Ms. Retail Innovator

With your numbers and background, an admit at Stanford looks like a real possibility. But Stanford’s super low acceptance rate of less than 7% makes any prediction at the GSB dicey. Still, you have a strong story to tell, with impressive big wins, graduating form a top ten liberal arts college, first gen student, working for a Fortune 10 company, launching an NGO, etc. You should definitely get an interview invite. Obviously, your odds are better at MIT and much better at Columbia.

Ms. Retail Innovator: Emily here from The MBA Exchange. I am a former Associate Director of Admissions at Columbia Business School and have been working as a consultant at The MBA Exchange for four years. I think top MBA programs like Sloan, CBS and GSB will very much like your GPA, GMAT and CFA designation as well as your experiences founding an NGO for women. It sounds like in the short period of time you’ve been working, you’ve had a strong impact and it will be crucial to communicate that impact as you will have overall less work experience than others in these applicant pools. I also think because you’ve been in two different jobs/sectors in two years AND want to move again into VC post MBA, you will need to carefully tie your story together. Admissions officers will see this as a lot of jumping around so you need to make sure you have a steady and cohesive story to tell about where you’ve been and where you’re going as well as why you need an MBA to get there (beyond just the credential). If you’re able to explain these points well in your applications and interviews, I think you will have great success. Good luck!

Hello there Ms. Retail Innovator… Jen Kedrowski here, from mbaMission. It sounds like you have quite a broad background—even more than the ‘retail innovator’ title suggests! As you described, sounds like your expertise is more a combination of finance and technology. Currently I’m a little hazy on what your career trajectory has really looked like (side note- feel free to submit a resume for a deeper look via our free consultation link below this post if interested at any point), so make sure when you apply that the admissions committee does not ALSO feel anything is unclear, and in this submission I’m not clear on exactly how much experience you have … BUT I love the “big life wins” of co-founding the NGO focused on women’s issues (love it even more if it’s still in existence today vs just in university), and the impact you made in launching the first product line in international markets, not to mention a strong GMAT score and the CFA III to boot, on top of a solid undergrad academic performance.

Getting into VC right out of the gate post-MBA is still notoriously tough as you may know, so you may want to voice that as your mid or longer term goal, with a shorter term backup or stepping stone goal in the meantime, but overall GSB should appreciate your drive to help startups via harnessing the impact that technology can have. In these posts we are meant to rate our best judgment on the odds you may get in to your target program… as you likely know, GSB only admits about 6% of applicants and is the most selective program out there… they do turn away 750+ GMAT applicants with great profiles on a regular basis (they simply have a lot more qualified applicants than places available!), so for just about any applicant GSB is a reach… I do feel your odds are greater than the average applicant’s at ~6%, but given their selectivity I still have to stick to 20%, just over 3x’s the general applicant’s odds. I do feel Columbia would be a good option to aim for, particularly ED or early in the RD rolling timeframe, or consider programs such as Kellogg or Booth if open to the Chicago area, or programs like Haas or Tuck as safer choices if you’d like to diversify your school choices at all. Good luck on the process!