Manager
Joined: 25 Jul 2007
Posts: 198
Given Kudos: 0
Schools:Cornell University
Q48 V45
Profile Evaluation to help in narrowing down schools
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30 Jul 2007, 16:06
Hey guys, thanks in advance for any wisdom you can offer to bring clarity to my search.
GMAT: 760 (48Q, 45V) 6.0AWA on first attempt.
GPA: 3.7 double-major, Communication Studies and Spanish.
Work experience: 2 years with a family business. From what I gather, having only 2 years and having it within a family business will be the weakness I will need to explain through essays/interviews. Out of college, I saw this as offering easily the best opportunity to acquire managerial skill. We run a real estate business, primarily mini-storages apartments, located in Oregon, Tennessee, and Oklahoma. Additionally, we have other holdings in a number of other states.
A primary accomplishment I would plan on emphasizing is that I was put in charge of a property exchange we completed recently. I was able to lead the sale of a consistent headache producing apartment complex along with an undeveloped piece of land into an easy to manage mini-storage at a bargain price in a highly competitive commercial real estate market. The price I was able to get was around $1 million under the property's market value.
Besides this, my work experience has given me what I consider a well-rounded knowledge of what it takes to run a business. I have now been trusted on multiple occasions to run the business while the others are out of town. Still, it is a relatively small business, with a total of about 20 employees.
I'm looking at an MBA as a way to expand my areas of comfort within the business world, and would love to transition into sustainable business, hence wherever I attend I plan to get involved with Net Impact.
Extracurriculars: Nothing out of the ordinary as many of the things I've read within other people's profiles. I'm very active, and have organized several soccer teams on which I play. Volunteer activities have been mostly limited to typical activies, ie volunteering in schools and working in soup kitchens.
So with my academic strengths and my work exp/extracurricular weaknesses, I am hoping that my strengths are enough to outweigh the weaknesses. There are a number of reasons I believe this is the best time to be pursuing an MBA instead of waiting a couple more years. If I stay within the family business for a couple more years, then my app will still say I worked within a family business, only the length of time will be longer. If I switch to a new job, with intentions of only staying there 1-2 years, I don't feel it's worth making the transition.
The schools I have on my list right now are Duke, UNC, Vanderbilt, Emory, Yale, Michigan, Virginia, and Northwestern. I've found strengths in all the programs, but I want to have my list narrowed to 5 or 6, and your opinions would be invaluable! Thanks, and sorry for the long post.