<p>Hello,</p>
<p>I am a Junior looking into various colleges and I'm interested in undergrad bschools or getting my MBA after ugrad. I was wondering if going to Westpoint + serving in the armed forces for 5 years would hinder me in getting accepted into MBA programs like HBS, Wharton, Kellogg, etc.. I would greatly appreciate any response. </p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>I don't think it will hinder you in the least. The service-academies, and the military in general, are a giant feeder to elite B-schools.</p>
<p>You'd be a very attractive candidate if you were a West Pointer.</p>
<p>remember that kelly, the winner of the apprentice, did his undergrad at west point, then went on to UCLA MBA. ;)</p>
<p>Here is the WSJ "feeder-list". Don't treat the WSJ ranking numbers as gospel - I along with many others here on cc believe that there are serious methodology problems with the ranking. However, what you can see is the strength of the academies in getting its graduates into MBA programs. </p>
<p>HBS, MIT-Sloan, and Wharton tend to really like military types. </p>
<p>That's awesome. Thanks all.</p>
<p>If you go to West Point, B schools will assume you already have all the leadership and discipline. Training someone like you for business might simply be easier. I think West Point is an awesome school that allows you to do pretty much anything after you graduate.</p>
<p>What about someone doing ROTC. If one did ROTC and served four years, would one be eligble for admissions to an MBA program without BUSINESS work experience?</p>
<p>Cmaher, the answer is yes. I know plenty such people who did ROTC, and have no business experience (only military experience) and yet got into top MBA programs. For example, a friend of mine did Navy ROTC at Boston University, then flew fighter jets for the Navy, graduated from Top Gun, and most recently flew missions in Iraq. He is now in the MBA program at MIT. Another friend of mine graduated from Navy ROTC from the Illinois Institute of Technology, then served as a navy officer in charge of handling unexploded ordnance. He got into the elite LFM program (the combined MBA/MS program) at MIT.</p>
<p>do you know their stats?</p>
<p>West Point will definately prepare you for admittance into any Graduate Program in the country. I have hear stories of Ivy League graduate programs that only take A+ students from any school other than a service academy, but from West Point, any graduate will gain acceptance.</p>
<p>Well, I wouldn't go that far. If you end up with straight C's and thus barely graduate from a service-academy, I think you'd find it most difficult indeed to get into the top graduate programs. Furthermore, the published statistics of the graduate schools indicate that while they obviously take strong students, to say that they only take A+ students from non-academy graduates is way off the mark. </p>
<p>As we're talking about business schools in this thread, even a place like the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the business school who admits a class with the highest overall GPA of all the business schools, admits a class whose GPA is ~3.6. And I would be surprised if academy graduates (meaning that ROTC doesn't count) comprised a small fraction of the entire incoming class. Common sense therefore dictates that clearly they are admitting plenty of non-academy graduates who don't have an A+ average.</p>