Am I a strong enough applicant for B-school?

[landoyuan]

Top 3 schools
1. UCLA Anderson
2. Northwestern Kellogg
3. Berkeley Haas

GMAT
- 690 (49Q, 33V)

College
Harvard University - 3.2 GPA; Economics

Work Experience
- 2 years (product/brand management for Fortune 500 company)

>>> I'm debating if I should apply round 1 to these schools or if I should retake GMATs and aim for 750+ (hopefully by raising verbal score) and then apply round 2. I'd like the slight advantage of round 1 but not sure if I'm strong enough of a candidate. Any help would be appreciated - thanks!!

[mbamission]

Hi, thanks for your inquiry. From the limited profile you gave me I think you're a reasonable candidate at UCLA; the others may be a bit of a stretch. But you really didn't tell me anything about the scope of your work, your leadership experience, any community involvement, etc. so my advice is limited. Pulling up the GMAT score would be nice, but there are other aspects of your application that it might be more helpful to focus on.

Best of luck,

Jessica Shklar
mbaMission

our blog: www.mbamission.com/blog

[ranihusseiki]

Hi Jessica,

I am going through a similar situation, so I'm posting my question here:

Target schools:
1.LBS
2.INSEAD
3.Kellogg

I was planning to apply to these schools in Round 1, but I recently took the GMAT and got 690 (Q49 91%, V35 73%). Retaking the GMAT would mean missing the Round1 deadlines for these schools. More on my profile:
- 3.5 years of experience (by the time of enrollment) at a startup software company. Very good leadership experience, good promotions (recently to a management role).
- 1 year full-time internship at a top/multinational industrial firm.
- several research publications.
- B.S. in Computer engineering (gpa 2.7!)
- M.Sc. in IT (gpa 3.1).
- Very good international experience (studied and worked in three countries 1 in Middle East, 2 in Europe, worked on multinational projects, etc...).
- Almost inexistent community work, but good extracurricular activities.

Shall I give the GMAT another shot and apply in round2? or just go for round1? Thanks for the help!!

[mbamission]

Hi, thanks for the question.

Given your low GPA, I think pulling up the GMAT would be a good choice, especially for the schools on your list. It gives them one less item to be concerned about and rather than reinforcing the lower GPA, provides offsetting evidence as to your academic abilities. I'm not sure how you're distinguishing community involvement from extracurricular activities - do you mean a difference between, say, volunteer work and playing sports with your friends? If you have sufficient leadership and depth with your extracurriculars, the lack of community service may not be an issue, but you would want to mine your personal story too to show a well-rounded picture of who you are. There is not a significant enough difference between R1 and R2 to warrant submitting a weaker application if you can pull the GMAT up.

I hope that helps.

Jessica Shklar
mbaMission

our blog: www.mbamission.com/blog

[ranihusseiki]

Hi Jessica,

Thanks for the reply! I will take your advice :) One more thing on my profile that I forgot to mention... I have taken a couple of courses though the Berkeley online extension program (statistics, financial accounting, with A+ on both) to mitigate the low gpa issue. Would that make a difference in applications to top-schools in your opinion?

I assume that extracurricular activities can include personal hobbies, such as practicing various sports (occasionally or on a regular basis) or arts, involvement in social clubs and networks, music/dancing classes, etc... whereas community service sounds more like volunteer tasks/jobs and activities that require substantial contribution to the community (e.g. president of a student body, red cross activist, etc...). I'm not sure if this distinction between leisure activities and community involvement (requiring more dedication for volunteer work) is relevant to the B-Schools at all.

Your insights are much appreciated!

[mbamission]

Thanks for the follow up. Yes, the Haas extension courses will help to some degree. Make sure you provide the transcript and mention the classes in the alternate essay you'll write about the GPA.

The schools are looking for demonstration of leadership, teamwork, initiative, creativity, engagement with the world outside of work. Community activities involving giving back are one way to demonstrate that, but so are leisure activities. Captaining a team, teaching dance, creating a discussion group - these are all opportunities to demonstrate different sides of yourself. I'm not sure one is more worthy than the other - it's the quality and depth of activity that counts more than what the actual activity is, if that makes sense.

Jessica Shklar
mbaMission

www.mbamission.com/blog