@mcjenks23-- happy to offer some additional thoughts below....
see comments throughoutI would really appreciate a profile evaluation. I am considering retaking the GMAT and thinking through what else I need to round out my application and think your opinion would be extremely valuable as I consider my options. I am planning on applying to business school fall of 2023 and targeting Harvard, Stanford, and Wharton
Demographic: 27 year old white-male. Married with 2 children (2yo and 8 weeks old). Economics undergraduate with minor in business strategy (3.99 gpa) from BYU. Fluent in Spanish (lived in Spain for two years as full-time service missionary for my church) and Portuguese (wife is from Brazil and I learned with her / taking college courses)
Congratulations on your new baby! GPA is strong and great to have multicultural exposureGMAT720: Q46 V44 IR 7 AWA 6
This is a solid score-- and H/S/W all take people with this score-- now it would not hurt to get your Q up a bit higher and you have lots of time to do that-- the V score is awesome. Look at my final comment below on why GRE might be betterWE:During college, I had internships at a tech startup (~100 employees, now valued at ~$3B), Goldman Sachs (operations), a MM PE fund, and Bain & Company. I also started a student-run consulting organization that does consulting work for companies across the country as a means for introducing students to consulting, getting them real consulting experience, and creating new recruiting pipelines for students at BYU. The organization is still running today and has expanded to 9 consulting teams with 3 managing directors. I joined Bain & Company after graduating from college and have worked there for 2 years. During my time at Bain, I have only done work in the private equity practice (~20 months) performing a wide array of commercial due diligences for private equity funds. This August, I will start as an associate at Bain Capital on their Tech Opportunities team, a growth-equity, tech-focused fund.
All very impressive. I would say telling this story and showing your impact is more important than squeaking out an extra 10 pts on GMAT-- but if you can do both that is even better.In addition to my full-time work, my wife and I also started a baby products and accessories business called Peebuddies, which helps solve some of parentings "messiest" problems. I invented, designed prototypes and manufactured the product which we now sell via our website, Walmart (online marketplace), and amazon.
catchy name ECA: During school, I was involved in the leadership of the management consulting association and an active member of the economics students association, which mainly involved planning and executing weekly events to improve recruiting outcomes for students. Outside of work, I am active in volunteering in my church.
In all honesty, I am still searching for causes that I am passionate about and feel that this is an area that could use further thought and effort to build out my application. I think finding a way to get involved with the Brazilian community in Boston once we get there or organizations that help parents would be areas I could look to get more involved in the community.
Post MBA goals:I am extremely passionate about entrepreneurship and ultimately want to start a company that can help individuals feel comfortable in uncomfortable situations. Some of the areas where I feel I might be able to do that are in the area of immigration, language learning, or parenting, where I have had past experience. My experience at Bain & Company has given me the skills to evaluate market dynamics and competitive landscape, as well as some operational learnings. I hope that my time in investing will help me understand the process of raising capital and add more depth in the operating of technology companies. Lastly, my experience with Peebuddies has given me a taste of running my own company and the joys of helping people who are in difficult situations make their lives a little bit easier, though I have had difficulties scaling from such a small size. By doing an MBA, I hope to learn the skills I need in operate a small-scale business and to achieve scale as well as better understand who I am as a leader so that I can create a company that has a strong and distinct culture.
The Peebuddies experience would also count as "extracurricular" leadership in that it is outside of your normal work and the efforts to bring this to market is a great complement to your entrepreneurial interests.Evaluation request:As I previously mentioned, I am currently targeting HSW as my top choices and want to understand what I should be focusing on in order to increase my chances of acceptance. Key questions on my mind are whether or not I should retake the GMAT ( I recently attempted the test again and made no improvements ) and what other activities I should focus on to round out my application.
I question off the bat why you would limit yourself to only HSW. As there are still 4 other M7 (CBS, Sloan, Booth, Kellogg) schools where I think you would be able to build a strong network for your future goals. If despite this you indeed only want HSW, then just know that it is a difficult task. While I agree with the expert tutor about trying to improve GMAT Q-- and potentially look at some extra support for that-- if you feel you can't improve that then the GRE is an option to consider. Your GRE score could end up being over the averages in that if you had a 166 V and a 164 Q score you would equate to a 720 GMAT according to this online converter. But I think you will have to do work on all fronts to be most competitive for HSW. I have had clients with these scores or even less break through at these top programs and what usually does it is that their story is bigger than them-- they have a mission and are able to win the hearts of adcom to get them to see how the MBA helps them realize a greater mission. With your passion for building companies I think you should also look at Booth and the entrepreneurial community you would find at things like the Polsky New Venture Challenge or also some of the resources at Sloan And as a Kellogg alum I would want you to also look at the entrepreneurship pathwayThank you very much for your time and attention.
I'd be glad to discuss your profile further-- and to do so just look to schedule a free consult with Stratus here I am Donna Bauman and you can look for me if you like or choose to speak with any of my colleagues also.Cheers![/quote]