Indian Male 680 , IT Project Management - Evaluate ?

Hey Kshitij -

It's always tough to give people a fair shake when all we have are some limited data about them on a discussion forum so please don't take this as a final answer, but you may be facing some challenges based on the info you shared and your target schools. As you probably know, you're coming from an oversubscribed candidate pool; there's just a lot of others "like you" applying, with similar backgrounds and stats. Your GMAT score is unfortunately a little low for any of the top schools like Kellogg et al. The average GMAT for Indian candidates who make it into the top programs is around 720. Anything under 700 makes things harder. Your undergraduate record also looks a little weak - though it's hard to say since we don't know the school, and there are different standards at different Indian colleges. These two factors combined mean that the rest of your profile would need to be amazing - which maybe it is!! We obviously don't know you enough to say. The PMP is nice to have, and hopefully you've got some good leadership and teamwork stories as part of your project management experience; those angles do differentiate you somewhat from someone who's "just" an IT engineer.

Since we're so early in the admissions season, we would encourage you to try the GMAT once again if you're serious about a Top 10 school. A school like Rotman may be OK with the existing score if you do a great job on the essays. It all depends on the whole package. Other schools like maybe Kelley or Emory could also be interested - it depends on how you pitch them, and of course it really depends on what you want to do with the MBA. There's lots of variables involved and a strategy needs to be developed carefully.

A higher GMAT score won't guarantee anything but you're below the mean at the moment, so it presents an obstacle for you. You'll also want to go for a Round 1 app to those more competitive schools, which means you have a lot to work on this summer! Give it some thought and let us know if you have questions that we can help with.

EssaySnark