What Do You Think of that Bruce?

Question

I’ve been on gmatclub for a decent amount of time now and this coming fall I plan on applying to some schools. I want to know realistically what schools I would be competitive at currently and what schools I would be competitive at if I reached my GMAT goal (I’m about half way through the mgmat books so I haven’t covered every topic).

Nationality: US- Negro (That’s what the census categorized me as so that’s what I’m putting)- neither one of my parents are west Indian or African. I’m straight up African American. Love fried chicken and everything.

Ugrad major: Economics/ Business from a big state school (biggest in my state actually)
Ugrad GPA: 3.5
-every human being says this part so let me join in on the fun: I had a steady upward trend. My gpa was a 2.75 my first semester and because I was a lazy bum and hung out with a bunch of lazy bums (out of the five of us I was the only one to graduate) I thought aiming for B’s was overachieving. Smh… I know. It’s a shame. My grades really started to climb when I joined student government and got around other people with dreams and realized that I was dreaming much too small for my abilities. Then I started busted my hump and did very very well especially in my major (I think I had 1 B and the rest were A’s in my major).

WE: IMO this is my weakest/strongest point depending on how you look at it. I’m not sure how an adcom would look at it. I’ve been working for an insurance company since I graduated (Jan 2008 – present) by the time I matriculate (if I matriculate) I’ll have 3.5 years. My work is great and the people are great but the pay is far below competitive. Still I liked the work and the company is kicking the rest of the industry’s butt & I get to play an important part in it & have a good understanding of the culture. Hopefully, I can spin this to bring a unique perspective to b-school (keeping my fingers crossed). I’m an analyst and I do all sorts of crazy stuff in Excel to make sense of the data. I created several sales, attrition, growth, forecasts and models to plot out and plan all sorts of scenarios to help us grow profitably. Luckily I got to do this in teams and present findings and ideas to big wigs. They liked our ideas but it was hard to come up with takeaways.

GMAT: I took this earlier this week and got a 650 (V37 Q42). Since I’m not done studying I’m fairly confident that I can break 700, hopefully I’ll get higher than that. I’ve just got to get used to the endurance the test requires and how wide my eye has to focus for the CR questions (these are normally where I’m strongest but because I had to span 12 inches rather than 3 or 4 to view the whole argument it threw my brain off a bit). I have until June 26th to take the real test and I’m trying to blow it out the water.

Extra curriculars:
 In college, as stated above I was very involved in student government, particularly the student senate. I broke a school record for the most votes for any student senator in my school’s history (though it was broken the next year by someone else when I ran for student body president). I was also the Chairman of the Appropriations Committee (we decided how to allocate $640,000 to 120 student organizations which were requesting $1.2 million it was pretty cool for a 19 yo but I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what some have done here so I def won’t boast). After we would decide I had to present the decisions to the Senate and defend our reasonings. I think a lot of people who didn’t agree with me politically still supported me because they respected my character. I don’t show partiality to anyone or any group and I made it a point to look at every issue from as may perspectives I could think of.

Also, in college I was very involved in my church, particularly in two ministries: 1) Praise and worship (music) and 2) community outreach. No joke. My college years were terribly rough on my spirit and probably the roughest point came as a result of community outreach. A friend of mine, named Eric, stayed with me and my roommate for about 2 or 3 weeks one semester and he also assisted with the community outreach to housing projects north of my campus. It was basically to just be there for the kids of the hood because a lot of them have it really rough and never get exposed to much outside of the projects. And it’s not like folks are fighting to go into the projects to broaden horizons. Most people are very fixated on their lives and careers. Anyway, we would have basketball programs and what not on Friday nights. One night I had a sinking feeling and I was determined not to go but couldn’t for the life of me explain why. Sure enough, Eric had to escort two teens out of the community center. One of the kids didn’t like it and shot him in the abdomen. He bled to death. He was 23 and about to be a father and he was nobody’s gangbanger. It was just sad. Who dies at 23 doing the right thing? That and a bunch of other things really messed with my head and heart to cause me to question whether or not I wanted to continue in any sort of real ministry to God or my community.

I guess some kind of way my heart got over those rough days and now I’m back involved in my current church & the community. I sing on the praise team and am a member of the finance ministry. I love it. I’m probably too involved. I guess I came to the conclusion that I’m gonna die anyway. Since I have no idea when I might as well live to help out other people and be the change that I want to see.

Anyway, I’ve typed your head off pouring my heart out to you lol. Do you think I could be competitive anywhere if I cross that 700 barier? My gf’s going to Wharton this fall I can’t let her hog all the education!! Let me know what you think.

MyMBAAdmit · Answer

We will be collecting all our profile evaluations and application review responses posted at GMATClub and other forums under the MyMBAAdmit thread to provide a single resource for our readers. Diverse candidate with unique profile, impressive extra-curricular activities and expected GMAT of ~700 assesses MBA chances. Hi vannbj, I started reading your profile and just had to keep going. This, in spite of your profile being one of the longer ones. I guess that tells you that you do have quite a compelling one! From our admissions and client experience, we know that every candidate is evaluated on three aspects: his academic, professional and personal credentials. I am including a brief profile evaluation below. Your undergrad GPA is good and being from a well-known state school supplements the credibility of those grades. I also like that your major GPA was strong, and of course, as every other human being seems to say (!), the story of your upward trend through college would make a great story for one of the essays! Your test GMAT score of 650 is good, and if you get it up to 700 or above, even better. You haven't said but if you are aiming for a top school, it would be great to see a higher score. Your professional experience seems good to me, with plenty of potential examples to demonstrate hard skills such as analysis and modeling and soft skills including teamwork and communication. I am curious to know why you think it could be a weakness. Could you elaborate? I would like to mention that the value of your experience is not determined by your lower pay, but by the quantitative impact of your efforts and the personal/professional development that happened alongside. When presenting your experiences, that is what we would focus on, as well as what the AdCom would be most interested in. Your personal profile is amply demonstrated by your involvement with student government in college and with church activities thereafter. The value of extra-curricular activities lies in their ability to demonstrate that the applicant was able to apply his skills and have an impact on activities outside the routine work/study activities that he was required to do. And, just from the description here, I am excited at the potential of getting those stories on paper and standing out from your competition by the sheer diversity of your profile. Of course, an MBA application is as much about what you have done in the past, as what you plan to do with your degree in the future. What are your post-MBA goals and ambitions? What kind of schools do you want to focus on? It would be great to know more about your profile so I can guide you better. If you have follow-up questions, go ahead and post them in the Ask My MBA Admit thread in this forum. Feel free to drop us a line at mbaconsult@mymbaadmit.com. Check out our Application Packages and Volume Discounts tailored to help with your admission needs.

vannbj · Answer

Thank you so much for your feedback, My MBA Admit. It’s a real encouragement to me to read what you replied and especially that it was an interesting read. I’ll try to answer your questions.

1) I thought my work experience could be considered a weakness because I thought adcoms tend to gauge the value you provide to your company by how much your company pays you. Since property and casualty insurance in general tends to pay less than most other industries and my employer pays very conservatively even among other insurers (part of its competitive advantage IMO), I am not sure if the adcom would or wouldn’t view this a weakness. However, I am not complaining because when I graduated undergrad, this was exactly the industry, job, company and even starting position that I wanted to work in and learn about. Thanks for giving me a better view of what the adcom would look for.

2) “What do I want to do with an MBA?” and “Where would I like to go?” are the two hardest questions to answer. I’ll try to answer them with a story. I started a business last year which would design and print poster-sized athletic calendars for high schools. They were really professional and polished athletic schedules designed to get students to post them on the walls of their rooms and spark school spirit. I planned to donate these to schools for free and give the schools large monetary donations (at least $500 per sports season). What provided the funding for these donations was ad space at the bottom of these athletic schedules/posters. I’d sell the ad space to local businesses and provide them with cheaper advertising for months than they would get anywhere else. Unfortunately, the business failed and not even from the parties providing the funding but from the schools. Perhaps I am just horrible salesman but I would like to think that it was more a matter of rapport and networking that caused what seemed like a viable and profitable business to fail. Because schools didn’t know me and were weary of others who were in this line of business I couldn’t get any of them on board (correction one came on board but then reneged). The most important thing I learned from that is that the more “exotic” your product or service is to a particular market, the more important it is for you to know someone who can help you connect with that market- preferably a mutual friend who can speak to your character. I want an MBA program with classmates who have a diverse exposure to industries, cultures, and passions so that when I see another viable profit opportunity in the future I will have a point of contact to increase the success of my enterprise. I want to go to a school that emphasizes entrepreneurship and makes me look at issues through paradigms I never would have considered. I visited HBS last year and was blown away by how the case method forces students to verbalize and kick the tires of their own positions and those of others to come to a decision. I also visited on International Day when everyone wore attire from their native country. It looked like a mini-UN in the classroom. My mouth salivated at the insight of venture opportunities in that room. Since I have only visited one potential school, it’s like seeing the first pretty girl and acting like you want to marry her. However, I have researched several others extensively. I’m also interested in Kellogg because of their one year program and Stanford because of their PMP. Honestly, Stanford might be a better fit than anywhere because of their focus on entrepreneurship but I’ll have to visit to tell. The two schools that aren’t “reach’s” like the others are Tuck and Darden. Much of where I’m competitive at will depend on how I do on the GMAT. That’s why my minimum goal is to crack a 700. I’m really aiming a couple points higher.

MyMBAAdmit · Answer

Glad we could help! Kudos (the little +1 box on the left) are always welcome!

I do understand your concerns regarding the work experience. Although there is a school of thought that believes AdComs assess a candidate's value to their company based on how much the company paid them, that is less so for younger applicants, and can be well-mitigated by demonstrating the depth, breadth and value of your experience (this is where we help). Also, I think you provided another good example (the first was your community service), and am excited by how many more examples we can work on together to position them well for a robust and compelling application tailored to the school. I think your goals make sense, in broad terms. The next level of defining them would be provide a well-thought out career plan and how the degree, as well as offerings and resources of that particular program help you achieve those goals. If you are just starting the MBA application process, I would recommend our 10-page report for Candidate Profiling and School Selection . This comprehensive report offers you the opportunity to go through a mini application process that will help to evaluate your profile and recommend a set of schools that is best suited to your needs. If you would like to discuss this further, drop us a line at mbaconsult@mymbaadmit.com to set up a Free Initial Consultation. Also check out our Application Packages and Volume Discounts tailored to help with your admission needs. Btw, I liked your comparison of an MBA program to a pretty girl. Funny!

What Do You Think of that Bruce?

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