Mr. Global Real Estate

Hi Mr. Global Real Estate: Emily Buckley here from The MBA Exchange. I am a former Associate Director of Admissions at Columbia Business School and have since advised many clients successfully through the CBS admissions process. I believe admissions will feel your GPA and GMAT fall into their range, but they will have many other applicants with numbers as strong or stronger than yours from the world of finance. I think your goals and background in Real Estate are helpful as that is a niche program at CBS and they do look for good fits for that program. I think the two keys for your application will be 1) timing–apply for Early Decision and submit as early as you can and 2) you will need to make yourself stand out from the crowded pool through your story which will include making your goals more unique within Real Estate and also showing what you will add personally that is distinct. Good luck and let us know if we can help further!

Hi Mr. Global Real Estate, Julie-Anne Heafey here from mbaMission. I like your dedication to achieve your personal goals with the marathons, and I think your plan for real estate development after a real estate research role makes sense. How fixed are you on Columbia, though? From what I’ve seen, if you really want to gain admission to CBS or Wharton, I think you’d see a better outcome if you can hold off from applying right now and instead gain another year or two of experience and build your leadership profile. I like your stats and your speedy promotion, but 2 years of experience at application time will put you at a disadvantage– you’ll be competing with others with longer track records and outsize team and community leadership (participation is great, but taking on a bigger role would be better). Building up your experience a bit more would put you in a much better position to gain acceptance at Columbia or Wharton. If you must go now, you might find more success at NYU or UCLA, particularly with your solid GPA/GMAT… or…have you looked into UNC? Kenan-Flagler has quite a strong real estate program that offers a lot of opportunities for hands-on experience in real estate development…check it out. Best of luck!

Hi Mr Global Real Estate, it’s Lisa Cummings of Stratus Admissions. Your solid stats will be appealing to Columbia and other schools, while your years of work experience will just fall in the range for your schools as that is measure by when you will matriculate . So why the 30% odds? I love your big life wins of marathon running and fund raising. However, I will offer a cautionary note, when I was on the Sloan adcomm I read hundreds, if not thousands of marathon stories. Not to take away from any one of them individually- that’s an amazing accomplishment- but it is hard to stand out after reading so many. It’s certainly worth a mention but I what really want to know more about is that impressive early promotion. Kudos to you, why were you tapped early – what did you do to deserve that accomplishment? Schools want to know that you were a valuable employee and how you contributed to your group or team. Adcomms will also be looking for leadership, do you have any leadership experiences you can highlight. Ditto for extracurriculars. While I love your marathon fundraising and NY Cares, those are often finite activities, NY Cares is usually a day (sometimes a few more ) of firm sponsored volunteerism. Is there anything else you have been involved in? Extracurriculars are also a good way to show leadership ability. You language skills could be a big plus for your career too depending on what market you want to work in and what other language your speak. By focusing on the right things in your applications you can make yourself really stand out and greatly improve your odds of acceptance. I just advised another runner and will leave you with the same advice. Applying to business school is a marathon and not a sprint so I applaud you for getting an early start. Good luck and I hope you are able to stay healthy and sane in all this craziness.