<p>I know that I do not have the work experience to be competitive yet, but I do not expect admissions standards to change that much by the time I will actually get that experience. Here is my file as it stands today:</p>
<p>Undergraduate GPA: 3.67 (physics-mathematics dual major)
Graduate GPA: 3.85 (physics MSc)
GRE general: V162, Q167, AW4.0
ECs: Student newspaper (3 years, head editor for 1)
Departmental assembly membership (2 years)
Research assistantship (1 year; will hold until I earn my MSc)
Tutoring (1 year, planning on continuing)</p>
<p>The only thing I'm really confident about is my academics. At this point I am not asking for chances, but what else to put on my roadmap to business school other than getting full-time work experience (and, when closer to actual B-school attendance, essays and recs)?</p>
<p>On the longer run I'd look at Cornell, Yale, Oxford, Cambridge (and, WE permitting, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard or Wharton) so I may as well be asking about business strengths of each, because I might cut some schools off my list if they don't fit at that time. And, of course, McGill Desautels or HEC Montreal at home, the latter being my financial safety.</p>
<p>GMAT is really an issue only if I stayed locally (and likely part-time). I checked with the other schools on my list and the GRE is acceptable everywhere away from home I have on my current list, hence why I posted my current GRE score. And it’s IMO just fine for Ivies.</p>
<p>Of course I will pull that long-term trigger only if my PhD plans fall through. Said PhD plans are why I took the GRE in the first place.</p>
<p>Work experience and its progression is very important to top B schools. After you hit a certain academic GPA and test scores (you are very qualified), you will have to explain very convincingly in a few essays why you need an MBA and what you will do with that degree.
B schools know that you can do many jobs without an MBA and they will only consider students who really have good reasons why they need that degree.</p>
<p>All I knew about graduate B-school was that I needed work experience to successfully get in… as well as a financial safety. I could always pursue part-time undergraduate, continuing business education if even my MBA plans fell apart.</p>
<p>While reading GMAT Club and Beat the GMAT posts, I gained a sense of what kind of academics were needed to get into any of the 10 schools on my preliminary list. I saw admits at these with at least one of GPA or GRE (or its GMAT equivalent) below what I had, and then drew the conclusion that all I had left to do at this point was to get work experience.</p>
<p>* I could always pursue part-time undergraduate, continuing business education if even my MBA plans fell apart.*</p>
<p>Don’t do this. If you don’t get into an MBA program, just get a job and work. Work experience is FAR more valuable to employers than a second bachelor’s in business.</p>
<p>Otherwise, there’s nothing particularly special about your extracurricular activities that show leadership or significant achievement, so it doesn’t make sense to get a profile evaluation right now (as much as it ever makes sense to do so on an online message board). Wait until you have the work experience. In fact, if a PhD is your goal, just forget about it for now and come back to it later if you don’t get in or change your mind about it. You actually are a strong candidate for PhD programs.</p>
<p>How I understood continuing business education: just take one night course or two for a semester or two (that way I could still work full-time; my sister actually does that, so what reason, other than a hectic work schedule with crazy hours, wouldn’t I be able to do so while having a full-time job, by the time I get one such job?) without the need of completing an actual degree program, so that I could acquire some business-related skills. It’s not the same as leaving a full-time job to earn an undergraduate degree in business. Now I understand that I was planning too far ahead.</p>
<p>There is one component missing as far as PhD applications are concerned: the physics GRE, which I didn’t write yet. Since my physical subfields of interest are cosmology and particle physics (my current research project deals with the very early universe, which is the interface between both) it’s going to be more competitive than if I was going, for example, into condensed matter. </p>
<p>I promise to make a separate thread about these PhD plans once I get a PGRE score back, but what I know for sure is that Tulane (IMO quantum chaos does resemble what I currently do, with applications to both subfields), UMinn, W&M, Tufts (non-reaches) and, at the reach end, UPenn, are on my list. I didn’t even apply to Tufts last year, which was the only US school I wanted to attend at that time, because I didn’t have research experience back then, and that I thought it was unreachable without it.</p>