pottsy44 wrote:
I am looking to apply for an MBA at the end the end of this year/start of next year. I come from a background of providing technical consultancy services to the Construction industry and I am wishing to pursue a career change.
Background:
- 27 year old Australian
- 2.75 (US equivalent) undergrad GPA majoring in Construction Management - obviously not great, but I worked full-time during my studies and in my current industry no one could really care less what your GPA is, its all about work experience, so I wrongly neglected my studies.
- Post graduate diploma in fire engineering technology - this is a bit dodgy as I received credit for 4 classes as I took them in my undergrad. Nonetheless, the GPA was 3 for this course.
- Work experience:
1. I worked full-time throughout my undergrad degree (completed a 4 year degree in 5 years) and only had 1 day off to attend uni during the semester and did 2 night classes a week. This was spread over 2 large government organisations that were directly related to my studies.
2. After graduation I worked for 2 years at one of the same government organisations, with a promotion and had limited delegation responsibilities.
3. My current position I have held for 2.5 years as a building services/code consultant working on significant building developments (working on projects with development costs up to AU$500 million (probably approx. to US$300 million). Due to the project-based nature of the work this means meeting tough deadlines and being fully responsible for the projects that I worked on as the grunt portion of the work is solo.
I intend to target schools such as Boston College, Boston U, U Connecticut, Northeastern and Babson - essentially schools ranked around the top 50 mark and in the North-East. My reason for this is because I want to have the ability to do an internship in Boston with the goal of gaining employment after the MBA is Boston. My goal employment would be something to do with business analytic's, business consultancy and competitive service delivery.
The obvious: My GPA is low. Does my work experience offset this enough for it to not be a major hurdle? What kind of GMAT should I target to offset my low GPA?
Does being Australian (I am Caucasian) give me any kind of advantage in applying to a US business school? I only ask because I don’t believe that many Australians go to US business schools.
Appreciate any advice that can be given.
A couple of things:
1. Aim higher. B-school these days are crazy expensive. If you're going to go, make sure it's worth it, especially if you're moving from overseas, and from Australia no less where the quality of life overall is better than the US at comparable income levels (unless you're financially independent, then in that case you won't need an MBA and you're 100% globally mobile). To be blunt, with the range of schools you listed, the kinds of job opportunities available to you may not be any better (or maybe even worse) than what you can find in Australia based on your current profile (you seem to have solid experience right now).
2. In your case, depending on your GMAT, you should be more competitive for higher ranked schools - that is, assuming you're not limiting yourself to Boston. Get a 660+ and schools in the top 30 such as Georgetown, Tepper, Texas, USC, UNC, and so forth are in reach. Get a 700+ and schools in the top 16 are within reach such as Stern, Yale, Cornell, Ross, Duke, Darden, and UCLA. Get a 740+ and you may want to add 1-2 top 8 schools such as Sloan, Kellogg, Booth, or Columbia. As someone who graduated from a non-US university, they will be looking more closely at your GMAT anyhow. And if you went to one of the top universities in your country, then that will be more important than your actual academic performance, barring any major issues (failing out, a ton of failed/repeated courses, etc).
3. Why are you limiting yourself to Boston? If it's a personal thing (your spouse/partner will be working there), then that's fine - you do what you need to do, and your original list of Boston-area schools makes sense. However, if it isn't a personal constraint, you really owe it to yourself to be more open-minded about where you should apply to and where you want to work.
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23 Mar 2015, 16:17
