Your Chances Of Getting In

Mr. All Over The Place

• 740 GMAT (V44, Q47)
• 2.8 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in history from an Ivy equivalent
•  Work experience includes one year teaching English in rural China, one year teaching English in Buenos Aires; currently unemployed, having returned to the U.S. four months ago from a six-month Latin America backpacking trip
• Extracurricular involvement as the captain of the club lacrosse team in college and now do mountain hiking
• Goal: To become an international development consultant
• Fluent Spanish speaker
• 26-year-old white male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 5%

Columbia: 10%

Wharton: 5%

Virginia: 10%

Michigan: 10%

Sandy’s Analysis: Are you friends with unemployed café dude right above you?

You are going to have a hard time at those schools with this profile. You may be “Mr. All Over the Place,” but you need to become “Mr. Has A Job.”  Even if that job is in volunteer work in development.

I think if you got a job with some development organization and applied in two years, well, you still will not get into HBS or Wharton, but you would be a reach at Columbia Early Decision, and you might get into Berk, Michigan, sorta schools rated 10^th to 20^th by Poets&Quants.

You might also think about getting a Public Policy degree instead of MBA. Your travel, language skills, and goals line up better with that degree.

Most MBA adcoms will see your application as an attempt to get a lottery ticket to change your life. While no one can blame you for that, adcoms are not in the habit of giving up a space so cruise-around-the-world types like you can play the lottery.

“Captain, club lacrosse team in college.”  Dude, club lacrosse captains often wind up on a Wall Street trading floor. Home of smart jocks like you (740 GMAT) with low GPA’s.

Why don’t you try getting some trading gig for two years. That could be a good platform for MBA application. At any rate, your chances of getting in right now to your target schools are remote. You need a job.