Profile Evaluation - Low GPA

Question

1)Brief description of your full-time work experience. What do you do?
3 yrs Experience, 2 promotions, very high ratings in comparison to others at my level. I work as a project manager at a large corporation, was one of 3 project managers on a 50 million dollar software development project. Had nearly 300 people working on the project, work with venders, international resources, etc. 
2) Your GMAT.
750 (Q49 V42) | 
3) College info: The name of the college, your GPA or grade average, your major, year of graduation. For any graduate degrees, please provide the same info. If you grades are low, please indicate if there were extenuating circumstances.
Carnegie Mellon University (2.87) Mechanical Engineering, 2010. Grades improved a little but still not great towards the end. Low grades are mainly due to lack of interest in my major(just did it bc high school guidance counselor told me it was a good fit), Immaturity, laziness and the pursuit of playing professional baseball which ultimately did not work out due to an injury senior year. 
4) Significant college and post-college extra-curricular activities or community service, especially leadership experience. 
- Member of a fraternity, held several leadership positions
- Captain of the baseball Club, couple semesters as treasurer. As stated earlier, the pursuit of going pro dominated a lot of my undergrad time
- Post college extracurriculars basically all revolve around playing Recreational sports(softball, football, volleyball etc)
5) Important certifications like CFA, CPA, FSA, or CA.
Not much here, I have a couple of internal certifications to my company in the formal of development methodologies, Agile and waterfall
6) Your target programs.
My dream schools are Harvard and MIT, but I figure they could be out of the question because of my GPA. 
Target: NYU, Columbia, Tepper, Fuqua, Yale, Emory
7) When you plan to apply? Please specify round and application cycle, for example R1 2013-14 or R3 2012-13.
Up in the air, R1 for matriculation in either 2014 or 2015
8) Your post-MBA goal.
I have a couple options here, I was deciding between continuing down the general management path I’m now. But part of me would really like to just change directions completely and go down the VC path.

Basically my question is do I have a shot at my target schools? I would like to think CMU will take me back, but considering my undergrad GPA, who knows… I was also considering holding off on my applications for another year to take a couple classes at a local University and boost my GPA while showing that I’m serious about going back to school. Will this improve my chances at the schools on my list or give me a chance in hell at Harvard/MIT? Another Question, I did well on my GMAT, but I know I could improve my Quant score, is it worth it to try, or is a 750 solid enough?

Admissionado · Answer

Hey dude, So first of all congrats on your superb GMAT! I think you can just totally forget the idea of retaking the GMAT, that would just be silliness. The good news is that the single best thing you can do to make up for a poor GPA is get a great GMAT score, which you have done. I don't know that at this point you need to take any courses that you would not take anyhow. I feel that FAR far far more interesting is your story. Not "I was a lazy bum"

, but rather "I dedicated all of my energies to my pro baseball career." Which is a good story and even an impressive one. Schools, and especially top schools love pro athletes, and they tend to be more forgiving with such candidates than with others. So will HBS be tough? Very. But still I feel like you can reasonably apply to several schools in the Top 10, as well as the schools on your list. A low GPA is not fantastic, but other than the top 3 schools, it is not always necessarily an "app-killer" and everything else you have seems good. So what I would do is apply to all those schools on your list, and then add 2-3 more from Top 10 (I feel actually you have a shot) so like MIT, Haas, Tuck.. or whatever you like. Regarding your goals, dude, I'm not sure that VC is a fantastic goal for you. So far I haven't seen anything in your profile to back up the idea that you have experience or that you might be fantastic at it, which is what the AdCom might be looking for. And they will likely have bunches of other folks who DO have that experience who are going for those very same goals. So something to think about, although I wouldn't necessarily rule it out altogether. But I do think that general management would present stronger and more reasonable goals to AdComs. Hope this helps you out, and if you have any follow-up questions, then shoot away...

Lang21 · Answer

Thanks a lot man, this gives me some hope :-D

It can be pretty discouraging when you start looking at some of those average GPAs in the top 10. As far as my essays, I've started working on them and right in line with what you said, I'm focusing on the baseball thing and trying to show that its not laziness as much as it was all my efforts focused somewhere else. Thanks again, Lang

Admissionado · Answer

Lang,
Sounds like a plan. One last note, dude: when you do write about the baseball thing, don't just use it as an excuse... meaning it is still REALLY important for you to own up to your errors. So somewhere you should write about how it was your fault and yes you should have studied more, but then, tell the story about the baseball (and maybe end up with your fantastic GMAT score as a PROOF that you are a changed man)

Best,
JF

Profile Evaluation - Low GPA

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