The email below is from another techie who is interested in business school and his story is surprisingly similar to mine. He’s a Computer Science major who wasn’t exactly a math whiz, got a good programming job, and went back to school to get a grad degree before B-school to prove his ability at the grad level. It may seem like a long path to take toward B-school, but it worked for me, so it definitely can happen. Hopefully, my perspective on his situation can be helpful to him.
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IK wrote:
“Hi Marquis :
I found your blog while searching for information on software engineers who have moved onto business school and yours is by far the best resource I have found! I am very interested in getting an MBA and would love to be accepted to a good school( top 30 would be godsend for me ). I am particularly interested in entrepreneurship particularly in the tech industry. I wanted to get some feedback from you on my current situation. I graduated undergrad with a computer science degree from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Problem is I graduated with a 3.0 GPA. In addition I never got higher than a B in any math class and got a C in Statistics. I was working during school but that is still not an excuse. I was fortunate though to get an internship between my junior and senior year at Lockheed Martin and was offered to join them full time after I graduated which I did. I am now currently working at Northrop Grumman as a Software Engineer. In terms of total work experience I would have 4 years this upcoming June.
During this time I started a masters degree in computer science at Johns Hopkins University ( was accepted conditionally based on my performance of the first two courses I took because of my GPA ). I performed well and was accepted fully into Johns Hopkins since then. I should be graduated with the MS in computer science in Spring of 2008 with a GPA of 3.5 in the worst case or 3.7 ( depending on my last two classes ). I have not taken the GMAT yet but will start studying in the summer of 2008. Is computer science seen as difficult by admissions in your opinion? In your experience did having a masters degree help in admissions and does it affect mitigating a low undergraduate GPA or would it be better to take math heavy courses in my last two masters courses or maybe even signing up for finance classes at a local university? I am currently taking a data mining class and may take a neural networks class as my last course.
I realize this is almost asking if my qualifications are “good enough”. But it seems like from your blog you have great experience and knowledge and the only blog I found on a fellow computer science major going into business school.
Thanks for the advice.
IK”
——-
My response:
IK,
What’s going on, man. Reading your story brought me flashbacks because my own journey through an undergrad Computer Science program. Like yours, my road was a litte rocky and I also enrolled in a grad program before business school to show that I could perform at the graduate level. I know exactly where you’re coming from, but the thing to remember is that it IS possible to make it into a good business school if you put in the requisite work and position yourself well. I know because I’ve done it for myself.
From reading your email, I see that you’re worried about two separate issues: (1) will your graduate degree be good enough to account for your so-so undergrad performance and (2) is your overall profile ‘good enough’ to get into a top-30 school. I’ll tackle these two issues separately starting with the first one:
–
(1) So, will your graduate degree be enough to make up for your undergraduate performance? I believe that the answer is “yes”, but, remember, I’ve never worked for an admissions office, so you would have to consider my opinion with a grain of salt. It all depends on how to leverage. While we both know that a M.S. in Computer Science wouldn’t give you much run if you stayed a Software Engineer (because of your undergrad in CS), it could be very impressive in a business school application profile. The coursework in your program is highly analytic, which can imply an ability to tackle the quant classes in B-school, especially if combined with a strong GMAT score. Also, such a high GPA in a highly technical grad program goes a long way in showing that you can handle the rigor of academics on the graduate level.
I can’t say for sure if my first grad degree helped me get admitted to business school, but I certainly know that it didn’t hurt…and I didn’t take any extra classes aside from those in the program. This M.S. in CS could do the same for you and I don’t think you need to take any finance courses in addition to that. Your focus should be on doing as well as possible in your CS grad classes to push your GPA up and on studying for the GMAT to ensure a strong score. If you can do both of those, your undergrad performance shouldn’t keep you from getting into B-school and you should have a legit shot at a top-20 school.
–
(2) Is your profile good enough to get into a top B-school?…Again, you’ll have to take my word as being only my opinion, but, from what you’ve told me, you’ve got a good shot at your target schools. So far, I only basic information about your academics and career though and there’s a lot more to a business school application than those. You still have to put together a strong collection of essays, get some good recommendations, leverage your extracurricular and volunteer activities, and knock the GMAT out of the park. Make sure you think about your entire application package when considering your chances of getting admitted.
The most important issue of all is the way that you present yourself in your application package. I wrote a blog entry about the concept of ‘positioning’ in an application a while back, so I advise you to search through the archives in my blog and find it. Even a strong set of application components can end up getting you dissed if you don’t have a good story to tie it all together. Make sure you don’t forget about that as you’re trying to cover all your bases to apply.
–
I hope you find what I’ve said above helpful. I know it’s got to be stressful trying to figure this all out, but at least you’re thinking about it pretty far in advance. Take care and good luck in finishing up your current grad program. I’m sure you’ll be able to get into a good B-school in the future.
-Marquis
——-
IK wrote:
“Hi Marquis :
I found your blog while searching for information on software engineers who have moved onto business school and yours is by far the best resource I have found! I am very interested in getting an MBA and would love to be accepted to a good school( top 30 would be godsend for me ). I am particularly interested in entrepreneurship particularly in the tech industry. I wanted to get some feedback from you on my current situation. I graduated undergrad with a computer science degree from the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Problem is I graduated with a 3.0 GPA. In addition I never got higher than a B in any math class and got a C in Statistics. I was working during school but that is still not an excuse. I was fortunate though to get an internship between my junior and senior year at Lockheed Martin and was offered to join them full time after I graduated which I did. I am now currently working at Northrop Grumman as a Software Engineer. In terms of total work experience I would have 4 years this upcoming June.
During this time I started a masters degree in computer science at Johns Hopkins University ( was accepted conditionally based on my performance of the first two courses I took because of my GPA ). I performed well and was accepted fully into Johns Hopkins since then. I should be graduated with the MS in computer science in Spring of 2008 with a GPA of 3.5 in the worst case or 3.7 ( depending on my last two classes ). I have not taken the GMAT yet but will start studying in the summer of 2008. Is computer science seen as difficult by admissions in your opinion? In your experience did having a masters degree help in admissions and does it affect mitigating a low undergraduate GPA or would it be better to take math heavy courses in my last two masters courses or maybe even signing up for finance classes at a local university? I am currently taking a data mining class and may take a neural networks class as my last course.
I realize this is almost asking if my qualifications are “good enough”. But it seems like from your blog you have great experience and knowledge and the only blog I found on a fellow computer science major going into business school.
Thanks for the advice.
IK”
——-
My response:
IK,
What’s going on, man. Reading your story brought me flashbacks because my own journey through an undergrad Computer Science program. Like yours, my road was a litte rocky and I also enrolled in a grad program before business school to show that I could perform at the graduate level. I know exactly where you’re coming from, but the thing to remember is that it IS possible to make it into a good business school if you put in the requisite work and position yourself well. I know because I’ve done it for myself.
From reading your email, I see that you’re worried about two separate issues: (1) will your graduate degree be good enough to account for your so-so undergrad performance and (2) is your overall profile ‘good enough’ to get into a top-30 school. I’ll tackle these two issues separately starting with the first one:
–
(1) So, will your graduate degree be enough to make up for your undergraduate performance? I believe that the answer is “yes”, but, remember, I’ve never worked for an admissions office, so you would have to consider my opinion with a grain of salt. It all depends on how to leverage. While we both know that a M.S. in Computer Science wouldn’t give you much run if you stayed a Software Engineer (because of your undergrad in CS), it could be very impressive in a business school application profile. The coursework in your program is highly analytic, which can imply an ability to tackle the quant classes in B-school, especially if combined with a strong GMAT score. Also, such a high GPA in a highly technical grad program goes a long way in showing that you can handle the rigor of academics on the graduate level.
I can’t say for sure if my first grad degree helped me get admitted to business school, but I certainly know that it didn’t hurt…and I didn’t take any extra classes aside from those in the program. This M.S. in CS could do the same for you and I don’t think you need to take any finance courses in addition to that. Your focus should be on doing as well as possible in your CS grad classes to push your GPA up and on studying for the GMAT to ensure a strong score. If you can do both of those, your undergrad performance shouldn’t keep you from getting into B-school and you should have a legit shot at a top-20 school.
–
(2) Is your profile good enough to get into a top B-school?…Again, you’ll have to take my word as being only my opinion, but, from what you’ve told me, you’ve got a good shot at your target schools. So far, I only basic information about your academics and career though and there’s a lot more to a business school application than those. You still have to put together a strong collection of essays, get some good recommendations, leverage your extracurricular and volunteer activities, and knock the GMAT out of the park. Make sure you think about your entire application package when considering your chances of getting admitted.
The most important issue of all is the way that you present yourself in your application package. I wrote a blog entry about the concept of ‘positioning’ in an application a while back, so I advise you to search through the archives in my blog and find it. Even a strong set of application components can end up getting you dissed if you don’t have a good story to tie it all together. Make sure you don’t forget about that as you’re trying to cover all your bases to apply.
–
I hope you find what I’ve said above helpful. I know it’s got to be stressful trying to figure this all out, but at least you’re thinking about it pretty far in advance. Take care and good luck in finishing up your current grad program. I’m sure you’ll be able to get into a good B-school in the future.
-Marquis
