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I’ve played professional baseball since graduating from college in 2019. I’ve played for both the New York Mets and Seattle Mariners minor league teams, reaching the AAA level. I also was a firefighter during the pandemic in Bolinas, CA.
Target School: Stanford GSB
Considering: Berkeley Haas
See More Profiles For: Stanford GSB
Application Status: Open
Undergrad School: Middlebury College
Undergrad Major: International Politics & Economics
GPA: 3.62
GRE: 329
Age: 25, Ethnicity: White
Extracurriculars: Firefighter
Title: Professional Baseball Player
Industry: Sports Management
Company: Other
Length of Employment: 4 yrs, 1 mos
Signing with an MLB team after playing at a D3 college was a big deal for me.
I’m looking to move into environmental sustainability in a business environment or sports management post-MBA.
Join in! Click here to assess the odds of Mr. Baseball Guy
You definitely qualify as a nontraditional MBA applicant and an intriging one at that. There aren’t all that many professional baseball players in the elite MBA applicant pool, particularly those who spent more than four years with the likes of the the New York Mets and Seattle Mariners and reaching Triple-A ball. Congrats. I know how extremely difficult it is to make it at that level and also am aware of the discipline you had to show to get that far. I also want to congratulate you for being a firefighter during the pandemic in Bolinas. So what are your chances? Applying to Stanford and Berkeley is like going to bat against Clayton Kershaw or Max Scherzer. Your odds of getting on hitting an extra-base …
You definitely qualify as a nontraditional MBA applicant and an intriging one at that. There aren’t all that many professional baseball players in the elite MBA applicant pool, particularly those who spent more than four years with the likes of the the New York Mets and Seattle Mariners and reaching Triple-A ball. Congrats. I know how extremely difficult it is to make it at that level and also am aware of the discipline you had to show to get that far. I also want to congratulate you for being a firefighter during the pandemic in Bolinas. So what are your chances? Applying to Stanford and Berkeley is like going to bat against Clayton Kershaw or Max Scherzer. Your odds of getting on hitting an extra-base hit are very low and that is what you would be doing if you got an invite to either school. Even so, you went to a well-known and respected school for your undergraduate degree. You got a 3.6 in international politics and economics while playing competitive baseball. You landed a strong GRE score at 329, a mere point below Stanford’s class average. And if you can convincingly write about your experience in pro ball, working in a team with other athletes and how that experience changed you in any meaningful way, you have a shot at both schools. I would also urge you to apply to UCLA Anderson and possibly USC Marshall as well, assuming you want to stay in California. You need other options in the event that Stanford or Berkeley doesn’t go for this story. One other powerful option, by the way, is Berkeley’s part-time MBA program but that would be for you to decide if you want to go that route. My odds are for Stanford where the admit rate is a mere 6% to begin with. Getting in there with your story would be like hitting a walkoff home run off Kershaw. It’s unlikely but you never know.
Congratulations on making it to the majors! As you likely suspect, your profile is decidedly unique within the MBA applicant pool, but it is not *wholly unrepresented* in the MBA applicant pool. In EVERY H/S/W class, there are a handful of professional sports players. So reliably so, that professional sports players make up their own micro demographic that you will need to set yourself apart within. Understanding this, you’ll probably also realize that your caucaisan male profile doesn’t help you within this microdemographic; you’d have better odds if you were a woman or an underrepresented minority from this professional demo (e.g.g, asian professional female golfer), rather than a caucasian male in baseball. Many of the other former/current professional athletes that apply to M7 schools will …
Congratulations on making it to the majors! As you likely suspect, your profile is decidedly unique within the MBA applicant pool, but it is not *wholly unrepresented* in the MBA applicant pool. In EVERY H/S/W class, there are a handful of professional sports players. So reliably so, that professional sports players make up their own micro demographic that you will need to set yourself apart within. Understanding this, you’ll probably also realize that your caucaisan male profile doesn’t help you within this microdemographic; you’d have better odds if you were a woman or an underrepresented minority from this professional demo (e.g.g, asian professional female golfer), rather than a caucasian male in baseball. Many of the other former/current professional athletes that apply to M7 schools will have already begun to move on to the next chapter of their life professionally (e.g., worked in VC, worked in some kind of sports AI startup, etc.). Given the illustriousness of your athletic success (MLB!!), you’ll definitely get points from having achieved great heights and fewer detractors from not making your mark in business (yet). Firefighting is good because it 1) demonstrates interests (e.g., environmental concerns) outside of athletics 2) demonstrates bravery and civic responsibility.
It’s clear you have the brains as well as the brawn: GRE score (awesome job here!), undergraduate GPA, undergrad institutional pedigree with respectable (though not off-the-charts) GPA in applicable major WHILE playing D3 baseball. You have what it takes intellectually to thrive as an MBA at the GSB!
My main caveats and advice will be regarding professional strategic positioning. **WHY** do you want to go into environmental sustainability post-MBA? Can you link this with your firefighting background? (I see obvious commonalities there but these aren’t elaborated upon in the write-up above). Can you link this environmental interest/passion to baseball? If you can’t, then the career pivot from baseball athlete to environmental leadership doesn’t benefit from your sports success, which makes this strategic positioning weaker. The best career pivot will borrow strengths from the disciplines in which you are already strong (think: a pro-golfer with some startup experience -> GSB MBA -> P&L ownership at Top Golf or similar immediately after MBA -> founder of golf AI startup as medium or long-term goal). The strongest strategic positioning is both 1) imminently achievable given your background and supported by demonstrated passions on your resume (with sports management this seems super believable; environmental leadership less so) 2) very ambitious 3) specific in terms of function and industry. The third leg of the stool is not flushed out in this bio. If you were my client, I’d advise you do some networking/linkedin sleuthing to see what kinds of roles in what kinds of companies you’d be most interested in and then we could see what would be reasonable given your skills and abilities and where GSB alums are represented in the workforce and what entry-level they arrive into when they start post-GSB. The smaller the company and the better the recruiting relationship with the GSB, the higher the likelihood that you’ll be managing a P&L immediately post-MBA. In our experience, specificity is highly rewarded in application essays. For instance, “Post-GSB, I’d seek an X role at Y or Z company for A reasons to leverage B prior skills and passions” signals more prior-planning and more of a take-charge recruiting mentality than “As a former professional athlete, I want to work in sports management post-MBA.” Rarely in our experience does the latter work for H/W/S. AdComs care immensely about employment stats, especially % of the class employed 3 months post-graduation (since this is a highly important metric for rankings from entities like US News and World Report, The Economist, etc.). Especially asa non-traditional applicant, you’ll need to demonstrate that you won’t become a liability that will hurt this employment number, which is something they might be more worried about for you than, say, somebody who arriving with more imminently transferable and marketable professional skills such as a former investment banker or management consultant.
The average acceptance rate at GSB hovers around 5%, but assuming you nail your strategic positioning, I believe your chances are better. Assuming memorable and well-executed strategic positioning, I’d pin your odds around 40%. Rooting for a home run!
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