MBA Admissions Consultant
Joined: 25 Jan 2010
Status:Admissions Expert
Affiliations: Founder, Amerasia Consulting Group
Posts: 1081
Given Kudos: 264
Re: Profile Evaluation - Minority Female Early Career Applicant
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07 Sep 2010, 20:07
KD2010,
I'll start with my burning question, which is going to be the same question that the person reading your file will ask: "Why an MBA right now?"
For you, it all starts with being able to really articulate why an MBA is the step you need to take right now in your career - what gap it will help you bridge, where you will land, how it is part of a larger goal, etc.
If you can convincingly make your case for why now/why this degree, then you can more effectively move into the other key areas of the application. (More specifically, you need your lack of full-time, traditional experience to be a positive rather than a negative and that all boils down to how you paint your career progress and post-MBA goals.)
As for your GPA, do NOT explain it in an optional essay. For starters, 3.3 does not require an explanation. Many programs have average GPAs for the class that are right around that mark - Ross is right at 3.3. for instance. If you write about it in an explanatory sense, you will call attention to something that might not have sent off alarm bells before, turning a neutral into a negative. Not only that, but there is no explanation that admissions officers (who can be a bit jaded and cynical) have not seen. It is far better to understand the underlying theme being implicated by a "low GPA" (again, yours isn't even that low), which is maturity, discipline, and focus.
Now, this is where it gets interesting, of course. Because your academic profile might beg the maturity questions, it tends to compound with your thin work experience and early career migration. You can see where I'm going with this: maturity is going to be the key element of your application story. (Must be something in the water - see my two previous profile evaluations as they both focused directly on maturity as well.)
As for schools, I think Columbia is going to be tough unless you can give them a lot of assurance that your first post-MBA job is a stone cold lock as long as you have that CBS degree. They are very, very cautious about the career pipeline. I like MIT as long as you can convince them that you will really enroll there (they lose a lot of admits who "chicken out" at the last minute). I also like Ross quite a bit. If you crush the GMAT, I also like Stanford.
If you want to dive into this in more detail, PM me and we'll set something up.
Respectfully,
Paul Lanzillotti
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