secretaznmanxz wrote:
Hi
Admissionado,
First of all, thank you very much for providing us profile evaluations!
Target schools: Columbia, Harvard, Wharton, Sloan, Booth, Stern
Round: All Round 2 submissions
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: Chinese American
Age: 25; 26 at matriculation
GMAT: 750 (V44/Q49); 6.0 AW; 6 IR
GPA: 3.81 in Business Administration (top California public university)
Work: 47 months at matriculation working at a Big 4 in the performance improvement consulting practice (promoted after 2 years - normal progression). Projects include the following: Led multiple workstreams to implement shared services center projects; performed benchmarking analysis projects to identify cost reduction opportunities.
Recommendations: Should be fairly strong.
Essays: I am budgeting roughly 3 weeks per school (~10-15 hours per week). What is the recommended/average amount of time to spend on essays for most applicants?
Extracurriculars: Started and currently manage a profitable online retailing business (~ 2 years). Lead a number of internal initiatives in my company to educate professionals on tools and processes (3+ years). Provide mentoring to students via multiple mentoring programs (~1 year).
Post MBA plans: Strategic planning (business operations & strategy) for a digital media startup (I've had experience with media companies in my current job).
Long-term goal: Entrepreneurship in the same industry above.
I am looking to apply in Round 2 for all of the schools above. Since I am likely in the over-represented pool of applicants, does applying R2 instead of R1 negatively impact my chances?
Understanding that I am applying to the top programs and that nothing is guaranteed, what are your thoughts on my chances of obtaining admission to one or multiple programs? What would you say is the weakest link in my profile? Any advice you can provide me would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you once again for your time and feedback!
Hey dude,
Good to hear from you.
Allrighty, so you have an awesome GMAT and fantastic GPA, which is a veeeery strong basis for your application.
On the other hand, you are applying to Top5 schools from two pretty massive pools - Asian-American and Big 4. Not toooo terrible, but if things are gonna happen it's because there's something exceptional there. Meaning, there's a lot of big 4 folks with great GPAs and GMATs, so how are you gonna differentiate yourself? First of all is of course your work. There's a difference between "Being in big 4" and "being in the top 1% of big 4".... The second is uniqueness - and this is inside like outside work - entrepreneurial experience, volunteer work, ECs, etc etc.
As for R1 vs. R2, the chances are relatively similar, the big advantage of applying R1 is that you have R2 which comes afterwards for you to add schools/shift strategy, but in terms of pure chances, they should be about the same.
The weakest link in your profile? Like I wrote above - how you gonna stand out?!
Make that happen, and you will be golden...
JF