MBA Handicapping: 3.4, 700 GMAT & Hispanic: Can He Get Into Harvard, MIT, Kellogg?

 

There’s just two things that are weighing against Andrew in getting into Harvard Business School and MIT’s Sloan School of Management. It’s his slightly below-average grade point average of 3.4 and a 700 GMAT score on his first try at the test.

Otherwise, this 25-year-old product manager at a sexy San Francisco unicorn has everything going for him. He’s a mechanical engineer from Texas A&M who spent two years at Shell as a reliability engineer, before joining Lime, the electric scooter and bike company that now operates in 25 different countries around the world. Andrew is product manager for trust and safety at Lime, the fast-growing micro-mobility company. A cancer survivor, he is also half Costa Rican, a volunteer firefighter, and an Eagle Scout.

His target school may well be within his reach: Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. But he also has a pair of stretch targets in HBS and MIT and a pair of other top business schools to round out his MBA choices at the University of Texas and Rice University. His goal: to land a job at McKinsey, Bain or BCG in its energy practice. Long-term, he hopes to work for a disruptive energy player.

HANDICAPPING YOUR MBA ODDS

In this episode of Fridays with Sandy, HBSGuru Sandy Kreisberg assesses Andrew’s odds provides a bit of tough love advice. We are also trying to convince Andrew to apply to Northwestern Kellogg and UVA Darden, two schools that we believe would welcome a candidate of Andrew’s stature.

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