<p>I don't really go to a "top notch" school. It's essentially a state college. :/
I do have somewhat of a decent GPA (3.8), and I'm graduating in about 2 years with bachelor's in business mgt.</p>
<p>I'm currently studying for my GMAT, and considering enrolling in a kaplan course or something to that effect. </p>
<p>I had an 8-month internship with a start-up company my freshmen year. Given the awful economic status of the nation, it seems the internship pond has dried up. </p>
<p>I have entered a bunch of business-plan competitions that my college holds every year. I ended up placing 3rd in one, and just making the finals in another. I also did all these business plans by myself (does that count for anything?) rather than in a group.</p>
<p>I would really love to get into Stanford for grad school, preferably as soon as possible (ooh, wishful thinking). </p>
<p>What can I do to set myself apart and make myself a stellar applicant?
I know essays are ridiculously important and I must admit that I don't think my writing abilities are amazing. </p>
<p>Just so you know, my GPA in high school was about 3.7.</p>
<p>I’ll save one of the more knowledgable posters some time by just saying you’ll need about 5 years of really solid work experience before you could hope to be admitted to the program.</p>
<p>While I can’t speak for Stanford GSB, I can say that there have been MBA graduates from Harvard Business School who have come from such schools as Idaho State, Cal State University Chico, Cal State East Bay, Southeast Missouri State, South Dakota State, Kansas State University -Salina, Youngstown State, Wayne State, Central Connecticut State, Central Michigan University, University of Central Florida, Eastern Washington University, Eastern Kentucky University, and many others.</p>
<p>So it is indeed possible to come from a state university and go to an elite MBA program. The issue is that there just aren’t that many that do. For example of all of the HBS MBA alumni who came from all of the schools combined that contain the phrase “State University” as part of the full name of the school - i.e. Pennsylvania State University, Ohio State University, Idaho State University, etc., add them all up and then double it and you would still not have enough to equal the number who came from just a single undergraduate school: Harvard College. This comparison is even more striking when you consider that most state universities have far more undergrads than Harvard College does, for example, South Dakota State University alone has over 10k undergrads, compared to only 6700 at Harvard.</p>
<p>Here’s what the listings show for the various ways that Rutgers appears in the database:</p>
<p>Rutgers (108)<br>
Rutgers State Univ-Douglass College (4)<br>
Rutgers University New Brunswick Campus (2)<br>
Rutgers University Newark Campus (2)</p>
<p>I don’t claim to be an expert on Rutgers, so I don’t know what the differences are amongst those 4 categories. You can interpret it as you wish.</p>
<p>Thats a weird reporting. The Douglass campus is located on the New Brunswick campus. 4 from Douglass but two from New Brunswick. Weird. I’m not sure 108 is high. But it’s better than nothing.</p>
<p>To put that number in perspective, the number coming from Princeton - another New Jersey based school - is about 1330. And of course Rutgers has far more undergrads than Princeton does.</p>
<p>I’d say go for it. If you don’t get accepted there, screw them. Just go somewhere else and see to it that you can help future students from state schools who would like to attend Stanford, or make it your life’s goal to have Stanford’s MBA school cease to exist through any means necessary for rejecting you. That’s what I plan on doing. If I can’t join em, kill em at their own game!</p>
<p>It’s possible that a lot of less prominent schools are underrepresented because students from these schools don’t have an interest in attend the self righteous MBA programs or that they don’t think they would get accepted.</p>
<p>sakky, your reply gives me some hope in my possibly future at Stanford. Hopefully, if I play my cards right, I’ll be there working on my MBA.
:< Maybe I’ll try to apply for a research intern at their business school? Though, I don’t think there are any available at the moment.</p>
<p>Considering how much ridiculously harder it is to ger into P’ton rather than say, Rutgers, in the first place, I am surprised Rutgers has even as many as one-tenth of P’ton’s output.</p>
<p>Just completely different-calibre schools, that’s all. You are talking about kids who got straight A+ in high school and 1500 on their SAT’s, with kids who got B’s and 1200 or something. It’s not exactly a fair comparison.</p>
<p>The essential problem with state schools is actually a simple one; there is no objective way to evaluate of their GPA’s. What does a 4.0 at state school mean? Does it equate to a 3.3 at Yale? A 2.9 (given the incredible grade deflation) at Princeton? A 3.6 at UC’s? Years ago Berkeley actually came up with a GPA adjuster for different schools, subtracting or adding 0.2 points to the GPA based on relative rigour, but of course 0.2 is hardly useful nowadays given the vast gulf in grading among different schools.</p>
<p>That’s why the talk is work experience. If you can convince GSB that your 3.8 is worth something, then you have a much better chance. But until you prove yourself as competent as the kids coming out of the Ivy League, who presumably worked much harder and more effectively than you did to get to where they are, it’s going to be a shot in the dark.</p>