ccharles1987 wrote:
...after reading the low gpa success stories and a number of people have done very well on their gmats why is that there is still some rejections?
The reason for this is that there is no magic bullet to get into any given B-school. It's not like if you cross a certain threshold, you're good to go. It's way more random than that:
Just think of the numbers involved here: Let's say that in the top 20 B-schools, there are 10,000 total slots each year for incoming students (just a nice round number, let's assume there are 500 students in each school's incoming class). The thing is, there is going to be a lot more than 10,000 applicants with stellar applications each year. Over 100,000 people take the GMAT annually, to use just one indicator of applicant pool size. There is room in our hypothetical Top 20 programs for roughly 10% of the test-takers (that's assuming nobody who took the test last year or the year before is applying, only this year's 100,000). But not everyone is shooting for the top programs, so let's remove some noise and limit our consideration to the applicants who are competing for the elite tier: think about someone with an 80th percentile GMAT score, which is widely believed to be something top schools want to see. By definition, these people are in the top 20% of GMAT takers, so there are 20,000 of them from a pool of 100,000 total test-takers. Yet our 10,000 seats in the Top 20 MBA programs means there is only room for
half of the people who score above the 80th. Long story short, achieving the right mix of stats on paper isn't going to guarantee you entry.
Wharton, I have heard, openly concedes that about 75% of the apps they receive are admissible, which is to say 3/4 of the apps the adcom looks at have satisfactory stats and a solid profile and all that. Yet Wharton's admission rate is less than 20%. The difference between 75% "admissible" and 20% "admitted" highlights exactly how much of a crap-shoot it all is.
There isn't anything you can do to guarantee that you'll get into whatever your dream school is. All you can do is follow the wisdom on this board as to what kinds of activities and achievements positively correlate with landing in the admitted pile, and then beyond that cross your fingers.
close
18 Aug 2011, 23:36
As time goes on I am realizing that i gain more information than if I was rushing. 
