MBA Handicapping: Can She Turn Silver Into Gold For Wharton & Columbia?

With a 3.4 GPA from Fordham University and a 700 score on a practice GMAT, Christina is hoping to leverage her experience at JP Morgan into a top business school MBA program. Her initial targets: Wharton, Columbia, NYU Stern, and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business.

The 27-year-old Christina brings a lot to the game. She played division one softball for all of her four years at Fordham, often putting in 30 hours of week of practice and game time. In her first year at Fordham, where she doubled up on majors in International Political Economy and Economics, she racked up a 3.8 GPA. But a family tragedy in her sophomore year impacted her overall grades and she graduated with a 3.4.

She joined J.P. Morgan as a direct-hire, initially in a financial analyst role, then as a client-facing advisor in a niche Private Bank group covering the business owner segment. She works closely with JPM Private Bank’s business owner clients on transition events, from the sale of a business or multi-generational succession planning.

The big question her candidacy poses: Can she overcome silver credentials (a degree from Fordham with a 3.4 and a non-investment banking job at J.P. Morgan) into gold at Wharton or Columbia?

If anyone can do, she can. Christina is highly personable and articulate, both smart and driven, and deeply thoughtful about her career goals. She plans to use her experience at J.P. Morgan as a foundation to transition into an investment-oriented role in private equity or venture capital. She also has exceptional extracurriculars. Among other things, she is a captain of J.P. Morgan’s annual Cycle for Survival (CFS) team which raises money for rare cancer research in partnership with Memorial Sloan Kettering. In fact, she has been the top individual fundraiser across the firm for five consecutive years. The cause is especially meaningful to her because it benefits the doctors who treated her mother’s rare cancer.

In this episode of Friday’s With Sandy, HBSGuru.com Founder Sandy Kreisberg and P&Q Editor-in-Chief John A. Byrne assess her chances of admission to one of her target schools and suggest that she also consider Yale School of Management and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.

If you would like to participate in a future Fridays With Sandy webinar, you can contact Sandy and P&Q Founder John A Byrne here.

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