tkkoh -- Thanks!!
Chris --- I addressed it by focusing on the successes in my career. I am on several patent applications for new anti-inflammatory disease therapies and was recently promoted to manage a portion of my companies largest signed collaboration. Most importanly the pervasive theme throughout my essays was my career that bridged the divide between business and science and my desire to use the skills from an MBA to carve out a career in the Pharma BD/Biotech venture capital sector. I felt that with a successfull track record of promotion and such, I would be able to easily show the reviewers that my old college GPA should be of little concern.
My strong GMAT certainly helped take the heat off as well. In addition, I had taken courses at the Harvard extension school and recieved A's and B+. But most importantly I never once refferred to my GPA as a negative, in fact I never even once draw the readers attention to it (I never talk about it directly at all). On Harvards first essay regarding the undergraduate experience, instead of pouring out excuses for my bad GPA I wrote about the unique project based learning of my college. Then in every optional essay I reiterated my dedication to academic disciplne and my expectation to be a top performer in my MBA class.
It was a pure positioning effort to prove to the reviewer that I have a proven track record of performance ever since graduating from college. My current boss and VP of Operations at my company told me to stop obbsessing about my GPA. He wanted me to instead focus on the great achievements since then to prove I have taken the necessary steps to academically mature.
I feel I submitted very strong apps to all schools and look at the scholarship offer as proof of that. I certainly hope to be in the lucky situation where I can evaluate multiple offers in the near future, but at least I can say for certainty that I am going somewhere next fall.
B.