Columbia - 01-03-2024 | Clear Admit ApplyWire

January 3, 2024 6:19pm ET

Applying: Columbia, Cornell / Johnson, Dartmouth / Tuck, Duke / Fuqua, Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, Northwestern / Kellogg, U. Chicago Booth, UPenn / Wharton, Yale SOM

Intake Year: 2024

Pre-MBA Career: Tech and Entreprenuership

Post-MBA Target Industry: Technology, Venture Capital, Entrepreneurship, Non Profit/SI

GMAT: 720

GPA: 3.22

Years of Work Experience: 5

Location: Atl

Notes:

1. I have heard a lot about ORM and want to understand how it works. Are ORMs categorized based on race or citizenship? Are Chinese-Americans, Korean-Americans, Indian-Americans categorized as ORMs?
2. How much does undergrad GPA matter? I transferred after 1 year at community college where my GPA was 3.8. My undergrad GPA from my graduating institution (decent engineering school) was 3.22 (not considering the community college GPA) while pursuing dual engineering degrees. Is that seen as low for most top schools?

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Show Comments (6) Last: January 16, 2024

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1584 As a potential ORM, you want to make sure you differentiate your overall profile, to the extent that you can. This can be through work (leadership, impact etc) and through activities outside of work.

Your GPA will be lower than the medians for top programs. But a dual engineering degree will be considered rigorous, and assume you have decent quant coursework on the transcript.

What are your post MBA goals? Do you have any geographic preference, post MBA? Ross etc might be worth considering

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rpeso Likes Earned: 11 A lot of unique experiences during and post college. Worked in various industries during college to support myself and also heavily involved in a lot of ECs supporting diversity and inclusion. Also launched a successful retail business during college. After graduating college, started working in tech as a software engineer and simultaneously cofounded an early stage tech startup that promotes diversity in food industry which I’m trying to grow right now and while pursuing my MBA. So immediate post MBA goal is entrepreneurship or startup strategy and long term goal is getting involved in impact investing. Any thoughts? (1)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1584 Your entrepreneurial goals, and experiences to date, should resonate well with adcom, and should help you differentiate yourself, which is very important. (0)

rpeso Likes Earned: 11 Thanks for the response! Two last questions: are first gen immigrants (moved to the US in my late teens and now a citizen) still placed under same category as other ORM? I think I’ve done a good job of highlighting the uniqueness of my journey so far in all my apps but just looking to understand how adcom categorizes someone with my profile? Based on my interest in entrepreneurship and long term goal of VC or impact investing, what schools do you think would be great fit? (0)

alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1584 You may be considered ORM, some of which depends where you’re specifically from. But it’s not a straightforward classification. It simply means you are similar to others in the applicant pool, so use your story to differentiate yourself.

Frankly, with your goals (entrep/VC) the higher the tier of the program, the better.

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alexbr4 Verified User. Likes Earned: 1584 More details on this candidacy in this episode of Wire Taps: https://www.clearadmit.com/2024/01/mba-wire-taps-333/ (0)