Hello,
I would sincerely appreciate a profile evaluation. The following is my information.
Thank you.
GatorToMBA
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Academics/Scores
* 3.49 GPA majoring in Political Science and Marketing
* 700 (48Q,37V) GMAT on second attempt. First attempt was 640 (47Q, 32V)- had 5.5 AWA and 7/8 IR on first attempt.
* Attended top state school with full-tuition scholarship
* Also received merit/leadership scholarship for 3 years
* Graduated in 2007
Awards
* Ranked top 20 student leader in state by now defunct magazine
* Inducted in to university's hall of fame (50,000+ student body)
* various leadership awards
Demographic
* Underrepresented Asian American (Southeast Asian where 1 in 10 never attend college)
* Male, 29 years old at matriculation
* Born/raised in the Southeast USA
Leadership
* Founded first Asian fraternity in state
* President of Asian organization on campus
* Founded Freshman leadershp development program for Asians on campus
* Elected into top 3 Student Government executive position
* Ran for student body president and lost
* Served as Director for National fraternity since graduation (5 years)
* Part of founding new Asian Alumni organization for my college
Professsional
* 1 of 12 students selected for a State Government year-long internship/fellowship (learned that I did not want to work in Government)
* After internship, started eCommerce niche apparel company
* Decided to work elsewhere post-graduation but maintained equity ownership
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* Joined international retailer to help company expand in to state (wanted to see how a big business grows/expands)
* Was a retail District Manager and launched two locations
* Managed store's P/L and hired/trained 20+ employees
* worked here for just under 2 years
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* returned to eCommerce business I started to pursue interest in entrepreneurship
* rebuilt website and developed competency in Web Development (HTML, CSS, etc)
* Hired/Trained/Developed all employes (20+) using my experience as a District Manager
* Created all policy/procedure manuals based on experience as DM
* Lead acquisition of two local small biz competitors
* Grew company from ~300k to $1MM+ in three years
* Sold equity ownership in company this year (Aug 2012) to take advantage of low cap gains tax and to pursue bigger goals
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* was immediately hired as a Project Manager for a small start-up company (3 FT employees, 5 PT contractors)
* managing portfolio of 12 clients - all small to medium sized biz
* currently work with clients and developers to create eCommerce websites
* utilizing my technical experience as biz owner and ability to communicate with people
* translate biz requirements to technical developers and vice versa
Goals/Why MBA
* MBA will help address my weakness in acct/finance. I was a people manager.
* Opport to network with students and share entrepreneur background via MBA
* Small Biz experience inadequate to run big biz with 100+ employees and $10MM+ revenue
* Short Term - work for large eComm company (eBay, Amazon, Wal-Mart, etc) and gain experience in Big Business.
* Long-Term - with big biz experience, launch a company in emerging Made-to-Order apparel eCommerce space
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I am applying to a few Top 10 schools, hoping for Top 5 in early January rounds and scrambling to write essays. I have the following challenges/questions:
* Not much out there about how to position myself as an entrepreneur, esp in essays
* No international experience
* Leadership outside work has been heavy Asian community focused although consistent since graduation
* Relatively old (29) Asian Male Candidate may be stereotyped - not sure how to position my under-represented Asian status
* Retail Manager experience is somewhat un-traditional - most do not pursue MBA.
* Mostly small biz background
* My Verbal GMat score is lower than my practice tests - actually spent time focusing on Quant because i thought it was a weakness - but failed to address Verbal sufficiently. Retake post application?
* BIG PROBLEM - Letters of rec are weak - using biz partner who also sold equity in business, National leader in fraternity, and administrator from college. None are technically "direct supervisors" - cannot use my current supervisor for fear of losing job - and my oldest company has a policy against LORs. Letters of rec already in play/submitted.