Good stuff, thanks for reaching out.

I'm sure you know that military experience can be a very strong backbone for an MBA application. I think your biggest pros are:

- Your experience in that area
- The fact that you went to Davidson, which is one of those "everyone in the academic world knows it is really good, but since it is so small, you don't see all that many Davidson grads applying" schools that makes your profile seem a bit more exotic
- Your goals to actually make or develop things in the public sector (big trend right now is top schools admitting more people who will actually go make things)

Your cons, probably obviously -
- Your #s are a tough low

It's not like they are dreadfully low, but the two together are both under the averages and under even kind of the "eye test" cutoffs for top schools (I feel like 3.3+ nobody bats an eye on GPA, and 700 is a magic number of sorts on GMAT). I think even 10 more points on the GMAT would be kind of critical for you in adjusting the initial perception of your candidacy.

The good news on this front though is that neither of these scores are low enough that you will get screened out (you'd have to be under 3.0 and under 670 for that to happen, in my humble opinion). So if you tell a great story, show all the right themes (make sure to showcase innovation and not focus solely on teamwork + leadership, as the latter two are more or less implied by service, whereas the former is often left out by military applicants ... though I suspect your experiences will take you there more naturally), and nail school fit, you will make some noise.

My only other concern is that while you have what I believe is the right # of schools (6), it is a little "top heavy" in that it has three of the four hardest schools to get into in HBS, GSB, and MIT. The first two of those are also very GPA focused (highest averages by far). Then you have this fairly big gap down to Ross and Darden, which is sort of in the third grouping in terms of selectivity. The only schools in the "sweet spot" (not insanely hard to get into, but still a T7 sort of program) is Kellogg. I like to see a little healthier dose of Kellogg/Booth/Tuck/Columbia type programs in the typical profile. Not the end of the world, I think you want 2/2/2 at worst in terms of selective tiers, and even better is 1/3/2. Hopefully that isn't super confusing.

Good luck and be sure to hit me with follow up questions. Sorry for the delay in this response, but we've been getting a lot of inquiries from all angles lately.

Respectfully,
Paul Lanzillotti
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