Profile Evaluation Request
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01 May 2013, 07:55
I am a 23 year old Asian American female who was born in the USA but grew up in Asia. I attended American schools while in Asia and only returned to the States for college. I graduated from a university in Washington, DC within three years with a 3.80 GPA (summa cum laude, majoring in Communications and minoring in Business Administration), along with various leadership positions (Teaching Assistant, Office Director for a Model UN conference, president of the ballroom club), honorable mentions and a senior thesis under my belt. My current extracurricular activities/hobbies include: YMCA volunteer; Garfield Elementary School volunteer; competitive Pre-Championship ballroom dancer; and coach for a local ballroom team.
Since graduating in 2011, I worked as a Human Resources Assistant at a national law firm for 8 months before transferring to an international law firm as the Talent Acquisition & Development Assistant (have now worked here for over a year). Even though I am/was technically the “assistant,” I have been given several important responsibilities in the past 2 years. For example, at my previous law firm, I took over the responsibility of the Legal Support Manager whenever she was out of the office. Moreover, at my current law firm, I was in charge of ALL aspects of our local recruiting and development efforts (which is a responsibility usually reserved for a Senior Coordinator or Manager) for 4 months until a Senior Coordinator was hired.
I plan on applying to several top 10 MBA programs this Fall in Round 1 (Harvard, MIT, NYU, Columbia), so that I can begin my studies in Fall 2014. With my international background and bilingual proficiency, I wish to focus on international business consulting. This is a major shift in career and industry, which is why I wanted to enroll in an MBA program after only 2-3 years of working full-time.
I took the GMAT three times and my last and highest scores were:
Total: 750 (98%)
Quant: 49 (84%)
Verbal: 44 (97%)
IR / AWA: I have not received these yet
My specific question is: what are my chances of getting into a top MBA program (especially Harvard, my dream school) with my work experience? I would have only worked full-time for almost 2.5 years by the time Round 1 applications are due, which is definitely below average. Moreover, despite my increasing responsibilities, I have only held “assistant” positions and I did not work in an industry that it favorable for top b-school admission (such as consulting or finance).
Any other suggestions and advice on my profile would be very helpful as well. Thank you very much!