I applied to 3 schools round 2 and 1 school round 1.
Round 2 schools:
-Anderson - Rejected
-Haas - Rejected
-Warton - Rejected
Round 1 schools:
-HKUST - Accepted with scholarship. I turned this down because they accepted me in January and gave me two weeks to decide if I wanted to accept, and I wanted to hear from the other schools. I was slightly turned off by the interviews as well.
How can I better position myself for a top MBA?
Stats:
Top 40 undergrad
Double Major in Engineering and Economics
GPA: 3.63
GMAT: 740
2 Leadership positions in college
Essays: I think I did a fantastic job of telling a story about why I wanted to get an MBA, and why I wanted to go to those schools.
Work Experience: I think this was my weak spot
After college
Engineering Intern - 6 Months
Unemployed - 7 Months
Actuary - 2.5 Years at two different companies
Unemployed - 4 Months
Health Care IT - May 2015 until now
Until a few months ago (after I had submitted my apps), I had no leadership positions nor had worked on key projects at any of my jobs. Now I had two leadership positions, and have worked on two very key projects.
I know I can apply round 1 next year for a better shot at business school. Is there anything else I can do?
As you said yourself, your work experience is your weak spot, and work experience is the most important factor aside from GMAT.
Right now, your work experience is spotty. It looks like you've struggled to figure stuff out, and you're jumping from place to place. Now, from a life standpoint, that is perfectly fine. Not everyone has the same trajectory. Some are late bloomers and have a longer "growing pains" period before they truly thrive. Others are early bloomers (but may or may not flame out, or "regress to the mean" so to speak in the long-term). Just know that b-school admissions has a heavy bias against late bloomers (they rely heavily on "the past predicting the future"), so the folks who are a bit all over the place tend to get dinged in favor of those who seem to have everything in place from the get go (again in the long-run it may not matter).
For this year, you need to do the following:
Apply to more schools. It's a numbers game. To minimize the randomness in results of one particular school, you need to apply to enough schools to minimize that randomness. Aim for 6-8 schools total (1-2 stretches, 3-4 sweet spots, and 0-1 safeties).
Apply to a different range of schools. Your chances at a top 8 are slim to none. That's the reality. Doesn't matter how amazing of a "story" you can tell. Your "stretch" schools are going to be top 16 schools, which means reapplying to UCLA, Haas and maybe 1 other top 16 school. Then, focus on top 30 schools as your sweet spots where you'll get more love. These are schools like USC, Texas, Georgetown, Emory, UNC, Tepper, Maryland, and so forth. Or internationally look at Oxford/Cambridge. These schools are NOT beneath you, and to be blunt, they're not shoe-ins either because plenty of people at these schools have solid work experience and strong backgrounds. And finally, look at 0-1 safeties - the Asian schools like HKUST if you want to reapply there again, or top 50 schools (Pepperdine, UC-Irvine, etc).
Thanks for your feedback. I really appreciate your honesty.
It's kind of weird... I posted on this site about a year ago when I was unemployed, and people said that Haas and Anderson were targets for me. I'm also slightly weary of top 30 schools. It may not be worth it to go to business school if there's an increased chance I might not even make it into banking, but I'll look into them.
How can I spin my employment/unemployment history better? When I was employed for 7 months I was studying actuarial exams and passed 3 in that time (normal pass rate is 1 per 6 months). I stopped being an actuary because I was laid off, and by then I had decided I wanted to go to business school, and I hadn't found my actuarial job experience particularly valuable or rewarding. When I was employed for 4 months, I spent them entire time interviewing and applying for jobs.
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