Ask an MBA Admissions Consultant

Hi all,

Thank you very much in advance for your advice.

In brief, I am an Australian lawyer who has been working in London for 3 years at a world-leading international law firm (described in England as 'magic circle', equivalent to 'white shoe' in NYC), having qualified from law school in Australia 4 years ago. It has always been my ambition to do an MBA and move into a business or finance career after a stint in law. Previously I was interested in banking, but I am now settling on a move into asset management of some kind, either in private equity, hedge funds or straight investment management.

I just sat the GMAT and I am very pleased with my unofficial score of 760/99% (Q48/83% and V47/99%). I haven't received my AWA score yet, but it will be average. While I thought my first essay was very strong, I ran out of time on the second and it was incomplete and sub-par. I am not sure how to convert my Australian undergraduate results into a US style GPA, but my undergrad results were okay but not impressive. Also on the topic of intellectual ability, I have passed the level I CFA examination.

I have had superb work experience over the past three years. I am a restructuring lawyer and, as you might imagine, we've been doing some interesting work recently. I won't go into it in detail, but I have done a lot of high profile jobs and worked on timely kinds of deals (i.e. financial institution insolvencies, structured finance vehicles (CDOs), etc). I've also done deals in some interesting jurisdictions, such as Kazakhstan. I think I can leverage my legal experience in asset management in a number of ways, but I won't elaborate here, and I think I would have a lot to contribute to classes. On the community service front, I have for the past two years been volunteering to a charity in London that works with homeless people, accompanying a social worker out on the streets of London one night each month to meet up with homeless people to build relationships with them and to try to help them change their lives for the better. I am quite passionate about continuing to assist vulnerable members of the community into the future.

I have applied for a Fulbright scholarship. Applications have just closed and I will find out in the next few weeks whether the Fulbright Commission would like to interview me. The final awards are announced in mid-December. I think I have a strong application, however these things are obviously always very uncertain.

The schools I am targeting (in rough and still-moving order of preference) are: Harvard, Columbia, Wharton, Stern, Insead.

The questions I am wondering about include:
(1) What are likely to be the weakness in my profile that I should focus on addressing in my essays?
(2) Would there be an advantage to submitting my applications in round 1 (or in the case of Columbia, for early decision)?
(3) Would winning a scholarship like the Fulbright be a significant advantage, such that it would be worth waiting for Round 2 to submit applications on the off chance I may be successful with the scholarship and could mention it in my applications?

One consideration in relation to question 2 is that I will find it quite difficult to get my references in by the close of Round 1, although if it was thought to be strongly advantageous, I might be able to do so for one or two of the schools. The partners at work are all extremely busy at the moment, and I've just had a couple of them do references for my scholarship application and I don't want to push it too much.

Again, many thanks for your thoughts and advice.

Lisa,

Thank you very much for that feedback, its very helpful. I'm not going to worry about applying first round.

Is the purpose of meeting school representatives to try to establish a personal connection so that your application is not just another anonymous pile of papers? E.g. they will receive your application and think "Oh, this is that friendly lawyer I met in London. He seemed driven/smart/mature/confident/etc."