Hello all,
I decided not to write my admissions story until I had all my information handy. And now that I do I would like to offer not only my story but a little bit of perspective I gained along the way. But first:
My stats
Indian Male (born in the states)
670 GMAT (48Q, 34V)
3.0 GPA chemistry
3.5 years in the biopharmaceutical industry as a chemist
extracurriculars in college include Improv, Research, Teaching
Have lived in America, India and Japan
Speak one Indian language and Japanese
Have a few patents under my belt, a drug that came from an exploratory project that I started going into clinical trials in 4q '06 and have worked for two companies pre-IPO that have successfully IPO'd.
There is a lot more but at this point frankly I'm bored of talking about myself and my credentials.
My results
Ding at UCLA, Waitlist Duke
Yesterday I got my ding email from UCLA and as I was sitting in my office looking forlorn my coworker asked me what was wrong. I told him that I got rejected from UCLA. He knew my story, he knew that I had applied to both UCLA and Duke and he shrugged his shoulders and said, "You threw two darts, one of them did not hit the bullseye" and in that one sentence he not only summed up my story but he summed up the whole MBA application process.
You read all those emails to MBA Game Plan and to
Accepted.com asking them to judge your profile. You see people with strong GMAT's and weak GPA's, or vice versa, you see people with no community service and some with plenty but the overiding fact is that the
PERFECT MBA applicant with a high GPA, high GMAT, excellent community leadership, interesting extracurriculars and phenomenal work experience
DOES NOT NEED AN MBA. In other words your weakness, my weakness, is the reason we need an MBA and without one there really is no reason to get one.
So we all apply, weaknesses exposed, insecure, wondering whether admissions committees can see past them and see our potential. And this is where the dart game begins. The process is extremely random. I am not saying that people are not rejected b/c of a weakness but if that is the case it is a very easy problems to fix b/c there are things you can do to mitigate your weaknesses. You can take classes (like I did) to mitigate a poor GPA, you can study for the GMAT and ACE the hell out of it to show that you can take that test well, you can do community service if you feel that is what you need, there are inumerable things you can do, but after all of that it is random. You may not be in the right demographic (I know Indian IT males know this story way better than I do), the personality that they gathered from your essays might not have matched what the adcomm thought was that of the school, random, random, random. SO I guess the message is
DON'T BEAT YOURSELF UP!!! MBA programs like people with some variety of a weakness because people like us keep them in business (no pun intended
).
My story is incomplete b/c I truly feel I still have a chance at Fuqua. But even if I don't get in I will next year, maybe even to a better program. Why do i know this? Well next year I am throwing more darts and thus will have more opportunities to hit that ever-so-elusive bullseye. I know what the process is like and I really want an MBA. That more than anything will get me there.
GOOD LUCK GUYS!!