Handicapping Your Shot At An Elite MBA

After working in India as a software programmer for a major software company, this Indian-born engineer managed to land a strategy job with a global insurance company in Chicago. A 26-year-old who graduated at the top 20% of his class in computer science, he has an impressively high 750 GMAT and now wants to go to business school to help him make the move to McKinsey, Bain or Boston Consulting Group.

After a six-year stint as an advertising executive for a national Canadian magazine, he went to Harvard University at the age of 29. With a 740 GMAT and a 3.9 GPA, this 33-year-old male now wants to go to business school to either become a venture capitalist or a consultant who specializes in media strategy.

This young African American professional worked for a bulge bracket investment bank for five years, then picked up an Ivy League master’s degree in information management. He has spent the last two years at a consulting firm. With a 650 GMAT and a 3.3 grade point average, he’s now hoping to get an MBA degree to transition to one of the big three global consulting firms.

Sandy Kreisberg, founder of HBSGuru.com

What they all share in common is the ambition to attend one of the world’s best MBA programs and to use that experience to enhance their career paths. Sanford “Sandy” Kreisberg, founder of Boston-based MBA admissions consulting firm HBSGuru.com, is back again to analyze these and a few other profiles of actual MBA applicants who have shared their vital statistics, work backgrounds and career goals with Poets&Quants.

As usual, Kreisberg handicaps each potential applicant’s odds of getting into a top-ranked business school. If you include your own stats and characteristics in the comments, we’ll pick a few more and have Kreisberg assess your chances in a follow-up feature to be published shortly. (Please add your age and be clear on the sequence of your jobs in relaying work experience. Make sure you let us know your current job.)

And if you just have a short question, he is happy to answer that, too. So just post it in the comment section below.

This edition of our popular MBA handicapping series is an unusual all-video version, but if you want to skip the film and go straight to the stats, the analysis and the odds, you can do that, too, because we include a writeup with each profile.

Mr. Indian-Engineer-Turned-Strategy Analyst

750 GMAT
Top 20% of class
Undergraduate degree in computer science from a well-known engineering school in India (not IIT)
Top 10% of class
Master’s degree in management from the Indian Institute of Management
Work experience includes a year for a major software company (think Microsoft, Oracle, SAP) as a software engineer in India and for the past two years for a global property and casualty insurance company in strategy
Extracurricular involvement is limited, only recently began doing pro bono work for an NGO
Goal: To use the MBA to work for a big three global consulting firm in their healthcare or financial services practice
26-year-old Indian male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 25%
Stanford: 10%
Wharton: 40% to 50%
Chicago: 40% to 50%
Northwestern: 30% to 40%

Sandy’s Analysis: I like this guy a lot. I like Desi guys who are software programmers who have big GMATs. And he works in what he calls P&C. But as far as Harvard and Stanford are concerned that might as well be D&C. It’s an abortion for them. It’s not something they care about. They think it’s as boring as most people think it is. It’s not considered a selective job. On the other hand, it is a serious and important job.

For those reasons and the fact that he does not have much by way of extras or Stanford-friendly assets, it’s going to be a hard sell. He’s the silver version of a golden guy who has a 750 GMAT who went to the Indian Institute of Technology, then got a job with McKinsey and is now working for an elite PE firm.

HIs goals are good. Consulting firms will like this guy because he has a very high GMAT and they might very well like a person from the property and casualty field. He will get a big three consulting gig, no matter where he goes.

This guy has a management degree and that is another thing to be explained away. Schools say you already have an MBA. What are you doing? Schools blink at that. They blink at non-American MBAs on the theory that you didn’t get the full monty experience. Why would you now come back and try to get it?

So Harvard and Stanford are probably not going to accept him. Wharton goes for a guy like this with serviceable execution. He’s got big numbers. He’s going to be employed. He’s smart. Why not? His chances at Wharton, Chicago Booth, and Kellogg are all good. I don’t know this guy and I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but he may not be a Kellogg type. I would like to know how many people at Kellogg ever worked at Oracle. That is a wacky statistic I would like to know because he and Kellogg seem like oil and water.

I like this guy and he can get into the Sandy Kreisberg School of Business any day.

Ms. African-American Tax Consultant

680 GMAT
3.4 GPA
Undergraduate degree from a top-tier public university
Work experience includes several years as a tax consultant for a mid-sized corporate advisory firm in Texas, serving the real estate and healthcare industries
Short-term goal: To use the degree to get a job in corporate finance or investment banking in the energy/utility industry
Long-term goal: To transfer knowledge to working in-house for a startup clean energy company in California
24-year-old African-American female, first generation college student

Odds of Success:

UCLA: 40% to 50%+
Texas: 50%+
Duke: 45% to 50%+
UC-Berkeley: 40% to 50%

Sandy’s Analysis: She is a very compelling applicant for the obvious reasons: She is a first generation college student and an African American female which puts her in the underserved part of the MBA applicant pool. She has a good entry level job and she has thrived there. In her note, she said she was going to be promoted to senior vice president. A 680 GMAT is a pretty solid GMAT score. The one blemish in this story is the 3.4 grade point average. But the holistic picture makes her a very attractive candidate and a lot of schools would love to have her.

The work she does is similar to the work people do in the Big Four firms like Deloitte, Ernst & Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and KPMG. That is a good starting position for minorities or international students. Those are very good jobs and considered so. If you are a white male from Yale and you are working for Pwc, that is somewhat questionable. It’s not viewed as a selective job for a white male from an Ivy League school, even though what you might do there is important. Generally, schools like Stanford and Harvard will look to firms like Pwc and Ernst & Young and take minorities from there. I’ve lost track of this but there was a that was almost a reserved seat for three or four years running.

As to goals, I don’t know where you are getting the energy thing from. What schools like is for you to continue doing what you have been doing. Why do schools like that? They think it would be easier to place you My suggestion would be to suggest goals that you are already doing. Say you want to transition to consulting in real estate and healthcare. Investment banking is a reach. I wouldn’t state that as a short-term goal.

I also wouldn’t say you want to work for a clean energy startup in California. It sounds like you are either telling them what you think they want to hear or you are sharing your secret fantasy. That does not evolve out of what you have done. The danger is that a school reads that and says this person doesn’t really know the environment.

Your target schools would welcome you with solid execution. You also should go to outreach events for minorities and underserved groups and try to snooze a bit and see what kind of response you get. I could see you getting into Wharton or Dartmouth Tuck. There is someone like you at Wharton. It could be you.

Mr. Inner City IT Consultant

650 GMAT
3.3 GPA
Undergraduate degree in business from a small liberal arts college
3.6 GPA (master’s)
Master’s in Information Management from an Ivy League university
Work experience includes five years at a bulge bracket investment bank (think Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley or J.P. Morgan) and two years as an IT consultant for a well-known consulting firm (think Deloitte, Booz or Oliver Wyman)
Extracurricular involvement as a leader in local and national programs in civic equality and education, currently working for a well-known nonprofit focused on minority youth education
Goal: To use the MBA to transition to McKinsey, Bain or Boston Consulting Group
African-American, first generation college student from the a poor inner city family
29-year-old

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 20%
Stanford: 15%
Wharton: 25% to 30%
MIT: 30% to 40%
UC-Berkeley: 40% to 50%
Columbia: 30%
Yale: 30% to 40%

Sandy’s Analysis: There’s a lot to like about this guy. He’s an up-from-the-boot straps African-American. He wanted to be a scientist and discovered that IT was more to his liking. What he wants to do is wind up at McKinsey, Bain or BCG. Here’s the problem: There is too much noise in the story. The 650 GMAT is a little bit of noise. So is his undergraduate GPA at 3.3. He also has had seven years of work experience, going from a bulge bracket bank to an IT consultant. That is more noise to be explained.

As I have said many times, schools will wink once if they like you. They will sometimes wink twice if they really like you. They do not wink three times. This guy has the 650, the low GPA and the unusual career. That is asking for two-and-one-half to three winks. That is why he is not getting into Harvard or Stanford and probably not Wharton.

Schools like when you don’t change careers because you are likely to be employed. He needs to shape his story. If he can do that he should. If not, he should hire a qualified consultant. Kellogg is a good school for you to think about. They are big and they go for stories like this. It’s also a school that would be open to the IT consulting angle. What he wants to do is join McKinsey and work in their IT practice. He could easily do that with a Kellogg MBA.

Mr. Old Undergrad

740 GMAT
3.9 GPA
Undergraduate degree from Harvard University. going to Harvard at the age of 29 after attending a community college
Work experience includes six years as an advertising executive for a national Canadian magazine and the last three years at a consulting shop working in intellectual property and strategy
Started two companies, a Groupon competitor sold to eBay and a loyalty coalition company sold to a large retailer
Extracurricular involvement as a volunteer coach for a Triple A ice hockey team, a competitive goalie who is a nationally ranked top five player in both ice hockey and ball hockey, pro bono audio visual work for local charity events
Goal: To move into top-flight management consulting in media strategy or to become a venture capitalist
33-year-old Canadian male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 20%
Stanford: 10%
Wharton: 40% to 50%
Michigan: 50%+
Cornell: 50%+

Sandy’s Analysis: This is an interesting guy and obviously a super smart guy. I don’t know what happened to cause this guy to work for a magazine out of high school. Somehow he transfers from a community college in Canada to Harvard and gets a 3.9 and a 740 GMAT. He’s 33-years-old.

That is the good news. Here is the bad news: This guy is going to be 36 when he graduates business school and he’s going to be looking for an entry job at a management consulting company. That is about the age when people start retiring from McKinsey, Bain and BCG. He may have a hard time getting that job and the schools know it.

What he has to count on is an admissions officer who reads his profile and says, ‘I don’t care what this guy says he wants to do. He is a really smart guy and he is going to be a plus in our program.’

What he should do is make it clear that he doesn’t want to work for one of the big three in consulting. He should say he either wants to start of work for a boutique media strategy consulting firm. Go look those up on Google and you would be amazed on what comes up. This could be a case where Google could help you prepare your application.

He’s not a guy who went to college a long time ago and is a burnt out middle manager. That is the heartland of Executive MBA programs. That’s the kind of guy who goes to an Executive MBA program. This guy actually presents as one of the man children who is technically 33 but thinks of himself as 24 and presents that way.

This guy should not say he wants to be a VC. That’s just day dreaming. When a venture capital firm hires youngsters out of business school, it really goes for the prestige. In reality, this guy would probably be a terrific venture capitalist. It’s just getting into the game that will be hard for him.

In God’s eyes, his extracurriculars are impressive. In the Canadian God’s eyes, those are terrific. In the eyes of an admissions officer, it doesn’t add up to much. The admission committee ladies won’t know much about ball hockey unless then are Canadian jocks. But let me say I am impressed.

There’s nothing driving you into Harvard or Stanford. But at Wharton, Michigan and Cornell, you are in good shape. All of those schools will buy your numbers. Wharton has become very big on GPA and GMAT numbers. It’s the way they got listed as tied for No. 1 in U.S. News. That happened because they said they were going to go for high numbers and they are going to keep doing it.

Mr. Military Intelligence Officer

700 GMAT
4.0 GPA
Valedictorian of West Point Class
Work experience includes a multi-year as a military intelligence analyst and officer; has led over 100 soldiers in cyber operations
Extracurricular involvement as captain of the fencing team at West Point which captured the national championship, volunteer in Big Brothers and Special Olympics
Goal: To return to the military in a leadership role

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 60%+
Stanford: 50%
Wharton: 60%+
Virginia: 60%+

Sandy’s Analysis: What we have here is a very impressive guy. He’s got a very good chance of getting into Harvard or Stanford.I would like to do is to use him as a test case and go through his assets one-by-one for people who are not valedictorians.

A 700 GMAT is acceptable for Harvard Business School if everything else is solid. What Harvard likes to see is 80% splits on both verbal and quant sides. As a rule, if you are the valedictorian of an Ivy, a near Ivy or a service academy, that is something business schools respect. This is important about military applicants: Business schools don’t really know how to appraise a military career because they don’t know the difference between being in a combat zone or running a cyber lab.

They also don’t know how people who graduate from service academies get assignments. I don’t know what leading people in cyber operations mean. What I imagine is a bunch of guys in a dark room sitting in front of computers. That is not the iconic leadership you see from a military guy.

What it does for military applicants, unfortunately, is that it makes your stats count a lot more. What you find is you can sort them out by some matrix of GMAT and GPA. The only way this guy isn’t getting into Harvard Business School is if he blows the interview. If you changed a few things, this guy would be questionable. If he weren’t the valedictorian, if he just had the 700 GMAT and was only the captain of the fencing team and they were unable to get some bead on his military career, he could wind up being beaten out by other military candidates. His trump card is being a valedictorian.

Just for the sake of being provocative, if you twisted the dials on this guy you could say, you know something, this guy is a little bit of a nerd. His grades are almost too good. He’s interested in cyber stuff. And if he didn’t have the fencing, which gets him back to normal mode, that could be a possibly dangerous profile.

This guy also says he wants to spend his career in the military. I don’t know how many military applicants say that. I think you want to say you want to work for McKinsey or Goldman instead. I think there are fewer service academy graduates at Harvard today than ten years ago. But he’s got a great chance at all the very best schools.

Ms. Consulting Wannabe

680 GMAT
3.43 GPA
Undergraduate degree in finance from New York University
Work experience includes eight years with a firm that does work for the financial services industry; the firm transitioned from an asset management company into a platform for hedge funds and asset managers
Goal: To use the degree to go into consulting
Extracurricular involvement limited but her hobbies include hiking, kayaking, yoga and photography
31-year-old female

Odds of Success:

Michigan: 40% to 50%
Cornell: 40% to 50%
Virginia:40% to 50%
Cornell: 40% to 50%
North Carolina: 50%
Carnegie Mellon: 40% to 50%

Sandy’s Analysis: In the real world, working for a firm for eight years would be a good way to get yourself on the road toward a gold watch. Within the world of business school admissions, that becomes questionable. When people see eight years of work experience, they begin to think EMBA—not MBA.

Business schools might not consider her firm selective enough. She wants to change careers and go into consulting. But McKinsey, Bain and BCG want young, book-smart people. When she graduates, she will be 33. They like them young, smart, they break them in and train them and bill them out at a lot of money. McKinsey, They won’t be impressed with her prior history. Bain and BCG also care a lot about where you went to school for your undergrad degree and they are looking for GMATs of 720 and up.

The dirty little secret about the schools she is targeting is that they want you to be employed when you leave. They don’t want to be a collecting point for disappointed, unemployed people. My advice to her is that she wants to continue what she is doing in some management role and to hint that she has a job when she graduates waiting for her.

When you read her profile, she sounds a little burned out. She would do better thinking about an EMBA program and if she wants to go to a full-time MBA program she should say she wants to return to the same industry in a management job.

Ms. Jersey Girl

710 GMAT (Q44/V42)
3.6 GPA
Undergraduate degree in politics with a minor in painting at a mid-ranked Ivy
Work experience includes two years at a young, fast-growing government consultancy (mostly social work/juvenile justice issues)
“My work was pretty varied – a lot of big picture strategizing, data analysis,. Drafted a major paper directed at the next NYC mayor, not typical policy manifesto but along the lines of managing and strategy for city departments that don’t often collaborate. Everyone I work with has decades of my experience but I’ve managed to become a trusted voice and resource on a number of issues
Extracurricular involvement mostly revolved around volunteering in local public schools, teaching traditional subjects, drawing and painting to kids; also a political cartoonist; currently board member and co-president of an environmental/community development nonprofit
“I don’t want to come off as a bleeding heart, I’m actually a true INTJ and a pretty rational problem solver. I want a lucrative career but one that puts me in a position to also influence society positively and meaningfully.”
Goal: To earn an MBA or JD/MBA to help develop private-public partnerships aimed at positive social impact
“Father immigrated from a life of poverty in Jamaica, mother home-schooled me for most of my childhood along with adopted cousins whose parents couldn’t care for them. She didn’t finish college herself because she dropped out to care for her nephews before I was born. So now, my achievements are hers, too.”
23-year-old African American female

Odds of Success:

Wharton: 60%+
Harvard: 50% to 60%
Dartmouth: 60%+
Northwestern: 60%+
New York: 60%+
Stanford: 40% to 50%
Virginia: 60%+
Berkeley: 60%+

Sandy’s Analysis: What you have here is a golden candidate. She’s 23. She’s an African-American female. She went to an Ivy League prestige school. She has a solid GPA and a great life story. And she has a social service bent. This story is impressive. It is tight and fits together. She is lively from reading the report she wrote us. And she is the type of person who will be sitting next to you in a classroom when you show up at Harvard Business School or Stanford Graduate School of Business.

INTJ is one of the 16 Myers-Briggs categorizations. It stands for introversion, intuition, thinking, judgment. If you look it up on the Internet, you see two people: Vladimir Putin and the guy from House, Dr. Gregory House. Let’s deal with the guy from House. What I think you’re saying is that although you are like the guy from House which might not fit well with business school because he is so idiosyncratic and does things his own way and is not a team player, you actually are a rational managerial person.

Your goal is to continue doing exactly what she has been doing. So you have a strong, tightly-knit package with no negatives and a lot of positives. She is a very attractive, well-qualified candidate.

And you don’t need no JD. If you want to get a dual degree, you would be better off getting one from the Kennedy School and HBS. A dual degree would just be a waste of money. My guess is you are a great schmoozer. Two years is enough to go to Harvard and Stanford and meet all the important people you need to meet. My guess is you will start doing that from day one and by the time you graduate you will have developed an entire ecosystem of mentors, friends and supporters.

Ms. Real Estate

700 GMAT (41V/45Q)
3.6 GPA
Undergraduate degree in finance from Georgetown University
Work experience includes three years as an analyst and associate at a large British bank in New York; three years at a smaller, more regional New York bank doing investment banking and having client-facing responsibility, promoted to vice president
“Most of my current clients are in the real estate industry (construction and development), has sparked my passion for working in the field”
Extracurricular involvement serving on two junior boards of directors of local charities in NYC, the second of which she co-founded; golfer (11 handicap, captain of high school team)
“One of my essays focuses on how golf has helped me in business as a female”
Short-term goal: To work for a top multi-national bank (Goldman/JPM/BofA) in real estate corporate finance
Long-term goal: To become a principal at a real estate investment fund
28-year-old Indian-American

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 15%

London: 40% to 50%

Northwestern: 40% to 50%

Chicago: 30% to 40%

Wharton: 25% to 30%

Sandy’s Analysis: Let’s cut to the chase. You’re not going to get into Harvard and explaining why is revealing. Six years of work experience at silver—not golden—financial institutions equals a ding at HBS for a number of reasons. The financial cohort of applicants at Harvard is unbelievably selective and elite. They’ve got people with four years of experience at banks that you want to work at. Two years at Goldman and two years at Blackstone, or a variant of that work background, is what the typical HBS applicant presents.

Harvard accepts people with similar GMAT splits, a 41V and a 45Q, but not investment bankers. That is an important distinction right there.

The six years of experience is on the high side of people applying particularly from banking and particularly for Harvard. With that amount of experience, people begin to say you should be earning a lot of money and you should have a lot of contacts. An experienced and cynical admissions officer might say, ‘Madam, why don’t you get that job at Goldman right now?’

While her golf game looks good, she’s not going to swing her way into Harvard Business School. There is no hole-in-one in MBA admissions.Those qualities, if you are on the border, could help push you over but they are not going to blow open the door.

On the other hand, London Business School runs older. They like accomplished people. They like bankers and people who hold out the possibility of being employed after they attend the school.

Wharton is an interesting case. You are totally up their alley with your background in banking and finance. Your stats are on the low side of acceptable for Wharton. I predict it’s not going to happen simply because there are a lot of people with the same story and a better version of it. The six years is a real killer.

Chicago is the same story as Wharton. Kellogg is possible because the six years in finance is not Executive MBA program but it’s getting there. This is classic Duke, Darden, maybe Kellogg, USC. By the way, your dreams can come true there—except for Goldman. The way to get into Goldman is to apply to the firm right now. If they need someone in real estate who is accomplished and connected, they will hire her. You don’t need no stinking MBA!

Ms. Dual Degree

328 GRE (169V/159Q)
3.9 GPA
Undergraduate degree from a Top 20 university
Work experience includes three years as an analyst for a top consulting firm (think McKinsey/Bain/BCG) with top ratings, and two years on the strategy team of a “big name” educational tech non-profit in Silicon Valley
Internships in international affairs at the State Department, for international development non-profits, and work experience in more than four countries
Extracurricular involvement as a board member of a mid-size non-profit in California and pro-bono consultant for non-profits.
Fluent in five languages
Short-term goal: To return to employer and continue work in emerging markets and non-profit organizations
Long-term goal: To lead program/operations for a successful international development organization with a focus on education and literacy
“Applying to joint MBA/MA (Education, Int’l Affairs) and joint MBA/MPP programs; will apply Round 1 to all schools”
27-year-old American female

 Odds at Schools:

Harvard: 50%+

Stanford: 40%+

Wharton: 40% to 50%

Sandy’s Analysis: You’re a very impressive candidate.

If there is a student who could successfully present a GRE, it’s you because you’re applying for a dual degree. Your GRE score translates to a 690 GMAT and you are obviously interested in top schools like Harvard, Stanford and Wharton. If you are going to present a 690 GMAT, you are better off reporting it as a GRE score because it won’t hurt a school’s ranking. That is just an issue for general consumption.

You have a resume full of prestige organizations and schools. And your story about what you’ve done and what you want to do makes sense. It is a tightly-knit story..

You’re a class act. You have such a tight narrative that the dual-degree may make sense for you. But I personally don’t recommend getting a dual-degree. I think it is a waste of a year and a waste of money. Here’s why: If you are shrewd about the way you handle the MBA, you can get the schmooze value of the dual-degree your second year. For instance, let’s say you want to go to Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School. My advice is just go to HBS and spend your second year schmooze around the Kennedy School. You can make all the contacts and you can save yourself a year of tuition and a year’s worth of income. In your second year, you could take a good number of the Kennedy school courses by cross registering there.

You have real Stanford DNA. The only boo-boo is your low GRE, but I think your chances are really good and even better at HBS. Wharton may say, ‘What is this person doing here?’ Wharton has a special person who recruits people for social enterprise, but Wharton might take a close look at this and say this gal is going to Stanford or Harvard.

Ms. Project Engineer

690 GMAT
3.9 GPA
Undergraduate degree in civil engineering from a top 20 public university
Work experience as a project engineer for a management construction company with 200 employees during the past three years; received three promotions; co-led a team which identified inefficiencies within a software program used by operations on a daily basis
Extracurricular involvement as a volunteer for a group that harvests fruits and vegetables and brings the to local food banks and soup kitchens; president and marshall of a civil engineering society when in college; tutor to fellow undergraduates in civil engineering courses
24-year-old Native American female

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 40% to 50%

Stanford: 20%

Michigan: 50%+

Northwestern: 50%+

Duke: 50%+

USC: 60%+

Notre Dame: 60%+

Sandy’s Analysis: Let me focus on the elements that are really important.

You are a female engineer and that is a real plus.

You’re a Native American and that is a real plus.

And you have a job working for an engineering firm as an engineer. That is a super plus.

If you can be convincing on all of those issues, you’ll be a strong candidate.

Let’s start with the Native American part. It’s helpful if you claim Native American heritage to have a narrative that has deep support in Native American heritage and issues. Sen. Elizabeth Warren declared herself to be a Native American and she took a lot of flak for it because she is only 1/16th Native American. But it is among the most difficult, hard-to-fill minorities for business schools so that could give you an edge.

The second issue I see is, ideally if you are an engineer you want to work for a huge engineering company, one that everyone has heard of. It’s not necessary, but it is very helpful. You work for a 200-person engineering company and the one project you describe is fixing software.

That’s not adding luster to someone who is an engineer. What we want is someone who is out there with an orange vest with a whistle, stopping traffic and bossing around guys who are driving big rigs and then going back and doing planning to quarterback that. You want to upgrade that issue.

Aside from that, the 690 GMAT is silver, not gold. Schools like H/S/W want to see a 700 or up. They are certainly willing to wink at it and they probably would because you are a female Native American engineer. Still, a 710 or 720 would look a lot better. The median and the mean GMATs are real high at Harvard and Stanford.

Your extracurricular activities are great in God’s eyes and great in my eyes. I don’t think it is going to cut a lot of mustard among the cynical admission committees you’ll face. The fruits and vegetables thing is just not scaled enough and it doesn’t intricately relate to what you do. Being class marshall of a big school is something that an admissions committee appreciates because it shows leadership. Being the president of a civil engineering club isn’t going to move the needle.

Mr. Dance Marathon

710 GMAT
3.7 GPA
Undergraduate degree from Penn State
Work experience includes three years in finance and corporate strategy for a healthcare/biotech company
Extracurricular involvement includes participating in a 46-hour dance marathon for pediatric cancer charity (no sitting and no sleeping; captain of the cross country team; volunteer for the national running club; leads employee running group
Goal: To return to current company or a similar role elsewhere in corporate strategy
25-year-old male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 20%
Stanford: 10%
Wharton: 30% to 35%
Dartmouth: 40% to 50%
Virginia: 50%+

Sandy’s Analysis: What we got here is a lot of silver, a little bit of gold. I don’t think you are getting into Harvard Business School or Stanford. In God’s eyes, what we have here is a likable, athletic, marathon dancer, philanthropist, and all around nice guy. What we don’t have is anything super special. We don’t have enough prestige in either the GPA, or the GMAT, or the prestige company to get one into HBS or Stanford.

Saying that you want to return to the same company requires that is not a good idea. That is Executive MBA stuff, for people who work for mid-level, non-brand companies who just want to do better at their own firms. Harvard, Stanford and Wharton doesn’t want guys like that for their MBA programs. I would advise this guy to say that he likes the function, he likes what he is doing, and he wants to be an impactful and innovative leader in that industry. Then, he should Google the leading company in that industry and say he wants to lead that company.

At Wharton, it’s a numbers game and there are going to be athletic guys just like him with better numbers. For him, Dartmouth and Darden are gold. It’s not a long reach. He could get into Dartmouth and he sure seems himself. And this guy has UVA written all over him.

Mr. Marine

730 GMAT (first try)
3.57 GPA
Undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Kansas, graduating in three and one-half years
Work experience as a U.S. Marine, having served two combat deployments
Was commissioned at the age of 21 and will come out as a captain
25-year-old male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 40%

Stanford: 30%

Wharton: 40% to 50%

Chicago: 40% t0 50%

Sandy’s Analysis: This is a case where everything lines up. The University of Kansas is the kind of school that Harvard and Stanford like to accept people from if they can.

The 3.57 in accounting is a couple of eyelashes on the low side, but the 730 GMAT helps him there. And then he has had a distinguished military career with two deployments. As I have said many times, admissions officers have a very difficult time hashing out a military career. Ghey don’t know what a golden career is versus a silver or bronze. One of the things they do understand are deployments. He’s got that going for him and he seems to have graduated to captain in what seems like a fast amount of time. That’s helpful.

Depending on how this guy tells his story, guys like this get into Harvard certainly. Stanford there might be a missing X factor that we don’t know about. At Harvard, he is in the hopper for sure.

Business schools are open to the military, but in their minds, there is the good military and the bad military. They’ll never admit this, but in the bad military are those who conform to the stupid stereotype of military people: that they are gung-ho, that they follow orders, and aren’t very reflective. If he presents that way, he will damage himself. A good military candidate is reflective, non-kinetic in anything other than a combat situation, and likable.

It’s a question of how you come cross. Do you have a more fluid body language. If you go in there with the yes-ma’am, no-ma’am stuff, they don’t like it.

Mr. College Hockey Player

740 GMAT

3.3 GPA

Undergraduate degree in economics and philosophy and from a Top 20 liberal arts college in New England

Work experience includes two years at a financial technology company doing IT work for hedge funds and past two years at a boutique management consulting firm “performing asset analysis to increase asset utilization

Earned a promotion in six months and expects another promotion soon

Extracurricular involvement as the captain of his college hockey team

Goal: To be a strategy consultant in the technology industry

26-year-old white male

Odds of Success:

Wharton: 30%

Yale: 40% to 50%

Columbia: 30% to 40%

Northwestern: 30% to 40%

Dartmouth: 40% to 50%

Berkeley: 50%+

Sandy’s Analysis: This is an interesting candidate. The 740 GMAT is great. The hockey is acceptable. The 3.3 could be an issue. As I often say, your GPA can really hurt you. It’s more important than anybody admits. That is one issue that you have to consider with this guy. The question is, how much trouble is that GPA going to cost him?

The 740 GMAT will buy this guy a lot. Schools will be taking a chance on him. And he’s smart enough to know that Harvard and Stanford won’t take a chance on him.

His work history is boutique-y and niche-y. His first job was doing some kind of sophisticated IT for hedge funds and his second job he described as boutique management where he was performing data analysis to increase asset utilization. My advice to this guy is to get this in more user-friendly terms.

Schools have a hard time reading the careers of people who work for unknown companies. It’s very important in your application to stress how selective they are, how important they are, and what they do. On the other hand, what the guy has done is very consistent, focused and being at the intersection of analysis, hedge funds and corporate development. All those things are good.

Mr. Tech Marketing

730 GMAT
3.4 GPA
Undergraduate degree from an Ivy League school in math and finance
Work experience includes product marketing manager at Facebook, Google, or Twitter, responsible for go-to-market strategy, product evolution, and marketing for a “very high-profile advertising product and one advertising product doing amazing well,” previously worked in consulting and also built a startup in private equity operations
Extracurricular involvement in multiple campus and fraternity leadership positions, founder of a student-run investment fund, and founder of an entrepreneurship forum to bring venture capitalists and industry leaders together
Goal: To move out of adtech to either find startup team or startup idea while in B-school and eventually move into the VC industry
27-year-old Asian American male

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 30% to 40%

Stanford: 30%

Wharton: 50%+

MIT: 50%+

Sandy’s Analysis: What we have here are two great candidates and whether or not you combine the two into one great candidate is a very interesting question. If he were a product manager at Google and had these qualifications and wanted to go on in product management and then business leadership in the tech industry, that would be a great profile. If he had a startup history and then wanted to go to business school, that is a good story.

The fact that it is a hybrid story doesn’t make it better. Business schools are like doctors. They don’t like complex stories. What doctors want is for you to go in, give your symptoms, then diagnose you and say here is a pill that can fix this.

By presenting a complex story, you begin to wonder what this guy really wants and what is really driving him and why he is leaving a product management role at a premier company to go to business school.

What business schools like is people who are already on one track and want to stay on that track. I don’t care what they say. What they like is someone who works for Google, has been successful at Google, and guess what, wants to go back to Google. What he should tell business schools is that he wants to become a mega-manager at Google.

His odds for Harvard are pretty good. But a 3.4 GPA even in a STEM major is on the low side and I hate to say it but that could hurt him at Harvard and Stanford. But MIT loves this guy. It’s a school that would buy the hybrid model, and MIT loves Google more than Stanford does because it is just farther away and more rare. Wharton will go for a guy like this. As so often is the case, he has to convince them he wants to go there.

Mr. Air Force Captain

680 GMAT
3.5 GPA
Undergraduate degree in finance from the University of Memphis
3.5 GPA
Undergraduate degree in economics from Penn State’s online program
Work experience as a combat systems officer in the U.S. Air Force
“I plan missions, operate weapons, and tell the pilot what to do. CSO is a rated slot (pilots, CSOs, RPAs and ABMs are all rated) and like all rated slots, they are highly competitive. I was an ROTC cadet.”
Extracurricular involvement in community service, including 150 hours during my Air Force career and more than 33 hours in college
“I am an extremely ambitious, business-minded person. I want to be a consultant so I can develop into a future CEO.”
29-year-old Air Force Captain in the Air Force

Target Schools:

Harvard: 20% to 30%

Stanford: 15% to 20%

Chicago: 40%

Columbia: 40%

Berkeley: 50%+

UCLA: 50%+

Yale: 20% to 30%

Sandy’s Analysis: I’ve said this before about the military and it’s important to underscore: The people who read admission folders are not veterans as a rule. They don’t have an understanding of what people do in the Armed Services. They have a very hard time determining whether you have a Gold, Silver or Bronze military career. They do understand that a military pilot is an elite thing. They understand that being a Navy Seal is an elite thing. They probably understand that being an Army Ranger is an elite thing.

If you are in the military, it’s very important that you give them a flavor of your career in terms they can understand. Unfortunately, what happens with military applicants is that your GPA and GMAT wind up counting a lot because those are easy elements for admissions people to understand.

What rank should you have? Most people who apply to business schools are captains. I think it is hard to get a rank higher than that within the typical five-year stint that people apply from. I don’t see many Colonels apply to business school. This guy is going to be a long shot at Harvard and Stanford with a 680 GMAT and a 3.5 GPA. There is nothing driving him inin terms of gender, or an overcoming adversity story. Harvard and Stanford would just look for someone with higher stats. The average GPA and GMAT scores of military admits to Harvard and Stanford would be an interesting set of numbers but I think it is higher than 3.5/680.

The only story that would overcome that would be a personal adversity narrative. He also comes across as a little too gung-ho, believe it or not. He says, ‘I am an extremely ambitious, business-minded person.’ You might think, ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Oddly, schools don’t like to hear that as directly as he puts it.

And they don’t want to hear that you want to be a consultant so you can be a future CEO. They want to hear that you want to be a consultant so that you can help companies grow and provide jobs and new opportunities. Sure, that is what he meant, or maybe meant, but if the full application and touch and feel of the thing is too directly ambitious like that, it could be trouble. Once you get outside of H+S, and if this application gets hip to the standard application BS, well, what you got is a pretty solid guy whom you’d like to have on your team in most situations. That should be enough at other schools he is interested in.

Mr. Global

730 GMAT
3.88 GPA
Undergraduate degree in economics from a “second-tier” Ivy League university
Work experience includes working for a high tech startup in Berlin, working on business development and strategy
Internships during college with the Council on Foreign Relations, UN Peacekeeping, 11 months with Egypt Endeavor, and a summer course in Beirut
Spent three months at Deutschebank in Berlin, writing a report on the Middle Eastern economy post Arab Spring; 11 months in Endeavor Egypt
Extracurricular involvement
Fluent in Arabic, German and French, several languages, having spent a lot of time abroad in the Middle East, among other places
Goal: To work for a tech firm or a larger consulting from in the U.S.; Long-term wants to start an international venture capital firm
25-year-old American male

Odds of Success:

Stanford: 50%

Harvard: 50%

Columbia: 50%+

MIT: 50%+

Sandy’s Analysis: Mr. Global has Stanford written all over him. He’s got the stats. He’s got the politically correct summer gigs, and the right intentions. He is their kind of guy.

Let me burst one balloon, first. This business of going to a second-tier Ivy just goes to show what a humble guy this is. From an admissions committee perspective, all Ivies are great. If you are an ambitious high school senior, you might become fixated on HYP (Harvard, Yale, and Princeton).

The 730 GMAT is the perfect GMAT. That means he is a super normal smart guy. Any higher and you start thinking nerd or idiot savant. A 3.88 GPA shows he is hard working and focused.

People who want to get into Stanford should pay attention here: The Council on Foreign Relations, UN Peacekeeping, the summer course in Beirut, 11-month stint at Endeavor Egypt. That is music to Stanford’s ears. They love exotic people like that. They love people in combat zones and those in the Middle East. They love people who are supporting the under=developed populations. They just like that kind of exotica. That’s what makes this guy attractive.

Then what he does is balance that out with three months at Deutschebank in Berlin writing a report on the Middle Eastern economy. I don’t know if that was a contract gig or started at the bank and decided it wasn’t for him. That could be a glitch he needs to explain.

He then moved to a high tech startup in Berlin. I don’t know what that means but it sounds good. It would help if that is a real company with venture capital backing or sales—any metric of reality. You could say that your roommate’s business plan is a high tech startup.

His goals make sense, too. He should sell his interest in venture capital as a desire to fund Impactful startups in underserved areas in emerging and innovative industries. This guy is going to go where the global need is and where impact can be made. With acceptable execution, he has a 50% chance of getting into Stanford.

Columbia is very shrewd about sniffing out people who use them as a safety. So he has to make a case why New York is important if he wants a chance to get into the school.

Ms. Financial Tech

680 GMAT
3.42 GPA
Undergraduate degree in economics from New York University
Work experience includes eight years with a financial services technology company, where she is responsible for getting hedge fund and private equity clients “on-boarded” to the company’s tech platform
“I’ve consistently achieved the best results compared to the rest of my team and measured by the number of funds added to our platform and the overall quality of the work, according to my boss”
Extracurricular involvement kayaking, hiking, mountain biking, yoga and photography
Goal: To move into management consulting
31-year-old white female

Odds of Success:

Michigan: 40% to 50%

Cornell: 40%

Carnegie Mellon: 40%

UNC: 40% to 50%

Sandy’s Analysis: In the real world, working for a firm for eight years puts you on the road to earn a gold watch. In the world of business school admissions, that becomes a disadvantage. For one thing, when people see eight years of work experience, they begin to think EMBA–and not MBA.

I also have a hard time understanding her description of the firm. She says the firm started out as an asset manager and then transitioned to a platform for other hedge funds and asset managers. I’m guessing what they do is to help prepare statements or manage trades with some kind of back office technology. Business schools wouldn’t consider that selective and that is the magic word in MBA admissions. It’s not selective enough. And moreover, she doesn’t want to build it out. She wants to change careers into consulting.

The big three leading consulting companies, McKinsey, Bain and BCG, like book smart, very young people. This woman, at age 31, is by their standards, not very young. She would have a hard time when she graduates at age 33 at getting a job at Bain, McKinsey or BCG. They won’t be impressed with her prior history and at age 33 you are almost ready to retire at a firm like McKinsey.

These firms also care a lot about where you went to school and what your GMAT score was. They tend to look for 720s and above. So your 680 just isn’t going to cut it at M/B/B.

The good news is that she has selected a group of schools that are right on the target of having a 680 GMAT and a 3.4. The dirty little secret about those schools is that one of the ways they appraise candidates is that they want you to be employed when you graduate. They don’t want to be a collecting point for disappointed, unemployed people. My advice would be to say you want to continue what you are doing in some management firm. They would be a lot more amenable to that than to someone who is career switcher.

The big issue will be whether the schools think she can easily get a job when she graduates. To be honest, when you read this profile it sounds as if she is a little burnt out and is looking toward consulting as a magic way out. She would do better thinking about an EMBA program and if she wants a full-time MBA program she needs to say she would like to continue in a role that she currently is in.

Mr. Political Strategist

710 GMAT (Q 77/V 92)
Top 10% of graduating class
Undergraduate degree in engineering
Work experience includes one year at a small non-profit as a project manager then as an assistant director; two years as a campaign manager for the 2014 general elections in India for a sitting Minister in the Indian Cabinet of Ministers, and one and one-half years as a public policy consultant to the same Minister at one of the Ministries in India.
“Built and now manage a team of close to 1000 volunteers and 20 full time employees in a $5 million campaign”
Extracurricular involvement starting a non-profit to educate underprivileged children where he manage close to 80 volunteers. Captain of State cricket teams.
Goal: To start a political strategy consulting firm that focuses on grassroots organizing. “I love what I do as a Campaign Manager, and the reason I want an MBA is so that I can get better at it.”
26-year-old male from India

Odds of Success:

Harvard: 40% to 50%

Stanford: 30%

Wharton: 40%+

Yale: 50% to 60%

Sandy’s Analysis: I feel for this guy. I think he was forced into the Indian engineering education track. He didn’t get into an IIT but rather what he calls a mid-tier engineering school. Based on his GMAT score, with a high verbal and a little quant, he is not a natural engineer. I think he is a natural consultant.

His chances of getting into a top American school are going to turn on exactly this: whether they think this guy is going to be a big deal. What he now has to do is convince an admissions committee that he has the political connections and contacts to position him as someone who in 15 years will be among the 100 people in India with influence. If he can convince top schools that he is on that track then he has a chance. But that is going to be a hard case to make.

As a rule, if you went to the admissions office of an elite business school and said here is candidate one who has managed 1,000 people and here is candidate two with a 780 GMAT, the school would pick the 780. It would think that anybody can manage 1,000 people. Getting a 780 is tough.

I don’t doubt that you have leadership ability. But the degree is called a Masters in Business Administration. It is not a MBL, a master’s in business leadership.

Starting a charity is good. It tightly wounds his story that he is going to be an impactful leader in India. It will give schools a chance to admit an Indian non-engineer. This guy is a natural at INSEAD and I think INSEAD would be a good place for him. I think he would get in easily.

Mr. Indian-Engineer-Turned-Strategy Analyst

Ms. African-American Tax Consultant

Mr. Inner City IT Consultant

Mr. Old Undergrad

Mr. Military Intelligence Officer

Ms. Consulting Wannabe

Ms. Jersey Girl

Ms. Real Estate

Ms. Dual Degree

Ms. Project Engineer

Mr. Dance Marathon

Mr. Marine

Mr. College Hockey Player

Mr. Tech Marketing

Mr. Air Force Captain

Mr. Global

Ms. Financial Tech

Mr. Political Strategist

Handicapping Your MBA Odds–The Entire Series

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