Mr. Soldier Boy

Hi Mr. Solider Boy, Kristen from MBA Prep School here. First of all, thank you for your service. As a former MIT Sloan adcom, I felt compelled to comment on your profile. You really have the makings of an outstanding MBA applicant. Your academics at West Point are stellar and being awarded a Fulbright is a mark of excellence; your GMAT is perhaps a little lower than the average at your target schools, but it’s in the ballpark and shows you have the quantitative aptitude necessary to success in business school. Your differentiators, however, are your community engagement and professional success. As a rule, military applicants tend to be viewed very favorable by Admissions officers due to the inherent leadership qualities and experiences they possess. I love that your leadership spans the soccer field and the battlefield (so to speak). You’ve led across complex, diverse teams and should easily be able to tell specific stories about how you have demonstrated those qualities. Your commitments to the veteran and special needs communities are also admirable and it says a lot that you find time to do this in between deployments. I usually push military applicants on their career goals; consulting is such a common path because it provides broad exposure to the business world, but many military applicants select it as a “default” goal with few specifics about why. In your case, I like that you have a mission-drive, longer-term idea of where it might take you. I think you have a solid chance of being admitted to a top MBA program (and personally I think MIT Sloan would love to see your application) if you can strategically put all of these strengths together into a comprehensive package! Please feel free to reach out if you would like to chat about ways to do that!

Mr. Soldier Boy, you have the right stuff to at the very least get an interview invite at HBS. Other than a GMAT score that is 10 points below the class average for Harvard, you have a near perfect application and profile. HBS loves West Pointers. Sure, the HBS Class of 2020 had 12 students from the United States Naval Academy versus seven from West Point but that is as much a consequence of who likely was in the pool two years earlier than anything else. Your 3.7 GPA while playing a demanding division one sport should work well. Along with your Fulbright, there should be no doubt that you can handle the core–and more importantly shouldn’t need to retake the GMAT to aim for a higher score. Your big life win of representing the US as the captain of the USA Military Olympic Soccer Team in China is super impressive. And your post-MBA goal of working for MBB is solid. They love former military people with demonstrated leadership skills. So to me, the question is how can HBS turn you down? If you execute poorly on your application, have so-so recommendations or get that interview and screw up, you will get dinged. So my advice is to take the time to put together a solid application with a well thought out essay, choose your recommenders carefully and coach them by reminding them what to focus on in their rec letters, and walk into that interview with the self-confidence I am certain you’ve developed through all your years of military service. If you nail those aspects of your candidacy, I would be surprised if HBS turned you away. But at a school that rejects 88% of the self-selecting pool of candidates it gets every year–and most of them are truly solid if not extraordinary people–you never know for sure. I am more certain that if HBS passes on you, Stanford or Wharton will invite you in. Good luck and thanks for serving our country.