kxc wrote:
I am a 22 year old Asian American female who was born in the USA but grew up in Asia. I attended American schools while in Asia and only returned to the States for college. I graduated from a university in Washington, DC within three years with a 3.80 GPA (summa cum laude, majoring in Communications and minoring in Business Administration), along with various leadership positions (Teaching Assistant, Office Director for a Model UN conference, president of the ballroom club), honorable mentions and a senior thesis under my belt. My current extracurricular activities/hobbies include: YMCA volunteer; Garfield Elementary School volunteer; competitive Pre-Championship ballroom dancer; and coach for a local ballroom team.
Since graduating in 2011, I worked as a Human Resources Assistant at a national law firm for 8 months before transferring to an international law firm as the Attorney Recruiting Assistant (have now worked here for almost a year). I had planned on applying to several top 10 MBA programs this Fall (Stanford, Harvard, London Business School), so that I can begin my studies in 2014. With my international background and bilingual proficiency, I wanted to focus on international business consulting. This is a major shift in career and industry, which is why I wanted to enroll in an MBA program after only 2-3 years of working full-time.
I took my first GMAT in February 2012 and my scores were:
Verbal: 35 / 74%
Quantitative: 44 / 63%
Total: 640 / 73%
Analytical Writing: 6.0 / 90%
Since all the scores were too low for top MBA programs, I took it a second time in April 2012 (2 months later) and scored:
Verbal: 40 / 90%
Quantitative: 42 / 57%
Total: 670 / 84%
Analytical Writing: 6.0 / 90%
As you can see, my issue is with the quantitative section. It does not help that my undergraduate major was not quantitative-based and even though I minored in Business Administration (and did very well in all those courses), the minor means I only took a few Finance, Economics and Accounting classes.
My specific questions are: what are my chances of getting into a top MBA program with my second GMAT score? Should I start studying again (after a year's hiatus) and take the GMAT a third time? Or will taking an online quantitative course (such as mbamath) be enough to offset such a low quantitative score on my GMAT?
Any other suggestions and advice on my profile would be very helpful as well. Thank you very much!
Do you think you can raise your GMAT? What if you take mbamath.com first and then retake the GMAT? do you feel that your GMAT score really presents your quant skills or do you think you can do better? If the latter, I think you need to retake. Ideally you want the quant score at 80%, but I'd take 70%. How did you prepare for the GMAT? Did you do it on your own, take a course, use a tutor?
You chances of acceptance with your current GMAT score are poor. MBAmath.com may help a little, and may even make the difference, but it will not be easy. Have you considered taking a few quant classes also, like stats for business or calc, or did you have them as an undergrad?
Your grades are excellent. Your work experience is on the lower end, but you seem to be able to show growth leadership in college and off the job. Basically I think you are aiming too high at the moment. If you can show professional growth and get a higher GMAT, then you would have a chance at your target programs, especially LBS, but while your college record is competitive and the international aspects of your background are strong and will help you achieve your goals, I think you are aiming too high. You may want to consider programs like Duke, Oxford, Cambridge, Yale SOM, UCLA, and USC. A higher GMAT would help you at these programs too. Finally, the elite management consulting firms sometimes use the GMAT as a screening tool. And they want to see a GMAT score with a 7 as the first digit.
Best,
Linda
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22 Feb 2013, 04:10
