Your Odds Of Getting Into A Great School

Ms. Buddist

• 720 GMAT
• 3.3 GPA due to poor grades in freshman year
• Undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Delaware
• Work experience includes internships at largest Chinese local private equity firm, a boutique investment bank Houlihan Lokey, a Chinese local investment bank in fixed income department, Baidu (known as the Chinese Google, and at Sequoia Capital in Beijing
• Extracurricular involvement includes serving as president of an ethnic student organization, run a non-profit website to help various kinds of charities, member of a student-run investment club and a business fraternity; regularly participate in volunteer works; Chinese Martial Arts the Fifth Duan-wei (medium-high level, 5/9); Chinese National Second Grade Sportsmen in swimming;  manage a fund of $50,000 for my friends and my parents’ friends, invest in stock market with an annualized return of 20%
• Fluent in Mandarin, English, Japanese and basic German
• “My mother and I are actually Buddhist, I spent a lot of time in Buddhism temple and service, and I spent a year to learn Confucianism. Should I mention this?  Is it possible for me to get into a MBA program without any full-time work experience?”
• 24-year-old Chinese

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 10% to 20%

Stanford: 10%

Wharton: 20%

Sandy’s Analysis: Your GMAT score will be important — it was not clear in original note if that was 720 or projected to be 720 — because there is a lot about this that is not fishy per se, but classic over-achieving and we begin to suspect there is some other shoe to drop about how you, in fact, got those internships, especially beginning sophomore year, with a low-ish GPA (at that time, I note it has gone up) from the University of Delaware. Not that there is anything wrong with the University of Delaware but it does not seem a natural feeder to top-rung Chinese PE firms.

Also, just from reading your original post (before it was edited for publication), your English seems shaky . . .although people have said that about me.  If you are currently a senior, you should apply to the HBS 2+2 program and find out about it, if you don’t know. Your odds there are WAY better than trying to apply for entry next year since, 1. HBS publishes stats on how many kids they take directly out of undergrad, and I think the number is zero or four, depending on how you read their chart, and 2. Those zero or four kids, my guess, do not have conventional finance careers like you, but are probably entrepreneurs, techies, or something odd.  On the other hand, you are 24, so that could tilt things.

My further guess is that Stanford is similar, since they also have a 2+2 clone program, which admits kids from senior year in college, but defers admission for two years. I don’t have any Wharton data on number of kids they take directly from college (if such data exists, someone please note that), and my guess is, your chances are probably best there, since they have a sweet spot for finance types like you.

Being a serious Buddhist is something worth mentioning. Lots of adcoms like Buddhists, more so, oddly, than in truth, they like these other accomplishments of yours:

1. member of a student-run investment club, which has $1.2million of portfolio;
2. member of a business fraternity;
3. Chinese Martial Arts the Fifth Duan-wei (medium-high level, 5/9);
4. Manage a fund of $50,000 for my friends and my parents’ friends, with an annualized return of 20%.

Although the cumulative impact of all that solid business and investment activity will be positive.  Just saying, work in the Buddhism stuff, too.

What you should seriously do is apply for HBS 2+2 program – you have an outside chance there, unless those internships are based on being connected in some way, unless on top of that, your connections are so good . . .well, you get the picture.