Thanks for the response Alex.
I would love to go to Yale, but I excluded Yale for the same reason I excluded most of the top ten: GMAT. The Yale mean/median is 722/720 and the 80% range is 680-760, similar to H/S/Berk. From the ISB website, mean/median is 710/709 and the 80% range is 670-760.
So, just to confirm my takeaways, here's what I interpreted:
First: Cornell is not within reach, its a stretch (aka my "Super Reach").
Second: UNC is not a stretch, its within reach (as are the schools outside the top 16 in USNR).
Third: ISB is beyond stretch (aka bordering impossible) because their students' median/mean GMAT score is heavily concentrated above my score [which sucks because I really wanted to go to India for a year]. Yale and Berkeley are not beyond stretch because...[need a little help here!!!
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Fourth: With respect to the stretch schools, I would be equally on the fringe at Yale and Berkeley (despite that each of those schools have a 20th percentile GMAT score of 680) as Duke or Cornell [640 and 620, respectively).
Fifth: By fringe, we're talking about sweating out some waitlists, if not getting an outright ding!
Anyways, I'm contemplating a change in strategy. I could take the GMAT again (this was my first attempt) but I am not confident that I will achieve a significantly different score and would rather concentrate on the rest of my application. I'm willing to roll the dice, and I'm also willing to get b***h-slapped back down to Earth. Actually, if I got dinged from every school, then it would be more like down to
My new approach (I will probably cut at least two schools away from this list):
Stretch (high GMAT range): Yale, Berkeley, ISB
Stretch (avg GMAT range): Duke, Michigan
Reach: UNC, UT-A
Advice on this approach is much appreciated, especially clarification on my candidacy for Yale/Berkeley vs Duke/Michigan/ISB (meaning is there a tier within these schools that I'm ignoring or is the probability of getting into any one of those schools relatively the same).
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27 Apr 2011, 11:47
