Top 10 Low GPA Question
Hi WSO
First time poster -- have been following the site for some time and am a big fan of the forum.
I intend on applying to top 5 US MBA schools and would like to get opinions from those who’ve been in a similar situation previously. My guess is that there will be a low number who can tick this box.
Background:
- 3 years consulting from an elite mid-tier firm (think S&, Deloitte Monitor) with an almost exclusive focus on Corp. Strategy and PE projects. Joined straight from UG, have been a top-rated analyst every year and received a promotion 6 months earlier than ~90% of my cohort
- Represented my state at a national level in an individual sport
- UG from a non-target majoring in finance/economics with a GPA of 2.7
- White male (if that needs to be mentioned)
- Yet to sit the GMAT, however have received 740 & 750 from two respective practice tests
I am comfortable with most elements of my application. Obviously the glaring hole is the UG (both institution and GPA). I am interested to hear from anyone who has gotten into a top 5 school with a similar UG.
My end game is MBB or, should the opportunity arise, a MM PE fund.
Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
DD
assuming you crush the GMAT and really get a 750, you have a chance at getting into a top 5 some schools are less GPA sensitive than others, so it'll help you to have an understanding of that check out the below website to see which schools are relatively indifferent about your GPA
http://www.mbadataguru.com/blog/
eg. darden is actually one of the schools that comes to mind that doesn't care much about GPA but you can definitely forget about applying to stanford, since they care about GPA a lot
btw how did you make it into big4 consulting with a gpa like that?
Thanks for the response -- good article. My school is top 50 but by no means a target. Basically confirmed my suspicions, not really shooting for H/S but will be targeting schools like Tuck, Columbia, Sloan etc. which I feel is reasonable if all other elements of my app are solid. You been to BS?
Re recruiting -- I'm good at networking (and had some luck). I'm legacy S&. All recruiting was done off campus; I had contacts at various firms and got my foot in the door for first rounds, then subsequently crushed the cases.
hav not been to bs, but have been reading a lot about it recently you can definitely do it- good luck
MIT's another one that cares a lot about GPA from my understanding. Just spread your applications out and there should be a school willing to overlook. They just need to feel comfortable that you can handle the courseload, so GMAT will probably play a huge factor.
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