jysail15 wrote:
Hi,
I took the GMAT a week ago and scored a 700 (Quant 48/ Verbal 38); although I don't know for sure yet, I'm pretty confident I got a 6 on the AWA. In terms of the IR, I didn't study the section much and wouldn't be surprised if I came back with a low score (e.g. 3 or 4). I was hoping to apply to business schools this year, but don't want the IR score to be the thing that holds me back.
To provide a little more context about me, I went to a top 20 liberal arts college (e.g. Amherst, Colby, or Colgate) where I got a 3.45 GPA while double majoring in Government and Middle Eastern Studies. I have worked at an major consulting firm (e.g. Deloitte, IBM, Accenture) for the past 3 years and spent almost a year of that working in Afghanistan doing economic development. The one area I'm a little weak in is the quant skills. Due to AP classes in high school, I passed out of all math course requirements in college and didn't take any.
I really want to go to a top 15 school such as Berkeley, NYU, or Northwestern, but I'm not sure if it's even possible with a low IR score. Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Would you be willing to take 1-2 quant courses (freshman level classes in calculus, stats, algebra, accounting, finance, etc.) through an online extension program like UCLA? I think regardless of what your IR score is, you probably should do that to give the adcom some comfort that you'll be able to handle the quant aspects of an MBA program.
If you're able to do that, then I think you should be competitive for the schools you listed (and I would recommend adding 2-3 more schools to that list, since b-school admissions is a numbers game as well, and you want to maximize your odds by applying to a sufficient number of schools).
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28 May 2013, 08:06
