Career changer with low GMAT

One of many Big Four consultants, Grace had to sell her lower GMAT and nontraditional (for a consultant) career goals. .

The Challenge

At first glance, Grace was just another consultant at a huge professional services firm. About a dozen people from Grace’s company seek advice from Admissionado every year, often with exactly the same title she had. If we’re getting a dozen applications as admissions consultants, it’s safe to assume the adcom at a major MBA program deals with at least 100 applicants from Grace’s employer every year. No MBA program is going to accept more than a handful of people from the same company. The question was, how to get Grace into that handful?

Possible Approaches

Before she transferred to a huge professional services firm, Grace had been an executive in a startup subsidiary of a Chinese tech giant. We considered using this experience to differentiate her profile. It was an enticing option:her position had come with lots of responsibility, team leadership, and culture building. It was an important job! But unfortunately, things hadn’t gone well for the startup. It ran out of runway and folded a couple of years after Grace joined up, forcing her to transfer to her current employer. While Grace hadn’t been responsible for the collapse, she was responsible for a major portion of the company’s operations, and we were concerned that the startup’s failure might reflect badly on her. It was not worth differentiating Grace’s application this way if doing so also raised questions about her competence.

The Admissionado Approach

Instead, we focused on Grace’s current position. She had the same title as a lot of other applicants—but that didn’t mean she had the same job. We asked Grace about her specialization within her huge employer, and found that most of her work related to auto manufacturing and sales. She was actually interested in transitioning from consulting to an auto company post-MBA. Combine this with her engineering education, and we had a narrative: Grace was not just another consultant, she was an auto industry expert on course to lead a major Chinese automaker in the not-to-distant future.

The Result

Grace only applied to HEC, and she got in! They even offered some attractive scholarships.

Personal Shoutout

“I want to thank you for the help with the application process. At the time it felt like a long and heavy process but I have learned a lot and feel better prepared for similar challenges like job applications.”