How I Got Into Columbia With A 640 GMAT

Columbia Business School successful candidates have an average accepted GMAT score of 717, length of work experience north of 12 years, and a 6:1 applicant-to-acceptance ratio.

The candidate had a 3.6 GPA with a double major in political science and journalism. Top tips are

1. Demonstrate Humility

Include some example of a time you’ve grown from a mistake, admit flaws, show that mistakes are opportunities to genuinely grow and mature. They want to see in you what all other CEOs have had to experience at one point or another in their careers – the strength to admit that you can be wrong.

2. Showcase Your Hard Work

Pick a time and an example when you’ve taken an idea from the ground up, and when you, yourself, built something meaningful. Make sure it is somewhat recent, and that it took both innovation and research to get it done. Include details of having gone above and beyond to get your idea heard, ideally one that few others thought could actually be successful. 

2. Tell Them Your Plan

Tell them who you really want to be one day. If you are in the healthcare field, tell them about your plan to reduce spiraling medical costs. If it’s real estate, tell them about the industry’s biggest problems and your perspective on how the MBA helps you to solve them. They want to go to bed at night knowing that they could have found the nation’s next tycoon, industry change-agent, scientist or inventor.  Give them what they are looking for and speak your GD mind!

For more information see Poets&Quants

The 11 Best Business Schools for Entrepreneurs

Since 2013, graduate business education resource Poets&Quants has ranked the start-ups to come out of business schools by the amount of venture capital-backed funding. The annual list of top MBA start-ups includes 100 companies founded between Jan. 1, 2012, and Dec. 31, 2016, that have at least one founder who graduated with an MBA in that same time frame.

Two schools dominate: Harvard Business School and Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Each has alumni running 24 venture-funded start-ups. 

And while Harvard and Stanford boast alumni at nearly half the start-ups on the list, in 2015, the two heavyweights dominated the list even more conclusively, with 71 start-ups between them.

According to Poets&Quants data, here are 2017's top business schools for aspiring entrepreneurs:

1.   Harvard Business School: 24 companies

2.   Stanford Graduate School of Business: 24 companies

3.   The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School: 12 companies

4.   Columbia Business School: 11 companies

5.   Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management: 8 companies

6.   MIT Sloan School of Management: 6 companies

7.   NYU Stern School of Business: 5 companies

8.   UC Berkeley Haas School of Business: 4 companies

9.   UCLA Anderson School of Management: 3 companies

10. University of Texas Austin McCombs: 2 companies

11. The University of Virginia Darden School of Business: 2 companies

For more see CNBC