Hi Guys.
I want to know my chances of getting into a decent MBA. I am a Chartered Accountant from South Africa (C.A. SA), CFA Level 1 as well CAIA. I was an Equity Sales trader at BNP Paribas, and have private equity experience as an Investment Analyst at a large PE firm in South Africa. I want to do my MBA in the US, and have a GMAT of 730, but am worried that my low GPA will hurt my chances. What schools do you think I can get into, I would ideally like NYU, McDonough, Ross, Fuqua etc. My GPA is 2.6/4
Hey man,
Real talk: your GMAT is not that high, it is decidedly average - that is, within the 80% spread of all the schools you listed. With a GPA that is FAR below the 10%ile of all of your schools, I would seriously give some thought to retaking the GMAT to get above the 90%ile of your target schools.
What you can also see in the source below is the 0th %ile for certain schools like Stern - it's 2.8. I bet if you go back a few years and check, it'll always fall around there. I can also almost guarantee that that score is from an underrepresented minority, so you can see that it is a very uphill battle for specific schools that may not be worth the effort.
Source: https://www.admitbrain.com/top-mba-programs?tab=scores
You can't think in terms of global GMAT percentile, you need to judge where you are relative to the application pool of your school. To boot, you are absolutely going to be competing with a small but competitive South African contingent who will have higher GPAs - you need to have a higher GMAT than them.
Like, sure, pick a couple top 15 and maybe CBS ED and give it a shot, but I really really disagree with the advice here encouraging you to apply to multiple top 10 schools: I think it is a waste of your time and will spread you too thin when you should be focusing on low(er) ranked schools with strong alumni bases like Darden.
I will say that it should be worth your time to look around for an understanding of how SA GPAs actually translate to US GPA (it isn't always like 7.5/10 abroad = 3.0/4 in the US, sometimes they adjust up, which can help your case). Additionally, you can take some online courses in technical subjects to show you can do the work (UC Berkeley Extension is great) and get As. Furthermore, the farther away from undergrad you are, and the more leadership experience you demonstrate combined with out-of-this-world recommendations will go a long way.