prospectivebschooler wrote:
Undergrad GPA: 3.5 from top 25 us school (not quite ivy) Majored in Psychology and History
Gmat: 710 (74% Q, 96%V) first time around; 680 (80% Q, 89% V) Second Time around. AWA 5 each time.
Work Experience: Have 3.5 years working in Quantitative Market Research for a vendor, in industries ranging from Pharma to Financial Services. I'm currently working as a Project Director and have received two promotions in the past year.
I realize that my gmat and undergraduate background do not have a strong quantitative foundation. My job however requires a lot of calculations and data analysis, so I'm hoping that could make up for my weakness in other areas. Plus, I'm interested in majoring in Marketing. When that's the case, do they put less emphasis on your quantitative background for your application? I'm interested in a full-time program, ideally at Kellogg, Stern, and Fuqua and am hoping to transition into Brand Managment. How are my chances?
If need be, I'm considering signing up for a pre-MBA program at Fordham University, where i would take Statistics, Managerial Economics,and Mathematic (soemthing or other) to boost my quantitative credentials. But if that's not necessary, I'd prefer to save my time and money. Any ideas?
prospectivebschooler,
I do think schools lower the quantitative bar a bit for marketing folks, but not by much. Earning A's in stats, accounting, or calculus certainly would not hurt, but your 74th quantitive percentile is actually fine. Far more important is your community and extracurricular profile. At Fuqua and Kellogg especially they will want to see not only evidence of leadership at work but of heavy involvement and leadership outside of work. Other schools that place unusually high percentages of MBAs in marketing are Indiana, UCLA, MIT, Michigan, Emory, Purdue, Babson, and Vanderbilt.
Good luck,