mberg5 wrote:
Hi everyone, and thank you so much for taking the time to look at my profile. I am not planning to apply until the 2014 window, but need some advice. I need to know how my profile is looking as of now, where improvements can be made, and whether it is H/S/W quality, top 10 quality, top 25 quality, or top 50 quality.
School: University of St Thomas, bachelor of Arts in Accounting. 3.4, with a 3.6 in my major. I am only 2 classes away from a music major.
I worked my way through school, and have 4yrs of various business internships not including the one listed below (I went to school for 5yrs). Because of this I had no extracurricular activities while in school. I also taught guitar lessons, maxing out at 20 students that I acquired on my own through marketing myself.
GMAT: 710
Race/Gender: White/Male
Credentials: CPA
Extra-Curricular Activities:
Toastmasters member, go every other week for the last half year, and will continue until I matriculate in 2yrs.
Part of Accountability MN, a nonprofit where I am on a group of accountants that travel around MN and do tax returns for charity. Ive done this for the past 3 years.
Full Time Internship Experience (worked 40hrs while going to school full time): UnitedHealth Care Children’s Foundation
1yr: Worked as an accountant for this nonprofit which has a $1million fund. Got to see the entire accounting cycle, and was the only accountant for 3 months while the lead accountant was on leave.
Full Time Work Experience: UnitedHealth Group
2yrs Accounting and Financial Analysis: Converted the financial statements following healthcare reform. After the conversion, I helped with book keeping and analysis of financial records. Also helped with in housing a PBM function that used to be done by Express Scripts.
2yrs (on matriculation) Internal Audit: Just started working in Internal Audit, but I will be doing operational audits instead of financial audits.
Post MBA Goals: I want to stay in healthcare, either go into working in a hospital, insurance, pharmaceuticals, or some sort of consulting.
The cliche advice would be something like "in the next year, you should get more involved in extracurriculars to enhance your leadership experience" or some other BS like that. The truth is, with only one year, anything you do will be incremental not transformational (i.e. you're not going to be drastically different 12 months from now; and if you are, it's likely something that would've happened to you that you can't predict, rather than something that is deliberate). Doesn't mean you should just stop and do nothing - but that you should be doing whatever it is you would do even if you were not applying to b-school at all (i.e. continuing to work hard to learn and progress in you job, continuing to stay involved in whatever it is that floats your boat, and so forth). You want to build a life, not a resume.
With that said, here's where you stand:
Stretch (but within reach): top 16 schools like Ross, Duke, Darden, Stern, Cornell, Yale and UCLA. Choose 3-4 from this list.
Sweet spot (reasonable shot): top 30 schools like Tepper, Texas, USC, UNC, Emory, Maryland, Georgetown, Purdue, Indiana etc. Choose 3-4 from this list.
Safety (should be close to a guarantee): top 50 schools - mostly local schools like Pepperdine, UC-Irvine, SMU, Fordham, etc.
A lot of your competitiveness is already baked into your profile today, and it's unlikely going to change much a year from now (any new extracurriculars, promotions, etc. will likely only be incremental - making you more competitive but not fundamentally changing the tiers of schools that you're in range for).
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19 Jun 2013, 11:42
