Best Of Sandy’s HBS & Stanford Ding Report

Dinged by Stanford with interview & Accepted by HBS

• 710 GMAT
• 3.6 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in finance from a Top 20 public university
• Work experience includes two years in General Electric’s Financial Management Program after college; had four rotations in different finance roles; received GE Corporate Honors in Top 10% of class; one year in corporate development/M&A for a Fortune 50 company
• Extracurricular involvement in an inner-city mentoring program, member of Urban League, and volunteer for buildOn schools in South America
• Goal: To work for McKinsey/Bain/BCG, eventually transitioning into general management
• African-American male

Sandy’s Analysis: Good one at HBS. This was real solid for them, and they respect Gold Plate rotational programs at GE Financial or any other major global company. Grades were good enough and so was your GMAT score. Your goal of going to MBB were right on the money, and your extras were solid and grow out of your experiences and narrative.

If you got dinged at Stanford, dunno, that was a coin toss as well [post interview odds there are sorta 50/50] –hard to say why it came up tails. Could be bad luck, under impactful essay themes, or just some other set of minority dudes they liked just a little bit more.