Mr. Big 4 Tax Manager

With a 700 GMAT score and a 3.15 GPA, I would urge you to target a half dozen schools–not merely Stanford which is the only school you list here. Your standardized test score is solid but it is 38 points below the latest class average at the GSB. Your GPA at a public Ivy, Michigan, is .63 below the class average of 3.78. Averages, of course, are just averages. And there plenty of candidates who get into elite schools with below average stats but there has to be other offsetting factors that take you out of the pile. In your case, you’ve been highly rated at a Big 4 company; you are one of 42 tax professionals across the US firm elected to serve on the National Council, and you qualify as an under-represented minority. The question: Is that enough to get you over the lower stats at Stanford with a Big 4 background in tax? If your extras were fleshed out a bit more (for example, what have you done in the D&I space that would demonstrate your leadership ability?), I would be able to give you a better sense of your odds. But on this profile, I don’t think you are going to get accepted to Stanford. That’s why you should apply to Harvard (which has a much bigger class and a higher admit rate) and four other schools (perhaps Kellogg, Michigan, Virginia, UCLA, and Berkeley).

Congratulations on your success in Big 4 consulting – rising to the level of manager in Tax is something to be proud of – it’s objectively difficult and the job market (including MBB!) values these skills in terms of compensation and exit opportunities. However, business school admissions committees, frankly speaking, value these technical accounting skills less than other employers might.

While Big 4 alums *do* make it to top business schools, what the accepted applicants often have in common with one another is that, while they may have majored in accounting in UG an started in tax or audit right out of college, they pivoted to something more strategic (management consulting adjacent, often at KPMG, Deloitte, Strategy&) prior to business school so they aren’t applying as merely an accountant. Big 4 firms are much less represented at top business schools than traditional finance employers (think bulge bracket banks). Think of top undergrad programs. Exceptioning a few top business schools like Wharton, Texas McCombs, Virginia, Michigan, etc., most Ivies and Ivy equivalents don’t even offer an undergrad accounting major. Many, including many of the ivies, don’t even offer a single undergraduate “intro to accounting” class. This is reflective of academia’s snobbish sensibilities towards the accounting discipline.

It’s important that you know this going into your application, because with some savvy positioning, it is possible to overcome Admissions Committee’s implicit biases towards accountants and avoid the reg flags and pitfalls they’ll associate with your candidacy because you are an accountant. For example, in your essays, you’ll want to show rather than tell *strategic* value add to your clients. Example: your leadership on a merger that made sense because of tax efficiencies that you sold to CFO of your largest fortune 500 client and worked directly with the c-suite of both target and acquirer to seamlessly integrate the merged entity.

Being an underrepresented minority will help you, and although your GPA and GMAT are lower than GSB’s averages, your undergrad pedigree (Go Blue!) will carry you somewhat, especially since you did break a 700 on your GMAT. Your pivot to MBB consultant seems doable and makes sense, you’ll just need to demonstrate in your essays that you are the type of accountant that can see the forest through the trees and illustrate why you’ll prefer and excel at management consulting problem-solving rather than tax strategy problem solving. You’ve already accomplished a lot in your short career. You have a shot at GSB and an even better shot at MBB at an M7 if you don’t get into GSB. Shoot your shot with the best strategic positioning you can muster!