Carnegie Mellon / Tepper - 07-22-2021

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July 22, 2021 12:53pm ET

Applying: Carnegie Mellon / Tepper, Columbia, Cornell / Johnson, Dartmouth / Tuck, Duke / Fuqua, Georgetown / McDonough, Harvard Business School, Northwestern / Kellogg, Notre Dame / Mendoza, NYU Stern, Stanford GSB, U. Chicago Booth, UPenn / Wharton

Intake Year: 2022

Pre-MBA Career: Cofounded a real-estate brokerage and oversaw $1M in yearly revenue for 2 years. Working at my brokerage, I conceived of an idea for a real-estate tech app which I built a team from scratch to build and launch, managed a team of 13 concurrent people and a total of 20 different people. My app was able to attract over 200,000 users and I improved conversion rates and more by over 100% year on year. I raised between 250,000-500,000 from investors for the company. I am now trying to sell it and am in discussions with a potential acquirer (not guaranteed it will close of course). While starting to try to sell, 1.5 years ago, I started working as a product manager for a data & gaming company and had a lot of accomplishments there, such as: • Managed international and cross-functional product teams (engineers, product managers, and designers) across SEA, China, and the US • Created and owned a new end-to-end product management process (SCRUM & agile methodologies) – coordinating weekly feature pushes, improving efficiency by 50% and saving months on feature pipeline. • Conceived and put into place a new intra-organizational “ideas and innovations” voting system to galvanize input from members across the company, and more (trying for brevity here even though I've clearly failed). Social impact would be mentoring (as of this month) disadvantaged youth and helping them get into college through a program available where I live, and advising (volunteering) 5 entrepreneurs/businesses in a variety of business / tech related matters.

Post-MBA Target Industry: Technology, Entrepreneurship Companies: Amazon , Apple , Facebook , Other

GRE: 325

GPA: 3.18

Years of Work Experience: 7

Location: New York City

Post MBA Location: New York

Notes:

My GPA is between 3.15-3.2 with some F grades in the record. The reason for this was never missing homework (or even performing poorly on anything, be it tests or assignments), but rather the fact that, at that age (24-25) I was ill-equipped to balance running my first business and going to class. So missing classes led me to get kicked out of 3 courses and receive F grades.

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Show Comments (4) Last: August 4, 2021

grichmond Verified User. Likes Earned: 1245 Thanks for your post! You clearly have some very cool - and unusual - work accomplishments and a truly entrepreneurial profile. In short, the work experience and goals - and need for an MBA all seem to line up really well. The other two pillars of your candidacy (academics and outside activities) seem relatively weaker by comparison. The solid GRE score will help a bit, but you will absolutely need to address the GPA issue - and perhaps even consider working to build an alternate transcript via HBS Online CORe or something similar. Your ECs also seem potentially thin, although perhaps we don't have the full story here, so feel free to elaborate. I should also note that you are on the older end of the spectrum - albeit ever so slightly - and that means you will need to work to demonstrate fit/intention to get involved in b-school. Question: do you fall into a demographic that is over-represented in the applicant pool? That may play a role in terms of the portfolio of schools you assemble and the round that you decide to target. Best of luck!
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anon80929 Likes Earned: 3 OP- Thanks for the really quick response! Further context on outside activities extracurriculars and additional information about me: I've been advising the 5 people (3 individuals and 2 businesses, 1 of which is an accelerator / incubator) for a couple of years now, all since my undergrad of course. These are some of my hobbies: food, traveling (visited over 35 countries on 6 continents and lived in 4 countries (3 continents)), poker ($2M+ in earnings between 17-22 years of age), tennis (played professionally as a teenager), financial markets (I invest quite a bit and have invested in a couple of startups), movies, and reading. And these are the languages that I speak or am picking up: English (native), Swedish (native), Polish (fluent/intermediate), French (elementary), and Arabic (elementary). Noted about the age btw: turning 34 this year. My goal is to either do a part-time mba or, as I am currently hoping to finalize selling my startup, do a 1 year MBA full-time (maybe less of a need to demonstrate intention to get involved in b-school in this case?). My demographic is probably over-represented. I am a white-passing Swedish national (Dad from the middle-east and mom from eastern europe) - living in New York. Given the information provided in my initial wire, and the further context in this comment, what are your thoughts on the schools I assemble and the round I target? Thanks again for your thoughts in your previous comment! (1)

grichmond Verified User. Likes Earned: 1245 Thanks for sharing these additional details! It sounds like you are fairly involved outside of work, and that the combination of diverse interests, travels, and languages spoken should fill out that portion of your profile very nicely. I think your background will not be viewed as over-represented at all. Your Swedish citizenship and Eastern European+Middle Eastern roots will surely be unique in the pool. As to your MBA plans, I feel like you have some work to do in terms of determining what you want. For instance, if a part-time MBA is your plan, then the list of schools in your post above don't all have such an offering. Also, if you want a 1-year MBA, the US offerings are highly limited - unless you count CBS's J-term (16 months) or some of the other 1-yr offerings out of Cornell and Kellogg (which you may or may not qualify for). That leaves Europe (birthplace of the 1-year MBA) and some excellent offerings out of INSEAD, Oxford, Cambridge, etc., but if you are targeting NYC as a landing place post-MBA, this may not be optimal. Also, to your question, I'd still suggest there is a need to demonstrate interest in getting involved on campus in the 1-year offerings. Hope this helps as you continue to think through your path!
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alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1677 More details on this candidacy in this episode of Wire Taps: https://www.clearadmit.com/2021/08/episode-177-wire-taps/ (0)