Berkeley / Haas - 02-26-2021 | Clear Admit ApplyWire

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February 26, 2021 1:55pm ET

Applying: Berkeley / Haas, Columbia, Harvard Business School, INSEAD, London Business School, MIT Sloan, Northwestern / Kellogg, UPenn / Wharton

Intake Year: 2022

Pre-MBA Career: Consumer Goods

Post-MBA Target Industry: Consulting, Technology Companies: Accenture , AT Kearney , Bain , Booz Allen Hamilton , BCG , McKinsey , Amazon , Apple , Facebook , Google , LinkedIn , Microsoft , Tesla , Twitter , Uber

GMAT: 730

GPA: 3.7

Years of Work Experience: 2.5

Location: Toronto, Canada

Notes:

Hi there, I'm looking to start applying in September of this year for MBA programs starting in 2022. My target schools are the US Top 10 MBAs with the goal of pursuing strategy consulting/product management post-grad. Would be great to have a quick profile eval to see where I should be focusing my efforts for the next couple of months leading up to round 1 applications!

Background: 24 yr-old Asian-Canadian, Canadian citizenship, immigrated as a child.
Undergrad: Top Canadian Business school (Ivey), cumulative average 83.6% - depending on where I go to, there are different conversions to US GPA - on many sites, including Canadian university websites, they say it's a 3.7, but using Columbia's scale it is a 3.3
GMAT: 730 with 48 Q/42 V/8 IR/5.5 AWA

Work Experience: Sr. Financial Analyst at General Mills. Wide breadth of experience and projects across supply chain, sales, trade marketing, and revenue management within 2.5 years of experience. Faster than peers in career progression, with promotion received after 1.5 years vs the usual 2 - 3. Increasing responsibilities in product management, pricing, financial reporting/process development. Throughout my time I've worked on numerous projects with ranging impact within the finance organization such as the development of new processes in budget management. Cross-functionally, I worked on various initiatives in enhancing pricing models for various items in our product portfolio.

Extracurriculars at work: a leader in the undergraduate recruiting program, a team member in workplace community outreach program (weekly breakfast program at local school), contributor in annual fundraising event for United Way, a major charity in Toronto.

Community Involvement: advisory board member for small charity providing music education in Tanzania, mentor in child mentorship program, mentor in newcomer career settlement program

My overall thoughts are that my profile checks the boxes but is lacking something amazing that differentiates. My next steps are to work hard at crafting a great personal essay and hope that can take me over the top.

Let me know your thoughts. Thanks in advance!

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Show Comments (6) Last: March 13, 2021

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1677 Be curious to hear more about the Tanzania project, why and what is it, etc. Something like that could be your point of differentiation, for example. As you’ve noted, lots a good solid stuff for top programs, presumably will be supported by strong recs. where are you originally from? (0)

mikeftc Likes Earned: 4 Thanks for the response! Yes I am feeling the same way, music has always been a big part of my life - I am originally from China and I played a traditional Chinese stringed instrument as a child - after immigrating to Canada I've leveraged those skills and transitioned into the cello. Participating in music has opened many doors for me in terms of leadership and friendship opportunities as I went through elementary and high school for sure. Those personal experiences with music made me interested in the Tanzania project and why I joined a few months ago. The project aims to bring music education to underserved communities in Tanzania and bring similar kinds of empowerment that I have experienced through music to those communities. We recently expanded the program to a second village and I'm hoping to take advantage of the fact that this project is small scale and early stage to maximize my impact over the next few months. (1)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1677 Nice, it’s sounds like a very interesting project, and something to really try to develop over th3 next several months (because it’s a good, meaningful thing to do, rather than simply something to do to get adcom points). (0)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1677 More details on this candidacy in this episode of Wire Taps: https://www.clearadmit.com/2021/03/episode-151-wire-taps/ (0)

anon27338 Likes Earned: 4 Thanks for featuring me on the podcast! I am aiming to apply in round 1 for sure so it has been a great help in the brainstorming process to see where I can stand out. Also really appreciated you guys talking about the GPA conversion. It was really hard to know which source of information to trust so actually hearing your inputs on that has been a huge relief. (1)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1677 Great, best of luck! (0)