<p>Is it more important to have a very high gpa or challenging coursework and slightly lower gpa?</p>
<p>Neither. It is more important for you to have strong work experience. Grades and undergrad coursework are minor considerations.</p>
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Grades and undergrad coursework are minor considerations.
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</p>
<p>...well, that depends... compared to Law School and Med School? Yeah, grades and classes are are definitely less important. and i definitely agree that work experience IS the most important, however...</p>
<p>that said, if you are aiming for an elite / top 5 b-school, i'd argue that a majority of those candidates have solid stats across the board:</p>
<ul>
<li>solid GPA</li>
<li>solid GMAT</li>
<li>solid coursework</li>
<li>solid work experience</li>
<li>solid recs</li>
</ul>
<p>i mean, we might not be talking about 4.0 and triple majors here, but we aren't talking about 2.0s and basket weaving majors either.</p>
<p>for example, the competition to get into, say, Stanford GSB is incredibly fierce - there are only 350+ spots any given year [excerpt from Wiki]:</p>
<p>
[quote]
The school has historically been the most selective business school in the country. It has maintained the highest ratio of "applicants to available seats" of any business school for the last decade. It has also had the lowest acceptance rates (typically <10%) of any major business school in the world, with the exception of the Indian Institutes of Management. In a deeply pragmatic process, the school assembles a concentration of top applicants into its relatively small and personal class size. For the class which entered in 2005, approximately 8% of applicants were offered admission.</p>
<p>The school has approximately 370 students per year in its full-time two-year MBA program. It is relatively diverse compared to its peer institutions. The most recent entering class was approximately 32% female, 25% ethnic minorities and 39% international. Among these are Fulbright scholars and Coro, Gardner, Rhodes, Rotary, and Truman fellows. Approximately 10% of the class entered the MBA program with other graduate or professional degrees; including medical doctors, lawyers, and Ph.Ds.
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</p>
<p>now, not every b-school is as hard to get into as Stanford, ill grant that, but to automatically assume that you don't have to give a crap about your grades and coursework isn't necessarily correct. i'd argue that MIT Sloan is also another program where grades / coursework is slightly more important that your average b-school.</p>
<p>I am not talking about basket weaving majors either easy courses not even related to business and finance, which you have to take in first and second year of college.</p>
<p>what type of work experience is good? i mean, does it have to pertain to finances/economics or if i hold a good position as an engineer or something else, is that good too?</p>
<p>Usually you want to show leadership skills or potential. </p>
<p>Now, most MBAs at the top schools are bankers and consultants from the top firms, so they mighn't be changing the world single-handedly, but b-schools can reasonably expect these kids to move up the corporate ladder if they enter back into similar fields.</p>
<p>For other jobs (engineer, IT, non-profit, whatever) you need to show managerial skills which relate to business. For example:
[ul]
[<em>]did you control a budget? How much? Did you enhance earnings?
[</em>]did you lead a team? In what capacity? How many people/what level?
[/ul]
You must show that you have some past experience which will translate well to your chosen career. You cannot say that you would like to be an international management consultant working with Fortune 500 companies in New York and London if your experience is entering data for a commercial bank's credit card division in a back office somewhere. The work experience must demonstrate your potential to grow into a leader (especially at schools like Harvard, which want you to reflect well on them in future when you're profiled in a magazine or have a bio on a company website).</p>
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[quote]
Now, most MBAs at the top schools are bankers and consultants from the top firms,
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, no, I wouldn't say 'most' are bankers/consultants from the top firms. A lot of them are, but certainly not 'most'.</p>
<p>For example, take the entering MBA Class of 2008 at the MIT Sloan School. A total of 38% of the class listed consulting and finance as their job function. Of that, there are surely quite a few who came from internal consulting or corporate finance at a normal company (or, in the case of finance, worked for the government). Even of those who actually worked at actual consulting/finance firms, plenty of them didn't come from 'top' firms. I know some MIT MBA students who came from no-name consulting/finance firms. </p>
<p><a href="http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/program/classof08profile.php%5B/url%5D">http://mitsloan.mit.edu/mba/program/classof08profile.php</a> </p>
<p>Here's similar data from Stanford. 40% of the incoming students list consulting or investment management (broadly defined) as their former job function.</p>
<p>It was a rash generalisation. Unfortunately, with any college admissions a lot of what we can say is sweeping statements about candidates ("You must have a 700+ GMAT for HSW"; "A 3.2 high school GPA won't get you into the Ivy League"), because we know there are exceptions to every university admissions rule, and thus it's hard to always quote stats.</p>
<p>What I was basically saying, business schools either look for industries they fully understand (eg. if you're a Goldman analyst in NYC with a good company recommendation, it's likely you will succeed as a leader in finance afterwards - succeed being good, not guaranteed future billionaire) or want to be fully satisfied that you have been a leader in your work by looking at results.</p>
<p>
[quote]
well, that depends... compared to Law School and Med School? Yeah, grades and classes are are definitely less important. and i definitely agree that work experience IS the most important, however...
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, let me clarify then. Of all of the graduate programs out there, MBA programs probably place the least importance on grades and test scores. </p>
<p>
[quote]
for example, the competition to get into, say, Stanford GSB is incredibly fierce - there are only 350+ spots any given year [excerpt from Wiki]:
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yeah, but why pick out Stanford? There are plenty of other top-ranked B-schools whose incoming stats are quite modest. Virginia Darden has an incoming GPA of 3.29 and GMAT of 668. Cornell is 3.31 and 660. Dartmouth Tuck has a 3.30 and 699. Yale's is a 3.42 and 683. Seriously - can you imagine getting into ANY OTHER grad program at Yale with just a 3.42? </p>
<p>The bottom line is that on the scale of what is important in terms of getting into B-school, grades and test scores rank fairly low on the scale. I know a number of people with top grades and top test scores who didn't get into ANY of the top schools. The problem? No work experience. For example, I know genius engineers and scientists who got their PhD's at MIT, and then applied to both the MIT Sloan School and to HBS, and several other schools, and didn't get in. Nobody disputes that with a PhD from MIT, they are clearly brilliant guys, but the B-schools aren't really looking for brilliance. They are looking for managerial potential, and the truth is, a lot of brilliant people don't have that potential.</p>
<p>In my class ata top 5 MBA program we had several who were engineering undergrad who had worked for tech companies. They didn't work in "solid engineering jobs", however. They came from business development, acquisitions, assistant to CEO, new product development, etc.</p>