Ding Ding Ding What is my problem? Can you guys please give

Question

I am waiting for more results, but by now I got many dings from schools. I even have not received interview invitation from many schools. This means that I have some problem in my application package. I have analysed reason by myself but if you guys give me some comments it will be much appreciated.

- GMAT 700; 50(M) 34(V)
- Ielts 7.0
- GPA: 3.04
- Work experience:
I worked for one of the big 4 accounting firm. I put “Big 4” on the place of company name below.
Big 4 assurance (audit) 2years, advisory (consulting – M&A due diligence, M&A advisory, performance improvement) 4 years; Big 4 Korea 4 years and Big 4 China 2 years

- Career goal:
Short term – come back to BIG 4 Korea to develop new markets by 1) expanding regional scope to overseas market with my overseas experience and 2) developing new product line. (I added the reason for the goals and more detailed roadmap in my application)

Long term – I will establish a consulting firm utilising the asset I will accumulate.

- Above goals will be possible because;
- The two year experience in China gave me inspiration, experience and knowledge for my plan
- I have various working experience in Big 4 Korea, which will be definitely helpful
- Big 4 Korea has really talented human resources (Korean CPA exam is terribly difficult to pass). Also, Big 4 Korea has much strength in consulting services (advisory services); more than 40% of revenue is coming from consulting services. I will be able to utilise this for my plan.
- Big 4 Korea management recognised that it is time to expand to overseas market to keep its successful track records, which aligned with my plan. Much support from the high management is expected.

- Why MBA? - I think my knowledge and career is not enough for the above goals.

- I think I got dings because: 
1. my career goal might not be attractive for the adcom (my goal is not IB, consulting, or CEO something)
2. I described very briefly about my extracurricular activity in application package. 
3. I do not have TOEFL score. I only have IELTS score. Though schools that I applied all accept IELTS score but it might not that good to compare with other candidates. They might just chose to consider other candidates.
4. I see high possibility of success in my career goal but they might think otherwise.
5. Accounting industry - not very appealing industry to Adcom

Thank you.

dosa_don · Answer

Sorry to hear about your dings. It might be helpful if you let us know the schools that you applied to. If you applied to HSW and the rest of the M7, then dings are expected not only for you but anyone who is from a relatively common applicant pool. If you applied to Univ of Phoenix, then you have a problem. So...your school list will help..

daraverla · Answer

Why dont you post your WHY MBA, WHY NOW, ST, LT Goal essay here with the companies names and other sensitive and confidential information crossed out?

daraverla · Answer

I am waiting for more results, but by now I got many dings from schools. I even have not received interview invitation from many schools. This means that I have some problem in my application package. I have analysed reason by myself but if you guys give me some comments it will be much appreciated.

- GMAT 700; 50(M) 34(V)  Not a bad split at all. I guess the percentile for your V score was someplace around 75%? Right? As long as you have good to great TOEFL score and wrote well-written essays, this uneven sprit should not have been a defining factor. - Ielts 7.0
- GPA: 3.04  This GPA really depends on the context of your undergraduate. I guess this is not an engineering degree, so I must assume that your major was finance/accounting/economics/business management, right? Did you go to school in the US? If so, it DOES help, since the adcome at various MBA programs would have sufficient knowledge and information to gauge your performance. Otherwise, this would make adcom a bit concerned as to your potential adjustibility to the new school in this country. 
- Work experience:
I worked for one of the big 4 accounting firm. I put “Big 4” on the place of company name below.
Big 4 assurance (audit) 2years, advisory (consulting – M&A due diligence, M&A advisory, performance improvement) 4 years; Big 4 Korea 4 years and Big 4 China 2 years

6 years in accounting/auditing field. Any serious career advancement? Promotion? any logical upward movement in the corporate ladder?

- Career goal:
Short term – come back to BIG 4 Korea to develop new markets by 1) expanding regional scope to overseas market with my overseas experience and 2) developing new product line. (I added the reason for the goals and more detailed roadmap in my application)

Long term – I will establish a consulting firm utilising the asset I will accumulate.  OK, a logical goal. 
- Above goals will be possible because;
- The two year experience in China gave me inspiration, experience and knowledge for my plan  you should have used a very inspiring and convincing anecdote to highlight your competitive advantage in experience, skill sets, and perspectives in this emerging market. - I have various working experience in Big 4 Korea, which will be definitely helpful
- Big 4 Korea has really talented human resources (Korean CPA exam is terribly difficult to pass). Also, Big 4 Korea has much strength in consulting services (advisory services); more than 40% of revenue is coming from consulting services. I will be able to utilise this for my plan.
- Big 4 Korea management recognised that it is time to expand to overseas market to keep its successful track records, which aligned with my plan.  You should have mentioned a very specific incident that would epitomize a very concrete expansion trend or plan transpiring in Korea.  Much support from the high management is expected.

- Why MBA? - I think my knowledge and career is not enough for the above goals.  (poor choice of words. I want to see how you wrote this part. This should NOT be a logical choice, but an inevitable choice.)

- I think I got dings because: 
1. my career goal might not be attractive for the adcom (my goal is not IB, consulting, or CEO something)
2. I described very briefly about my extracurricular activity in application package. 
3. I do not have TOEFL score. I only have IELTS score. Though schools that I applied all accept IELTS score but it might not that good to compare with other candidates. They might just chose to consider other candidates.
4. I see high possibility of success in my career goal but they might think otherwise.
5. Accounting industry - not very appealing industry to Adcom

Thank you.

sudden · Answer

just a few quick thoughts. your profile looks decent, so it depends on where you applied to school. if i were to guess, i would say your largest weakness is your low verbal GMAT score and errors with written English. my guess is that similar errors were present in the essays, which, combined with the weak verbal score, likely indicated to the adcom that you were not prepared to handle the communication aspects of school and business in general. i think it's impressive when anyone can write in a non-native language, so i am not putting you down, but this is clearly where you stand to improve the most.

besides the verbal problem, your academic scores seem fine -- GPA is on the lower end, but probably not a deal breaker. your workex looks good, largely because of the international slant. not much to go off regarding ECs and leadership.

where did you apply? if you applied to really competitive schools (top 10), then your dings may not be the result of errors you made. keep in mind that you are being evaluated against other prospective students who are similar to you. based on your experience, i am guessing you are Asian and from Asia originally (I could be wrong). if that's true, you are in a very competitive demographic filled with "super" students. a 700 and 3.0 GPA is not going to help you much in this demographic if you applied to top schools. if you don't get in this year, you know what you need to do -- retake the GMAT, nail the verbal, and spend a lot of time hammering out any kinks in your essays. good luck.

bsd_lover · Answer

I agree with sudden, your "profile" seems fine. I think the problem may be with your essays. Perhaps you could send them to some of the experts within the forum.

riverripper · Answer

Even the best essays arent going to get you in if you arent above a certain level. Pretty much every school will admit people despite terrible essays if that person is a superstar...

If you applied to all top schools...(HBS, Stanford, Wharton, Kellogg, GSB, MIT, Columbia) then its probably a function of the competition you face and your demographic. Your stats are strong but not spectacular for the M7 schools. At Kelloggs admitted student weekend they stated applications were way up and the average GMAT for admits in R1 was 721. If you have a GPA of less than the 3.4-3.5 at a top school your GMAT is going to need to be higher if you are in a common applicant pool.

Where did you apply, that could have a great deal to do with your lack of success.

Audio · Answer

I'm surprised that no-one mentioned extra-curriculars: if you only mentioned them very briefly, or if you don't have any, that could be a significant weakness also (you didn't provide any details about them).

riverripper · Answer

I think ECs are over rated. I personally dont do any volunteering (besides some in politics that I didnt put in there at all) or charity work, and I managed to get into a school where that is supposedly very important. As long as you have something outside of work (interests/hobbies) that you are into you can write about that and show you are well rounded. Not everyone can score a position on a non profits board (especially if you have no connections).

Not having them is a weakness but like many things in an profile its easy enough to overcome. Work Experience is something you really cant get past, as are GPA and GMAT below the average of your competition. I know you can retake the GMAT but a lot of folks break 690/700 and say good enough, but average scores at the top schools are now closer to 720 than 700...soon 720 may be the magic number.

Audio · Answer

I don't know how overrated or not ECs are, but in my opinion not having any or not mentioning them is a weakness: it's not a deal-breaker, but I think your application has to have other strong points in order to compensate. Maybe in this particular case the adcoms didn't see what other points were strong or distinctive enough to compensate lack of ECs.

togafoot · Answer

EC`s are exactly that... Extra. It doesn`t mean you have to help in non-profit or social responsibility, to me it`s a check point to show you are a rounded individual who demonstrates some passion in something other than work. An activity(s) that demonstrates a difference between your work experience and life experience. Therefore the type of extra curricular is not as important rather than the fact that you have some that you participate in because you enjoy it.

It also acts as a potential insight towards the type of non-academic contribution the candidate can make towards the student body to build social cohesiveness.

It also acts as a potential insight towards the type of non-academic contribution the candidate can make towards the student body to build social cohesiveness.

navy01 · Answer

How about your leadership experience?

89nk · Answer

Nice to meet other Korean-Americans on this board.

Which schools you applied to might help explains all the dings.

rhyme · Answer

What I see below is a lot of posturing about why you will be successful with your goals -- you seem overly focused on convincing the reader that you can reach goal X, but I see very very little about why goal X, what makes goal X important to YOU and most importantly why goal X is right for school Y.

In particular when I read your list of possible dings,

I notice that you seem, at least in part, concerned with things that don't matter. Adcoms don't look at the "attractiveness of career goals", nor do they care about #4, or really #5 either (at least, not in the way you are positioning it). #3 could be valid, I honestly don't know, but I don't think having IELTS vs TOEFL is a huge deal, or they wouldn't accept IELTS. That said, your verbal score may be comparatively low - that I don't know.

When I see the above and combine it with:

Two key things jump to mind. First, if your goal is to come back to the firm for which you already work, why do you need an MBA? If you have overseas experience, (unless of course you meant your MBA as your overseas experience), then what purpose does the MBA serve? Second, you include the reason for your goals in parentheses -- suggesting to me that you view these as of secondary importance, when in fact, they are of primary importance. I'm making a leap of logic here for sure - but combined with the laundry list of ding reasons you had....

Waaaaay too vague. A consulting firm focused on what? Operating where? What kind of clients? What kind of consulting? What industries will it focus in? etc? I don't see any passion at all in this statement. It even sounds like some kind of dry accounting rule "asset I accumulate"!

For instance, compare the above with a statement like "I will establish a consulting firm based in London with the intent of developing product marketing tools specifically for clients in high end fashion, watches and jewelry across Europe and Asia".

Which "plan" sounds well thought out? If you had to pick which person probably sounds passionate about their ideas, who would it be? Probably the detailed answer, not the short vague one!

The below also gives me some pause.

Again, I see some things that make me wonder. 90% of the above is not meaningful for an application. This should be maybe a sentence or two at most because it tells me nothing about you -- it tells me more about the firm you are working for. I don't care about the firm, their HR department, their advisory services, or their revenue stream breakdowns. I care about what YOU want. Again, it strikes me that you seem quite concerned with convincing the reader that your plan is something you can achieve. If you have a lot of text in your essays about the stuff above, you may have missed the mark.

Most notably.... even though you don't have to convince the adcom that you can achieve your goals (just that you are passionate about them), even so, Nowhere in here do you even talk about the MBA as a critical reason for why you would succeed!

In other words, if you are going to write essays that include this kind of information: 1) Keep it short and 2) Make the MBA 90% of the discussion and your firm's goals 10% !

A fair point, but I hope you have something more detailed in your essays. If you only wrote one brief sentence like this one, I think you need to expand.

So, although I haven't read your essays, based on what you've posted I'd be thinking about a few things:

1. You don't sound very passionate about your goals. 
2. Your decision to include the reasons for your goals in parentheses makes me wonder if you treated the reasons the same way in your essays. The WHY is far far more important than the WHAT. Make sure your essays include more about the WHY than the WHAT. 
3. You seem overly concerned with convincing the reader that you can achieve your goals, but don't spend any time at all convincing the reader about your desire to pursue those goals. Remember: Adcoms are not assessing the validity of your goals, just how passionate you are about them. Moreover, none of the reasons you list you will be successful include anything about an MBA! 
4. Your why MBA is fine, but I would suggest you make sure you've explained it in a bit more detail in your essays.

Some of these might be off base, but I'd suggest you look back at your essays and think about whether or not any of the above points apply. Most importantly, look for passion -- if you don't sound interested in your own goals, the adcom isn't going to be either.

rhyme · Answer

I was going to add -- don't despair. Your profile seems good enough to be competitive -- thats why I think the issue may just be your essays. Let me know if what I typed didn't make sense or if it was way off base. I kind of made a few leaps of logic there, so it might be.

helg · Answer

jongwong, I, with a pretty strong, well-rounded and a bit non-traditional profile (read: GMAT 730 V44 Q47; TOEFL 290 of 300, GPA 3.9, supply chain management, good carreer progress, formal leadership, international exp, Russian national), was dinged by all 4 schools I applied to last year. This year I was dinged by 3 already (yeah, I have my 1 admit, and it's all what matters now 8-)

). When analyzing the reasons for dings I came up with the following: - admittedly weak Why? essays last year; - lack of community involvement (how strong is your profile in this respect?); - few distinctive wow-factors (did not climb Everest, free dive Mariana deep, win Olumpics, teach French to impoverished kids). My advice: - give a close and remorseless scrutiny to your essays, better yet - give them to someone experienced for evaluation; - do not despair.

gmatnoob · Answer

I'm korean-american as well. Like you I feel like I'm in the same boat. I'd like to hear more suggestion from others about how to tie in the why/how about the goals.

If anyone here who is experience with this topic could lend their eyes I would greatly appreciate it. I feel like I know what I want to do but it's not as clear how to present the why/how...

rhyme · Answer

Just ask yourself why you want an MBA! Surely there must be a reason!

3underscore · Answer

Can you remind me why I wanted an MBA rhyme?!

rhyme · Answer

Money. Power. Women. Giraffes. More Money.

err, what I meant to say was to develop a broad cross functional orientation towards business problems, highlighting opportunities through pattern recognition skills developed through excellent faculty.....

Ding Ding Ding What is my problem? Can you guys please give

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