anxious08 01-16-2006, 09:57 PM I have applied to Wharton, Harvard, Chicago, and Columbia second round. Wondering what my chances are, and if I should apply to a few more schools third round.
My profile
Male, U.S. Citizen
6 years of consulting and m&a advisory experience at a boutique firm
Work experience in South Africa and Switzerland
Promoted to the MBA-equivalent position a year ago
Supervise 10 analyst resources (staffing consulting projects, conducting reviews, recommending compensation)
Completed the CFA program three years ago
710 GMAT (47Q 39V), both over 80% hurdle
3.2 GPA in Finance from Honors program of University of Maryland, College Park
I worked part-time through undergrad (affecting my grades)
President, Vice President of 75-man social fraternity undergrad
Recently a Mentor for a disadvantaged child in my community
Obviously, the GPA is a weak area, but I am hoping the CFA and GMAT make up for it. Any thoughts on my chances would be appreciated.
anxious08
Clear Admit 01-17-2006, 08:01 PM Hi Anxious08,
Thanks for writing ?for the most part, you appear to be a fairly strong candidate. However, no matter how strong your candidacy is, you can never be 100% sure that you’ll be admitted to any specific school. Given the brief overview of your candidacy that you’ve shared, I don’t think that you are a ‘shoe-in?at any of the schools to which you’ve applied thus far.
So, as you consider submitting some third round applications, I recommend that you keep the following two factors in mind:
1) The 3rd round issue ?As you probably know, schools tend to admit a very small percentage of their classes in the 3rd round. This is another thing to keep in mind when deciding how ‘safe?your safety schools, if you do choose to include any, should be. Just as is the case with the top-ranked schools, you would have a better chance of being admitted to Safety School X in Round 1 than in Round 3. This round-specific factor may affect the strength of the safety schools that you end up settling on.
2) How committed you are to attending safety schools ?There are undoubtedly some schools that you would have an extremely high chance of gaining admission to, but these are schools that show up quite a ways down in the rankings. In other words, you need to think clearly about the importance of attending a ‘big name?school, for you. As you move up the ranks towards the Top 10 schools that you’ve already applied to, the actual safeness of your safety schools starts to decline. Would you be content going to a school that was not in the Top 15-20, if admitted? If so, I would recommend applying to a few. But if you are not willing to go lower than a Top 15 school, then you shouldn’t feel pressured to ?just remember that your chances will be diminished a bit.
Good luck with your Round 2 decisions!
Nick Maxwell
Clear Admit, LLC
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