The 2016 Ding Report: Why Great Applicants Are Often Rejected

Mr. Ivy League

 

• 730 GMAT on first try
• 3.4 GPA
• Undergraduate degree in environmental studies/science from an Ivy League school
• Work experience includes two and one-half years at Google; two and one-half years at a 50-person venture capital-funded startup in a partnership role; no “promotion” but strong performance reflected by salary and equity bumps as well as recs from VP and CEO (both of whom I worked closely with); also work as an independent marketing consultant following my experience at Google, self employed.
• Extracurricular involvement as a varity sport captain and NCAA qualified; involved in multiple other activities on campus while working multiple part-time jobs
• Goal: To move into clean tech
• “MIT interview I thought went relatively well. Maybe not home run but was conversational, asked a lot of the behavioral questions you would expect. Example of a time a project didn’t go your way, how did you navigate an ambiguous situation, why mba/why MIT, no real curve balls”
• 28-year-old white American male

Dings:

ULCA (Anderson) Waitlisted after interview

UC-Berkeley (Haas)-Denied without interivew

Harvard-Denied without interview

Stanford-Denied without interview

MIT (Sloan)-Denied after interview

Sandy’s Analysis: Grrrr, it’s hard to say exactly where you went wrong, but you could be a poster boy for what schools really care about vs. what they say they care about.

WHAT THEY REALLY CARE ABOUT–AND WAS SO-SO WITH YOU

1. GPA!!!!!

2. BLUE CHIP EMPLOYMENT VS. START-UPS AND SELF EMPLOYMENT

WHAT THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT—AND WAS STRONG WITH YOU:

1. BEING CAPTAIN OF VARSITY TEAM AND NCAA QUALIFIER

2. Involved in multiple other extra curricular activities on campus, worked multiple part time jobs

3. Outside of work as a volunteer undergrad alumni interviewer, captain of a soccer team, triathlon, mountaineering

Sorry to be so harsh, but above, mixed into the salad of your total application is what sunk you, in various ways at various schools.

The real spoiler here was going self-employed from Google then joining a start-up and then somehow needing to apply to B-school, when, in fact, working at a VC-funded start-up is the DREAM of many post MBAs.

Your post-MBA goal to move into clean tech could also have been a problem. Unless prior jobs were in clean tech, this is sort of a generic wet dream stuff for a solid, white boy, with low grades, who is a real nice, athletic guy like you. And that is how this got “read” by the adcom ladies.

Your Berk ding with no interview is a bit surprising. I would not say other results were certain, but I am not surprised. Applying to business school from a start-up is harder than it might sound. You would have had better outcomes applying from Google after two years or sticking it out there until you got in.

I find your story and outcomes deeply confirming many of my “SK truths” about the process.