Harvard Profile Evaluation - Tools for B-School Profile Evaluation

You have a very impressive profile, although your GMAT is on the low side for HBS. You have the time until you apply and it may make sense to prepare, retake, and raise it.

Another suggestion, your goal is quite clear, but I have a question, and you don't need to answer it now. What will be different about your fund? What niche do you intend to serve? There are lots of funds out there.

Get your score up, and you'll have a competitive profile for HBS.

Best,
Linda

Concerning the 710, I have gotten feedback from research and other sources and have discovered that being within 20 points of the school's average is almost no man's land. I have been told that anything over a 700 would encourage an admissions committee to view my profile in its entirety. Given my story, resume, and undergraduate rigor I feel positive that my 710 would not be a negating factor. In summary, I feel as if a 710 gets my foot in the door and obtaining a 730+ score is a luxury item and not a gating item. Am I off base in that analysis?

Additionally, through my research I am beginning to realize that there are only a handful of schools (MIT, HBS, Stanford, and Wharton) that will provide me with the network and tools that will give me a substantial opportunity to reach my long term and short term goals. Would my profile be competitive at these schools and are there any other schools not mentioned that would be worth while to research further and have a significant track record of VC placement? I am finding it difficult to identify "safety schools" where the value proposition would make sense versus just applying directly to larger VC firms and foregoing B school altogether.

If you were applying now for the extended R3 deadlines and the COVID rounds, I would completely agree with you. But you are planning ahead for two cycles from now, and it is highly possible that application volume could be higher and competition could be more intense than it has been this year or for the last couple of years. So is it possible, given your excellent professional, leadership, and extra-curricular experience, that you could get into one of your target schools with your current GMAT score? Yes. Is it also possible that someone with similar excellent experience and higher GMAT and GPA could also apply and be deemed more competitive/ Yes again. That's also possible. And sincet you have 1.5 years until you intend to apply, unless it will take an enormous amount of effort, I'd recommend going to the trouble of preparing again and retaking the exam. This is a competitive process and on some level, the weakest element of your profile could be like the weakest link in a chain.

Perhaps you're a tad over-confident. Or perhaps just less risk-averse than I am. But that's my reasoning.

Best,
Linda

Hi there,

I would greatly appreciate any feedback on my profile and ideally some thoughts on how to best take the info below and shape it in to a killer HBS admission.

Work experience:
- Three years post-graduation as civil engineer while chasing athletic goals (NZ/UK)
- One year full-time playing sport professionally in Europe and for USA National Team (USA/The Netherlands)
- Retired from sport, returned home to further career. Two years client-side project manager responsible for delivering construction projects up to $200mil (NZ)

Extra curriculars:
- Athletic - Previously member of USA Men's National Team (passport holder) competing for ~2yrs in various international tournaments including Olympic Qualifiers
- Voluntary - NFP Board Member for charity with connections to personal background
- Industry - Chair of national industry network for young professionals (~800 members)

Undergrad school/major:
- Bachelor of Engineering (Honours) from top NZ engineering school

Race/nationality:
- Dual citizen New Zealand/USA

Sex:
- Male

Age:
- 27

GMAT Score:
- 740 (Q49 V42)

Undergrad GPA:
- 3.4

Goal of MBA:
- Aspire to gain a strong toolkit of strategy/business skills through post-MBA experience in consulting at MBB. Transition to role consulting for or within a purpose-driven organization (Gates Foundation/Bridgespan Group/World Economic Forum etc.) Eventually lead/start a business back in New Zealand with the best practice experience gained from abroad.

Target schools:
- Reach - Harvard, Stanford GSB, Kellogg
- Target - Yale SOM, INSEAD, Oxford Saïd

- Plan to apply R1 2020 for 2021 intake. Hoped to visit schools before applying to get better feel for fit but this is likely off the table
- Want to position myself for scholarship opportunities as best as possible. Three months now to write essays etc.
- Keen to hear people's thoughts about schools, goals and key essay considerations
- Understand GPA is slightly low (training full time during engineeirng degree) and WE is non-traditional
- Purpose-driven goals began with seeing the impact that opportunities to sport offered kids and has been emphasized through last 12 months in involvement with NFP sector and experience in the World Economic Forum's Global Shapers Community

Background and nationality - Indian (male), age at application stage - 26, Business education (Undergrad and post-grad from top tier institutes in India)
GMAT: 730 -740 (Realistic target)
Undergrad Gpa- 7.48(equivalent to 4.0 acc to gmac)

Post grad Gpa - 2.93/4.33 from IIM (top 30% of class)

Work experience and leadership - 3.5 years (during application) CPG firm in India, led a team of 10+ management graduates for all these 3.5 yrs, promotion in 2 years, youngest and fastest to get promoted, youngest state head, highest growth and achievement nos. in first 2 years

Recommendations from Pan India Heads

Community and others -
1) volunteering at a free school for the underprivileged - arranged youth awareness camps and increased enrollment at school
2) Volunteering at a school for special needs children - mostly kids who don't have resources for correct diagnosis - tried to teach them nuances of human interaction and to make them independent in their daily tasks

Hosted a tedx event and achieved a blackbelt in martial arts, opportunity to represent country and state in international and national competitions

Post MBA goals - transition to consulting and then start an entrepreneurial venture



zero international experience, but experienced many cultures in India

Ideal GMAt score considering my background

Posted from my mobile device

Hello everyone.
I am from India. I have done my Bachelor's in Pharmacy with low CGPA of 6.75/10.I have scored 750 on the GMAT and I have participated at various platforms. I have done my Master's in Pharmacoeconomics and Health Economics From German University with CGPA of 3.5/5. I was the Sports Secretary of the college and lead the team of 20+ Volunteers. I have done 2 Internships. And I have work experience of 3 years into Pricing and HEOR at ISPOR. What are the possibilities of getting it into Harvard MBA?

Posted from my mobile device

Hello Folks,

Thank you for looking at my profile.

· Demographics (nationality, gender):
- Indian
- Male (turned 27 in January '20)

· Education (undergraduate institution, GPA, major - high school/entrance exams not needed):
- B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (popularly known as IIT Delhi - Among Top 2 Engineering schools in India)
- Graduated in May 2016
- CGPA - 8.1/10 (Major - Textile Engineering)

· GMAT or GRE (include section breakdown):
- Yet to give but expecting 750-760+

. Work experience (highlight amount of work experience, industries, roles, promotions, special accomplishments, international exposure):
- Designation: Senior Manager at analytics consulting firm based out of Gurgaon, India (have been pretty unlucky with H1B lottery for last 3 times)
- Current Employer: EXL Analytics, multinational company headquartered in NYC (wouldn't consider as recognized as BCG, Bain, etc. but probably Tier 2)
- Work Experience: have been working with the same company for about 4 years now right after my undergrad
- Promotions: Total 3 promotions in ~4 years (2 fast track promotions in first 2 years of working with the company)
- Special Accomplishments - not sure if this carries much weight here (Best Innovator Award and Best Employee award)
- International Exposure - No long time international work experience but have client meetings exposure (been on business trips to US few times)
- Industry - Analytics/Data Science consulting in Banking and Finance
- Actual Work - currently leading a team of 5 consultants all graduated from top schools in India, worked on numerous data science/analytics projects for top US banks (Credit Card Risk & Fraud Mitigation)

. Potential Recommendations -
- VP at EXL (IIM - top B school in India) - strong
- SAVP at EXL (The Mays Business School at Texas A&M University) - strong
- Director at top US Bank (past client, among Chase/Citi/BoA) (George Washington University School of Business) - strong
- SVP at top US Bank (past client, among Chase/Citi/BoA) (MS from Carnegie Mellon University) - strong

· Extracurricular activities (highlight notable undergraduate and post-undergraduate ones):
- During school time, I founded a tech forum/community with about 1Lakh members and had Alexa traffic rank of ~70,000 in 2008. Had to shut down due later due to higher studies
- Did a lot of freelancing work (Web apps/coding) right during 5th - 10th grade while in School
- I enjoy working on mobile app development, worked on a startup idea recently but later decided to drop it
- I had decent extracurrics at my undergrad - part of organizing committee (very competitive in college) of one of India's biggest college festival, affiliations with extracurricular clubs (Music) during undergrad
- No certifications as such but have been involved in various activities and led few events for music club both at college and at work

. Post-MBA goals: Starting off with a product role (something in AI) and to grow as a leader in this field. Would ultimately want to be in top position at a Bank leading analytics and operations vertical (resonates with my current work experience as well).

Community Experience: I spent time volunteering at National Association of Blind in New Delhi helping the NGO transcribe textbooks into digital format (Braile later on) for specially abled people.

· Target schools:
- Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, Sloan, Chicago Booth, Kellogg, Columbia, Yale
- Thinking of giving GMAT by July '20 if covid situation resolves and applying in R1, however could wait an extra year if my profile has better chance at top B Schools

· Other information relevant to your profile: I had a decent source of income ever since 6th grade working as a freelancer of variety of things. I am a Table Tennis (Ping pong) enthusiast and spend atleast one hour daily practicing (picked up this sports at my workplace). I have played Cricket professionally for about 5 years before my undergrad at regional level.

I have seen people from my undergrad making to Harvard/Wharton but those always have had either better CGPA or/and more recognized work experience (top management consulting firms), so I would appreciate if you can give me honest feedback as to how I can improve my chances. I don't mind waiting a year if that's required but I am not willing to do MBA other than the listed schools.

Anyway, thank you for looking at my profile and for your valuable suggestions

The ideal GMAT score is the highest one you can get. Your practice scores are in range. Higher would be nice.

As I wrote in response to your Stanford post, it makes sense for you to try and get into HBS, but you also need to apply to other programs that support your goals and where you are more competitive.

Linda

Hey guys, would appreciate some advice on a potential application to the MBA program for 2021 entry.

GMAT: 710 (V40, Q47)

Background/Goals: I'm 32, Canadian, working as a physician. Graduated from residency at 28, and have been working as a licensed physician since then. Interested in pursuing an MBA to get into healthcare administration. Have plenty of leadership and international experience through my career path.

GPA: 3.7 (undergraduate), 3.3 (medical school)

Open to thoughts on how successful my application could be. Thanks!

Your GMAT is on the low side and your med school GPA also appears to be on the low side, unless your med school had a tough grading scale. I'd like to know more about what you want to accomplish in healthcare admin.

You have a shot with the strong leadership and int'l experience, but HBS is a stretch. You may want to also look into Wharton's healthcare management program or Columbia MBA, which aren't exactly easy to get into. Other programs strong in healthcare include Yale, Duke, and Haas. If you believe you can raise your GMAT, I'd encourage you to do so.

You might be interested in recording of yesterday's webinar: Get Accepted to Harvard Business School .

So I've already submitted my 2+2 application but I've had nothing to distract me to help out with the wait, so I've decided to post here and get some thoughts on my chances. I'm not putting too much weight into whether or not I get accepted since I'll always have another chance in 2-4 years, so this is more like a practice round I guess.

Demos
22 Asian American M
LGBTQ, if that counts for anything?

Undergrad
HYPS, Applied Math, 3.55

GMAT
780 (47V, 50Q, 8IR)
Took the online version so no AWA
In case anyone asks me how I got this score, because people seem to be interested in this sort of thing: unfortunately, I have no advice for you since I scored a 770 on my first GMAC official practice test in February with no studying. I took 3 more official practice tests to make sure this wasn't a fluke and got 2 more 770s and a 750. Then I took the real thing. Total hours spent prepping is basically these 4 tests, which comes out to 10 hours ish.

Work Experience, Leadership
Main extracurricular in college was organizing huge model un conferences all over the world (participants in the 2-3 thousands). Senior leadership.
Consulting club for a couple semesters (not too significant tbh)
Two product management internships listed on resume, both at relatively unknown startups.
Unsuccessful at recruiting for new grad pm programs and consulting (rip) so working at a quant hedge fund in a rotational biz ops role starting next month. The fund is relatively well-known and successful within the quant world, with 7B AUM, but probably not as much brand value for bschool adcoms.

Extracurriculars
Framing MUN organizing leadership as educational impact, so it's kind of both work experience and community impact
Main hobby in college was dance, both urban and traditional asian. Have choreographed piece for team showcase before. Didn't really touch on this in my app beyond mentioning it in my EC section, but could go in depth about journey from never having danced before college to choreographing for 15 dancers in an interview
Was on school newspaper doing design for a year and a half

Essay
Using a letter from my freshman self that I wrote to my graduating self (my freshman RA sent them to us last month), I framed my journey of defining what satisfaction means to me. Touches upon leadership experience in MUN, leading a huge digital infrastructure overhaul project for the club, and then briefly but generically on why HBS at the end (couldnt get more descriptive due to length sadly). Really tried to put forward a blend of introspection while showcasing leadership experiences. Wrote most of it the day before the app was due, but I would honestly say it was pretty good (channeled the same energy that got me into hyps in the first place)

Recs
The junior spring to summer internship, the product team was 3 senior PMs and me the intern. Two of them acted as my direct supervisors (VP of product and a senior pm), and they each wrote me letters. I found out too late that I was supposed to give them more guidance than simply throwing the GMAC prompt at them and expecting good letters. Neither of them went to bschool, so this was probably their first times writing something like this. I expect them to be positive letters, but not likely to be very very strong recs unfortunately.

MBA Goal
My goal is to re-recruit for tech pm or mbb, but I don't think I mentioned this anywhere explicitly in the app. In my essay, I just mentioned that I will seek new challenges after my stint at the quant fund (with prettier messaging, but thats the gist).

Other schools
Sloan and CBS's deferred MBAs as well. Would love to get perspective on whether I'm competitive there as well.

Final thoughts
I know that I'm not the target demo for 2+2 and my GPA is way below the avg, but applied anyway because who knows! Quant hedge funds are kind of on the border between finance and tech, so maybe that's interesting for them idk. What I can see myself struggling with is debating between accepting a deferred spot at sloan or cbs vs applying to H/S in 3 years.

Appreciate any thoughts from the experts here! Thanks.

Hi kat271, thanks for sharing your profile. Agree with the other poster that you should focus on getting your GMAT up closer to the average of the school(s) to which you're applying (730ish for HBS). You might also consider completing HBX CORe to demonstrate aptitude for the MBA curriculum. It's going to be a competitive cycle as I'm sure you know, so both of these things can only help to make you more appealing to the adcom. Beyond that, the key will be building out a convincing narrative as to why a career in healthcare administration is your passion and how you will leverage your MD + MBA to do great things within that function/industry. I would also recommend spreading your risk around by applying to a handful of schools that fit your criteria. Good luck!

Obviously without seeing your application it's pretty hard to comment intelligently on what you wrote. You're correct that your GPA is a little low for HBS 2+2, but given your GMAT and the other experiences you had and LGBTQ status, I don't think your GPA a knock out. I actually think your chances of getting into one of these 3 program is pretty good. Just not sure which one. You have a shot at all 3.

I'm a little concerned about the way you talk about your goal. It seems pretty bland and frankly unfocused.

Anyway, now that I provided the distraction, I hope you get in!

Male, 31 years, from Norway but studies in Denmark.

Bachelor's/undergraduate: 2.97 GPA at Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Master's/graduate: 3.93 GPA at Copenhagen Business School.

Will they care about the GPA from my undergraduate when my graduate score is much better?

In Europe, it is not normal to have lots of extra curriculum so I do not have much to show for there, except as a project leader in Blockchain Society and volunteer work at a student house. I graduate in December and the plan is to work 2-3 years to gain some experience and at the same time work on acing the GMAT. I have read that in Harvard most MBA students are quite young, so will a (then) 34-year-old Norwegian stand any chance at all?

BTW: my GPA calculation is based on online GPA caluclators - I do not know if this is accurate since it is really hard to find accurate information on how to convert ECTS's to GPA.

Thank you all for your help, this site is great

Hi aslak,

Thank you for your post. I do require more details about your background and professional experiences in particular to evaluate your profile better (what have you been doing between undergrad and grad, what is your professional goal, etc.). That said, your undergrad GPA will be considered in your application (my recommendation is to not convert your GPA, and address your undergrad performance in an addendum); however, your master's degree GPA will help show your academic potential. Obtaining a strong GMAT score will also help in the outcome of your applications.

While earning a traditional MBA past 30 is more challenging, it's not impossible. You will have to have a clear response to why a traditional MBA is essential to your career progression and why Harvard in particular.

I am happy to discuss your profile and goals in a 30-min free consultation if that is helpful at all. When you are ready, please reach out.

Good luck!

Susan, thank you so much for your quick reply. I will definitely contact you

What a great forum this is!

Hi Aslak,

MBA programs will care about the undergrad GPA, but they will like the grad GPA. Combine it with a strong GMAT (or GRE) and context for the low GPA, and they'll pay much more attention to the rest of your app. We've had clients in their 30's accepted to HBS. I really depends on what you've accomplished to day and will accomplish between now and when you apply.

Finally, if your grads were considered high then don't use a calculator to translate them. A 2.97 is a mediocre GPA and definitely below average at HBS. If your grades were considered above average in Norway, HBS will recognize that.

HBS will also want to know why you want a second masters degree in business.

You may find these resources helpful:

* 5 A's for your Low GPA.
* HOw to Get Accepted to HBS, a webinar recording.

Best,
Linda