GMAT 670: What are my chances at Haas?

[svar]

I just got complete gmat score-card

My GMAT score is 670
Maths : 51
Verbal : 28
AWA : 3.5

I am electrical engineer and has 7+ years of work-experience in vlsi (5+ years in US and 2 years in India)

What are my chances at weekend and evening MBA program at Haas (Berkeley). Do I have any chance at all ?

I can definitely improve my GMAT score to 720 (as I prepared only for couple of weeks first time)

thanks a lot

[Erin]

I'd say not very good. I've had internationals with higher GMAT scores and similar work experience get dinged by Haas and Davis. The UC's are tough for internationals, IMO.

Also, your AWA score is too low for almost any good school--many admissions officials have told me that they require at least a 4.0 on the AWA, even if the AWA score isn't that important.

So yeah, you're going to have to knuckle down and study some more!

[mtariq]

Erin, Were you speaking about Berkeley in geneal or specifically the evening (part time) program at Berkeley?

Svar asked about the part time program which is competive but I think the admissions criteria may be diferent.

First of all, since this is part time, most of the applicants to the program are local to Silicon Valley since they are presumably working in the area.
So this for one thing does make it easier since you are less likely to be competing with international applicants or even US ones who are NOT in the Bay area.

The program is very expensive even for local residents. A huge plus with the full time program is that it is inexpensive compared to other programs (10K a year vs 30K). The first year at the part time program is 27K... yes 27K for part time. So this factor also makes the full-time program more competive.

So I think Svar has a decent chance as long as his other factors are good: recomendations, essays, and leadership roles in his jobs.

Finally I think 670-680 is the mean score for the part time program.

Mariam

[Erin]

Originally posted by mtariq

Erin, Were you speaking about Berkeley in geneal or specifically the evening (part time) program at Berkeley?

I was talking about the regular, full-time program.

Yes, in general part-time and evening programs are easier to get into, but I don't think I've ever had a student apply to that particular program (except you, of course!).

Just found out yesterday that somebody I helped last fall got dinged at Haas, but waitlisted at HBS. And another student with mostly good stats got dinged by Princeton (they cited too little work experience). Both guys told me that they were told by the adcoms that this year is really, really tough--so many good applicants.

[mtariq]

Hey Erin ... From what I heard it is unbelievably tough right now, even more unbelievably tough than it usually is! This is a huge reason I chose to apply part-time instead of full-time.

Just found the admit stats of Haas Full-time vs Part-time:

Full-time: 11%
Part-time: 26%

Mariam

[jimb]

There is an excellent reason that they were not admitted to princeton. Princeton doesn't have a business school.

[Erin]

Originally posted by jimb

There is an excellent reason that they were not admitted to princeton. Princeton doesn't have a business school.

The person in question was applying to the Bendheim Center for Finance at Princeton University.