MBA Handicapping: How A White Male With Lower Stats Gets Into Wharton & Columbia

Patrick’s core stats–a 3.34 GPA and a 323 GRE score–are below every one of his target MBA schools. They fall short of the latest class averages at Wharton, Columbia Business School, MIT Sloan, and UC-Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. But he has a powerful story to tell that could very well make up the difference.

In this episode of Fridays With Sandy, HBSGuru.com Founder Sandy Kreisberg and P&Q Editor John A. Byrne handicap his odds at those schools and help to draw out the story of this 26-year-old American who now works in Sydney, Australia. From his days in middle school, Patrick was determined to go to an Ivy League university for his college years. Though he went to a public high school in Houston, Texas, which sends few of its grads to prestigious universities, he went to Cornell University, recruited as an athlete for the school’s swim team.

After earning his degree in industrial and labor relations, Patrick landed a job with Bank of America/Merrill Lynch in sales and trading group. But he badly wanted international experience so he networked himself into a job as a corporate project manager reporting directly to the CEO of a consumer products company in Australia. Now, at the age of 26, his sights are set for a highly selective MBA program.

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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