MBA Admissions Consultant
Joined: 26 Dec 2008
Posts: 2457
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Re: Atypical profile
[#permalink]
06 Jan 2012, 11:26
Stretch: Booth, Kellogg, Sloan, Columbia, Tuck, Haas (pick 2)
Sweet spot: Ross, Duke, Darden, NYU, UCLA, Cornell, Yale (pick 3-4)
Safety: outside the top 16 (pick 0-1).
Yes, your situation is more unusual than other applicants, but that isn't necessarily a selling point (it helps because there's less of a chance of blending in, but it can be a liability because it causes concern about whether you can fit in with what they're looking for). What adcoms care about in this day and age is employability, and in your case it's going to be an issue, since you've mostly worked for yourself, and by applying to full-time b-schools it sends mixed signals about your success: because if you had some amazing success as an entrepreneur, you wouldn't be applying to b-school in the first case (you would be using your funds to start another venture and you would be *hiring* MBAs, not becoming one).
To be honest, you need to focus on your work experience, not on getting more credentials. That opportunity with the consulting firm may have passed, but you need to get some solid work experience to complement what you did before with your own business.
Also, your GPA will be an issue - yes you had some personal circumstances, but the reality is, others have had similar kinds of challenges and still managed to maintain respectable grades. In short, there really is no excuse especially when you're up against folks who have had strong profiles *and* who may have also faced difficult circumstances.
Yes, you've had a more unusual story to tell, but at the same time you have to go into the process accepting the reality that adcoms will still prefer the cookie cutter mgmt consultant with strong numbers simply because they are a known quantity (lots of people like them) - it's the risk averse choice for the adcoms and in this economic environment, there is a flight to safety (they are less willing to take a chance on applicants). So that's where you stand with the above schools, and where schools like H/S/W are going to be long shots simply because you're up against more than enough blue chip applicants who they would much rather take (and even within that group of cookie cutter blue chip applicants - it's still hard for them to get in!). That's why you should focus on other schools where you at least have more of a chance like Booth, Kellogg, etc as stretches and other schools in the top 16 as sweet spots.