3.8 GPA from Top 15 under-grad business school.
Plenty of extracurriculars, community service.
720 GMAT.
2 years at elite boutique (think, Greenhill, Lazard, Evercore)
Probable 2 years at high-end of middle-market PE fund.
What do you guys think? Trying to strike a balance between having my "reach schools" and shooting high as well as being realistic and understanding the competitiveness of the process.
You appear to have strong fundamentals for top b-schools. I generally recommend applying to 4-5 schools with a mix of "reach" (1 in 4 or 1 in 5 chances of admittance), "target" (1 in 3), and "safety" (1 in 2) schools, with the number of schools in each bucket depending on how important an MBA that year is to you (i.e., how comfortable would you be with not getting into any school?).
Based on the information you have provided, HBS, Stanford, Wharton, MIT and Berkeley would be good "reach" schools. Kellogg, Booth, CBS, Tuck, and Stern would be great "target" schools. And schools like Ross, Darden, Fuqua, and Anderson could be in the "safety" bucket. One factor included here is class size, which is an important driver of acceptance rates and competitiveness (hence why Berkeley is more difficult than Kellogg and Booth for example).
Good luck! Feel free to reach out to Clear Admit (http://www.clearadmit.com/services/free-consultation/) for a free detailed profile evaluation.
Best, Heidi
http://qz.com/42233/if-you-cant-get-into-a-top-five-mba-program-dont-ev…
If you can’t get into a top-five MBA program, don’t even bother
If you can't get into HBS, don't even bother
It's interesting to see the comment by an admissions consultant and read the article above on what's considered a "Top 5" school.
As someone who agonized over whether to apply to B-school and which schools were worth applying to/attending, I'm shocked to see that Kellogg/Sloan/Haas are even considered by prospective MBA students who want to work in finance.
Each school's employment reports are available online. You can see who's getting hired where. Outside of the obvious (H/S/W), no other school comes even close to Columbia and Chicago Booth, whether its for buy-side (PE, HF, AM) recruiting or IBD recruiting for career switchers. Goldman hired 18 people from Columbia last year, and 1 from Kellogg.
I do NOT mean to start a "which b-school is better?" war here, but for the OP - I'd apply to those 5 schools and from your stats I'd imagine you'd get into at least one. Of course, I'm assuming you're interested in finance since you're posting on WSO. For consulting or any other career path, I can definitely understand why the other great schools are commonly referenced.
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