How hard is it really to get into an M7?
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Ivy undergrad + good gpa/GMAT + IBD + ok essay should guarantee you AD to lower M7 (K/C/B/S). If your essay is good, wharton should be fine too. Real hard ones are H/S.
Bro,you're in an IVY with a nice GPA,not to mention great experience.You're already winning at life.Though I do suggest you do something that makes you look more interesting.
What a great post
You'll be fine. 720+ GMAT should net you lower M7 given good execution. 750+ and you will be W perhaps even H/S but, as mentioned above, that is a crapshoot. If you are a top performer in MS/GS IBD you have a good shot at H/S and if you add anything else that is particularly interesting to your profile, a great shot. Go for 3.7 GPA... could make the difference at H vs 3.6. They really care about GPA. At Harvard, GPA is 1.a, GMAT 1.b, and the opposite at S.
I do have some interesting sports / creative writing related things on my resume that I can talk at length about.
Would you all suggest that I try and take the GMAT while I am still in undergrad? It seems like a test that requires a significant amount of studying and I have quite a bit of free time this and next semester as I have a SA internship locked up.
Take some practice tests. If you went to an Ivy, you got a good SAT score. My SAT was nothing to write home about (I believe ~95th %ile), but I scored 740 on the GMAT with a few hrs of studying. You are an econ major as I was, which means that your classwork essentially doubles for GMAT practice. Take the official practice test from MBA.com and see where you stand. I would estimate that every 2-3 hrs of studying yields approximately a 10 pt improvement. Since you have free time now, I would recommend taking before you begin working.
To OP, maybe you can go from a cold 700 to a 710 after a few hours of, say, statistics refreshing, but you obviously get diminishing returns.
I also think that there are diminishing returns to study time. The low 700s provide this sort of return because it implies that the individual is capable of identifying and fixing their own weaknesses. Below this, there may be a base level of knowledge too low to accomplish this and so improvement comes more slowly. Also slows down at 770+. But I think that in the 700-760 range, this estimate probably holds true.
how does scoring 700 on the GMAT indicate strong self awareness?
To go from a 650 on my first no-prep practice to 750 on the real thing, it took me about 100 hours.
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