Berkeley / Haas - 10-24-2024 | Clear Admit ApplyWire

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October 23, 2024 4:46pm ET

Applying: Berkeley / Haas, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, Stanford GSB

Intake Year: 2025

Pre-MBA Career: Software engineer at Google -> Airbnb -> Twitch. Currently tech lead on a safety team but have worked across different products like maps, shopping, ads and safety.

Post-MBA Target Industry: Entrepreneurship

GRE: 326

GPA: 3.2

Years of Work Experience: 7

Location: San Francisco

Notes:

African American male - 28.

My goal for an MBA is to build tools for music creators. I joined a band during Covid and found a passion for digital music creation and machine learning, but I lack the business skills.

Top Choices:
HBS: Offers cross-registration with Berklee for classes like audio engineering and entertainment law, plus a chance to collaborate with potential users and experts in the music field.
MIT: Media Lab aligns with some of the audio breakthroughs I’m interested in

My challenge is a lower GPA. How can I offset that weakness?

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Show Comments (3) Last: October 24, 2024

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1706 What was your undergrad discipline? It might be worth doing GMACs Business Fundamentals, or HBS CORe etc. What was the quant score on your GRE?

Showing impact and growth at work will be very important, backed up by strong recommendations. Are you still in your band? Any other activities outside work, additional hobbies and interests?

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aureliusmarcus Likes Earned: 1 Undergrad degree: Electrical and Computer Engineering from a state school. Got As in my math classes per my transcript (Calculus 1 & 2, Engineering Math, Discrete Math) then a B in calculus 3. GPA suffered since I prioritized recruiting in my junior year. Landed a Google job but unfortunately screwed over my GPA. Should I write an explainer for my gpa in the essays? GRE: 161Q 164V currently and I plan on retaking next month to get a 330+ as I took the last exam with only some prep. I literally decided to pursue an MBA last month haha. I’m still in a band and my desire to pursue a business idea around music creation tooling was sparked by how hard it is to collaborate remotely. Other extracurriculars/hobbies: - Tech coalition: big tech organization focused on keeping the internet safe — I am one of the reps for my company - Music + AI like I’ve mentioned — my day to day work involves building out ML models and helped trigger my plan to pursue this new path. After work I make music at home and with my gf. - Tennis - Travel — lived in 3 cities in 3 years. Moved around a lot as a kid too - Philosophy — Stoicism is a core viewpoint I have and it is reflected in my essays and how I lead (2)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1706 Yes, prep hard for the GRE, get your best score. That will really help. I don’t think you’d need to use the optional essay re grades, especially with a super GRE score. Lots to like here, overall, I think. Wharton might be another option to look at. (0)