Mr. Coder To VC Or Finance

The number one issue with your profile, as you no doubt already know, is that incredily low GPA at Berkeley. A 2.7 for Harvard Business School is well below the latest class average of 3.69. Your 740 GMAT, especially if your quant split is strong, would help to offset the GPA but you have some explaining to do. If you have a solid answer for why your GPA was that low, illness in your family or some such, you might not have much of a chance at HBS. I also worry about your expressed goal of entering the venture capital field, a very difficult industry to penetrate, from a coding background. I would leave your VC aspirations off your application and just say finance because admission officials may well consider that yet another red flag. No school wants to admit a candidate when it has doubts about whether that applicant can make the career transition he or she really wants. That said, your work experience is solid as are your big life wins. But you have to remember you’ll be competing against applicants in software with high GPAs and high GMATs and similar work experience. Why would HBS choose a 2.7 candidate with career aspirations that might well go unfulfilled? This is even more true for an Asian or Indian candidate where the competition is especially tough. And your extras–playing chess–isn’t going to help you, either. You are asking Harvard to admit you on your work experience alone. I just don’t think that is going to cut it. My advice: Apply to a wider range of schools that would be more willing to blink at your GPA and the lack of extras that show your leadership potential and ditch your expressed career aspirations to go into VC.