Assessing Your Odds Of Getting In

This 30-something woman is a U.S. Navy submarine officer who has also spent three years as a NASA engineer. An avid surfer and licensed scuba diver, she is hoping that an MBA degree would help to advance her career.

He’s a Brazilian who works in logistics for one of his family’s companies in Brazil. With a 740 GMAT and a 2.8 grade point average, this 24-year-old now wants to go to a top U.S. business school so he could return to the family company and work in general management, eventually climbing to the position of chief operating officer or CEO.

He’s a 34-year-old IT director for a community college in California with a pair of online degrees from Capella University. With a 750 GMAT, he wants an MBA to eventually move up into a chief information officer role in a Fortune 500 company.

What these MBA applicants share in common is the goal to get into one of the world’s best business schools. Do they have the raw stats and experience to get an invite? Or are they likely to end up in a reject pile?

Sanford “Sandy” Kreisberg, founder of MBA admissions consulting firm HBSGuru.com, is back again to analyze these and a few other profiles of actual MBA applicants who have shared their vital statistics with Poets&Quants.

As he has in the past, Kreisberg handicaps each potential applicant’s odds of getting into a top-ranked business school. If you include your own stats and characteristics in the comments (please add your age and be clear on the sequence of your jobs in relaying work experience), we’ll pick a few more and have Kreisberg assess your chances in a follow-up feature next week.

Sandy’s assessment:

Ms. Naval Officer

 

• 740 GMAT (90% Q & 90% V)
• 3.2 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech
• 3.35 GPA (master’s)
• Master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech
• Work Experience includes current stint as a U.S. Navy Submarine officer, with top clearances, commanding a $1 billion boat; led several naval teams in combat, emergency and watch stations; also spent three years as a NASA engineer with space shuttle and space station deployments
• Also had Caltech summer fellowship and was a Lockheed Martin Intern,
• Helped develop and market indoor mapping tool for blind people, programming Python scripts and traded ($100K<) on the stock market. Used profits to travel to 20+ countries on six continents, including Brazil, Israel, Egypt, Japan, Turkey, South Africa, Australia, South Korea, Hong Kong, and the Czech Republic.
• Extracurricular involvement in ocean/river runoff pollution and as a part-time debate coach and judge; an avid surfer and a licensed scuba diver
• Fluent in Tagalog, Mandarin, Spanish and English
• “I hate my GPA, but I have a solid GMAT score, and I think an applicant who used stock market profits to travel to six continents, helped launch space shuttles, and served as a U.S. naval engineer is maybe worth a look at?”
• A 30-something Pacific Islander woman

Odds of Success:

Duke: 60%+

Wharton: 35% to 45%

MIT: 40%

Harvard: 30% to 45%

Stanford: 30%

Sandy’s Analysis:

First of all, apply to HBS. Dee Leopold LOVES female engineers, and you are the real deal. Also female vets are semi-rare and a plus at all top schools. HBS  will blink at your GPA in light of the double-barreled 740 GMAT (with 90 percent on both sides). Your work in the service and post that, viz.  “commanded a $1B boat (SCORE 1), led several naval teams in combat, emergency, watch stations (operations, nuclear engineering, etc.) (SCORE 2) and  NASA Engineer: worked as early career hire  for three years on space shuttle and space station deployment (SCORE 3) is just what schools really admire. Your internship at Lockheed Martin is another plus.

What you think they like,  “an applicant who used stock market profits to travel to six continents” is actually no big deal. Schools are totally unimpressed with people who makes $$$ trading stock. That is a different skill set, although they do admire people who found trading and money management companies, which is different.

It is amazing how many people, if asked to rank what schools would really like about them, often get it wrong. What schools like are engineers, solid GMATs and GPA, women in combat, women in submarines, and, yes, solid do-gooder stuff.

Another issue, you say, “Pacific Islander,” and I am just guessing, but given your U.S. Navy career, are we talking about American Samoa?

I assume you are a U.S. citizen?

BINGO!

You are an “official”  minority for U.S. government headcount purposes (US Citizen + either 1. Black, 2. Hispanic surname or from Puerto Rico, 3. Native American, 4. Alaskan — not sure what that means but my guess is, not any clown from Fairbanks — or, TA-DA Hawaii/Pac. Islander) In this  case, a super plus, because Pacific Islanders are also rare.  I don’t mean to be silly here, but schools collect this stuff and display flags from the home countries of their students, so they are the ones who fetishize this.

I talk to kids from all over the world, and honestly, on balance, those kids are more international generic yuppies than anything else, with the regional differences long since bleached out of them, although sure, they look superficially different and have different accents.

Soooo, what we got here is U.S. minority, submarine, woman, engineer with a 740 and some great work experience. In an odd way, your chances of getting into Stanford and HBS are better than MIT, where for better or worse, they are less impressed with identity politics jive than most places (but are still impressed!)

As for your community service: ocean/river runoff pollution because I am an avid surfer and licensed scuba diver–that is solid enough for me, and Stanford will not get past ”ocean river runnoff” before their eyes tear up.

What you need is some goals package to put this all together and to sound that you are in fact interested to each school you apply to.

Goals might be a real problem given that you are older–let me suggest consulting (Big 3 consulting shops are always looking for a military woman who has commanded a sub and is a scuba diver and has a 740) leading to something at the intersection of engineering, water, and making things better. Dip into the McKinsey practice areas and you will get some great ideas. http://www.mckinsey.com/client_service