Best time to sign up with a consultant is AFTER you've taken the GMAT. You owe it to yourself to focus 100% on the GMAT before doing anything else.

As for your chances - again, it depends on your GMAT. You say you'll have a predicted score of 710 -- but plenty of people end up getting scores that are much different than what they had predicted. That's why it's pointless to speculate.

Focus on the GMAT. Don't think of anything else at this point. You can talk all you want about your profile, but unless your score is competitive (minimum 700+ for a top 16 school, and ideally above 720 especially for the top 8 schools), there isn't really much point in talking about your profile.

What I will say though is that your profile isn't strong enough to focus only on the top 8 schools. The top 8 schools are going to be stretches for you even with a 760. You may want to focus on schools outside of that like Duke, Darden, Ross, UCLA, NYU, Cornell and Yale -- schools where you have more of a shot (choose 3-4 from this list). For the top 8 schools like HBS, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, Booth, Columbia, Sloan, Tuck or Haas, you should limit it to 1-2.
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If you really think Yale and UCLA are safety schools... you are in for a rude awakening.

No top 16 school is a safety school for most applicants anymore. It's not that these schools are full of Olympic athletes or anything - it's that there's way more applicants of a similar caliber than there are actual seats available.

With top 8 schools, you're up against folks who worked in finance, consulting, engineering, etc around the world. And yes, even a few folks in medicine (and whether you feel it's fair or not, adcoms do hold those who practice medicine in developed countries in higher regard).

To be blunt, you are not in a position to be a "top school or bust" type of guy. You need to readjust your expectations. Schools in the top 16 and even the top 30 may still be a great option for you, and can still allow you to reach your goals.
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What you need to do is to readjust your attitude and perspective about what an MBA can do for you.

It sounds like you're putting too much stock on the MBA as some glass slipper to your Cinderella story (the fact that you'll defer 2-3 years, probably do anything and everything just to get into a school signals that you feel that way).

The fact is, the opportunities available to MBA grads don't differ significantly within the top 16 schools. And arguably, over the medium to long-term it won't matter whether you went to a top b-school or not (or whether you went to b-school at all) because in the medium- to long-term it's all about your body of experience, and not what school you went to decades ago as a child. It seems to be even more extreme amongst young Asians who grew up being indoctrinated with the whole notion of prestige/educational pedigree by their status-obsessed and conformist Asian parents. And so they end up taking that deeply imbedded view into their adult lives. Yes, your grandma and your relatives might fawn over your "Habh ad" degree, but the real world could care less (beyond the surface pleasantries and congrats). Even in the business world in Asia, people don't care as much as you think they care (i.e. they don't care anywhere as much as your family will when they boast about your fancy degree and try to marry you off).

Asking "what can I do to improve my chances" is the wrong question to ask, because you've then got it ass backwards. The most accomplished people (in any thing - not just those who apply to b-school) tend to be that way because they believe in what they are doing for its own sake; they are committed to it for not just years, but decades at something they love. In your case, the choices you make should be dictated by what you want to do, and not by what you think others want you to do (basically the opposite of what your dutiful Asian parents would tell you about following some template).

Rather than have your career and life choices be dictated by what you think an adcom wants, focus on what YOU want. Sooner or later you will have to do that, or else you end up with a career and life that isn't your own (spending your whole life trying to impress others: growing up it's your parents, then it's your teachers, then your classmates, and when you're working it's your colleagues, and then moving onto b-school adcoms, and eventually someone/something else like your neighbors).

Practically speaking, apply this year. But readjust your expectations not only about which b-schools you have a realistic shot at, but also what b-school can and cannot do for you.
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Alex Chu
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