I was wondering if you could please provide a profile evaluation?

Ethnicity: Caucasian male, U.S.

GMAT: 740 (Q48 V42)

GPA: 3.77 from the Ohio State University, B.S. Industrial and Systems Engineering (with Honors in Engineering), Entrepreneurship minor (4.0 minor GPA).

Work Experience:
Will have 2.5 years full-time at MBA start date (2013). I also have 4 engineering co-op quarters with the same company in a similar role. Industrial Engineer for a Fortune 100 retail company on the Inventory Optimization team. Our group works as internal consultants for various supply chain, logistics, and strategy initiatives. Some major projects have been leading a re-structure of store planograms that reduced inventory by 25% while improving service levels, supporting a new vendor managed inventory program, supporting gross margin optimization initiative with replenishment speed being the primary focus, and leading a data sandbox project that provides previously inaccessible details about store-sku inventory and forecasts that has supported a variety of pilot projects with data/analysis. I also have experience with DC capacity and productivity, forecasting inventory, managing sales forecast errors, and managing aged inventory. I am MOST (work measurement system) certified. I won an award for the outstanding co-op of Spring 2009 for all Ohio State Engineers. I self-taught SQL and am an expert Access and Excel user.

At work, I manage our team's co-op program and mentor one co-op per quarter.

Extracurriculars:
-Marketing volunteer with Power Inspires Progress, a social outreach program that employs and mentors inner city residents
-Writer for Hoperatives, the largest Cincinnati Craft Beer Blog, award winning homebrewer and certified beer judge
-Cincinnati half marathon

In college, I was involved in Social Entrepreneurship through two projects:
-The first involved Montana De Luz, an orphanage for kids with HIV/AIDS in Honduras. Work there included making the facility more energy efficient and meeting with the local Honduran government to gather information about regulating energy costs. The work was presented at the undergraduate research forum at Ohio State.
-The second was conducting Search Engine Optimization and Web Strategy for a start up non-profit seeking to fine a cure for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. This involved partnering with a local web marketing company and performing target keyword analyses for a fundraising 5k.


My interested areas of study are Marketing, Venture Capital, and Social Entrepreneurship. My ideal post-MBA job would be working in marketing for a social entrepreneurial venture or as an analyst for a social venture capital firm. I plan on applying to Stanford, Harvard, Penn, Northwestern, Duke, Berkeley, MIT, and UVA. I know my work experience is on the light side, but I think the diversity of work I have done, as well as the co-op terms, could make up for this.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Steve

Hi Jennifer,

Thanks for the reply! I am likely going to apply to one school out of Ohio State, Indiana, and UNC as my safety. I think I will be able to tell my story in a way that meets your suggestion; I would evaluate my interpersonal skills and communication ability as stronger than my analytical ones. That will definitely shine through on my letters of recommendation because I have a good idea of what my two recommenders are going to say (past and current boss, both have required a lot of feedback to date).

One final question, for my safety school, can I wait until the 3rd round to apply (after I have heard from most schools already)? How does this impact scholarship allocation?

Hi Jennifer,

Thanks for the advice again. That makes sense about safety schools; I will likely plan on applying to one in January, and will not go through with it if I hear a yes on any first round choices in December.

My comment on interpersonal skills was meant to emphasize that even though I am an engineer with good grades and have heavy work experience in analytics, that my interpersonal skills are still strong. I assumed from my educational background and work experience that the analytical abilities would show themselves naturally and that the interpersonal and leadership skills will be the ones I should focus on portraying in essays and interviews. Is this a sound strategy?

Thanks again for your time!
Stephen