Military officer accepted into Wharton despite 2.5 undergrad GPA

• US military with 10 years of experience
• GPA: 2.5 from a service academy
• GMAT: Initial 660; retest once waitlisted 700

I wholeheartedly recommend Avanti prep to anyone serious about earning admission into a top MBA program.


I learned about Avanti Prep from review on GMAT club. After reaching out to multiple admission consulting services, I chose Avanti because of their prompt and personal responses to my email inquiries. I couldn’t be more impressed and pleased with the services they provided over the following months! I made the right choice. Through the entire application and waitlist process, I worked closely with Beau and felt like we were a team pushing towards the same goal. I initially purchased ten hours of counseling then bought another ten as I was highly impressed with our results and progress.

I applied in round 2 to six business schools and completed my applications while deployed to Afghanistan. I took the GMAT a couple of days before deploying and earned a 660. Though I had a decade of leadership experience in the military, I knew my 80th percentile GMAT and 2.5 undergrad GPA would present severe obstacles to my candidacy for a top 20 MBA program. I applied to one M7 school (Wharton), my reach school; I also applied to three other top 20 schools, one school in Europe, and one top 50 school.

First, Beau and I worked closely on my resume, which I had to create from scratch. I sent drafts to Beau, and he would make edits and recommendations before we met virtually. During our virtual sessions, Beau challenged me to make every line and word of my resume count; the improvement between my initial draft and final resume was immense! Beau and I followed a similar process for each essay, 11 in total. He provided copious insights about each school’s application review process and helped me understand in-depth what each school was looking for in a candidate’s essays and resume. Working with Beau also helped me better refine my own MBA goals.

My applications earned interview invitations to five of the six schools. Beau helped coach me through interview prep, and we held a mock interview as a culminating event.

Through this entire process, Beau was highly responsive and accommodating. My job as a deployed officer was time-consuming; Beau made every effort to work with my demanding schedule. He even once met with me at 5am EST because that was the only time I had available.

Following the interviews, I was accepted into one school and waitlisted at the other four (the one school in Europe did not accept me). Beau explained the waitlist process to me and recommended strategies to continue correspondence with each school and improve my candidacy. Beau and Greg even convinced me to use my two-week leave period after deployment to prepare for and retake the GMAT- a decision that was well worth the effort. I earned a 700, and acceptance into Wharton a few weeks later.

The MBA application landscape is complicated and competitive. Having Avanti Prep with me through the process made a huge difference; I do not believe I would have earned acceptance into any school, let alone Wharton, without their expert counsel.