MBA Handicapping: Will Stanford & Harvard Buy This Story?

Daniel is a 26-year-old professional with a lot of promise. He has worked as a senior consultant for more than three years and wants to get an MBA to enhance his career opportunities. He brings some enticing assets to the table, including the fact that he graduated summa cum laude with a 3.96 GPA as well as a 710 GMAT on the first try. Plus, he’s from Columbia, a country that is underrepresented in most U.S. MBA programs.

So what could hold him back? For one thing, he’s aiming very high. His target schools includeĀ Harvard, Stanford, MIT Sloan, Berkeley Haas, and Northwestern Kellogg. For another, he did not do his undergraduate education from an elite university but rather the University of Cincinnati which is not a feeder school to either HBS or the GSB. And finally, he doesn’t work for McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte or Accenture but rather a global firm headquartered out of Spain that was founded by Anderson partners when the Enron scandal caused both Arthur Anderson and Anderson Consulting to implode.

Will those issues hold him back? In this episode of Friday’s With Sandy, HBSGuru.com founder Sandy Kreisberg assesses Daniel’s odds. Spoiler alert: Sandy is quite keen on this candidate, giving him a 30% to 35% chance of admission to Harvard Business School. Find out why.

If you would like to participate in a future Fridays With Sandy webinar, you can contact Sandy and P&Q Founder John A Byrne here.

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