Mr. College Entrepreneur

Based on the numbers, your undergraduate institution and your role in founding an A.I. health startup, I’d say your chances are very good. You have the basics and now it’s a question of executing on those basics to get an admit at an elite school. Yale is a superb choice. A lot more business schools have jumped on the deferred admit bandwagon as a result of the decline in full-time MBA applications in the last few years. So you should pick five of them and work it. By work it, I mean devote enough time and thought to do very solid applications and speak to current students who may have gotten in via a deferred program. Good luck.

Hi, it’s Nisha at mbaMission! You have the building blocks to be a viable deferred MBA program candidate: an excellent GPA in a non-business subject, a high GMAT score, and strong leadership experience as a co-founder of a startup. So, I think your success will depend on your application execution. A couple of things I would think about:

1.) Your career goals: how do you see yourself benefitting from an MBA after a couple of years of entrepreneurial experience? The programs will want to see that you’ve thought deeply about your career goals and why MBA, so make sure you understand each school’s resources and charter a logical path for yourself. One note about VCs – typically, they are seeking a combination of finance and startup experience, and in any case it’s extremely tough to enter a VC immediately post-MBA. If you’re serious about it as a long-term goal, you might even consider investment banking as a short-term goal. I recommend visiting mbamission.com and checking out the Career Guides – we have one on VC.

2. The long game: One of my colleagues did a research study on 2+2/deferred applicants, and one of her main takeways is how unpredictable the admissions process can be, even for candidates like you who are strong on paper. So keep that in mind, and know that even if you apply to these programs and don’t succeed, this will in no way penalize your future MBA applications – in fact, we’ve seen that a decent proportion of admits through the “regular” application cycles were deferred candidates in the past.
Best of luck!