MA improve chances of getting into MBA?

gellino
Fri, 29 May 2009 13:50:49 +0000

The MA wont get you in a Haas or Anderson without significant, good work experience. I diagree that a 3.3 is in range for those schools. It is possible they may average in your MA grades too, so do as well as you can.



I’ve known several that got into Haas and UCLA with GPAs below 3.3. Granted, it was slightly before the most current wave of college grade inflation.



I’m shocked that those GPA’s are getting into top programs, certainly was not the case in my day. Speaks to the ultimate importance of work experience today. Yet I’m curious as to where the work experience is coming from as I know ibanks and consulting firms rarely hire anyone with below high 3’s.



From my experience, this is not remotely true and “your day” was considerably before “my day”. This has been the general range of GPAs for incoming top 10 MBA classes for at least the ~ 12 years that I’ve been aware of the stats (if anything, they were somewhat lower when I was applying), so I question how much recruiting and trashing of resumes with sub 3.8 GPAs you’ve been doing over the last decade+. From both my UG and my BB IB analyst class almost no one had a GPA over 3.75 that got an IB analyst job. Most of that type pursued JD, MD, PhD immediately after UG. I would say just about everyone that went into IB had a GPA over 3.2, so maybe with the grade inflation of the last decade this would translate to ~ 3.4. Consulting firms, I would grant you had a higher threshold than IBs but it wasn’t only 3.8+.