Please help evaluate my profile

Question

Hello all,

I was hoping you could evaluate my profile and help me decide where to apply. My current rough list of target schools is: Duke, UT Austin, Foster, Vanderbilt, Michigan. 
Profile: 
- White male, 26
- Work at Merrill Lynch as an advisor and analyst for a Global Institutional Consulting and Private Banking team
- GMAT: 680 44/38 (this is a retake and improvement from 650 and honestly about the best I think I can do right now) 
- Undergrad BBA double major in Finance and Management 4.0 from a state school
- Solid recommendations
- Volunteer work: on the board of directors of three non-profits (one very large well known NP) and the VP of Development for one of the boards 
- Want to transition to a role in either Marketing or Consulting (I have previous marketing and sales experience from a company I started and sold in college). 
- First generation college student (don't know if that is actually useful or not).

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Is my school list good? To many stretches? Not a legitimate stretch included?

Thank you in advance,

AvantiPrep · Answer

Hello and thank you for your post,

GMAT Considerations

As you're likely aware, your current GMAT score puts you behind the curve for many of these programs, which can be a difficult mountain to climb when applying from a crowded demographic (white-male-finance). I view your Quant sub-score as a particularly tough hurdle (low 50th percentile), and it seems like a downside surprise given your 4.0 GPA in finance as an undergrad.

Fuqua can be a little more open-minded on the score front (their middle 80% is 640 to 750), but you'd have to a lot to make up for in terms of articulating specific fit, your story, your goals, and what you think you can bring to the Fuqua community. Execution will have to be superb. Foster and Owen's middle 80% GMAT ranges are in the 640-730 range, with averages around 690, so you're more aligned there. The challenge at those programs then becomes size. Foster has only 125 seats in their class. Owen has about 170. You'll need to convince them you deserve one.

GPA & Extras

With respect to the GPA, did you receive all As throughout college? Were you valedictorian of your graduating class? Your GPA definitely helps, but that Quant sub-score will be a topic of discussion among adcoms. So be sure to highlight your strong performance in quant related matters in undergrad and at work (and possibly have your recommenders do the same). I also like what appears to be very strong extracurricular involvement. And first-generation college student will be worth weaving into your applications and story in some capacity.

Schools & Paths

I see two possible paths for you. One would be to retake the GMAT, improve your score, and apply in Round 1 of next year (with an improved score and when you can be totally out in front of this process). The other path is to apply this year with the understanding that your school list is "intentionally aggressive," and there's a chance you don't land a seat anywhere (but would be ecstatic if you landed one anywhere). Ross and Fuqua are reaches (which is fine as part of a diversified strategy). McCombs a little less so but still tough. Foster and Owen start to get more profile-aligned for you, but with their class sizes you'll have to execute very well. (And again, I do harbor concerns about that GMAT quant sub-score.)

Depending on your capacity, I think you could consider strategically inserting one more school with an average GMAT in your range and with a bigger class size (provided you still really like the program, of course). One example of this could be a Georgetown-McDonough. Right now your "more aligned" programs simply aren't very big.

Goals & Story

Finally, I know you were probably summarizing your goals very quickly, but you're going to need be super decisive and super specific about those goals in your applications. What specific role at what specific company or companies do you seek after graduation? What are your specific long-term goals? What relevant knowledge, skills, and experience do you already have? What specific knowledge, skills, and experience do you need, and will you get via these MBA programs? At each program, what courses, clubs, and extracurriculars will get you there? What about their cultures, communities, and career opportunities make them right for you? In what ways will you uniquely contribute? Part of superb execution is developing a clear, coherent, credible, and specific career arc, a compelling personal narrative, knowing these programs extremely well (visits, info sessions, conversations), and articulating it all in your essays and applications.

Hope this helps! Please feel free to reach out via the links below to further our conversation with a Free Consultation.

Best Regards,
Greg

Nson40 · Answer

Thank you for your response. I appreciate your insight. Yes I was the Valedictorian of my HS class, yes I received only As in every class I ever took in college (two majors, while changing my major three times, while studying abroad a semester, while working 30-40 hours a week, while still graduating in 4 years), and yes I have unfoundedly struggled on the GMAT. For some reason I just cant "get it". Its not the content really, just cant seem to beat the system.

I will work on my goals more and try to put together a better story. I do have a unique business I did for 4 years in college in which at one point I owned a sales office in Denver and personally hired trained and employed over 100 employees. It later evolved to a marketing and branding sales services that I specialized in working with realtors in branding their business. I want to try and weave this into my story as I believe it connects with what I want to do post-mba better than my current job at Merrill. I need to figure out how to work that right.

Out side of Georgetown, do you have another "aligned school" recommendation with larger class sizes you recommend I took a look at?

Thank you,

AvantiPrep · Answer

My pleasure. That's all very good additional context. They'll see your transcript, of course, so they'll know (and be impressed by) your perfect undergraduate GPA. You should certainly weave in that you accomplished this while working 30-40 hours per week, presumably at the company you started and ran. (You don't need to highlight in your application that you changed majors three times, however.)

This business sounds very successful and interesting, and that's quite a unique accomplishment for an undergraduate. That should definitely be a pillar of your story -- really try to unpack it, what you did, how did it, challenges you faced, what you learned, etc. And to your point, try to connect it your work at ML (which then connects forward to your pursuit of an MBA and your career goals).

Given what you've described, I see more a sales-marketing-branding thread to your story than I do consulting. I'd probably go that route with it. Your Private Banking experience is malleable and fits with that narrative given that in wealth management, advisors are outward representatives of their firm and brand, and they have to communicate the value and capabilities of that brand in order to "sell."

Regarding other programs, I should first clarify that you should mainly consider programs that you really like and genuinely believe are a strong fit from an academic, cultural, geographic, and career perspective. Within that context, consider a diversified strategy (a couple of "reach" programs, a couple of more "realistic reach" programs, and a couple of "aligned" programs, for instance). The "size of program" element is more of a strategic overlay to all of this. Just something to consider if your only "aligned" programs are very small.

With that in mind, along with Georgetown, I'd mention Carnegie Mellon Tepper and UNC Kenan-Flagler as back-end-of-the-Top 20 considerations (700 median GMAT at both, so still behind that curve a little bit, but hopefully the rest of your profile and superb application execution can overcome it), and I'd mention USC Marshall, Indiana Kelley, and Notre Dame as a few options from the 21-30 range.

USC Marshall is still up in that 700 GMAT club, so if you wanted include a program where you're at or above the average GMAT, Indiana Kelley and Notre Dame are a couple of considerations. Note that Kelley is only a little bigger than Owen and ND Mendoza is actually smaller; if you scan through programs on any rankings list, you'll see that program size tends to shrink once you're outside the Top 25. So including a program like Kelley or Mendoza would be more GMAT-strategic for you than it would be size-strategic.)

Best Regards,
Greg

Please help evaluate my profile

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards