Indian Admits -Room : Keep all desi discussions here!

daszero: Our profiles are pretty similar. Given the sheer number of Indian applicants, I am sure we'll find a many more HW engrs. That shouldn't dishearten you, these stats are just a part of the application.

daszero, I would say that top 5 schools are generally tough for Indian applicants, and more so for Male applicants from electronics/electrical/engineering/chip design/soft dev/IT etc pool.

I read some essays while helping applicants this year and I would say IC/chip design etc is a very common experience in the Indian demographic. I personally read essays from at least 10 people with this background. I cant imagine how many such essays, ad-coms at the top 5 schools read.

Differentiating yourself is the key that will open the doors at the top B-schools.

Thanks svrider, I somehow figured that all applicants were on an even keel but its no surprise that business schools want diversity in their incoming class. My profile is rather similar to yours, except for that I will 4 or so years of experience at application time.



The differentiation is where its at, no doubt. Besides what does knowing to design Analog circuits have anything to do with business school, anyway. As for differentiation points, thus far, I can come up with, still wanna be a ski-bum someday (I am pretty sure thats gonna fly great) and I listen to way more hip-hop than the next guy. . But I understand what you are saying. Time to work on the whole package.

Breaking the mold

The significant challenge faced by most folks from the Indian IT background is the perceived lack of impact of their day-to-day jobs and their own lack of business sense or acumen, perceived or otherwise. While there is some truth to this, I firmly believe that applicants can effectively position themselves by following a few simple techniques. With that in mind, I have tried to give an example of how some research and a decent amount of thought can spin a typical IT project into a solid yarn on impacting the business landscape at your company. Obviously, this is not mind-blowing stuff that hasn't been thought of by anyone before. All of what I write here is used by most applicants anyway. However, I want to illustrate how one can break the mold and showcase small successful IT initiatives as glowing testimonies of an applicant’s business-savvy.

So, you sift through your “experience inventory” to figure out what to write for the accomplishment essay. Unfortunately, you never saved a drowning child, never climbed mountains, ran in the Olympics, saved children in Burundi, or ever had a fancy-sounding hobby. You have just been a good boy. You studied hard to get into college and then worked harder to succeed in an IT services company. The only project that you’ve done that was even remotely interesting was the work he did in automating a manual process that was once thought in-conducive for programming. This particular essay theme sounds really boring. Right? Now, let us look at how we can transform this run of the mill story into a solid essay.

Just close your eyes and replay the whole project in our mind. But, while doing so, you fast-forward the picture thinking quickly “So, on project A, I wrote this super complicated algorithm to automate activity X, Y and Z. Nah, this sucks. What am I going to do with this s%$#*?” On to the next project. More the same and soon, you are at the end of your story list. Don’t be discouraged. Just slow down the whole project, and re-play.

Ideally, it should play to your inner eyes like a spoofed matrix-style fight scene. You are in the middle of the picture and as the camera rotates, you look at the various other actors in the scene. Some of them are people with whom you have to fight with, some stronger than you and therefore you avoid. There are also others who are fighting each other, a few on-lookers waiting to join the fight, and there are those few who know neither who they are fighting nor what they are fighting for. They constitute the people problems that you overcame during the project. Then, there are high walls, deep holes, trees that obstruct your view of the goals; they are the props on the set. They do not directly fight with you, but they influence whether you succeed. You wield your weapon in different directions, the line tracing the trajectory of the weapon shows who’s in its path. Are all of them your enemies? Are some of them your own peers? Whats the collateral damage of this war? By assessing collateral damage, you come across empathetic to your audience and mature to the ad-com.

There are also several roads that you can take to reach the mountain top(your goal). Some are paths well-treaded, but others are paths that have never been traveled before. Some paths do not even exist. You will have to lay the road and then travel on it. They constitute the choices that were available to you in pursuing your goal. Additionally, you only have a few pennies left over for your journey. Even if you fight off your enemies, you don’t have enough money left to cover your expenses for the trip. So, you make do with what you have. Those are the financial obstacles that you overcame.

Also, think about why you want to reach that mountain-top. What will happen to you and your troops(your company) if you lose this battle. Is all this fighting, the blood-shed worth it? What does this mean for your kingdom(or company)?

Relive the scene and pay attention to every movement, every sound, and every conversation. Note them all. You will have enough stuff to write a solid essay.

All you got to do is put all of this together. How?

Draw the battle-lines, know what's at stake for yourself and your kingdom, line up the props and light up the stadium

My client, X was facing intense competition from emerging competitors such as Y and Z. Having led Company A’s business consulting team at X for more than two years, I knew that X’s ineffective customer service practices were partly caused by its outdated technology infrastructure. Many of X’s problems had remained unsolved because other consultants had advised them that any attempt to resolve these issues would likely be expensive and ineffective. Therefore, I knew I had to build my case carefully before pursuing the business opportunities presented by X’s situation.

Know your friends, know your enemies and evaluate your paths to the mountaintop. Pick one and lead your soldiers. Develop your battle-strategy

After identifying improvement areas, I evaluated each of them based on six criteria: earnings benefit to X, risks if our solution failed, number of employees currently affected by the problem, historic revenue loss and customer attrition, problem complexity, and cost estimates for possible solutions. After brainstorming with colleagues, I concluded that fixing X’s troubled “business-process” process was our best opportunity. The problematic process was labor intensive. Fifteen full-time employees manually performed the process on a daily basis. Errors and omissions resulted, impacting customer satisfaction and increasing costs of correction. Eventually most dissatisfied customers simply switched “service-providers”.

Adapt to new enemies, make some friends along the way and keep that sword swinging…

After observing the processing staff in action and interviewing each member, I had to concede that the previous consultants had been right. Wholesale replacement of the system would be a risky project and a huge expense. So, I had to be creative. I theorized that if a super fast typist could enter data at lightning speeds, then the process would be done much faster. Building on this idea, using available software that could record and replay user keystrokes, I built a script that mimicked the manual process. Then, by gradually reducing the time interval between consecutive keystrokes in the recorded script, I was able to reduce drastically the time taken for executing one transaction. By repeatedly testing and refining my script, I devised a scalable program that could accomplish the daily process in just twenty minutes.

You are at the mountaintop. Reap the rewards. Marry the king’s daughter. But, don't forget to summarize what you learned from this battle.

X leadership was impressed both by the ingenuity of my solution and its potential benefit. After implementation, X's retention rates increased by 5% translating into $5 million in added revenues, $1 million more than the projected savings. Furthermore, my solution saves X more than $2 million annually in labor costs by eliminating the need for the fifteen-member “business-process” team. My actions earned A close to $1 million in revenues and played a significant role in growing A’s 10-member X account into a 100-member multi-million dollar partnership. This experience taught me the value of applying creativity and believing in my ideas even when faced with skepticism and doubt. By constantly seeking new opportunities, I now open doors previously unseen, learn things previously unknown, and achieve things previously unaccomplished.

Hey, now look at your essay. You were able to sum up the business landscape, show your ability to consider options, demonstrate your political savvy, show your creativity, save a ton of money and without a doubt establish that you are more than an IT clone.

Not bad for a Male-Indian-IT. Is it?

Zicklin school of business is my next destination...

Good to see old timers here

Wow. I didn't see this until now. Congrats Oz!

hopefully we will be able to start a new one for all the applicants for next fall. Any ideas and lessons learned will be much appreciated.

Thanks buddy...

Come on 09-ers, make us proud! NC has already given some great insights into the challenges that we desis face at the top schools. I just have a few things to add about interviews - things that I learned a little later along the process.

It's OK to boast (a little):

Generally, while talking, we desis (especially those who studied and worked in India) have a tendency of being a little discrete about our achievements and successes. We do fine on paper with the essays, but when it comes to the interviews, I feel we do not play up our achievements for all they are worth. On the other hands, Americans are very upfront about it and they expect us to tell them how great we are - something we are not used to. Of course, this doesn't mean that we should all become narcissists! Just ensure that you clearly communicate your successes and what you did to contribute without holding back.

Show, don't tell (even in the interview)

Something else that I realized during my R-1 postmortem (and corrected it in R-2) was the fact that in most instances, I was 'mentioning' my achievements and not really elaborating them. Definitely not a good idea! In the later interviews, I would mention the achievement, then talk about something specific about it - either a particular incident or how that experience itself has contributed to my well-roundedness. Most interviewers give applicants a fair amount of leeway in guiding the discussions. So take advantage of this and give anecdotes to 'show' (and not just 'tell') your strengths.

The power of anecdotes

Personal experience are just that - personal. They make your interview a lot more personal and less scripted. The anecdote, being your's and therefore unique, will stand out from the usual drivel that interviewers constantly hear. Told well, a good anecdote will definitely pique the interviewer's interest in you. Another great thing that I noticed about anecdotes was that while telling them during the interviews, I automatically became more comfortable and was able to build up a stronger rapport with the interviewer. Sometimes the interviewer would pitch in with something similar from his own personal experience and we would really take off on a great conversation from there.

There! I hope this helps some of the 09 desis. All the best!

In at MIT Sloan.

Congrats man

Several competitions require that at least one person is a school student. So you could pair / group with a student or group of students and participate.

L.

Well, I think stanford does give this edge to females....my 2 cents...

Anybody from Hyderabad applying to GSB this fall? I am in town (till Aug15th), so give me a shout if you wanna catch up for a drink sometime and discuss your app strategy....actually, just pm me if you are in Hyd and thinking about bschool in general..

Thanks Prasad.
I took Gmat on 26th july and scored 760/5.0 . (Quant 50,Verbal 44)
I am from DCE a non-IIT college (but top 10 in India) with 5 years of work ex in IT + 6 months in core power distribution.
Eng. Score - 76% (Rank 5th)
Extra-curri - I am actively involved in social work, fund raising for charity and am also participating in CDC marathon. During College days, I used to do event management in Annual Tech fest.

From above, can you suggest what colleges should I apply for?

Holy crap this is one sobering thread. Here I was with a score of 720 and Management Consulting WE of 4 years thinking I could make it to at least one of the M7. Woe is me!

On another not just wanted to ask whether B Schools are seeing an increasing trend in people applying from Big 4 (E&Y et.al.) or small consulting firms in India? I think this is another pool in addition to M/IT which is getting more competitive by the day.

Don't get too tensed about these things. This is a very small sample.
In my case, I have a 700 GMAT and an undergrad from an average (non IIT/REC) university in India scoring ~80%ile, nothing earth shattering. I do have a Master's degree from a very top school in US though and my experience is in technology consulting industry, a very common pre MBA career.
My MBA application journey was long and with several setbacks. I finally cracked M7 (@CBS 2012) as a reapplicant after half a dozen interview calls (all within M7), 2 waitlists (CBS/MIT) and multiple rejects. The key is to not give up and not doubt yourself. This process is subjective, it's not like CAT where you get 99.8%ile and you get 5 calls and 99%ile gets no call. Here, there are too many variables. What we can do is keep improving our application anyway possible and keep trying. This is not easy but it sure isn't unattainable for a desi.

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