Harvard Business School - 01-23-2023

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January 23, 2023 4:34am ET

Applying: Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, Northwestern / Kellogg, Stanford GSB, UPenn / Wharton

Intake Year: 2024

Pre-MBA Career: Analytics

Post-MBA Target Industry: Consulting, Technology

GPA: 3.7

Years of Work Experience: 4.5

Post MBA Location: East Coast

Notes:

Wondering if I have a case that is strong enough to apply to an MBA program before investing months into GMAT prep (which is my biggest hurdle because I've been historically a bad test taker).

Demographic:
--26F, black and hispanic, immigrant, first gen, low income background

Education:
Graduated from a top liberal arts college with a 3.7 GPA, double majored in Psychology/Neuroscience and Spanish. I switched my major 4 times and had a rocky first 2 years during college. I'm concerned that my GPA looks inflated because the last 2 years of college I was taking "easy" classes compared to my first 2 years since I switched to being a Psych Neuro major (from Computer Science/Pre-med track).

Have a Masters degree from a city school in Analytics, 4.0 GPA.

Work exp:
4.5 work exp, 2ish years doing education analytics at a think tank, 1 year doing analytics at an edtech company, and now working at a big media/streaming company as a senior data analyst. Current role is high visibility and high impact

EC
have been involved in data literacy/access groups at all my jobs. first job I founded and led an analytics group for women of color to learn how to leverage data effectively; second job I founded a data literacy course for non-data folks; third job I'm part of a culture committee where we provide resources to folks from the data team to advance their skills and engage in professional development opportunities

Few things I'm unsure about:
--what GMAT score would make me competitive in the listed schools?
--are my ECs enough?
--is having a previous grad degree (MS) a disadvantage?

Like (1)

Show Comments (3) Last: January 30, 2023

grichmond Verified User. Likes Earned: 1237 I think your candidacy could absolutely be competitive at the top schools on your list. First off, your work experience sounds interesting, quantitative, and impactful. Second, it seems like you have a track record of service/ECs in a couple of key areas. Your academic profile is also pretty stellar to me - a 4.0 in a masters in analytics coupled with a 3.7 ugrad at a top liberal arts college should be more than enough. I'm not at all concerned about the change in major nor your upward trajectory with grades, in part because I can't imagine the first two years were all that bad if you still landed a 3.7 overall. As a URM, immigrant, first gen, low income, your profile will be very much sought after too. So as to your questions: 1. You can absolutely be competitive at these target schools, in my opinion. 2. You should put the time and effort into the GMAT, since the score will be considered alongside your GPAs (and a poor showing could detract from your GPAs in a sense). 3. As I mentioned above, your ECs sound promising, but I would want to know more, and also understand how active you were in ugrad. 4. You should be aiming to clear 700 on the exam, and ideally 720+ (in light of your targets), but any score at or above 700 should keep you very much in the mix. You could even potentially land south of that, but at this point, I'd make it your mission to perform as well as you can on the test. 5. There is no disadvantage in having an MS, as long as it's not an MBA (which doesn't seem to be the case). Best of luck and thanks for your post!
(1)

vhapp Likes Earned: 3 thank you! okay now I am extra motivated to invest time and effort in the gmat since I have a fair shot. Thanks so much for your insight! (2)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1676 More details on this candidacy in this episode of Wire Taps: https://www.clearadmit.com/2023/01/mba-wire-taps-273/ (0)