Profile Evaluation Request

Hey farful - since you asked us nicely via PM to respond to this, well, here we are.

And we're kinda known for "brutal honest comments" - never try to be mean, just dish out the truth.

But unfortunately, there's only so much we can say about this. We are not in a position to make blind school recommendations; this is a very personal process and we don't know anything about you that could even help to narrow the field. Things like geography, school size, culture, and obviously specialization and focus all play into it. Do you want to go to a school in a city so that your wife can easily find work? Do you want a school with a strong partner support culture? All schools have some of that but some are much more welcoming to spouses and SOs of students.

You're going to need to figure out your answers to these questions, and roll up your sleeves and do some research - and get out and visit. The EssaySnark blahg has some resources for this process. And figuring out your goals really would be a helpful first step.

Your GMAT is obviously awesome and sure, your GPA is on the low side but it's not showstopper low. It sounds like you have a good reason you can offer in an optional essay to explain what happened with those science classes; that even could potentially come off as a positive. We're not concerned about that. You'll also need to explain the master's program... and the year of unemployment. Ideally, you'll be able to cover at least one of these in one of the main essays for each school - not an easy thing to do with this year's abbreviated questions, but possible. Otherwise, that optional essay is going to get very crowded. All of these issues will need to be explained. None of them are red flags necessarily but it will be up to you to take control of your messaging and help the adcoms see what the deal was and turn them to positives.

But the goals - you really need to nail down the goals. It sounds like you want to get out of supply chain? If you don't, then you have a pretty easy task of identifying the schools - there's a bunch that are specifically known for that. If you do, then you need to do some heavy lifting / soul searching and figure out what the next step is. We actually can't even recommend a single school without that information, and even with it, it's not always so easy - especially if you say "strategy consultant" which is what everyone seems to want to do these days!!!

Please don't be deterred from saying that, if it's what you have in mind - just recognize that it's exceedingly common and it's becoming more difficult to stand out if that's the goal.

Anyway, sorry that there's not more we can do here - we'd be of much greater use to you if you were presenting ideas for feedback, rather than this vacuum. We're of the DIY school - we have a gazillion tools on our site to help you work through these questions and then we can give guidance based on what you come up with. You may want to poke around on essaysnark.com to see what's there.

Good luck with it and as you narrow down on some of these choices, feel free to post back and we'll see what we think.

EssaySnark