ps_dahiya wrote:
:btw
By "average profile" I meant to say average among the admitted candidates.From your post can I interpret this? An 800 GMAT and above average profile is better than a 700 GMAT and an impressive profile.
If answer is yes then I think you are going too far my lawyer friend. I have never seen anybody (adcoms, admission consultants, MBA students and graduates) who suggest taking GMAT again if you have an average (for your target school) GMAT score and an impressive profile.
As far as top schools are concerned, after a 700+ GMAT, its your profile that will make you stand out (atleast 70% weightage) and not the GMAT. If there is a red flag such as relatively lower (compared to school average) GPA, bad quant or verbal scores in undergrad then GMAT will certainly help negating these factors.
Just my 2 cents. I know we engineers can never argue with lawyers.
Well, I like to argue, but I hope nobody takes it personally.
ps_dahiya, you are right. I agree with you that an impressive profile is absoutely more preferred by adcoms. But I think people need to be realistic about what an impressive profile actually is, and what it actually means to stand out from a crowded applicant field. To me, it actually seems much more plausible to distinghish oneself with the GMAT that it is to distinguish oneself through work experience etc. A truly impressive profile is probably much more rare than a 750 GMAT score.
Seriously, do all the people here believe that their profiles are more impressive than the blue-chippers from Mckinsey, Goldman & Citigroup that fill the classes of top business schools? I think it's an accomplishment just to get yourself onto the same level, much less blow away the competition. I'll paraphrase Sandy from the BW forum. He says that while the top schools all say that they want diverse work profiles and experiences etc., they always admit the great bulk of their students from all of the traditional sources.
Sometimes I wonder if people really stop to consider what "extraordinary" and "exceptional" mean. One of the key questions that admissions consultants ask when they review work experience is "how tough was it to get the job". If you're at McKinsey, the answer is d@mn tough because they weed out all but the best. If you can throw in promotions at an above average rate at a place like this, then you're distinguishing yourself. If on the other hand you were promoted the fastest at management training and are the youngest executive in your group at Target, well that may not be nearly as impressive because the talent pool is not the same.
I was looking through a packet of Wharton student resumes from about 3-4 years ago. Just skimming through the first 25 or so resumes, here are the employers prior to business school:
BofA securities
USMC Captain
JP Morgan (2)
Merrill Lynch
Cambridge Technology Partners (boutique strategy)
Citigroup (2)
Syncra Systems
Kaplan ... Architects
Estee Lauder
US Army Captain
Microsoft
Navy Lieutennant Commander F/18 pilot
Elan Computing
Royal Marine Commandos Captain
CSFB IBank (2)
Intel
Accenture (2)
OECD Reactor Project (non-profit)
American Express (US Olympic Fencing team)
McKinsey
Goldman
Ok, so what does this tell us? Well, first of all I'm not going to pick a fight at business school because there are a lot of people that can kick my @ss - it's clear that military officer = leadership in the eyes of business schools. By my count, only 2-3 of the first 25 resumes I looked at had experience that was not either military or traditional (banking, consulting, products). They are Syncra systems (I don't know what this is), Kaplan Architects & the nuclear non-profit. Other than that, all chalk (sports betting terminology for going with the favorite).
So I'm in total agreement with ps_dahiya that an impressive profile is more important than a high GMAT. I just think that we disagree with what an impressive profile is. Someone that is a product manager will be competing with the best from Intel and Microsoft. Someone from a financial background will be competing with the best from Goldman, Citigroup & JP Morgan. Somone that's president of their hiking club will be competing with someone that was a Royal Marine Commandos Captain (yikes!). Someone that is an analyst with an accounting firm will be competing with the best consultants from Bain & McKinsey.
I just think it is too easy to say - "go out there and knock them dead with your impressive profile". Certainly, that is the best way to gain admission to a top business school, but as I mentioned above, I'm afraid that a profile that really impresses adcoms is probably much rarer than a 750 GMAT score. Throw in the crap-shoot that is the application reading process and things get even murkier.