MBA Admissions Consultant
Joined: 20 Apr 2003
Posts: 6448
Given Kudos: 92
Location: Los Angeles CA
Re: Profile Evaluation greatly appreciated
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04 Apr 2008, 09:26
swbluedevil,
Your profile is an impressive and distinctive one, so you are right to aim high. Your GMAT score compensates adequately for your not-so-great GPA. You are doing all the right things. Your military background, strong leadership profile, and exellent community service experiences will all help you. You should be competitive at Wharton, Haas, and UCLA. Whether HBS and Stanford go for you will depend not on the quality of your profile (it seems to be good enough for them) but on how well you package it, i.e., compelling essays that project personality, dynamic leadership, savvy and due diligence about career goals, maturity--an interesting guy, not just an achiever. You'll also need recommenders who are willing to invest the time in writing letters that drip with enthusiasm and are chock full of concrete examples. Phoned-in or aloof-sounding reco letters could hurt you. I recommend that you start building networks at your target schools among students and alums and that you do the same in strategy consulting so you can show the schools that you've personalized the process of understanding your post-MBA goals.
Hope this helps.