Mr. Top Salesman

Sales experience is a great asset to have, even if it is often less valued by elite MBA admissions staff. Let me just tell you straight out: You are not getting into Wharton. By the way, someone who is a professional photographer (and has a creative side) and is also trained as an engineer (a highly rigorous education) is someone I would very much admire and respect. So I want to explain why Wharton is doing to turn you down: 1) Your 610 GMAT score for an Indian engineer is enough to hold you up. There’s just too wide a gap with Wharton’s class average of 732, and I would bet that for Indian engineers the average is closer to 740-750 at Wharton which is a school that over indexes test scores. 2) While you did exceptionally well with a 4.0 in your undergraduate studies, SRM is not a feeder school into Wharton and is ranked above 1,000 in the world. You will compete with other Indian engineers with degrees from IITs. 3) You have worked for a couple of startups and admissions will not know that these jobs were highly selective. As I have said before, MBA admissions is a risk adverse exercise. The more selective schools want to know that you have already passed through a fine screen at both the undergraduate and employer level to give them greater confidence you woj’t be an admissions mistake. And 4) You are in sales which I greatly respect but tends to be underappreciated by elite adcoms. If your heart is really set on Wharton, you would have to take the GMAT and achieve a score of 740 to 750. So here is what I suggest. Do take the GMAT again and again until you get closer to a 700 score. Meantime, you need to put together a list of schools that are more likely to consider your application and accept you. You can become the CEO of a major company from Vanderbilt, Emory, USC, Indiana Kelley, Georgia Tech, Michigan State, Ohio State and many other very strong business schools. So I would encourage you to do those two things and to use your formdiable skills in sales to “sell” yourself into a solid MBA program.