Unique profile - Family business heir

Thanks for the Reply Hendrix... I know that I am not the typical applicant, but I am in the range on most of their things so I think there is hope there.


Why now? If I honestly even wait another year I will be too entrenched within the company to be able to simple leave for 2 years to get my MBA.

In addition to what Hendrix said, you're going to have to overcome several other significant obstacles to get into any of those schools.

1. Understand that you're near or below the bottom 80% of most of those schools applicants in both GMAT and GPA. The successful applicants I know with a weak GPA could counterbalance it with an excellent GMAT score and vice versa. Additionally, your weak GPA is going to weigh heavily on AdCon members' minds because you've graduated so recently. Anything you can do to help this, like getting an A in a calculus and stats class at a community college or re-taking the GMAT and getting a 720+ with a high quant score should help.

2. Your leadership experience is going to be suspect. I'm not sure how to counterbalance this, but you don't appear to have any outside of the family business. You've been doing that for about seven months now, and people are likely going to assume that you're in your position solely due to your last name. Can you point to any specific, significant accomplishments you've had as a leader at work? Your lack of leadership experience in college is going to make that worse.

In short, you come across as an applicant that, frankly, doesn't have a whole lot to offer the class. I'm not trying to be mean, but you have very little work experience, a poor (for the schools you're applying to) academic profile, and suspect leadership experience. You've got a long way to go to prove you're an admissible applicant.

Again, apologies if this comes off as harsh, but you have to successfully overcome each of those deficiencies to succeed and you've got two weeks to meet HBS's second round deadline.

I have met other family-business people here at Kellogg, but they had a number of years' experience already running the business. I would recommend spending a couple more years working on the family business before applying to b-school. Perhaps you can take a few courses at your local college and get a high GPA to address concerns about that as well.