Mr. Marine Officer

I am super impressed. As the son of a Cuban immigrant, you have done your country and your family proud. Thank you for serving! The fact that you are a Captain in the Marine Corps overseeing 160 Marines and that you led an overseas deployment attests to your inherent leadership skills. UVA Darden is a perfect place for you, as well. Darden loves accomplished veterans like yourself. My friend, I hope to see you there on my next visit!

Hi Mr. Marine Officer, Julie-Anne Heafey here with mbaMission. I agree that your accomplishments are impressive, and that Darden would be a fantastic choice for you, especially given your consulting goals. On top of any Service 2 School help you get, make sure to do individual vet club outreach at Darden and the rest of your target schools, it’s incredibly helpful and will pay off when the schools ask you what you know about their programs. As for your profile, your GPA is low –if there’s context like part time work or other factors in the background, make sure to leverage the optional essay to explain the situation. I agree on making sure you are demonstrating strength in quant– if your percentile on the Quant side is lower than 60%, and/or you don’t have strong quant coursework on your transcript (calc, statistics, or similar) I’d consider a retake if possible. Good luck! I’m rooting for you!

Hi Mr. Marine Officer, Melisa here from Stratus Admissions. First, thank you for your service. There is a lot I like about your profile and your school selection list – so I think you will be very attractive to business school programs, Darden included. If you haven’t yet, make sure you reach out to MBA Veterans – they have a lot of great resources available. I like consulting as a next step for you and think you’ve identified nicely the tie of your consulting with forces in other nations with how you would help clients – this is a strong story for you. I’d suggest you think about where you want that to take you long term. Schools will look for what you want to do over the long haul – and how consulting will help get you there. The good news is that consulting can bring you many places – you just want to be able to articulate that through your application. Your lower GPA is going to be a detractor from your application. Depending upon where your GRE quant score is and what type of Math classes you took at Auburn, you may want to take a Berkeley extension Business for Math class – and/or maybe your recommenders can highlight your analytical skills. This would be to reinforce your quant skills to handle the academic rigor of the program. It’s unclear if this is a big part of your role now. You’ve clearly identified the right target for consulting – with 35% of Darden’s class heading into consulting. Overall, I think you have strong chances across your list of schools. Good luck!