Handicapping Your Shot At An Elite MBA: Mr. Indian-Engineer-Turned-Strategy Analyst

 

Mr. Dance Marathon

 

• 710 GMAT
• 3.7 GPA
• Undergraduate degree from Penn State
• Work experience includes three years in finance and corporate strategy for a healthcare/biotech company
• Extracurricular involvement includes participating in a 46-hour dance marathon for pediatric cancer charity (no sitting and no sleeping; captain of the cross country team; volunteer for the national running club; leads employee running group
• Goal: To return to current company or a similar role elsewhere in corporate strategy
• 25-year-old male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 20%

Stanford: 10%

Wharton: 30% to 35%

Dartmouth: 40% to 50%

Virginia: 50%+

Sandy’s Analysis: What we got here is a lot of silver, a little bit of gold. I don’t think you are getting into Harvard Business School or Stanford. In God’s eyes, what we have here is a likable, athletic, marathon dancer, philanthropist, and all around nice guy. What we don’t have is anything super special. We don’t have enough prestige in either the GPA, or the GMAT, or the prestige company to get one into HBS or Stanford.

Saying that you want to return to the same company requires that is not a good idea. That is Executive MBA stuff, for people who work for mid-level, non-brand companies who just want to do better at their own firms. Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton doesn’t want guys like that for their MBA programs. I would advise this guy to say that he likes the function, he likes what he is doing, and he wants to be an impactful and innovative leader in that industry. Then, he should Google the leading company in that industry and say he wants to lead that company.

At Wharton, it’s a numbers game and there are going to be athletic guys just like him with better numbers. For him, Dartmouth and Darden are gold. It’s not a long reach. He could get into Dartmouth and he sure seems himself. And this guy has UVA written all over him.