Candidate:

Mr. Adrift

About Me:

I am an East Asian male and a part of the LGBTQ+ community. I had a lower GPA in undergrad due to some personal issues (depression). Since graduation, I’ve taken more than a semester’s worth of college-level courses with a 3.8 GPA. Work is currently not engaging or challenging, and I would like to transition to a career where I can make a bigger impact.

I would love to know if taking a GMAT would help. My GMAT scores on practice tests (without training) are 750-760. I had to rush the GRE examination as there weren’t many in-person sessions scheduled before some of the other programs I wanted to apply to (so I only had 3 days to prepare). Any advice is appreciated.

Schools:

Target School: Darden

Considering: Cornell Johnson

See More Profiles For: Darden

Application Status: Open

Details:

Undergrad School: Top 100 Global

Undergrad Major: Commerce

GPA: 3.1

GRE: 332

Age: 28, Ethnicity: Asian or Indian

Other Degree/Certification: Project Management; Data Analytics; Data Science; Business Statistics; Business Analytics; Python

School Name: Google, IBM, Rice, UPenn, UMich via Coursera

Extracurriculars: Pro-bono start-up advisor, and a Seasoned traveler.

Work History:

Title: Intellectual Property Advisor

Industry: Education

Company: Other

Length of Employment: 7 yrs

Big Life Wins:

– Increased KPI by 150-275% over 7 years (13%-21% annualized).
– Travel & food photographer with 50+ million views on photos
– Started pipeline for releasing mobile applications, 10+ successful rollouts so far..

Post MBA Goal:

My post-MBA goal is to go into consulting. I’ve done some of this for startups, and I love the process of identifying and solving problems.

Odds:

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The Experts Rate The Odds At: 20%

See what the industry experts have to say:

John A. Byrne, P&Q Founder & Editor-In-Chief | Odds Assessment: 20%

Let me answer your question right away: No, don’t take the GMAT. You have an excellent GRE score already that is 13 points higher than the class average at your first-choice school Darden. If you think you can do better, you should give yourself some time (one to two months to study) and retake the GRE. The only reason I suggest this is because your GPA is on the low side and a higher standardized test score would help offset any concerns about your academic abilities. Another issue here is the selectivity of both your undergraduate alma mater and your employer. It’s not clear here how much prestige those add to your application. It would help to play up your role as a pro bono …

Let me answer your question right away: No, don’t take the GMAT. You have an excellent GRE score already that is 13 points higher than the class average at your first-choice school Darden. If you think you can do better, you should give yourself some time (one to two months to study) and retake the GRE. The only reason I suggest this is because your GPA is on the low side and a higher standardized test score would help offset any concerns about your academic abilities. Another issue here is the selectivity of both your undergraduate alma mater and your employer. It’s not clear here how much prestige those add to your application. It would help to play up your role as a pro bono startup advisor and how that came to be because it appears that is your only extracurricular that you can leverage. I also would urge you to expand the group of schools to include a few others that can get you that post-MBA consulting job. If Darden and Johnson are stretches (and they very well might be), it could make sense to add another three schools to the mix. I would take a look at Duke, UNC, Michigan, Indiana Kelley, UT McCombs, and Minnesota Carlson.

4 years ago Read the full review