Profile Review - 27M, 690 GMAT, 3.18 GPA, Tech Sales

Hey, I go a T10 and volunteer for an admissions consultancy. Your GPA is pretty poor for most of your target schools: McCombs has a 3.4 GPA average, as does Foster. Average GMAT for both is 704 from what I looked up. Your career trajectory is impressive with your promotions and managerial experience, but you are an ORM and I don't see any meaningful extracurriculars like philanthropy or outside-of-work leadership. Unless you have a really compelling personal story, these schools may be reaches for you.

With your GPA, I would recommend retaking the GMAT (or take the GRE because I believe it to be an easier test) and aim for 720+. Tech sales is a great career and unique pre-MBA experience, and there are a few folks at my T10 coming from it (are you at Oracle?). The positive stereotypes for it is that it grants you very useful soft skills, but the negative stereotypes for it is that you may lack the harder analytical skills needed for the more mathy coursework or post-MBA jobs. This is usually successfully mitigated by a high GMAT/GRE, specifically a really good quant score.

The other thing is that maybe reconsider what you state your post-MBA goals are in your application. Going from tech sales to tech strategy in FAANG is doable, but usually corp strategy groups at major and minor tech firms like to hire ex-consultants. I have seen the tech sales folks successfully transition into Product Marketing Management and Product Management however (which on the bright side usually makes more $$ than tech strategy).

None of this is to discourage you, and of course, you could still end up beating the odds and getting in somewhere good. But these are the blind spots I see on your application given the information you provided us here.

/r/MBA Thread