Mr. Bird Watcher

Hi Mr. Bird Watcher, Melisa here from Stratus Admissions. I always love to see a poet and quant! Makes you tough to put in a bucket – which is great. So let’s start with your stats – your lower than average GPA sounds like can be explained and is nicely complimented by your strong GRE score (helps to be a tutor I am sure!) Also the fact that you’ve done banking shows you have the quant ability to do well in any program – so I think you are solid here. Your work experience in banking will be attractive and is one of the two routes (the other being consulting) that I see setting graduates up for highly coveted PE jobs post-MBA. While it sounds like you are highly involved in your community, I’d want to dig in a bit more on where you have led across your professional and community involvement. Showing how you have led collaboratively will be important to Kellogg – so be sure to highlight this. It is clear that giving back to your family is important, which is fantastic – I’d want to dig a bit deeper on what your family business is and how the operational side of finance will help here. You will want admissions to clearly see this tie. A big fan of Kellogg myself (married a Kellogg grad), I see the draw and like that you’ve identified Yale as another school that will value your commitment to service. If this is the year for you to go to school, I would suggest adding a couple other options – potentially Ross and Duke to round out your list. Reach out if I can answer any other questions. Best of luck!