scott1234 wrote:
Hi Paul,
Thanks in advance for your evaluation.
My Info:
-Born: Baltimore, MD
-Currently: Orange County, CA
-Age: 26
-Work Exp: 5yrs, Currently I am a Program Manager in a high-tech product development firm. I have an above average level of responsibility for my experience.
-GMAT: 770
-Undergrad: 3.64 GPA (4.0 scale) Mechanical Engineering - Top 10% in class
-My extra-curricular / volunteer experience is basically none. (Is this a deal breaker?)
-Career Goal- Transition from technical product development to business side of product development, including possibly marketing, finance, and entrepreneurship.
- I plan to apply to UCLA, Berkeley, and Stanford. Could you please evaluate my chances at these three schools? In particular, am I wasting my time to apply to Stanford with no real extra-curricular / volunteer experience?
Thank you very much,
Scott
Scott1234,
My sincere apologies for the late replay; it's been busy. Basically, yes, lack of extracurriculars or community is a deal-breaker at Stanford, Haas, and most top schools. The problem is they want well-rounded people (especially joiners and doers -- read: active/generous future alumni), so a one-dimensional work superstar is in a hole. This is much less the case with European schools IMO. If there is some activity outside of work that you could possibly write about, and you have exceptional leadership/impact stories at work, then I wouldn't tell you not to apply to UCLA, given your strong GMAT, but schools get a perverse pleasure out of dinging high-GMAT people who don't jump through their hoops. You are young enough to sink your teeth into something over the next year and get into some good schools, and there are plenty of decent schools that would let you in now, probably. UC Irvine and USC might be two of them.
Good luck,