<p>I'm a current TFA corps member (23 year old white male) looking to apply to business school in the fall. I have a 3.7 UG GPA from a top university that is notorious for grade deflation, and scored a 740 on the GMAT in September, 2008. I had two summer internships at a bulge bracket investment bank and held many leadership positions in various on-campus organizations during college. </p>
<p>What are my chances of getting into a top business school? I'm really interested in Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Yale, and Columbia because I want to pursue a JD/MBA and am attracted to the balance of the programs at these schools...</p>
<p>Any advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!</p>
<p>you would be competitive at the b-schools, but will probably not get into harvard, yale, or stanford law school due to your gpa. that said, i would advise going for HBS or Stanford GSB even if you don’t get the law school, as those are REALLY selective programs.</p>
<p>if you really want jd/mba, your best bets are columbia or penn IMO.</p>
<p>Median 50% of LSAT at YLS is 172, while at HLS it is a 173. </p>
<p>Likewise, the median GPA at YLS and HLS are in the 3.8 range. </p>
<p>In other words, 50% of the admits into each of those schools have an LSAT score lower than 173. Hardly implies you need both a 176 and 3.90 to get into one of those law schools. </p>
<p>That being said with a 3.7 you will need upwards of a 176 to get into either of those schools, but that’s not to say it’s impossible. </p>
<p>As far as business school goes, I personally think the success of your application will be based on how you can articulate the MBA helping your career path. The MBA is seen to be a terminal degree, so you’ll want to show how (to an extent) your career has stagnated, and how receiving an MBA willl help you moving forward. Personally, I don’t see that yet-- I don’t see anything you would personally want to do that an MBA would help you jump into right away. Almost any field I can think of is something that you would need at least initial experience in before the MBA. However, if you conivince adcoms otherwise, you’ll have a shot.</p>
<p>b-school
Although your stat is above average for those schools’ students, it’s fairly average for those school’s applicant pools.
H/S - admissions is very arbitrary, S has 6.5% acceptance rate, no one is a guarantee there.
W/CBS - banking experience (full-time) with your stats are dime a dozen. these are finance heavy schools, so how are you planning to distinguish yourself?
YSOM - traditional non-profit school, but a lot of non-profit type apply. regular TFA may not stand out.</p>
<p>law school
HYS - your GPA is definitely an issue. on top of that YS have tiny class size, so you need something beyond grades to get accepted to those two schools
CP - you have a shot at these two schools if you can pull of 170+ on your LSAT.</p>
<p>recommendation
I suggest that you figure out why you want a JD/MBA, besides the prestige, as those two degrees carry you on two different career paths.</p>
<p>For MBA, don’t worry about the rankings too much. Besides H/S (maybe W), other ~top 15 schools offer similar exit options, you’ll be better served going to a school that fit your career goal. For example, if you want to go into management and choose CBS over Duke-Fuqua because of ranking, it’s probably not a good idea.</p>
<p>For law, all the top 15 schools will get your foot in the door for BigLaw, the lower the ranking of the school, the higher your class ranking needs to be. But law school entrance is highly merit based, so if you are a Yale quality student going to Texas law, you’ll likely do very well in Texas, and get the job anyway (especially for BigLaw in the SW region).</p>
<p>For how many years have you been involved with TFA? Please remember that without several years of work experience, you may be at a disadvantage in business school admissions, particularly since you are planning to apply to some of the best business schools in the country. Getting into business schools is not all about the numbers.</p>