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ello, I'm a long time reader of these forums and have yielded tremendous value from them. I'm excited to be posting here.
I was hoping you could evaluate my chances at my target schools. Any feedback would be appreciated.
I plan to have 5 years work experience and be 28 at matriculation.
Post MBA plans: I hope to work as a management consultant for a top firm on the west coast.
Any feedback on my chances would be greatly appreciated!
I was hoping you could evaluate my chances at my target schools. Any feedback would be appreciated.
I plan to have 5 years work experience and be 28 at matriculation.
Post MBA plans: I hope to work as a management consultant for a top firm on the west coast.
Any feedback on my chances would be greatly appreciated!
21 Jun 2019, 17:08
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Welcome to GMAT Club, perhaps a bit belated welcome.
It is fantastic you are starting early with your prep and planning your GMAT for July and the whole application process this early on.
If you can get a high-enough Quant score on the GMAT (49 or higher), I don't think anyone will have concerns about your quant ability, and frankly, as an artillery, you will be expected to perform very well on quant.
If you are gunning for Management consulting, those folks like numbers and if you can push your GMAT to 760, where you would be at 99th percentile (since you have the time), that would help you later down the road. 740 is perfectly fine for admissions but when there are 400 applicants at Booth for 100 MBB positions, it pays to have 760 on the consulting applications.
Since you do have time, in the fall, start networking with current students who are military - go through your West Point network and other connections you may have. These are the people who will be able to help you with questions like these and also with your applications. As long as you are genuine and are not wasting their time, they may offer to even review your applications and help out with your resume, completely free, as long as they have the time. But even if they don't, you can still count on this network to help you out with small questions, details, and intel so you don't make dumb mistakes. These folks will also help you narrow down your program choices (though most folks still apply to quite a few schools).
As to your profile, your extracurriculars sound fantastic and I feel the story of overcoming adversity is a powerful one too. I would not write a whole essay about it but perhaps mention in a few lines how it made you stronger and how going from homelessness to west point gave you confidence to accomplish so much more. I think you can also explain your low GPA with some of that background but a low GPA is always a big concern.... I am mixed on the idea of taking HBX and UCLA extension. That's a lot of work potentially - I would take one or the other. I think that would be perfectly fine to just take the HBX core for example.
Also, think about how you compare with other military applicants. Think how you will compare with the infantry, airforce, and navy. Will you be able to beat them for the top spots at top bschools?
P.S. In terms of the overall profile, I feel you have a good shot at a variety of schools. Your story, essays, LOR's and interviewing skills will tilt the scales in one of the directions.
It is fantastic you are starting early with your prep and planning your GMAT for July and the whole application process this early on.
If you can get a high-enough Quant score on the GMAT (49 or higher), I don't think anyone will have concerns about your quant ability, and frankly, as an artillery, you will be expected to perform very well on quant.
If you are gunning for Management consulting, those folks like numbers and if you can push your GMAT to 760, where you would be at 99th percentile (since you have the time), that would help you later down the road. 740 is perfectly fine for admissions but when there are 400 applicants at Booth for 100 MBB positions, it pays to have 760 on the consulting applications.
Since you do have time, in the fall, start networking with current students who are military - go through your West Point network and other connections you may have. These are the people who will be able to help you with questions like these and also with your applications. As long as you are genuine and are not wasting their time, they may offer to even review your applications and help out with your resume, completely free, as long as they have the time. But even if they don't, you can still count on this network to help you out with small questions, details, and intel so you don't make dumb mistakes. These folks will also help you narrow down your program choices (though most folks still apply to quite a few schools).
As to your profile, your extracurriculars sound fantastic and I feel the story of overcoming adversity is a powerful one too. I would not write a whole essay about it but perhaps mention in a few lines how it made you stronger and how going from homelessness to west point gave you confidence to accomplish so much more. I think you can also explain your low GPA with some of that background but a low GPA is always a big concern.... I am mixed on the idea of taking HBX and UCLA extension. That's a lot of work potentially - I would take one or the other. I think that would be perfectly fine to just take the HBX core for example.
Also, think about how you compare with other military applicants. Think how you will compare with the infantry, airforce, and navy. Will you be able to beat them for the top spots at top bschools?
P.S. In terms of the overall profile, I feel you have a good shot at a variety of schools. Your story, essays, LOR's and interviewing skills will tilt the scales in one of the directions.
My initial take is that your personal story and professional experiences will help you quite a bit, but that it's always going to be difficult to overcome a sub-3.00 GPA for schools in the Wharton/Stanford/Booth tier.
This blog post will give some solid evidence to indicate why: https://blog.militarytobusiness.com/201 ... a-gpa.html
Having collected stats for hundreds of clients over the past 8 years, MTB probably has the best data for not only those who attend certain schools, but also for those who are admitted but choose to matriculate at another program.
So yes, you can see that according to the numbers in the second bar graph. it's not unheard of for a 2.86 GPA to get into Booth, Wharton, Dartmouth, Duke, or Columbia. But what's not indicated on there is how many clients with similar numbers did not get into those programs. In the same vein, I met plenty of people who admitted to having sub-680 GMATs at HBS, but I didn't meet all the sub-680s who didn't get in.
You can see on the third chart that we've seen 3.98 GPAs get dinged from Stanford, and 3.71 GPAs get turned away from Wharton.
If we had a full-time data guy we could run a fancy regression to figure out odds of admission given a 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 etc. across each of the top 25 programs, but I feel pretty confident saying that degree of difficulty goes up quite a bit for every bit you go below a 3.0.
Again, not to say it's impossible to have things go your way — just that it's probably not a good idea to apply to three M7 schools with those numbers. A strong GMAT and building an alternative transcript will help, but keep in mind that there are dozens of guys/gals from across the service academies in your same year group who will also have 730+ GMATs and good fitness reports to go along with 3.5+ GPAs from undergrad.
So my advice would be to pick one school from the Wharton/Booth/Haas tier of admit rates, another one or two in the Kellogg/Duke range, then two or three others along the lines of Michigan, UCLA, USC, Washington, or Virginia.
Don't just pay attention to rankings — once you get beyond the M7 schools then regional considerations and career placement stats are more important than whether a magazine says a school is #14 or #18.
For instance, if you want to be a consultant in LA or the Bay Area, then UCLA (and maybe even USC) would probably make more sense than Duke or Virginia even though the latter two are "better" schools.
Also, if you're getting out right at the 5 year mark and won't be eligible for the Post 9/11 GI Bill — don't overlook a school's willingness to throw money at applicants that they want to land, particularly public schools that want to boost their profile by "buying" high GMATs.
I've seen several examples of UCLA and Michigan in particular offering big fellowships and scholarships to veterans with above-average GMATs. May be the same case with Washington but I haven't had any clients end up there.
You wouldn't want to make a decision completely on the basis of money, but if you're comparing near-peer schools then having one offer you some money isn't irrelevant.
This blog post will give some solid evidence to indicate why: https://blog.militarytobusiness.com/201 ... a-gpa.html
Having collected stats for hundreds of clients over the past 8 years, MTB probably has the best data for not only those who attend certain schools, but also for those who are admitted but choose to matriculate at another program.
So yes, you can see that according to the numbers in the second bar graph. it's not unheard of for a 2.86 GPA to get into Booth, Wharton, Dartmouth, Duke, or Columbia. But what's not indicated on there is how many clients with similar numbers did not get into those programs. In the same vein, I met plenty of people who admitted to having sub-680 GMATs at HBS, but I didn't meet all the sub-680s who didn't get in.
You can see on the third chart that we've seen 3.98 GPAs get dinged from Stanford, and 3.71 GPAs get turned away from Wharton.
If we had a full-time data guy we could run a fancy regression to figure out odds of admission given a 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4 etc. across each of the top 25 programs, but I feel pretty confident saying that degree of difficulty goes up quite a bit for every bit you go below a 3.0.
Again, not to say it's impossible to have things go your way — just that it's probably not a good idea to apply to three M7 schools with those numbers. A strong GMAT and building an alternative transcript will help, but keep in mind that there are dozens of guys/gals from across the service academies in your same year group who will also have 730+ GMATs and good fitness reports to go along with 3.5+ GPAs from undergrad.
So my advice would be to pick one school from the Wharton/Booth/Haas tier of admit rates, another one or two in the Kellogg/Duke range, then two or three others along the lines of Michigan, UCLA, USC, Washington, or Virginia.
Don't just pay attention to rankings — once you get beyond the M7 schools then regional considerations and career placement stats are more important than whether a magazine says a school is #14 or #18.
For instance, if you want to be a consultant in LA or the Bay Area, then UCLA (and maybe even USC) would probably make more sense than Duke or Virginia even though the latter two are "better" schools.
Also, if you're getting out right at the 5 year mark and won't be eligible for the Post 9/11 GI Bill — don't overlook a school's willingness to throw money at applicants that they want to land, particularly public schools that want to boost their profile by "buying" high GMATs.
I've seen several examples of UCLA and Michigan in particular offering big fellowships and scholarships to veterans with above-average GMATs. May be the same case with Washington but I haven't had any clients end up there.
You wouldn't want to make a decision completely on the basis of money, but if you're comparing near-peer schools then having one offer you some money isn't irrelevant.
