Profile Evaluation

[AAA]

Alex,

I would appreciate an evaluation:
Gmat: Not taken but I just finished my preparation. Ready to take any day. Practice tests 660-710
Undergrad GPA; 2.5 1st two years and 4.0 last two years (worked full-time last two years). Degree in finance
Undergrad school: small regional school
Age: 32, minority
Work Experience: Financial analyst position during last two years of undergrad, then moved over to another company in the same role after graduation. I've had my business for the last four years. Revenues have been steady at 1-2 million. I manage about 75-90 people. I'm looking to maybe close the business soon because the future looks bleak (and this will give people time to look for other employment). Because of my age, I would like to an MBA now before the business is forced to close in maybe in 2 years where I'll be even older. The problems of the company are for the most part industry-wide but my management skills are also to blame. It is in management that I am interested whether for a corporation or once again on my own.

Other information:
Played professional soccer in Central America for a couple of years
Taught myself VisualBasic in a couple of months and wrote some small internal financial programs for the companies that employed me
I run a charitable organization that helps orphanages in Latin America. Have done many, but small, fundraising projects. Again, better management skills will help in the long run.

Ideally I would like to attend the best program possible, but I would like your opinion on which schools you think might fit my background and where I might have a reasonable chance. Also, do you think I should consider R3 for some schools?

Thanks in advance.

[MBAApply]

First, I have to applaud you for having the humility to admit or take responsibility for what's happened at your firm (how you could've been a better manager). A lot of people can't do that for one reason or another - pride, lack of empathy, etc.

Anyhow, my hunch is that you may have an outside shot at schools in the Kellogg/Columbia/Chicago/MIT/Tuck range. I would call these your stretch schools.

Schools like Michigan, Darden, Duke, Berkeley, NYU, UCLA, Cornell and Yale would be schools where I think you could be "in the mix" so to speak -- schools where if you put together a strong story and you have a little bit of luck, you should get in.

Of course this assumes that your GMAT is as close to 700 as possible - anything below 680 and your chances become slim at any of the above.

Alex Chu
alex@mbaapply.com
www.mbaapply.com
http://mbaapply.blogspot.com

[AAA]

Thanks Alex,

I appreciate the advice.

[AAA]

Alex,

I am just curious as to how you came up with the schools you recommended. In other words, did you pick the schools because of a particular strength of the MBA program that matches my background or simply because they are top programs? After researching you kind of see these schools getting lumped into certain fields, i.e., Chicago, Columbia for finance. MIT, Haas for entrepreneurship. Yale for nonprofit. Seems like in my own research I tend to get too focused on specialty rankings. However, perhaps there is something about the schools you mentioned that I don't know about.

Thanks again.

[MBAApply]

What I usually do with clients is focus on "tiers" - which is how I grouped the schools in the prior post. You are a reach for schools in a certain tier, and "in the mix" for schools in a lower tier.

And it's up to you to decide which schools within those tiers that best suit your personal circumstances and needs. So yes, while Berkeley and NYU for example may be in the same tier (i.e. they have more or less a comparable overall reputation), they offer different experiences because of their location, career interests of the students, and so forth.

Alex Chu
alex@mbaapply.com
www.mbaapply.com
http://mbaapply.blogspot.com