MBAbound12 wrote:
1) Basic demographic info: 26 year old (at matriculation) white male
2) Educational Background: University of Maryland, double major accounting and finance, GPA 3.7, 690 GMAT (Q44 V40), licensed CPA
3) Work experience: Big 4 Consultant within Transaction Services group for a year and a half. Previously spent 2 years in audit at the same firm. Will be a senior associate upon matriculation.
4) Extracurriculars: Involved in a 3 year long mentoring program with the goal being to get underpriveledged high schoolers into college. Involved in volunteering for Junior Achievement and soup kitchens through work.
5) Short/Long term goals: I am looking to make the switch from doing diligence on M&A deals to investment banking and eventually private equity. Preference of location would be NYC or San Francisco.
6) Schools: Considering all top 10 schools, (except Stanford and Harvard, which I assume are out of the question) Columbia, Cal, Penn, Chicago, MIT, NYU, Michigan, Northwestern, etc.
I am looking to attend one of the above mentioned schools. Please let me know what you think my chances are and whether there are areas in which I can improve. I am considering taking the GMAT again, but I am not really sure how much more a 710 will help my cause. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.
You sound very personally involved extracurricularly, which will appeal to Ross and Kellogg in particular, but I do think that pulling up the GMAT a bit could help significantly. Your professional experience seems pretty standard, so try to think of and detail examples of situations in which you went beyond the normal due diligence to make a difference for your clients. And don't bother using any auditing examples in your essays; these just don't appeal to the admissions committees at all since they are typically so dry.