Mr. Cyber Guy

For someone who wasn’t a great student and is not a solid test taker, you have really accomplished a lot. Despite your 3.1 GPA, you was the top student nominee at your university. You’ve been an Eagle Scout. You are rated among the top 1% of performers at a Big 4 firm. Yet, you still have well-below-average stats and want to apply to three world-class, highly selective MBA programs. Duke is a good first choice because admissions there is truly holistic and the school many be able to get past those stats and admit you. I am less enthusiastic about Yale and Tuck. So here are two things I would urge you to do: 1) Not knowing if your GMAT score was on the first try or after multiple tries, I would tell you to suck it up and take it again. Hire a personal tutor and get that GMAT score to a minimum of 700 or more. The higher you get, the better your chances, particularly at Yale and Tuck. You also should apply to a wider range of schools to give yourself a better shot: I would consider applying to Michigan, UT-Austin and Indiana Kelley.

I place odds relatively low with the current application strategy – 15% – mostly because of poor strategic positioning given the raw stats associated with your candidacy. Your MBB goals are going to be difficult given your stats. MBB recruiting at Duke is going to be looking for GMATs >720 unless you are an under represented minority and they are also going to be looking at GPAs. MBBs are even known to look at SATs (even asking for the breakout). Simply put, test scores matter to them, and you are going to have a hard time outrunning poor testing results with MBB recruiting. Given that your undergraduate GPA is low, you may also have a lower MBA GPA given these factors (that matters less at schools with grade non-disclosure, but it still does matter, and even with GND, there are signals at top employers look for like presidents list, honor roll, etc. that you won’t be able to signal with a lower GPA).

Transitioning from Big 4 consulting to MBB consulting represents a “leveling up” that any B-school AdCom can recognize and appreciate. They know the candidates that MBB want and the ones that they passed up (and the reasons why they were passed up) in undergrad/other grad school recruiting. You may indeed be successful transitioning to MBB consulting in b-school, but to espouse this career change in your essays, given your stats, would be a mistake in my view. Keep in mind that this exercise is about GETTING INTO BUSINESS SCHOOL, not achieving your professional objectives, which are two separate but related considerations.

Once you are into business school, nobody is going to hold you to your stated essay goals, least of all the Admissions Committee, whom you’ll probably never see or hear from after matriculation. If transitioning to MBB from Big 4 consulting is what you want, you should go hard for that goal once you are an MBA, but you’d be wise not to talk about that in your essays. For these reasons, I think product management in tech (especially in light of your Computer Science Masters), is a better strategic positioning for you. You’ll need to be more specific than just “Tech,” though. Talk about the specific industry vertical you are interested in, the specific title, and have some good idea of career progression in medium and long term (e.g., “Product Manager at Health tech firm XYZ to play upon my healthcare services background in consulting and my academic training in computer science. This will help me achieve my medium-term goal of X, and ultimately achieve my long-term dream of Y).

It’s clear that you have personality, leadership (both at work and extracurricular-wise), and ambition in spades. This is where essay storytelling comes in. You must SHOW RATHER THAN TELL these traits in your essays. The good news is you have great ways to show your winning streak – being voted top student (despite implicit lower GPA – but no need to highlight that) by your peers at college, transferring from Junior College to elite 4 year university with success, etc. Your work with the Special Olympics will be most resonant if you can find a way to plug those same passion/skills into an extracurricular that already exists at the particular school OR if you can find a way to charter an extracurricular that would tap into these interests (for instance, a mentoring group for people on the spectrum run by Yalies in New Haven or a Special Olympics chapter in Durham with Fuqua involvement).

Best of luck to you!