working in Economic Development, as you do, should be a good start for that. Consulting as a first move is also wise.  A 770 will open a lot of doors.