Mr. Defense Engineer

Our community seems less enthusiastic about your chances of admission to HBS than I do. While I do think that based on the info you provided there is nothing driving you into Harvard, your basic application is very solid. The problem with elite MBA admissions is that the competitive is severe, it is self selecting and the vast majority of candidates get turned down–and that also means candidates like you who are fully qualified to attend and do well. Still, I think your odds are better than the 12% chance our community has given you which basically is exactly the accept rate at HBS. Here’s why: Your BYU degree is highly valued by HBS (the current managing director of admissions Chad Losee did his undergraduate degree in international relations at BYU and in the Class of 2020 there were seven BYU grads with the following degrees: Accounting (2); Business Management: Strategy; Economics; Economics, Business Strategy; Economics, Business Strategy, International Development; Mechanical Engineering). Your 3.6 in a difficult subject–Electrical Engineering–plus your master’s on top of it from ASU makes it clear you are up to the academics. Your 730 GMAT sits right at the class median at HBS. And your role at a Fortune 500 company helping to develop a key component–a missile control module–is impressive, as is your devotion through the church to a Central European community. Still, there is nothing in here to make you pop out as exceptional. You are like a lot of solid candidates who apply to Harvard Business School but who lack that X factor to put them over the top. I’m hopeful that HBS will get to interview you and that you have a chance to close the deal. But I want to be realistic here, too, and tell you that as a white male competing against other white males from Ivy League schools and super prestigious employers with that X factor, your chances aren’t all that good at HBS. I am much more positive about your other two schools–UVA Darden and Chicago Booth. And either of those schools would allow you to fulfill your career dreams and for different reasons may provide a better experience for you than HBS. At Darden, you’ll benefit from having the best MBA teaching professors in the world in a smaller environment than HBS where the bonds you’ll create with classmates will be stronger. At Booth, you’ll benefit from an intellectual environment with Nobel Prize winning profs in one of American’s great cities. I would add a couple of more schools to your targets to increase the odds of success. Best of luck to you!