Mr. Second MBA

You want a second MBA? The fact that you are currently enrolled in an MBA program and are thinking about applying to another one in the U.S. won’t help you very much. Most admission officials will be puzzled by your desire to get two MBAs. They will assume you failed to get the job you wanted with the first go-round and therefore be skeptical of your ability to get the job you want with the second degree. The only way you can break through this issue is to get a jumbo GMAT score that will help a school that over indexes scores for ranking purposes. Wharton loves high GMATs, but because of the reason above, they aren’t going to buy this, no matter what. My gut tells me you will have similar trouble at your other target schools. So let me make a couple of suggestions to you: You need to get a GMAT of 750 and you need to apply to Cornell which has an excellent program for future I-bankers and a successful track record of placing MBA candidates in bulge bracket firms.

If you are not planning on applying until 2025, a lot can happen in five years, but given the current snapshot, this profile is not yet competitive for Wharton. Also, for anyone who already has an MBA or MBA-equivalent degree, the rationale for getting “another” MBA will have to be exceptional and compelling.

Hi Mr. Second MBA, Julie-Anne Heafey here from mbaMission. Well, it’s super hard to evaluate anyone’s chances for a Wharton MBA 5 years down the road, especially without a GMAT or known employment history, but I agree that the fact that you already have an MBA is already going to be a pretty giant hurdle. Some US MBA programs actually will exclude you from consideration. You’ll want to double check the policy of each program on your list when the time comes (things change). Right now, Wharton is a school that does not exclude applicants who already have MBAs, but you really would need to explain both what you’d get out of the program and what you’d contribute to it…and both should be extremely enticing to the adcom. Since you’ve got such a big hurdle and so many unknowns, I’m putting your odds at 5% for now since it’s just too impossible to predict and Wharton gets so many compelling applicants from your region. In a few years, I’d reevaluate the situation and see where things are. Good luck!

Mr. Second MBA, it’s Lisa Cummings of Stratus Admissions, and a former Sloan adcomm. The real question to me is why are you in an MBA program now if you know you will want second one in just a few years? I imagine it makes great sense to you but it will require a serious explanation to your target schools. In my many years at Sloan, we very rarely saw a candidate with a prior MBA degree, almost always that first degree was international and it always gave us pause. You are coming from a very competitive demographic, you don’t want anything to raise red flags yet you will have a big one. If you really are serious about your second MBA, you will want to start positioning yourself now. Start studying for the GMAT as soon as you can so you will have time to work on it if your score is not where you want it to be. Generally, it’s easier to take the exam close to college graduation – use that to your advantage. Feel free to reach out once you graduate to formulate a strategy to follow once you enter the workforce. I wish you luck.