Ms. Multifaceted Desi

I love your profile and what you have accomplished so early in your life. And as a professional writer, editor and author, let me also say you have an artful way of expressing yourself. You would be a great asset in any MBA classroom. Here is what I worry about: your GRE score is 19 points below the class average at Stanford which as you well know is the most selective prestige MBA program in the world accepting fewer than 7% of its applicants. As much as I hate standardized tests, I would feel much better if you retook the GRE and got closer to the average. Sure, your 4.0 GPA will help offset your current score but you are such a great candidate for Stanford I would hate to see you dinged because of a damn test score. Now that I got that off my chest, I also want to urge you to apply to a few other schools. As I have often said, elite MBA admissions is a bit of a crap shoot, no matter where you come from or what you have accomplished. The applicant pool at a school like Stanford is overloaded with truly exceptional people and in many cases there is not much of a difference between who gets in and who doesn’t. I am still optimistic for you because of your ability to write well and persuasively–along with your obvious accomplishments. Having been a Broadway performer and a yoga instructor who works for a Big Four accounting firm gives that special Stanford X factor. That’s why I think your chances are more than three times the admit rate. But do yourself a favor and apply to at least three other schools and make one of them Harvard which has a much larger class size that enables the school to not get hung up on the test score of a truly exceptional human being. Good luck to you. I am hoping Stanford demonstrates the wisdom to accept you!