Profile Evaluation for 2020 Application

Hi SpiderGuy46,

Thank you for your post. Here are a series of thoughts and observations:

QUESTIONS / CLARIFICATIONS REGARDING WORK EXPERIENCE

I do have a few questions about your work experience that would help with parts of my response. More specifically, did the 18 months "part-time" in Virginia's Real Estate Division come after you graduated college? How "part-time" was it... like how many hours per week? And how significant has the 14 months of "side work" with the startup been?

I would also love to hear more info about the startup in general, like what does it do, size and revenue, and the particulars of your role, etc. (Happy to discuss by phone if that's easier.) And I'd want to know what else you've been up to from an extra-professional / community / leadership perspective since college.

NATURE OF EXPERIENCE

You are right to observe that your full-time, post-college work experience has less *quantity* and *structure* to it than the experiences of many other MBA applicants. But if the part-time work in the real estate division was robust enough, and serving as a partner for the startup is a real-deal thing, then your work experience might not necessarily have less *substance* than the experiences of other applicants. You've just come at things in a different, more unique, less structured yes, but in some ways more interesting (and possibly goal-connected) kind of way. But to know that for sure, or to start to think about how to position that, I would need to know more about the jobs.

AMOUNT OF WORK EXPERIENCE

Knowing those details will also help clarify "how much" work experience you have; like have these experiences been concurrent? On its face, it seems that you might be in the "low work experience" category, applying with less than two years of experience (???) to enroll with less than three years of experience (???).

Enrolling with three years of experience is often the bottom end of schools' middle 80% range; when you attempt to do so, you need to make an even more of a proactive case (via your essays and recommendations) as to why now, why you're ready, and what you can contribute, and you need to make sure that your leadership experience / potential and professional readiness / maturity are adequately conveyed. Your experience as a D-I football captain will help with that, though I'd love to know what else there is to work with on that front from your professional / startup life.

AREAS TO FOCUS ON

Your GPA is low to very low, but the 740 helps offset that. Given the timeline of potentially applying this year, the main thing you can aim to improve over the next three months would be building an alternate transcript. You will want to be able to prove to adcoms that you have the academic foundation and ability to succeed in the MBA classroom. If you didn't take baseline quant courses like statistics and calculus -- or did poorly in them -- then I'd encourage you to take those courses at a local, accredited institution (or online with a reputable provider) and get As in them. You could also potentially look at microeconomics, accounting, and finance. It all depends on what you've already taken and the grades you got.

Beyond that, I'd encourage to further develop the specificity of your goals; consider how those goals have evolved (or were borne of) your varied mix of experiences; how that varied mix of experiences has given some foundation of relevant knowledge, skills, and experience; and what knowledge, skills, and experience you are missing toward your goals, and therefore need to acquire via an MBA. You can read more about these dynamics here: https://www.avantiprep.com/blog/the-mos ... on-process

[Again, hard to comment on extra-professional / community life without knowing what you've been up to since college on that front.]

SCHOOLS

I believe you have a very reasonable trio of programs listed above (pending the work questions above). Your GMAT score is very strong, serving as two-year captain of a D-I football program is great (be sure to unpack that leadership experience, as it may provide good fodder for essays, so long as you strike a proper balance with professional material across your essay topics, as you don't want to "over-build" around football), and your recommendations seem promising (though I'd make sure that all of these well-titled individuals actually know you deeply and can deliver real substance, deep insight into you, and super-specific examples and anecdotes to support whatever they say).

You'd probably have a little more upside applying one year from now, as that would seemingly solidify your work experience and give you more time to build up your alternate transcript (and possibly your post-college ECs if they need more building). At the same time, if you do plan to apply this year, I would encourage you to add some even more competitive schools to your school strategy. Despite the low GPA and non-traditional work experience, you've got some really great things going for you, and you should not sell yourself short. With the right application / essay execution, I believe you can strike even higher. (And if that doesn't work out, time is on your side, so in my opinion you're better off aiming high and re-applying if things don't work out.)

Happy to chat if helpful. You can sign up for a Free Consultation here: https://www.avantiprep.com/free-consultation.html

Best Regards,
Greg