MBA Handicapping: How To Be The Right Kind Of Do-Gooder For Top B-Schools

Alexandra is a non-traditional MBA candidate who hopes to leverage her unique work experience at the intersection of health and social impact to a post-MBA career in healthcare consulting.

With a 3.97 GPA and a GRE score of 324 (Q162/V162), she is applying to seven schools: Chicago Booth, Northwestern Kellogg, Yale SOM, Duke Fuqua, Dartmouth Tuck, Cornell Johnson, and Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

It’s likely that the applicant pools of those schools will not have a candidate with her background. Alex is a registered dietitian by trade, and her career to date has been in the health-related social needs space, namely food security. Most recently, she has been a coordinator on the healthcare partnerships team of Project Bread, a nonprofit service organization in Boston, innovating in food security and food-as-medicine.

“Before Project Bread,” she adds, “I completed my dietetic internship at Simmons University (a didactic requirement for dietetian eligbility, similar to a residency requirement for a medical doctor). There, I specialized in community nutrition and health promotion, and spent my time in various practice settings, including in community nutrition work at Dept of Public Health and inpatient clinical dietetics at an underfunded, state-run hospital serving active inmates from the MA Dept of Corrections.”

So what are the chances of this non-traditional applicant? In this episode of Friday’s With Sandy, HBSGuru.com Founder Sandy Kreisberg assesses her odds and provides some fresh takes on how Alex can increase the chances of an acceptance or two at her target schools.

If you would like to participate in a future Fridays With Sandy webinar, you can contact Sandy and Poets&Quants John here.