Top 10 Chances?

[Pennywise]

First off, thanks for taking the time to answer questions. I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I would like to get the best assessment possible, so here it goes:

Demographics: 30 year old white male, will be 30 at the time of application.

Undergrad: Graduated with BA in Communications and a cum GPA of 2.5 from Ohio State University. My explanation is 2 months into my freshman year I experienced some personal issues, which I began self medicating with alcohol. My freshman year I almost flunked out, and from my sophomore year on I managed B and C's. I also worked close to 40 hours a week my last 3 years of school to finance my alcohol abuse and education. I offer up no excuse. I just handled things terribly.

Post Graduation: I did very well in my first job out of college, which was a management training program for Enterprise Rent a Car. I received one promotion, exemplified leadership ability with constant sales awards, a marketing award, and holding sales training after work on many occasions for new employees. Unfortunately, the corporate culture there was no help to my alcohol abuse and my anxiety issues. After a couple years I left the company and began a job as a sales engineer at a technology company, properly addressed my problems, and quit drinking cold turkey. I have not had a drop of alcohol in over 3 years, and never will again. I can go into detail on how I finally overcame adversity, and I am hoping this helps my profile stand out.

After Enterprise I worked as a Sales Engineer at a network cabling and telecom company. I was responsible for the engineering and designing of telecommunications infrastructures, as well as selling them. I engineered several solutions and had a promising career there, but it was not what I wanted to do. I left the company and went into the Toy/Game industry, as an account manager handling retail accounts.

Consumer products is where I truly want to be, and the impetus for an MBA is that I want to be a brand manager at a large consumer products firm such as P&G or General Mills. I love what I do now, and I have shown great progression in my current position. I started out running around $250,000 worth of business, and I am now responsible for around $1.3 million. I have also joined my boss in our custom development department in the last few weeks, which is a huge opportunity. If it were not for my desire to make the leap into large scale marketing, I would be more than happy spending my career here.

As for my poor GPA, I have taken 7 night classes at a community college to provide an alternate transcript. I have taken Financial Accounting, along with a spreadsheet lab, Marketing (since that is what I truly want to get into), Selling for Business (to help in my current position), College Algebra, Microeconomics, and Statistics. I have earned A's in all of these.

I have not taken the GMAT yet, but I plan on scoring a 700-720.

As for leadership, I co-formed and lead a network group when I was in outside sales. I spent countless nights after work helping train people in sales at my first job after college. For the last 5 months I have been a tutor at an adult literacy program (I love to read and like to help people who help themselves), and I have been working on a website to help people who have gone through the same personal issues as I have, which I hope to launch in May. My wife and I are also the organizers for a local meetup.com group.

The last four months have been truly crazy but I have managed to juggle everything at once. I was taking Stats and Econ at night, tutoring two nights a week, and in the midst of my busiest months at work. I still managed to get A's, and earn a promotion.

My target schools are Harvard (my dream school), Chicago GSB, Northwestern, UCLA, and Michigan.

I would like to go to a top 10 school, but I want to know if I will be overreaching?

Also, will my age or the fact that I am in sales be an issue?

[MBAApply]

In short, it really comes down to two things:

(1) Your GMAT - given your GPA, you need to score in the 700s to remain competitive for the tier of schools you listed.

(2) Your written application - you need to put together a compelling set of essays, rec letters, and interview on top of that. Given your profile (low GPA, non-blue chip background, etc.) there is no real margin of error; you really need to put together a stellar application to remain competitive. And "stellar" or "compelling" doesn't mean making overcoming substance abuse the major theme in your application (although it can and should be just one sub-theme) -- you really have to come across as accomplished, focused, well-rounded, and so forth -- regardless of whether you had to overcome substance abuse or not.

If you can do these two things, then schools outside of HBS/Stanford/Wharton (i.e. Chicago, Kellogg, Michigan, UCLA, etc.) should be within reach. My guess is HBS is probably out of reach (too many things working against you), but if you really want to go, you might as well throw a hail mary and hope for the best.

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