Events & Promotions
|
|
GMAT Club Daily Prep
Thank you for using the timer - this advanced tool can estimate your performance and suggest more practice questions. We have subscribed you to Daily Prep Questions via email.
Customized
for You
Track
Your Progress
Practice
Pays
Not interested in getting valuable practice questions and articles delivered to your email? No problem, unsubscribe here.
May 0808:00 AM PDT
-08:30 AM PDT
Join the special YouTube live-stream for selecting the winners of GMAT Club MBA Scholarships sponsored by Juno live. Watch who gets these coveted MBA scholarships offered by GMAT Club and Juno.
May 0803:00 PM PDT
-04:00 PM PDT
Inquire for a free profile evaluation and guarantee statement for possible admits and scholarships!
May 0710:00 AM EDT
-10:30 AM EDT
Sia Admissions Founder Susan Berishaj is covering this live on YouTube, May 7: how admissions committees actually evaluate goals statements, who is in the room, and why the goals statement most applicants submit wouldn't survive that conversation.- May 07
11:30 AM PDT
-12:30 PM PDT
Most MBA resumes fail not because of weak experience — but because of how that experience is presented. In this episode, we break down what makes an MBA resume effective, and how to shift from listing responsibilities to demonstrating impact... - May 07
06:00 PM PDT
-07:00 PM PDT
A strong MBA application is built long before you start writing essays. In this session, Scott Edinburgh (Founder, Personal MBA Coach) shares 6 practical ways to improve your MBA profile before MBA application season 
May 1111:00 AM IST
-12:00 PM IST
Looking to secure a coveted spot at a top business school? Our team of seasoned MBA admissions consultants, including top B schools alumni and industry leaders, is here to help turn your dreams into reality. Let’s kick-start your journey to success!
May 1310:00 AM EDT
-11:00 AM EDT
Applying to business school this year? Don’t miss Personal MBA Coach’s Top MBA Application Tips guide
17 Aug 2020, 09:59
Kudos
Bookmarks
SharksAndMinnows
Your a tough one to assess because of that low undergrad GPA. Your GMAT is excellent. Your work experience is strong and your military experience will add a lot. However, that GPA needs to be addressed in your app. What was the context?
You may be interested in "5 As for a Low GPA."
In terms of your target schools, it makes sense for you to apply to the programs you're aiming for with the possible exception of MIT Sloan, which historically has been less receptive to low GPAs from my experience. I'd add a few schools R2 if you aren't accepted to these programs R1. Consider Ross, Darden, Cornell Johnson,
Best,
Linda
17 Aug 2020, 12:35
Kudos
Bookmarks
SharksAndMinnows
Congratulations on your high GMAT. You come from an overrepresented demo, so it’s helpful to have a GMAT score that’s over the schools average (usually around a 730 for Harvard) given that accepted applicants from your demo usually are associated with higher-than-average scores.
Military experience is sought after, especially by top-tier schools, for the leadership grooming it provides and because recruiting stakeholders select for it (especially General Management programs, for which HBS is known, and professional services firms like management consulting and banking). However, most of the vets hail from service academies, and that doesn’t appear to be the case with you. This may be because going into the military through a service academy is the most conventionally prestigious route and because of the leadership training that academy students receive during undergrad. All of this is to say that you need to emphasize your leadership skills and experience as much as possible to compete with these other vets. Did you lead troops over seas? Did you experience first hand combat? What sort of projects did you lead? This is the sort of material that you want to make sure you develop in your one (and only! - HBS has only one!) essay for HBS.
One differentiator for you is that you have both military and private sector experience. So you’ll want to make that dual advantage clear in your essays. You’ll be coming with real skills - finance acumen, credit knowledge, markets knowledge - rather than just raw leadership potential and raw intelligence like a career military guy with a STEM undergrad (many of the vets at HBS look like this on paper).
Equity trading is considered less prestigious than other forms of capital markets activity (IB M&A, DCM, etc.). It’s not really clear to me why this is the case - trading is super competitive and remunerative - but it is. There’s less appetite among top MBA programs for traders than more traditional sell-side bankers and PE buy-side guys with former IB experience. You shouldn’t apologize for or be ashamed of our equity trading background in any way, I just wouldn’t make it the feather in your cap or write your whole essay about it. Most b-schools will be more interested in your credit experience - there are a lots of people from S&P, Fitch, Moody’s at top B-schools. Many of them are successful in investment management or IB. I think you could make a good case for Infra IB -> World Bank or IFC if you wanted to given your global perspective as a military guy. You definitely seem to have international interest already given your stated long term goal and this could help you get there potentially.
Regarding your long-term goal, you need to find a way to tie this back to your prior success and interests somehow. Do you have personal ties to this region? Is this where you were stationed in the military? How will strategy consulting get you there? Why strategy consulting? Do you have biz dev experience in this area already? You need to have these breadcrumbs in order for your long-term goal to resonate. You also have to have an intermediate goal to help get you there so that your long-term global seems both very ambitious and imminently achievable based on your prior successes.
Strategy consulting is one of the most commonly espoused intermediate goals cited in applications. It’s great if you actually want to do it, but avoid using this goal just because you think this is what the AdCom wants to hear. It can come across as very generic-sounding in essay if you don’t develop your career arc properly. You need to have clear reasons why you want to do consulting given your long term goals and why you need an MBA to get you there.
Your GPA is a little low, especially for a non-engineering major. Your undergraduate institution ranking makes a big deal here. Having a 3.0 from UC Berkeley or UVA or UNC is different from having a 3.0 from a lesser ranked state school. I’m assuming that you went to a state school because those are the ones that would be “top-ranked” and still have a finance major available. Most private Ivy-league universities don’t have finance majors offered to undergraduates. If you have a 3.0 because you made mostly bs in all of your classes, then I wouldn’t say anything about it in your app. It’s obvious from your GMAT score that you can handle the academic nature of a challenging MBA curriculum. If, however, you have a 3.0 because you had a 4.0 until something devastating happened to you that blew up your GPA one semester, I’d explain that in the optional essay.
Lastly, I don’t see any extracurriculars on your profile. You need to demonstrate that you have passions and commitments to your community outside of the office. If you don’t have this already, and you are thinking of applying R2, then it’s not too late to get some of this on your resume. Ideally though, you’d want to have long-standing passions that show years of commitment to a certain issue -- after school mentoring, corporate ethics, industry focus groups, your musical band - whatever. You’ll want to show that you’re not just a footsoldier, either, but rather a leader who takes initiative. It’s better to be the board of an organization *and* a volunteer for it’s mission than to just be a volunteer.
If defining your strategic positioning might benefit from a admissions consultant as a sounding board, feel free to sign up for a free consultation with one of our admissions consultants here: https://admissionado.com/free-consultation/
Hi,
I am 29 yo Turkish male. I completed my Business Administration Undergrad in Turkey at top 3 schools in Turkey in 2014. (I was 1983th between 2M students)
Undergrad GPA: 3.36/4.0
Went to Netherlands for Erasmus study.
GMAT - Still working on it.
I worked for a VC fund for a year when I graduated. 500 deals prescreened. Helped for fundraising & establish a new funnel system for the fund. Also, I’ve contacted with many bigtech companies such as Amazon, Google etc. to get some perks for our portfolio companies. One of the portfolio company that I worked closely elected as Endeavor Entrepreneur within my efforts.
Later, I’ve noticed that I need much more industry & professional experience to bring more on table. So I left there and started to work for leading telco company. I’ve started at strategy department. First 2 years, we evaluate more than 50 deals to make feasilibity plans and potential benefits of those to company. Later, we have merged with subsidiaries team. My company has around 20 different subsidiaries and I entered all monthly board meetings of those subsidiaries. I collected & compiled financial and business data of those under single dashboard and presented this dashboard to C-Level. Some companies need further attention. So, I worked closely with their teams. Later , since April 2019 we are focusing on commercial projects and business development activities. Our New management team wants to combine external innovation with our company’s resources. This new duty really helped me to show myself. Because I have been actively involved in entrepreneurship ecosystem since 2013 from my university years while I was working as an Intern at entrepreneurship center in my university. I can really find eligible entrepreneurs easily by contacting with my network and my manager & director are always surprised that How I’m doing this.
Extracurricular
1. Board Member of a University club which organizes book fair that aims to bring discount priced books to school for university students & youth festival that is the biggest event of the year. 4 day lasting. ~600 events organized and doing this free for students by securing some sponsorship (Hundred thousands dollars per year)
2. Actively mentoring to Turkish Tech ecosystem. One of the company ,that I’ve helped, raised 500k USD and then he secured a joint venture investment from an American investor group. Also I helped him to develop & present his financial model. We also worked closely together to look for customer development strategy & changing business model from single time payment to recurring revenue model. Other one is an IoT company which digitizes everything. Some of my ex-directors started to work at municipalities and government itself. They called me about their needs & I find some companies which might be helpful for them. Still some negotiations & trials are ongoing. Hope they can help to digitalize infrastructure to increase efficiency.
3. Worked on technology committee at a political movement. They want me to help them in their technology policy making issues. We are still working on it. Writing policies & recommendations. Putting it into party’s future plans & programs. Cross functional team. It can closely work with other divisions such as economy, environment etc.
4. Started to write at one news blog during covid-19. Writing biweekly some tech articles into there.
Short Term Goal: Working at management consulting especially at public, finance & tmt practices.
Long Term Goal: By combining MPA - ID education at HKS & MBA at H/W/Sloan/Tuck and my experience at telecom & management consulting, I would like to work for government as a public officer. I want to increase prosperity, digitalization, entrepreneurship & education levels of my country.
One of my biggest passion is smart cities & infrastructure digitalization. It is an essential things for the world. Resources are getting more scarce day by day and we need to use benefits of technology. So we need to digitalize infrastructure as efficient as possible. I am recommending this to current administrators as well as the political movement leaders that I am actively involved.
I want to learn holistic approach of Public Administration & Business Administration. That’s why I choose to do MBA & MPA-ID. MPA-ID is a rigorous and math heavy program within developing countries. I will be working in a Turkey or other developing countries when I graduated. It is more challenging and has a great learning curve.
I would like to do HKS MPA-ID Joint Degree with HBS MBA or Concurrent Degrees with Sloan, Tuck or Wharton. Do I have any chance of getting into those?
Thanks for long reading and evaluation!
Posted from my mobile device
I am 29 yo Turkish male. I completed my Business Administration Undergrad in Turkey at top 3 schools in Turkey in 2014. (I was 1983th between 2M students)
Undergrad GPA: 3.36/4.0
Went to Netherlands for Erasmus study.
GMAT - Still working on it.
I worked for a VC fund for a year when I graduated. 500 deals prescreened. Helped for fundraising & establish a new funnel system for the fund. Also, I’ve contacted with many bigtech companies such as Amazon, Google etc. to get some perks for our portfolio companies. One of the portfolio company that I worked closely elected as Endeavor Entrepreneur within my efforts.
Later, I’ve noticed that I need much more industry & professional experience to bring more on table. So I left there and started to work for leading telco company. I’ve started at strategy department. First 2 years, we evaluate more than 50 deals to make feasilibity plans and potential benefits of those to company. Later, we have merged with subsidiaries team. My company has around 20 different subsidiaries and I entered all monthly board meetings of those subsidiaries. I collected & compiled financial and business data of those under single dashboard and presented this dashboard to C-Level. Some companies need further attention. So, I worked closely with their teams. Later , since April 2019 we are focusing on commercial projects and business development activities. Our New management team wants to combine external innovation with our company’s resources. This new duty really helped me to show myself. Because I have been actively involved in entrepreneurship ecosystem since 2013 from my university years while I was working as an Intern at entrepreneurship center in my university. I can really find eligible entrepreneurs easily by contacting with my network and my manager & director are always surprised that How I’m doing this.
Extracurricular
1. Board Member of a University club which organizes book fair that aims to bring discount priced books to school for university students & youth festival that is the biggest event of the year. 4 day lasting. ~600 events organized and doing this free for students by securing some sponsorship (Hundred thousands dollars per year)
2. Actively mentoring to Turkish Tech ecosystem. One of the company ,that I’ve helped, raised 500k USD and then he secured a joint venture investment from an American investor group. Also I helped him to develop & present his financial model. We also worked closely together to look for customer development strategy & changing business model from single time payment to recurring revenue model. Other one is an IoT company which digitizes everything. Some of my ex-directors started to work at municipalities and government itself. They called me about their needs & I find some companies which might be helpful for them. Still some negotiations & trials are ongoing. Hope they can help to digitalize infrastructure to increase efficiency.
3. Worked on technology committee at a political movement. They want me to help them in their technology policy making issues. We are still working on it. Writing policies & recommendations. Putting it into party’s future plans & programs. Cross functional team. It can closely work with other divisions such as economy, environment etc.
4. Started to write at one news blog during covid-19. Writing biweekly some tech articles into there.
Short Term Goal: Working at management consulting especially at public, finance & tmt practices.
Long Term Goal: By combining MPA - ID education at HKS & MBA at H/W/Sloan/Tuck and my experience at telecom & management consulting, I would like to work for government as a public officer. I want to increase prosperity, digitalization, entrepreneurship & education levels of my country.
One of my biggest passion is smart cities & infrastructure digitalization. It is an essential things for the world. Resources are getting more scarce day by day and we need to use benefits of technology. So we need to digitalize infrastructure as efficient as possible. I am recommending this to current administrators as well as the political movement leaders that I am actively involved.
I want to learn holistic approach of Public Administration & Business Administration. That’s why I choose to do MBA & MPA-ID. MPA-ID is a rigorous and math heavy program within developing countries. I will be working in a Turkey or other developing countries when I graduated. It is more challenging and has a great learning curve.
I would like to do HKS MPA-ID Joint Degree with HBS MBA or Concurrent Degrees with Sloan, Tuck or Wharton. Do I have any chance of getting into those?
Thanks for long reading and evaluation!
Posted from my mobile device
