Mr. Academia Into VC

Hi Mr. Academia into VC, Melisa here from Stratus Admissions. For a deferred candidate you check a lot of the boxes I generally look for: Strong internship/planned post-undergrad work experience, strong leadership experience and strong goals trajectory. Your internship and future work experience at a VC firm will be very interesting to schools – as you will be bringing to the table an industry that is a target for many MBA grads. Your leadership across your extracurriculars looks strong across the research team, non-profit founding, and competitions. Your goals, based on the limited info here, is where I would suggest you spend a bit more time. I see aspirationally you want to run an international fund, but think you need to be a bit more specific on your short term goal. Stanford can give you the resources to do anything you want to do – but you need to know what that is – and Stanford will want to see that you have at least a directional idea as to how you can do it. Stanford wants its students to change the lives/organizations/world – and it is up to you to show how you want to do this. Now, as a deferred applicant, I think you get a bit more leeway here than those further in their career. But being more clear about the post-MBA/short term goal, will help your story sound more compelling. It is difficult to give a true assessment not knowing your GMAT score – we generally see that deferred candidates have slightly higher averages than the overall class profile. Assuming you have a strong GMAT and can articulate your story well – I think you have better chances than most across these schools. Keep in mind that the average admit rate at GSB is 5% and I think your chances at each of the school is 5-10% higher than their average. Best of luck!