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

 

Mr. Marine

 

• 730 GMAT (first try)
• 3.57 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Kansas, graduating in three and one-half years
• Work experience as a U.S. Marine, having served two combat deployments
• Was commissioned at the age of 21 and will come out as a captain
• 25-year-old male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 40%

Stanford: 30%

Wharton: 40% to 50%

Chicago: 40% t0 50%

Sandy’s Analysis: This is a case where everything lines up. The University of Kansas is the kind of school that Harvard and Stanford like to accept people from if they can.

The 3.57 in accounting is a couple of eyelashes on the low side, but the 730 GMAT helps him there. And then he has had a distinguished military career with two deployments. As I have said many times, admissions officers have a very difficult time hashing out a military career. Ghey don’t know what a golden career is versus a silver or bronze. One of the things they do understand are deployments. He’s got that going for him and he seems to have graduated to captain in what seems like a fast amount of time. That’s helpful.

Depending on how this guy tells his story, guys like this get into Harvard certainly. Stanford there might be a missing X factor that we don’t know about. At Harvard, he is in the hopper for sure.

Business schools are open to the military, but in their minds, there is the good military and the bad military. They’ll never admit this, but in the bad military are those who conform to the stupid stereotype of military people: that they are gung-ho, that they follow orders, and aren’t very reflective. If he presents that way, he will damage himself. A good military candidate is reflective, non-kinetic in anything other than a combat situation, and likable.

It’s a question of how you come across. Do you have a more fluid body language? If you go in there with the yes-ma’am, no-ma’am stuff, they don’t like it.