Ask ARINGO MBA Admissions Consulting

I am a 26 year old female from India and applying to US business schools in 2012. I have a GMAT of 640 (Q:45 / V:34 / AWA:4) and a TOEFL score of 96. I have worked for 4 years as a marketing executive in India in the hospitality industry. I have worked for two different hotel groups 1) 1 yr at a large single hotel located in the commercial center in the capital city of India 2) ~3 yrs at a large multi-national and multi-brand hotel chain, with responsibility for nationwide (India) marketing. I had hit a ceiling at my company and without an MBA they were not willing to promote me further or give me additional responsibilities. So I quit and for last 2 months, I have been working as a full-time volunteer for an NGO for differently-abled and underprivileged children. By the time I join a business school (hopefully), I would have worked at this NGO for almost 1 year. I am passionate about dance and was part of a professional dance group for 5 years (alongside my college and job). Both at college and as part of this dance group, I have performed at multiple shows with audiences of 1,000+ people and won many awards. I have an undergraduate degree in English (Hons.) where I studied English, History and Philosophy. I was very active in my college’s dance and theatre society. Indian colleges do not have a GPA system. I would consider myself a firm mid-tier performer academically.
I am very keen on continuing a career in marketing. Can you kindly advise which schools will best suit my profile? I am keen on Duke, Haas and Cornell.
Thank you very much in advance.

MilindJ,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 710, our experience indicates you would be a stretch candidate at Kellogg, Tuck, Ross, Fuqua, Darden, Anderson, and Stern, and between stretch and competitive at McCombs.

1) I would strongly encourage you to consider delaying your application by at least one year. With just two years of work experience at the moment, you are on the younger side of the applicant pool. In our experience, the candidates who are successful in applications with just two years of full-time work experience are typically from the management consulting or investment banking industries. The male, Indian, engineer, working in IT demographic is extremely large and most of those applicants have many more years of experience than you have.

2) Your undergraduate grades are potentially going to be a (major) concern. Although you attended a good school, a 58% is much lower than most students I have come across from Indian universities. You will need to make sure to provide proper context for these grades, including your graduation percentile / rank and/or other detail around what an average GPA looks like for this school.

3) Your career goals and reason for MBA are somewhat emblematic of a younger applicant - I would encourage you to make sure that you give specific short and long term goals including a geography, industry, function, and target companies or types of companies. It looks like you have chosen a subset of schools that are known to be stronger in general management, so that is aligned with your objectives.

Best of luck,

mjr0410,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 710, our experience indicates you would be a stretch candidate at top 20 schools in the US, between stretch and competitive (closer to stretch) at schools 20-25, and between stretch and competitive at programs in the 25-30 range.

Overall, your profile and my thoughts are extremely similar to that of MilindJ, whose profile I just provided a response for in one post earlier. Specifically, points 1) and 2) there would also apply to you - I would recommend that you consider applying in the future (not this year), and make sure you provide context about your grades as they are potentially going to be a concern for the ad coms.

It's even more relevant for you to get some additional work experience, and promotions, because you are working at a very small IT consulting firm. When applicants come from smaller companies that are not as well-known, ad coms need to see a clear progression of increasing responsibility and promotions. Otherwise, it is hard for them to calibrate your experience because they do not have a lot of data points from prior applicants in that firm from years past. If you have received promotion(s), definitely include this in your resume and application.

In terms of your GPA, and this goes for many applicants from India that I have seen in profile submissions, you do not need to (and should not) try to convert from a 10 or 100% scale into a 4.0 scale. Ad coms know how to deal with a 100% scale but do need context around what the average and your percentile rank was within your graduating class.

Best of luck,

Winds81,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 640, our experience indicates you would be a stretch candidate at Fuqua, Haas, and Johnson.

You have relatively unique profile and work history relative to most of your peers from India, which helps significantly. At the same time, however, with a below average (for top programs) GMAT, likely average grades, and a TOEFL score that is lower than the 100 that many top programs require, we would project that top programs would have concerns about your ability to be successful. It appears you might have selected Fuqua, Haas, and Johnson because they either do not have an absolute minimum TOEFL score or have a minimum that is below 100 - this makes sense. Based on our experience, if you are interested in top 15 programs in the US, I would recommend that you consider retaking both the GMAT and the TOEFL to improve your scores to the extent possible. Regardless of your current and future test scores, I would encourage you to apply to programs outside of the top 15, as well.

Regarding your grades, ad coms expect applicants to provide the percentage / score of their marks from university. Please see my remarks on this topic from any number of other Indian applicants in this thread for further detail.

One other area you'll want to make sure to phrase with care is the nature of the end of your work experience with the hotel chain. It's quite important to make sure to describe that you left the organization on good terms, and you'll also need to have at least one of your recommenders from this company anyways.

Additionally, I would say try to be as structured as possible in your essays and interview responses so that you are able to convey the strength of your communication skills.

Best of luck,

I am extremely worried now that I have seen some people's profiles and see that they aren't considered strong for some schools. Well, in order to narrow down my choices in applications I might as well give it a shot.

Age: 25
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: Taiwanese
GPA: 2.9 State University at Stony Brook (really stupid grading system for labs)
Major: Biochemistry
Work EXP: 3 years at a small laboratory. Went from a quality control chemist to a quality control and quality assurance manager.
GMAT: 690 (Q50, V31)
Schools that I am looking to apply to: Tuck, Columbia, Stern (mainly want to go here), Johnson, and Booth
I know I will have strong letters of recommendation, especially since I am coming from a different field. One of the letters is from an accounting professor and another is from my current supervisor who used to be the technical director at a big pharmaceutical company.

Hi, many thanks for the work that you guys are doing.

Would request you to provide some input and direction based upon the profile posted below-

Gender - Male
Nationality - Indian
Age - 28
GMAT - 700 (q49, v35)

Highest Qualification - B. E (Computer Science & Engineering) from a Tier2 college in India
Percentage in B.E. = 70%
12th - 81%
10th - 81%

Work Exp : 7 years

Currently working as Assistant Vice President for a small-sized service based company in India which caters to only Investment banks. Managing the account for an leading investment bank in USA and leading a team of around 10 people. The work on client side invloves development of a derivative trading platform but I mange the account for all the engagements beween this bank and my employer. Have worked with Swiss bank singapore team for an year.

Before that - I was able to convince one of the US based firms to start its operation in India. Though the operstion could last only for one and half year.

I can arrange one reco from CEO of my current employer and another from the CEO of the oraganization which started it's operation India.

NO extra curr.
NO community work.

One more point, though I am not sure whether it will be positive or negative for my profile, is - I belong to a place in India which is extremely backward (even electricity isn't available yet) and I have completed my schooling (till 10th) from there.

Target schools -
INSEAD
Kellog
IE
IMD
LBS

Would you suggest me to re-take GMAT?

Injuin,

Thank you for your profile submission. Based on the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 690, our experience indicates that you would be a stretch candidate at the schools you are interested in. We would project that you would be between a stretch and competitive candidate at programs in the 20-25 range in the US, and between stretch and competitive (closer to competitive) at programs 25-30 in the US.

Thoughts on your profile -

Since you have a below average (for top programs) GMAT and a below average (for top programs) GPA, you will need to be able to hit upon other areas in the application to make up for these areas. Yet, I do not see any comments on your leadership or extracurricular activities outside of a professional realm. Keep in mind that these will be important to help the ad coms consider your potential - this is also critical since you have slightly less work experience than the average applicant. I also do not see any summary of the reasons for why you are interested in the MBA and what you are looking to do from a career standpoint after graduation.

Regarding recommendations, in our experience we strongly recommend candidates to gain two professional (not academic) sources. A professor is much less able to judge your strengths and weaknesses in a professional setting. This is perhaps more important if you come from a smaller company that sends (in all probability) fewer employees per capita to business school than other, larger companies.

In terms of your GPA, keep in mind you will need to have a (much) different approach to explaining your grades, relative to what you have currently in your profile. In our interaction with applicants, we see reasons for a low GPA that resonate with the ad coms as things like: working a significant number of hours (and especially when most other students do not), graduating in 3 or 3.5 years, taking a double major, dealing with a significant personal loss or difficult personal situation, etc.

My thought is that you may consider taking at least 1 (if not 2) classes in a business subject to indicate to the ad com that you will be able to handle the rigor of an MBA program. You may consider delaying applying for a year to take a class or two, gain another promotion, increase your extracurricular involvement and leadership, and potentially re-take the GMAT.

You comment that you are concerned that some other profiles have been given some low chances projections. In general, in our experience, with 2 or 3 areas with lower than average performance vs. top programs, it is that much more difficult (but not impossible) to gain admission, especially if one is in a competitive demographic. Aringo has worked with candidates with low GMAT scores to gain acceptance to top programs, and it can be done. But, our chances projections are based on our experience with candidates and the general odds given certain profile characteristics.

Best of luck,
Brian

Ellipse,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 700, our experience indicates you would be a stretch candidate at INSEAD, Kellogg, and IMD, between stretch and competitive at LBS, and strong at IE.

Comments on your profile -

You comment that you attended a "Tier 2" university in India. I would definitely include your relative graduation rank / percentile within your class. On your recommendations, I would just caution you to make sure that both of the CEOs know you well and can speak in depth about your strengths and developmental opportunities. If they do, great! It's just that in our experience, we caution clients against trying to go for the "big" name if that recommender does not know the applicant well enough and has not truly supervised the work of the applicant.

Regarding coming from a less affluent part of the country and whether this is a positive or a negative, the answer (like many other parts of the MBA application process) is that it all depends on how you frame it. If you have an attitude that speaks to the challenges you have faced and how you have worked to overcome them, this works to your advantage. If you are able to incorporate how your background influenced your approach in business and helped you to succeed, even better. If, on the other hand, you come off as complaining or lamenting your background as something that has held you back, in our experience this resonates much less with (and can turn off) ad coms.

In terms of your extracurriculars, you comment there was "no" involvement. When we have conversations with clients, we often find that people can underestimate their actual extracurricular involvement because they think some of their prior activities are actually not "valid." So, I would just encourage you to think expansively about your prior history. For example, if you lead recruiting efforts at your firm, this can count. As far as re-taking the GMAT, a higher score could help your profile, but personally I would be more interested on either increasing your extracurricular involvement and/or explaining why your prior involvement was limited. Ad coms will want to know if you will be a committed alumnus of your MBA program and if you will be invested into the outside of academic component of the MBA program. As such, make sure you are extremely specific (vs. general) in your essays about the types of activities and initiatives that you would look to join, contribute to, and lead.

Finally, definitely make sure to check your application for spelling errors and any typos prior to submission.

Best of luck,

Thanks for taking time out and going through my profile.

Do you think a score of 740 would make my profile competitve at INSEAD? In that case, I can think of retaking GMAT.

Hi,
please advice.

Age:23

Gmat :710(50 Quant,35 Verbal)

Work ex : - Currently 2.5 years in an IT consulting Firm.
- Working for an insurance client and was involved in several cost cutting,Process improvement projects with a cost saving range of 20K to 100K $ savings.
- Was part of a team which procured a $11 million worth project.Contributed in Providing the Technical feasibility as well as the proof of concept for the project.
- Led a team of technical experts to train New joinees into company in various cutting edge technologies.

Qualification : B.Tech IT with Honors from a Tier one University of India

GPA : 9.21/10 (not sure how would it convert it to 4.0 scale.. A direct conversion gives 3.68/4.0)

Extra Curriculars :
-Awarded Best speaker award by Ministry of Parliamentry affairs of India at regional level(Among nine States).
-Was pioneer in establishing a Telugu(My mother tongue,An Indian Regional language) Literary club in my University and led a team of 8 to win International level cultural festival at VIT University,India.
-Head of Guest lectures Team,DAKSH,an international level techno management fest held at my University and organized guest lectures by famous people such as Harold Kroto(One of the Discoverer of Buckminster Fullerene) and Subramania swamy(Faculty at harvard and Minister of parliament of India) for a group of more than 400 students.
-Executive Member of Association of Information Technology department in my university.Organized several technical sessions such as Quantitaive Aptitude,Computer hardware as well as several communication related sessions.
-Represented school table tennis team for district and state level competitions.
-Won intra mural team table tennis championship both at school level and University level.
-Stood runner up in district level singing competitions.
-Have led Quiz teams at school level,Won several of them at intra school level and inter schools level.

Academic :
- 6th among a class of 144 with a GPA of 9.2/10
- Awarded Deans list (Top 2% of the University) for a Final year GPA of 9.8/10.
- awarded Merit list (Top 10 % of the Unviersity) for a second year GPA of 8.8/10

Community service:

- At University ,Was part of a team which arranged for health as well as entertainment program for old age homes.
- At school was a Part of Bharat Scouts and Guides ,An Organization,Which works for social equality as well as community helping.Awarded third highest honor, Tritiya sopan for my services and for leading a troop of 40 Scouts.

Aiming; MIT,Oxford,ISB,NUS(singapore),Arizona State University. Please Suggest if i can get through top three of my options.

Hello,

Could you please give me a little feedback on my unique situation? I am applying for MBA programs in pursuit of a JD/MBA dual degree. I am hoping for admission into at least one top 14 law school (such as Cornell, Harvard, Virginia, Penn, Stanford, Chicago, Columbia) and would like to get into the MBA program as well. However, I am a college senior and am concerned about the uphill battle with work experience. While I have not been working after undergraduate I started a real estate investment business and work in real estate. I am a female Native American(citizen of Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma), 3.65 gpa in Business from a large public institution, with a GMAT of 710, AWA 5.5, Quant in the 71st percentile(my weakness) and Verbal in the 96th percentile. I am applying through the Consortium to schools like Michigan, Darden, Yale, Cornell, ect. Do I have a chance of getting into the Business School at any of these? If so, how can I craft an application to make up for my weaknesses and highlight my strengths?

Thank you for your insight!

Ellipse,

Thank you for the follow-up question. Based on our experience, a 740 would help you, yes - we would project that you would be between a stretch and competitive candidate at Kellogg, INSEAD, and IMD. However, keep in mind we also projected that a key area to address is going to be how you frame extracurricular activities and your contribution to the MBA experience.

Quote:

As far as re-taking the GMAT, a higher score could help your profile, but personally I would be more interested on either increasing your extracurricular involvement and/or explaining why your prior involvement was limited. Ad coms will want to know if you will be a committed alumnus of your MBA program and if you will be invested into the outside of academic component of the MBA program. As such, make sure you are extremely specific (vs. general) in your essays about the types of activities and initiatives that you would look to join, contribute to, and lead.

Best of luck,
Brian

nsvivekanand,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 710, our experience indicates you would be between a stretch and competitive candidate at Sloan, and strong at Oxord. We have the most data on the top 30 global programs, and have less precise ability to predict chances at ISB and NUS, but you would likely be at least competitive at these programs. With your profile, if you are looking at US schools I would recommend that you look at programs in the top 10 to top 20 range - Arizona State is typically outside of that range.

Overall, you have a strong profile, with a solid GMAT score, very good academic marks, and a good extracurricular profile with some solid accomplishments. With respect to your extracurriculars and awards, try to prioritize which of these that are perhaps the most impressive and try to design your resume (and which of these you talk about in essays) around this approach.

The one challenge is that you are on the younger side, both in terms of age and in the number of years of work experience, for most top programs. I do not see anything in your profile around future career goals or why MBA. For an applicant in an extremely competitive cohort such as the male, Indian, engineering major working in IT or IT consulting, the future career goals and why MBA are quite important differentiating factors for applicants.

Don't worry or try to convert your GPA to a 4.0 scale - just show your grades on the 10 point scale and show your class rank (thank you for putting this in your profile - very helpful for ad coms).

Additionally, in your essays, make sure to have someone that you trust take a look at the language, spelling, and punctuation that you use. For example, in your profile, I see a fair amount of capitalization of words that would typically not be punctuated in this way in English.

Best of luck,
Brian

Milo2010,

Thank you for your profile submission and questions. Since you are a college senior, virtually the only top MBA program that would realistically consider you for admission would be Harvard - but that would be under the premise for their 2+2 program in which you would need to work for 2 years after you graduate. You have a good profile for an MBA candidate from a metrics perspective (GMAT, GPA), and as both a female and Native American, you would be given extra consideration by top programs. However, unlike medical or law school, top MBA programs strongly desire full-time work experience since this experience is a large part of the basis on which you would contribute to class discussions. In our experience, ad coms will not genuinely "count" internships or undergraduate work experience unless the venture was entrepreneurial in nature, it was the applicant who founded/runs the company, AND the company has legitimate financial performance with extremely strong growth and/or venture capital support.

If you're really focused on getting an MBA from a top school, I would recommend that you either:
1) Work for several years post-undergrad and then apply, where your chances would be quite good, or
2) Apply to and attend law school, work as a lawyer, and then apply to business school

Best of luck,
Brian

Hello

I took the GMAT and received a 690 Q47 V37 AWA 5.5 and IR 8.

I have accumulated 3 years of work experience in the hospitality industry. One in a management operations role at a four star resort and two years as a hospitality consultant for a leading industry firm

I graduated from undergrad in hospitality with a 3.72 gpa

My short term goal is to shift my career to hotel development and my long term goal is to own my own full service hotel

Extra curriculars
Several hospitality professional organizations
Non profit work for a meal delivery organization
Independent research articles in the hospitality industry

I am applying to Yale, Cornell (obvious hospitality ties), Duke, and Emory. What are my chances?

Posted from my mobile device

pmiklius,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 690, our experience indicates you would be between a stretch and competitive candidate at Yale, and strong at Johnson, Fuqua, and Emory.

Clearly, your experience and future career interests in the hospitality sector are well-aligned, and it is good to have both experience at a hotel and in a consultative role as well.

The one potential area I might point out is how strongly you position yourself as a hospitality-focused MBA student - undergrad major, all of your work experience, a number of tie-ins with extracurriculars, short term goal, AND long term goal. Even though a program like Cornell is well-renowned for its program in this space, when applying to a top-tier, full-time MBA program, you want to have an element in your application that shows you would value a cross-industry, cross-functional experience. The (vast) majority of the cases you study will not be about hospitality, for example, particularly in your core classes. I love your energy for the industry, but just would caution you to also frame your essays in a way that indicates you're interested in the "full" MBA experience from an academic standpoint.

The second area is to make sure you have as much leadership exemplified in your extracurricular activities. It's not clear if you were managing others in your first role. If so, definitely point it out; if not, it becomes that much more important to show your leadership potential. Additionally, if the move to the consulting position was promotional in nature (responsibility, pay, etc.) also point this out.

Best of luck,

I'd like to give it a shot:

Hi there,

1) Work

- 1y in Armed Forces (rank: Sergeant, leading a small group and responsible for the technical and tactical training). As ususal my country, I remain a member of the Armed Forces for 6-10 years and am attending annual repetition courses (3.5weeks each) during which I have the function of an instructor or lead a group in exercices.
- 3 months internship at 2nd tier global Mgmt consulting company
- Business Management position for 2y at bulge bracket bank in Europe (providing analytical, administrational and other support for senior Mgmt). Great management exposure, early promotion. Whole thing was in the client facing unit for private clients from some emerging markets.

After things were pretty much done at the bank (I had joined after a significant restructuring),

- I joined microfinance startup NGO in Ghana in Sep 2012 to help building it, pro bono work, committed for at least six months. Had always dreamed of the challenge to work in developing country.

2) GMAT Score: 680 (85%; V:83%, Q:71%). (Re-taking is not an option)

3) Undergrad in Business Administration from a leading European institution (St. Gallen, HEC, RSM, Bocconi). Very solid, but not stellar, GPA.

4) Extra-curricular:

- Voluntary member for 9 months (full time) in a selective and prestigious student initiative (incl. leading 60 students for a 2w period), otherwise mainly relationship management with business leaders.
- Co-founded a successful online gaming team in my pre-college years (incl. management of corporate sponsors and 20 staff members). Grew to a considerable size during college.

6) Target schools

Top25 schools, global brand and internationality is important (I am not really U.S.-focused): Fields of interests: Corporate finance, general management, development (but all with of them with a focus on emerging markets/developing countries). Less interest in: Tech (and the related start-ups), Marketing.

7) Post-MBA goal.

Very fascinated with emerging and developing countries, hope to join and lead (or maybe build, at a later stage) a company that either consults companies that enter these markets or finances local companies (e.g. through PE). To put it more visionary: Helping to transform underdeveloped economies by enabling businesses.

Other.

Have quite adventurous personality and am a risk-taker: Do a lot of outdoor-sports (kayaking, mountaineering etc.) and backpacked through some special destinations (e.g. Somalia, Mali, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia etc.).

Would extremely appreciate your insightful feedback!

Hi Aringo,

Here's my profile:

Gender - Female; 29 yrs old
Ethnicity - Chinese
GMAT - 620 (V: 34, Q: 41, AWA: 5, IR: 7)
GPA - 3.7 from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Undergraduate Degree - Bachelors of Science in Industrial Engineering
Professional Experience - 6+ years spread over various geographical locations; Chicago (approx. 2 years), London (1 year), Hong Kong (4 months) and Singapore (3+ years)
Industries - 4 years in management consulting and 2 years in banking (risk management)

I'm looking at the following MBA programs:
Stanford
Kellogg
Chicago Booth
Columbia
MIT
Berkeley

I'm at crossroads at the moment as my GMAT score isn't my strong point. Your advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks!

FifthEmu,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 680, our experience indicates you would be a stretch candidate at IMD, between stretch and competitive (closer to stretch) at INSEAD, between stretch and competitive (closer to competitive) at LBS, competitive at Oxford, and strong at IESE, HEC Paris, and IE.

Your current work experience at the NGO is well-aligned with your future interests and objectives, so definitely use part of your essays to use the lessons learned from this work to provide depth to the reasons "why" you have this interest. While the experience is a positive in this sense, I was not entirely clear on the reason for you leaving your prior role and the relationship/reputation with the bank when you left. Since you were with the company for just several years, it's important for the ad coms to know that you were a valued employee and that you left on good terms. Additionally, although you do have leadership experience based on your military background, I would say to make sure you take on and highlight initiatives that display leadership in your work at the NGO. Part of this is that you might not have had the opportunity to receive a promotion in your two years at the bank.

Some of the type-A personality traits like backpacking and visiting a number of countries will provide points on the margin for your candidacy. Since your quant GMAT split is a bit lower and because you comment that re-taking the GMAT is "not an option," definitely look for other areas to highlight in your background that would solidify the evidence around your quantitative and reasoning abilities. It will help some if your major in undergrad was in a technical field or if you can point to key accomplishments at work that were quantitative in scope. While this would be advice for many MBA applicants with your level of quant GMAT split, it does have some added weight because you are listing an interest in corporate finance as a primary career objective.

Best of luck,