<p>Hello, and please excuse the lengthy first post,</p>
<p>I just graduated college in May, and have been considering getting an MBA. After high school, I joined the Marine Corps for four years, making the rank of Sergeant (not a wartime veteran), where I was a program manager in the quality assurance division. I was awarded with a Navy Achievement Medal for my superior job performance, and I'm able to "dress up" my resume rather nicely compared to most recent undergrads... Unfortunately, the best I was able to do during undergrad was hold a meaningless 25-30 hour a week retail job, though it was in addition to a full time course load.</p>
<p>I have a Bachelor's of Arts in Finance (Minor in Accounting) with a degree granting GPA of 3.62 (3.3 cumulative including JUCO), from a middle of the road liberal arts college in Ohio (Baldwin-Wallace). For what it's worth, I took Kaplan's GMAT diagnostic and scored a 670 cold, though that was after studying intensively for the LSAT for the past 3 months, so the critical reasoning, reading comprehension, and sentence correction were relative child's play for me.</p>
<p>Assuming I can bump my GMAT up to 700 with some practice, do I have a shot at a top 10 business school? Admittedly, my social/communication skills are average to below average, but most professionals I meet still tell me that I continue to have the commanding presence of a Sergeant of Marines.</p>
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Assuming I can bump my GMAT up to 700 with some practice, do I have a shot at a top 10 business school?
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<p>Unfortunately, the full time work experience that most top b-schools seek are post-bachelor's. I'm sure you'll be able to spin a great story or two out of your time as a Sgt of Marines -- and b-schools certainly value military experience/perspective -- but you'll have a MUCH stronger shot if you worked in the corporate world for a year or two. By the way, the overwhelming majority of the vets at the top programs will be former commissioned officers... many from service academies and top publics/privates/ivies. While your enlisted experience will probably stand out from that crowd, you'll want to ensure that your stories are especially compelling.
Your GPA is solid; you should probably be able to rock the GMAT, especially if you scored a 670 on a Kaplan's diagnostic as their tests are notorious for being (and scoring) harder than the real thing.</p>
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you'll have a MUCH stronger shot if you worked in the corporate world for a year or two.
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<p>Thanks for the reply, and by this, should I assume that not just any run of the mill corporate experience will do? The best I was able to do was an internal field auditing position at a Fortune 300 company...</p>
<p>This process is SO much different from the law school application process I am familiar with. Law school was entirely about the numbers, which is nice because if you're quite bright, you're a shoe-in at a top school. But business schools seem to have an elitest mechanism built into them, if you don't come from a top consulting / ibanking / private equity / management firm (which mostly only recruit from the Ivies to begin with) you are going to be hard pressed to get anywhere near them. Seems a bit unfair and discouraging to me.</p>
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Law school was entirely about the numbers, which is nice because if you're quite bright, you're a shoe-in at a top school.
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<p>Being successful in business takes a lot of skills: people skills, communication skills, political skills, etc. Being bright does not guarantee success in business. Top business schools want candidates that have had success in the past and show the potential to have success in the future.</p>
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But business schools seem to have an elitest mechanism built into them, if you don't come from a top consulting / ibanking / private equity / management firm (which mostly only recruit from the Ivies to begin with) you are going to be hard pressed to get anywhere near them.
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<p>To a point, but not necessarily. Business schools accept people from many different backgrounds including engineering, govt, non-profit, fortune 500, startups, IT, etc, etc, etc.</p>
<p>Of course, business schools are much, much larger than law schools, so they'll almost certainly have more spots for non-Ivy "name-branded" type kids overall.</p>
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But business schools seem to have an elitest mechanism built into them, if you don't come from a top consulting / ibanking / private equity / management firm (which mostly only recruit from the Ivies to begin with) you are going to be hard pressed to get anywhere near them. Seems a bit unfair and discouraging to me.
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<p>While many of the students will be from those fields, a good percentage will not. It really is the combination of your academic stats AND your work experience/progression. Many of my classmates had degrees from the Stanfords and Harvards of the world but went into niche consulting or nonprofit roles. Others had less "pedigree" but outstanding professional accomplishments. It may be a little more difficult without a brand name or two but it's certainly far from impossible.
So long as you exhibit great leadership potential at work, you can be competitive for many of the top schools.</p>
<p>Thank you for the replies everyone. I guess, over the next couple of months, I will try to get my GMAT as high as possible. Anyone have recommendations for study prep? So far, I only have the Kaplan Master the GMAT 2005 CD. It seems kind of corny, but helpful. I purchased over 5 different prep books for my LSAT studies, so I will take all the recommendations I can get.</p>
<p>Ultimately, I would like to stay in the North Carolina area, as I like it down there. I would think Wachovia and Bank of America(both HQ'd in N.C.) global investment banking recruit heavily from both Duke and UNC, which are only a 20 minute drive from where I will be moving in March. So I would like to be competitive at those schools.</p>
<p>Fortunately, all of that math you need to know for the GMAT is elementary level. I personally recommend the Princeton Review book for general studying I'd also work through all of the problems in the official GMAT study guide. When done with the Princeton Review book, I'd read Kaplan 800 (tougher problems). </p>