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August 12, 2025 6:42am ET
Applying: Boston / Questrom, Boston College / Carroll, Columbia, Georgetown / McDonough, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, NYU Stern, U. Washington / Foster, UCLA Anderson, UPenn / Wharton, USC / Marshall
Intake Year: 2026
Pre-MBA Career: R&D Engineer
Post-MBA Target Industry: Other, Pharmaceutical Companies: Amgen , Astra Zeneca , Johnson & Johnson , Merck , Novartis , Pfizer , Roche , Other
GRE: 320
GPA: 3.6
Years of Work Experience: 5
Location: Boston
Post MBA Location: Boston, NY, or CA
Notes:

GRE: 320 (156Q, 164V). Not retaking (taken it 3 times, score has gone up but I just can't do another go)

Undergrad: Neuroscience / Journalism double major at University of Colorado Boulder

Career: 1.5 yrs as an associate technical writer, 2 yrs. as a Technical Writer and Scrum Master (Agile), roughly a year and a half as an R&D Engineer specializing in UI for a surgical robot. All at Medtronic.

Post-MBA: Strategy or product marketing in healthcare. Ideally at a medical device / surgical robotics company but open to roles in pharma as well. Not really interested in a pivot in geography or industry, really just looking to change function.

Extra-curriculars: lots of outdoor hobbies, volunteer with an organization for people born with heart defects (I have one myself) to help connect them to doctors around the country that specialize in those defects (there are not many in the world). Spend probably 1-4 hours a week doing that depending.

School selection: must be in a big city or I'll go insane. Higher ranked programs I'll target in round 1, others in round 2.

Questions:
1.) With the GRE should I even target any M7? If so, how do I decide which?
2.) I'm a bit torn between doing a full-time vs. a part-time program given my goals and GRE score. The healthcare industry certainly has some leaders with high-profile MBAs but most of the executives that I know and/or have researched on LinkedIn either don't have MBAs or received them from a less well-known program. All that to say I don't think that prestige is as important in the industry as consulting or investment banking, say. How can I evaluate the benefits or tradeoffs of doing a full-time program at a Questrom or Carroll vs. a part time program at the same schools? What about an online program at a McDonough, NYU, or Foster?