Ms. Aspiring Entrepreneur

Stanford would be making a big mistake by turning you down. You have a fascinating background as a woman, with a degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech (there are three MBA students at Stanford in the Class of 2020 from your alma mater, two who majored in mechanical engineering and one who majored in biomedical engineering. So Georgia Tech has definite cred with GSB admissions. Your 3.8 highest honor GPA in a difficult subject is a tad above the school’s class average and your 750 GMAT is nicely above the 732 average for the latest entering class. Plus, I like your experience as a consultant who is working on a product with a major Chinese company. And since you say your consulting firm is a top firm I am going to assume it is MBB or at least Deloitte. That, too, bodes well for you because in the Class of 2020 McKinsey, BCG and Bain dominate the feeder companies of Stanford admits. 44 of the incoming class were working at one of the three firms when they applied to the GSB, with another 26 who started with MBB before making a career switch. Deloitte is not far behind with 14 members of the class having had experience at Deloitte. The question is does your passion for animals translate into the school’s lofty mission to change lives, organizations and the world? Generally, Stanford is looking for leadership experience that would give them confidence you will one day be in a position to fulfill the school’s mission. Based on your own description of who you are and what you want to do, I have little doubt you will do that. So I’m swinging the odds in your favor of an admit, though with an acceptance rate of just 6.7%, a 30% prediction for admissions should be seen as very positive. Good luck.

Hello Ms. Aspiring Entrepreneur! Krista Nannery from mbaMission here. Thanks for posting.

I got really excited when I read your profile — you seem to have both the stats and the work experience to get the attention of some of the best schools out there. What I am worried about for you is your goal of creating your own start-up. Have you already made progress on this or is this totally a post-MBA dream? I ask because entrepreneurial goals are so much easier to sell and understand if you’ve already made some progress and have something to show for it. If it’s more of just a dream, you may want to give your immediate post-MBA goal some more though. B-schools know that starting a business is HARD and that most start-ups fail. So the more legitimacy you can give your start-up idea now, the easier this will be to sell.

Two other small worries:
1. I am not a huge fan of 2-school strategies, especially when one of them is GSB. Add one or two other programs please. Ideally front-loaded in R1 so you’re not scrambling in R2.
2. Can you bump up your ECs in the next few months? Perhaps you can leverage that passion for dogs into something more formal that gives back to society?

Hope that helps!