Profile Evaluation

[devenh]

Hello,

Thank you mbaMission for taking the time to respond to individuals such as myself. I'm confused whether I should apply for this year's round 2 for Stanford and Northwestern, wait until next year, or broaden my scope to include more schools. If I decide to apply for this year's round 2 and if I decide to only apply to Northwestern and Stanford should I focus all my energy to make my essays the best they can be or should I plan on studying to take the GMAT a third time? I would like advice about how competitive (or uncompetitive) my profile is. Since my wife and her career are here in Chicago, I'd like to stay in Chicago, but if I got into Stanford we would be okay with moving away from Chicago.

Here's a quick run down of my profile:

-GMAT: 650 (i've taken the test twice and it's given me problems. my high score is a 650)

-Undergrad GPA: 3.67 (University of California, San Diego - Computer Science)

-Professional: I've been working for 8 years. Mainly as a Software Engineer / Product Manager at Web 2.0 startups (ie. Silicon Valley venture backed startups). My current company is a Brazilian daily deal site similar to Groupon that is one of the fastest growing tech companies in Brazilian history. I travel to Rio De Janeiro frequently for work and this has given me great international perspective. I was also a former employee at Microsoft and Qualcomm.

-My goal for b-school is to meet great people to form an all-star team, to learn about finance and accounting and to start my own tech company one day. My more ambitious goal is to make Chicago (my current home) an innovation center so that young tech people like myself do not have to migrate to Silicon Valley to pursue careers at tech startups.

-I am an Indian male engineer/product manager, but I was born and raised in the US. A few unique characteistics about me include: I was raised in a US military family and as a result my family moved to many small towns across America, I am involved in multiple tech/entrepreneur organizations here in Chicago, I am an active wrestler and ju-jitsu fighter and I also tutor kids in English and Math as part of a local chapter for 826National.

Just as it is for everyone else, working at my current job is extremely demanding, but if my GMAT is just too low to make me a competitive applicant I will take the test again. The problem is that if I don't feel ready to achieve my target score by mid January then I will be forced to delay my application until next year or apply this year with a sub-optimal GMAT score. Assuming the worst case scenario, if I don't get in to my target schools will applying to Stanford/Kellogg two years in a row hurt my chances in the second year? Do I need to rethink my list of target schools?

Thank you mbaMission!

[mbamission]

Hi devenh,

Thanks for writing in and sharing those details. You definitely have some interesting experience and a solid international background, which you will want to call out in your essays.

But you are also right that your GMAT will be seen as a weakness at those two schools. While any singular weakness can be overcome with other strengths throughout your application, I do think Stanford and Kellogg will still be in the "reach" category for you with that GMAT score.

Between your interesting goals and great extracurricular experience you may want to expand your scope of schools a bit, as I think you might be competitive in the top-15 range, even with the 650 GMAT. In general, you want to put your best application forward when it is ready, but not before then.

If you do apply to Stanford/Kellogg, do not get admitted, and apply again next year, the schools will want to know how you have improved your application in the year in between, which can be a bit more difficult to show sometimes.

Hope this information was helpful and good luck!

Daniel Richards
http://www.mbamission.com

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