Mr. International Impact

Hi, this is Deepak Punwani from MBA Exchange. Am bullish on your profile for various reasons (but with caveats). First lets speak about your positives. Your international experience is very impressive. Distill your learning from these experiences and bring forth your worldview. Schools will love that. Secondly your work is in a “hot” sector. Data Science is a cool area to be working in. Schools will respect that. Third your goals are a mix of delivering impact using technology. What’s not to like. So this makes me confidence of your chances. Now the caveats. You are an older applicant with 2 Masters. You will have to explain the “why now”. Why does a full time program make sense for you at this point in time ? The other fact is that at your age you cant “spray and pray” on schools choice. The stretch / safe kind of school decisions wont work for you. Only a few programs make sense and you should have the clarity and conviction around which those schools are. If its MIT – you should have a clear idea what makes MIT tick and why you are best suited for it. It could be because you are really excited about using big data and AI to solve some of humanity’s biggest problems. Now you suddenly have MIT’s attention. Additionally you seem really passionate about the development space. Make sure to explain why you are passionate about this space. So your approach has to be very specific and tailored to every school and then execute well. You may do much better than what most people may tell you is possible. Good luck

Hello Mr. International Impact! Krista Nannery from mbaMission here.
I think we may be missing some detail here — given your age, I would expect a little more work experience. (I see that you completed two Masters, which I assume took anywhere from 2 to 4 years in total combined. So something is missing!)
Without this information, it’s more difficult to gauge your chances but the one thing I am worried about for you is that at 32, you’re six years older than the average b-school candidate. While that’s not to say that you won’t be successful, b-schools have a certain set of jobs that are targeted to a certain level.
On the plus side, I LOVE your international experience and your non-profit experience. B-schools will too. My suggestion is that you go all R1 to really wow them with this experience upfront and maximize your chances. Because your age makes you a little non-traditional and you come from a very competitive demographic, I’d also like you to widen your school selection. Of course apply to Sloan, Yale and Kellogg, but consider programs like Tepper, Cornell, and UNC as well.
You might also want to consider EMBA programs. One thing I love about the Sloan application — when you apply, you can ask them to consider you for both the full-time MBA and the Sloan Fellows program, which is their full-time, residential EMBA program. I think it would be great option for you.
Last thing — no matter where you apply, make sure your work experience is less about Python, R and SAS and more about business impact and analysis.
I wish you all the best in this process,
Krista

Hello Mr. International Impact, Lisa Cummings from Stratus Admissions. Your GPA and GRE are certainly within the range for MIT Sloan, your solid quant background would be of interest to Sloan and other schools, as would your international experience. But….I need some more information to predict your odds of admission. There are a few easy things you can do to address this. From my time on the Sloan Adcomm, I would want more specifics about your work. What are your responsibilities and what impact have you had? You call yourself Mr. International Impact – great! You need to convey that impact in your applications. The sustainable tech competition you won in Kenya is interesting- are you an entrepreneur? Does that connect to your short or long term goals? Your length of work experience also stands out – you list one year plus as a length of employment, is that just at your current position? I also suggest that you flesh out your post MBA goals, with two masters degrees already, you will need to make a solid case for why you need an MBA in addition to those degrees. Schools will want to know that they will be able to place you in a job when you graduate; that will also allay any concerns they may have that you are merely looking to collect another degree.
Congrats on your interview invite at Kellogg! Given that you are coming from a competitive part of the overall pool, you are wise to consider additional schools. Depending on how many years of experience you have, you may want to look at some part time or executive programs. However, many are for mid-career professionals and so have a minimum number of years work experience. For example, Sloan has a terrific EMBA program but they require a minimum of 10 years work experience and they are pretty firm on that. Students in the Sloan Fellows program, a full time, year long MBA immersion program, have an average of about 14 years of work experience.
Good luck at Kellogg and in your MBA search process.