MBA Handicapping: Is HBS 2+2 Possible With A 680 GMAT?

When Harvard Business School sorts through the more than 1,400 applications that it will likely receive next year for its 2+2 deferred admissions program, Derrick Li is bound to stick out.

With a 3.9 GPA, the rising senior at Stanford University will be graduating with both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in computer science, a feat accomplished in four rather than the more typical five years. On his resume will two summer internship stints at two well-known corporate players, Qualcomm and Amazon. He’s a course leader for the intro computer science course at Stanford, and he led a team of 20 classmates as the entrepreneurship club director of an international summit at Stanford that brought 35 students to the campus from all over the world.

On his first try in sitting for the GRE exam, without any prep to speak off, he racked up a 163 quant, right on the median for Harvard Business School’s class average, and a 159 on the verbal, four points shy of the HBS median, though the V range at HBS was 147 to 170. Even so, his overall GRE score is the equivalent of a 680 on the GMAT.

Can he get in with that score or should he retake the GRE or try his hand at the GMAT? In this episode of Fridays With Sandy, HBSGuru.com Founder Sandy Kreisberg answers that question and more in assessing Derrick’s chances of admission to Harvard’s 2+2 program which tends to show a lot of love STEM undergrads.

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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