Hi! US citizen looking to apply to European or Asian MBA programs. I'm a bit late in the game for this year (2017), but I figured that since my GMAT expires in April, its either apply now or retake! Any thoughts on the below schools or programs that would be a better fit? Should I retake the GMAT? Appreciate any advice!

Age: 31
680 GMAT V41 Q42
GPA 3.47 (took longer to graduate as a worked full-time, so my transcripts will look strange)
3.5 years in Financial Services, with ESL teaching in Japan in-between. Currently work at Deutsche Bank (Jax not NYC)
Strong verbal, so I imagine my essays will be strong

I see opportunities all over DB where I could contribute, would really love to accelerate my growth with an MBA. I was scoring in the 720s, but didn't perform on test day. This was years ago, so probably 3 months of studying to retake, which would put me out of this cycle and into next year (2018).

Top programs in order of preference:

Oxford
IE
IESE
HKUST
ESADE
NUS
HKU


Thanks!!

As an American with a balanced GMAT score, they'll probably be more lenient on you than they would with people from more competitive applicant groups. But it might also depend on your career goals - if you wanted to stay in financial services the adcomms might look for a higher quant score, for example. In general though, I think you have good chances at most of these schools, even with a 680 (700+ would look really good, though.)

And I think that even if you took another couple of months to prepare, you could still get into the fall 2017 application cycle (you might probably miss the first round deadlines but that's not usually a big deal.)

For Asia, I think you are ok. (I did a MBA in Asia)

They look less the GMAT than the personality. For European MBA, it will be more competitive.

I agree with @mba hipster, you may miss the first round but you should still be in time