Mr. Health Clinic Founder

HI! This is JP, I’m a Senior Consultant at The MBA Exchange. I’ve spent much of my life both in the US and Asia, been active in non-profit, and worked with many applicants with similarities to your story over the last ten years. So your profile definitely resonates! You have a much richer background and experiences than most applicants, but the challenge will be to capture it in a way that Admissions Committee will understand and value. There are some minor challenges to overcome as well, but I’m sure you’re up to the task. I’d be happy to have a chat to discuss how to maximize your odds of gaining a seat at HBS. Email me at jpo@mbaexchange.com. I look forward to hearing from you!

Hello Mr. Health Clinic Founder!
Krista Nannery from mbaMission here.
I love that you have started your own health clinic and it seems to have a wide footprint — 150 employees is impressive!! I would encourage you to look at the Wharton HCM program….your experience is really unique and interesting and adds to the mix of doctors, nurses, and healthcare consultants in the program. Now, that being said, with a 3.0 GPA, you may have some challenges. (Not to say you won’t be successful — you’re very interesting — but the 3.0 adds a bit of a question mark.) You are the type of candidate where I would advise a broad school strategy all in R1. (Remember, the 80th percentile GPA range for most schools is 3.2 to 3.8, so your GPA puts you in the bottom 10% of accepted applicants.) I LOVE that you ave an HBS professor though so my advice is to leverage that connection and ask for tips and referrals.
My other suggestion is that as a startup founder, schools will be looking for external validation of what you’ve built. If you’ve received high-profile awards or investments, make sure that’s all very clear in your applications.
I hope that helps!
Krista

Hi Mr. Healthcare Founder, Melisa here from Stratus Admissions. You have a lot going for your application: solid GRE, great US and in country work experience, and strong extracurricular tied into what appears to be your long term passion in healthcare. I do think this will help overcome your lower than HBS’s average GPA. How you tie your story together and give evidence to the impact you can make with your HBS MBA will be your difference. I recently worked with a client who was living and working in Asia and wanted to return post-MBA. I really think that on-the-ground experience added credibility to the viability of employment post-MBA. I love that you’ve had both large US and non-profit in country experience. Are there opportunities for collaborating with current HBS research? You’ll want to make sure that you can articulate how this has given you increases in responsibility. Often recommenders can help here. Harvard will look for evidence of your leadership, both professionally and personally, so make sure this comes through loudly. While the landscape can change drastically in 2 years (or 2 weeks as we’ve seen recently), start making connections with the companies you would potentially want to work with post-MBA. You will need to convince an admissions committee that this is a viable path for you post-MBA and as they will most likely not know the market you will need to give them confidence through your knowledge and connections in the healthcare industry there. I think you have higher than average odds at HBS. I never like to see a 1 school strategy, if you are open to applying other schools – would you consider a joint MBA/MPH? Would suggest looking into Haas, Wharton, Columbia, Yale, Fuqua. Best of luck!