Hello everyone,
I would like to kindly ask for fair opinions on chances of getting into a decent UK programme.
My profile:
Female, 3rd year undergraduate at #1 B-school in the country (CEE Europe)
GMAT: hjust started the preparations, practice test are around 700 & taking the actual test in November so that I could pull up my score
Experience:
3 month summer internship - ECM/DCM division at a local financial advisory company
3 month internship at local bank's IBD (one of major players on the local market)
9 month (ongoing) internship/junior analyst at Big4 Transaction Advisory Department (valuations& financial modelling) - beside being involved in various projects i developed a comprehensive tool used as a starting point for banks financial modelling and valuation and should get partner's recommendation
Other:
CFA RC EMEA finalist (country winner)
several Big4 national m&a-related contests' finalist
acted as school's finance club head of knowledge (organising trainings for students introducing to databases like bloomberg, emis, how to prepare for an interview etc)
co-coordinated the largest investment banking and private equity related event in the country
CFA scholarship recipient (taking the CFA level 1 in 2019)
selected for Big4 mentoring programme and Big3 high potential list
received scholarship for the future regional capital market leaders granted by fund supported by our local exchange
offered a position of teaching assistant at postgraduate programme at our school (valuation & business modelling programme) as the only undergraduate student
I spoke to a top European B-school recruiter recently - she really liked my profile and encouraged me to apply to their Msc Finance. I wouldn't be extremely anxious regarding my applications if it wasn't for my grades - an issue which I haven't mentioned to her and which keeps me awake at night. Due to insufficient presence during some classes I scored lower than I should (i.e. missing points from group exercises counted into overall grade, or missed midterm paper etc) and therefore my GPA converted to US scale is around 3.0/4.0 (3.75/5) with weird spread like C/B- (3 out of 5) in mathematics and A (5/5) in mathematics for finance. I predict my final GPA (including the thesis grade) to be 3.4 (4.2/5), translating to overall 2:1 (4.5/5).
Lower grades occurred mainly during my freshman year when my family was going through a really hard time and all the circumstances caused me to go through social anxiety disorder/depression phase. Not going into much details, I was literally panicked when I had to go to school or had to involve in social interactions and after I started getting hysterias in public I refused to go out of home almost at all, fearing that everyone will notice there's something wrong with me. Due to that I missed few exams and had to retake the subjects next year. I know that low grades are the material for the additional essay, however I'm not quite sure if I should disclose such things.
My dream was to get into LBS. Is there even a possibility of receiving an (conditional?) offer with 3.0/4.0 GPA at the moment of submitting the application (January 2019)? MiF programme content sounds perfect for me but given my grades and classes of 80/90 students I'm almost 100% sure there's no chance of getting an offer, but maybe MiM? Does it make sense to apply?
I was also considering submitting applications to LSE, Imperial, UCL, Cass. Among non-UK: HEC MIF. I'm freaking out that they will reject me everywhere (esp. LSE which I have read is extremely strict in terms of grades and extremely competitive, was thinking about a less competitive majors like Law & Accounting though).
Recently I declined a M&A offer from French MM bank and stated i'm not available until Feb in elite boutique very active on our market. Knowing their hours, I know I couldn't handle the job, GMAT and school at once, but I started to think that the first option could strenghten application to HEC.
Career goals: M&A London