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BornAgain
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Do second chances exist? PT MBA, Low GPA, decent career & fierce drive Updated on: 23 Oct 2016, 17:54
Originally posted by BornAgain on 27 Feb 2016, 23:00.
Last edited by BornAgain on 23 Oct 2016, 17:54, edited 2 times in total.
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Greetings,

Good luck to everyone on applications this year!
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Do second chances exist? PT MBA, Low GPA, decent career & fierce drive 28 Feb 2016, 19:31
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Born Again,
Congrats on turning yourself around. Given your GPA and the schools you're targeting, you need to score well above these school's average GMAT, say, 750 or better. Any quant courses where your grade was C or lower could be retaken and you could sign up for MBAMath to send a strong signal to the schools. I also recommend that you write an optional essay explaining your college issues. Finally, I recommend applying to as many schools as possible to optimize your odds. The stronger the rest of your profile is---including leadership at and outside or work, and personal differentiators such as your ethnicity---the better your odds. If you do all these things your chances at schools such as USC and UCLA will be fair/decent, though you will face tough sledding at Haas, Booth, Kellogg, Stern etc., which is why I recommend casting a wide net both in terms of number of schools and in schools that are more realistic such as USC. Feel free to send me your resume for a closer look: [email protected].

--Paul Bodine, Great Applications for Business School, www.admitify.com/outcomes

BornAgain
Greetings,

I've been browsing around this forum for the past 1-2 weeks and after much contemplation, I've decided to create an account and be an active user. My purpose for creating this account is to share my story with other candidates in similar situations hoping to serve motivation. I've read enough forum entries myself that have instilled some faith in me to take action and I feel that it is a duty to give back. This would also keep me accountable in my studies because the motivation would obviously only be effective if I had a successful ending. Just recently, I have bought all MGMAT/OG books and have started studying after work and throughout the entire weekend until my brain gets completely fried. I've never been a "great" standardized test taker by any means and I've never been a "great" student as well, but I was always willing to be a top 1% percentile when it came to work ethic. Looking back at my entire life, I've always had to work harder than the average Joe to achieve the same results and that's okay with me. I'm willing to put however many hours it takes to finally score a 90th percentile on my first standardized test and am feeling very determined to do so. I come from a very poor immigrant family where my mom did not even finish high school. I am forever grateful for my parents on taking the risk to come here for me to even have an opportunity at applying to business school (regardless of the final outcome of my efforts).

Despite this, I am ashamed to say the one skeleton in my closet that haunts me is my undergraduate GPA. I pledged for a fraternity my freshman year of college, met all the wrong people and got distracted. This is absolutely not an excuse, but an explanation. My family gave me a golden opportunity to make something of myself, but the immature 18 year old in me partied it away. To make matters worse, my mom got laid off from work and my dad's company was going through financial struggle where he was on the verge of getting laid off. I was unaware of this at the time, but my family was about to lose their home. I quickly grew up and took on a full time job where I worked 30-35 hours a week while tackling on 16 units a quarter paying my own way through college and trying to send whatever money was remaining home. Needless to say, I was no longer active in my fraternity, but instead dedicated myself to my job and finishing college. At that moment, I didn't care what grades I received in my classes, I just cared about passing them and graduating early so I can work full time to help out at home. That attitude has resulted in a very low 2.7 GPA and I am now fully recognizing the ramifications. Long story short, I was so focused and determined in my career that I have saved up enough funds to help pay off my family's mortgage. This was an important goal of mine because after seeing how helpless and scared they were during the recession, I never want them to feel that way ever again so long as there's breath in my lungs. I have moved up the ranks rather quickly and have outperformed virtually all my colleagues in the same position. I'm writing this in hopes that we can share this GMAT and business school application journey together.

Do I have a snowball's chance in heck of even getting admitted into a top part-time MBA program? Haas, Anderson, Booth, Kellogg, Stern, Marshall. I have received plenty of C's and one D in a non quant class. I did manage to get straight A's during my last quarter of college (in all the advanced economics and quant classes), which proves that I can do the work, but I just didn't have the right mentality from 18-21. What would be an "at least" GMAT score I would have to hit?

29-30 Years Old
2.7 GPA (double major in Economics and Social Sciences) from a Top 40 university in 3 years
9 Years Work Experience (financial advisor/portfolio manager/wealth management) with multiple Fortune 50 companies. Currently with a Top 4 Brokerage Firm
Series 7, 66 Life/Health licenses
At a point in time, I was promoted to be the youngest sales manager at a Fortune 50 company amongst 300 across the country (I worked 80-90 hours a week to hit this mark at Age 25)
200k-280k current income (depending on the year and the markets)
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Do second chances exist? PT MBA, Low GPA, decent career & fierce drive 28 Feb 2016, 19:51
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Thank you for your candor Paul. While I certainly don't think a 750 is "impossible", I'm not sure if it'll be completely realistic. I'm only interested in the part-time programs and I was under the impression they had high 40-60% acceptance rates. Would the 750 GMAT still be applicable in this case? If so, I definitely have my work cut out for me!
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Do second chances exist? PT MBA, Low GPA, decent career & fierce drive 28 Feb 2016, 20:22
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Apologies, I missed your reference to *part-time* programs. Yes, you're right, they have much higher acceptance rates and will not need a 750. However, I still recommend overscoring your target schools' average GMATs by a health margin (say, 20 points). So aim for a 710 at Booth and Haas, 690-700 at Kellogg, NYU and UCLA, and 650 at USC. If you do this, you should be in good shape for admission at many of these schools. Good luck.
--Paul Bodine, Great Applications for Business School, www.admitify.com/outcomes

BornAgain
Thank you for your candor Paul. While I certainly don't think a 750 is "impossible", I'm not sure if it'll be completely realistic. I'm only interested in the part-time programs and I was under the impression they had high 40-60% acceptance rates. Would the 750 GMAT still be applicable in this case? If so, I definitely have my work cut out for me!
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Do second chances exist? PT MBA, Low GPA, decent career & fierce drive 28 Feb 2016, 20:58
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That is excellent news Paul! I'll send you over my resume shortly after I update it. I haven't worked on a resume in years. How do business schools factor in your current income to the admission process? I've been fortunate enough to have a decent career in financial services, but I worry they may see me as lowering their ROI statisics. For example, someone who is making 80k but then jumps to 140k post graduation is a much higher ROI percentage than someone who is making 240k and then jumps to 300k, or worse, no jump at all. Maybe I'm just overanalyzing thinga too much, but figured I would bring it up anyways. Thank you once again Paul.

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Do second chances exist? PT MBA, Low GPA, decent career & fierce drive 29 Feb 2016, 09:06
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It's a good question, but I think they are more interested in admitting people who raise (or don't lower) their GMAT range than they are in the ROI question. If they had to make a choice between 2 strong candidates who were otherwise equal, the candidate who helped their ROI numbers might get the nod, but it's a hypothetical scenario that doesn't happen in reality. You will probably get more benefit from your impressive compensation in terms of what it says about you than you are hurt by any ROI considerations. Looking forward to seeing your resume.
--Paul Bodine, Great Applications for Business School, https://www.admitify.com/outcomes

BornAgain
That is excellent news Paul! I'll send you over my resume shortly after I update it. I haven't worked on a resume in years. How do business schools factor in your current income to the admission process? I've been fortunate enough to have a decent career in financial services, but I worry they may see me as lowering their ROI statisics. For example, someone who is making 80k but then jumps to 140k post graduation is a much higher ROI percentage than someone who is making 240k and then jumps to 300k, or worse, no jump at all. Maybe I'm just overanalyzing thinga too much, but figured I would bring it up anyways. Thank you once again Paul.

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Do second chances exist? PT MBA, Low GPA, decent career & fierce drive 29 Feb 2016, 09:26
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BornAgain, well amazing background story but I don't see any goals of yours. What do you think to achieve after your MBA? Why do you even want to do an MBA considering you already have a extremely high income? Do you actually want to switch career? If the answer is a no the I really can't understand why you want/need an MBA to be honest.
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Do second chances exist? PT MBA, Low GPA, decent career & fierce drive 03 Mar 2016, 10:12
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Thanks for all of the detail. I think if you can exceed the average scores at these programs by a bit you should be in decent shape. PTMBA are a bit more lenient on red flags in a profile. Your profile is pretty strong otherwise as it seems you have some great performance in your work life. Good Luck!