Profile Eval

[Guest]

- Asian Female
- 25 years old
- Graduated from UCLA in Business Economics with Accounting Minor
- 3.6 GPA
- 710 GMAT (49 Quant - 89%; 37 Verbal - 82%; 6.0 AWA)
- Obtained CPA certification
- 3 years as an auditor in Big 4 Public Accounting Firm
- 1 year (current position) as Corp. Accounting Manager at a top hedge fund
- Would like to obtain my MBA to gain a finance education

What are my chances of getting into a top program?
I am planning to apply to round 2 (January) to give myself enough time to work on applications.
Is a 710 GMAT score high enough for a top program? Should I retake? I was scoring between 740-770 in practice exams.

Thank you!!

[MBAApply]

You should be competitive for schools like Columbia, Chicago, Kellogg, Sloan and Tuck. These would be schools you should really focus on (choose 3-4 from this list). Schools like Wharton, Harvard or Stanford will be reaches -- but if you dream of any of these schools, by all means put your hat in the ring for one of them - you never know. Schools like Duke, Darden, Michigan, NYU, Cornell, Yale and UCLA -- you shouldn't have problems getting in so long as your application is decent and you don't run into really bad luck (a cranky adcom who just happens to not dig your essays). But given your background, I don't know if these schools will give that much mileage given your background already.

And yes, your GMAT score is good enough. I really won't retake it unless the 710 was a "really bad hair day" and you feel there's a very strong chance you can easily score 760 or greater without much effort (and without much prep time that could take away from your essays). And even then, it's not really going to make a difference with the top schools anyhow (but may matter more for schools in the Duke, Darden, Michigan, NYU, etc. range).

Alex Chu
alex@mbaapply.com
www.mbaapply.com
http://mbaapply.blogspot.com