kingfalcon
Blax0r
Age/Gender: 29 - Male (Asian American)
GMAT Score/GPA : 760 (50Q, 42V) - 3.3 from a top 15 university according to USNews
Work Experience: [industry/years] Software development/financial engineering - 5.5 years
Location: Boston
Schools applied to: Booth
Any consulting services used: [Yes/NO, Who?] No
#Interviews: Booth
#WL: 0
Optional:
Which ding hurt the most and why? Booth - It was the only school on my list because it is by far my top choice, and I devoted all of my efforts to their application.
Why the lack of success? I likely had a bad interview grade, and not much community/volunteering work.
What next? Will go through the fall 2013 application cycle, do some community work in something I'm passionate about, and dabble in mobile app development.
LBS, Booth, Wharton, CBS, Tuck are on my preliminary list of schools. Would appreciate any suggestions (especially if I'm aiming too high).
I don't think you're aiming too high. I just think you made a mistake by putting all your eggs in one basket. Based on your list of schools for next season, it seems like you're interested in finance in NYC/Boston. If so, have you considere Darden, Johnson, and Yale? I believe all three place pretty well in IB and could help round out your list of schools.
Probably didn't help that I achieved my GMAT score a month before R2 apps were due (and I didn't start the process yet at that point).
Actually, there are a few specific companies and course-sets that I am looking for in an MBA. I am definitely more on the quant-side, and want a program where I can take hardcore math classes (Times Series Analysis is an indicator I use) as well as the other management/soft skills classes. Booth's curriculum fits this preference very well; they even offer linear programming. All but Tuck satisfies that condition, but Tuck happens to be a target school for most of the "non-bank/consulting" companies I would want to work for.
I was actually a masters student at Cornell 6-7 years ago, and saw their detailed employment report - it was not good. Hopefully things have changed since then, but there are other things about Johnson that I wouldn't want as an MBA student.
I will definitely look into Darden and Yale though; my initial impression of Yale was that its curriculum is
very different from everyone else. Not sure if that's good or bad yet. Darden is a complete unknown to me, but its reputation is very strong.
Thank you for the support, and congrats on Sloan! I will definitely do a visit during the fall semester; maybe we can meet up!
Yeah, I'd look at those schools + Sloan if I were you. Sloan is more quant-heavy as I'm sure you know, so that sounds like a good fit from a high-level perspective. Yale's curriculum is set-up really differently from other schools' but ultimately the content is more or less the same. There's still cases and lectures and whatnot, but instead of approaching business from a functional standpoint (finance, marketing, operations, etc), they approach it from a stakeholder perspective (customer, competitor, investor, etc). Hope that helps.