Mr. Relationship Manager

Your profile tells me you are a smart, hard-working young man who is clearly doing very well in your early career. Your big life wins are impressive, from being the fastest rising management trainee to being the youngest relationship manager in the corporate banking department. The fact that you independently manage a portfolio of 20 corporate clients is a sign that you are trusted and highly valued. Your basic stats–a 3.8 GPA and a 750 GMAT–are solid. But here’s the challenge: Unless I’m missing something, I don’t see something here, particularly in your extras, that is driving you into a program as highly selective as Harvard or Stanford. It’s possible that HBS would accept you, given your achievements at work but I think you need a more distinctive story to tell. Perhaps there is something in your personal narrative that would make you stand out. Maybe there are extracurricular things that you failed to mention that would show you to be more than the hard-working person you are. But you do need something extra to put you over the hurdle of super excellent candidates in the pools at HBS and the GSB. That is why I would add three or four other MBA programs to your list because you can fulfill your post-MBA goals from any one of those other schools just as easily as you can from Harvard or Stanford.