Profile evaluation and business school selection help

Question

Hi,

I am currently preparing for my GMAT (next month).I want to apply for the January 2020 enrolments. I have an honours BA degree from university of Toronto in Economics, Human Resource and environmental management (double major and a minor). My GPA is 2.5 but was 2.86 and 2.75 respectively in the third and fourth year.
I have worked in the financial services industry in Toronto for the past six years; mostly in back office compliance and administrative roles. What schools will be a good fit for me if I want to move around and up in the financial services industry? And which ones will be good if I want to switch industries? Also any general advice for my profile is very welcome.

Thank you,

S.

Posted from my mobile device

MG4MBACrystalBall · Answer

A few quick thoughts for you  Shafterson .

For the Jan'20 intake, ideally you are already a bit late. The application seasons starts roughly a year in advance.

Here are the programs that offer   Spring intake  .

Push really hard on the GMAT front to overcome the   GPA hurdle  .

Hope this helps some.

Cheers,

MBADecoder · Answer

You could still apply to Richard Ivey and Queen's. Both have rolling deadlines, so the faster you apply, the better. Would recommend you get in touch with the admissions teams. At these two programs, it pays to build personal connections.

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

Shafterson

I would strongly encourage you to apply to September. In order to move around in the financial services industry it generally requires an internship , and going without one would put you at a disadvantage for most roles. And to move out of financial services, if that is your goal, you would need an internship (the one exception might be going to INSEAD for consulting, but the January ship has sailed.) So while a one-year program is often good, it seems you would benefit from an internship and honestly you have a little bit less to lose being in a 2 year program.

It seems your role nor industry is too electrifying for you? All the programs that would be open to you right now are one year. the only one that's really a viable option I think is Ivy, which starts in March, but I think you would be better off leveraging your efforts by applying to several schools. It would probably be a wise idea for you to do HBXCORe in the meantime 2 put forth a better showing with the GPA situation. More time would take a little bit of the pressure off of getting the exact right GMAT score the first time out which rarely occurs.

For so many reasons you're better off to apply in the fall , and use the time you have between now and then too correct some issues in your profile and get the best test score you can to offset your GPA. If you are hell-bent on applying for January term, might consider HEC-Paris but make sure to have competitive stats.

Check out my article on handling a GPA challenge:  https://mbaessaycoaching.com/2019/06/22/submitting-mba-applications-with-low-grades/

Profile evaluation and business school selection help

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