please evaluate my profile

I really appreciate you guys taking time and replying to my questions.
I have few other questions

1) In your previous post you mentioned the demographic. I know that B-school would like to maintain diversity and things of that sort. But my background in not IT. I work for sales and application team who is primarily concerned with resolving customer issues. Do you have any stat as to how many people from background such as mine apply to B-school. Is this profile quite unique or quite common. If it is quite common can you plz tell me besides GMAT score what other things I can do to make it unique.

2) You were right in saying lot of people go for investment banking and consultancy. But I want to pursue an MBA in entrepreneurship. Do you think with GMAT of 680 and other info I had provided earlier, make my application different.

3) Last question I have is besides gaging your academic abilities, for what other purposes do B-school use your GMAT score. In my view considering the weirdness of GMAT I dont think you can judge a whole lot about person except one's analytical abilities. If that is the case I have plethora of instances where B-school can judge my analytical abilities.

Actually, when I said demographic I was referring to being Indian. You said you attended Delhi University and worked in India for 2 years so I assumed you were Indian. Reliable sources have speculated that the average GMAT for Indians a top schools is 730-750 (Montauk, Sanda on Bw and others).

Regarding your final question of what the GMAT is used for, I think the key use is direct comparison to other candidates. To paraphrase countless articles and books, the GMAT is the only thing that is common to every applicant. People attend different schools and have different majors with different grading scales. They work at different jobs for different periods of time and are promoted at different rates. They have different activities, etc.

But everyone must take the GMAT, and everyone gets a score calculated to a common scale. Whether the GMAT measures dedication (some people score well through hard work) or natural talent (some people score well without much work), each person is tested in the same way. Everyone knows they must take it and has an opportunity to show what they can do. Eventually, applicants will become students and they will eventually face similar challenges in school - those that handled the prior challenge better are (probably) likely to do better when facing the new challenge. Students eventually become professionals, and those that did better when facing the prior challenge will (probably) do better when facing a consulting issue or a general management problem, etc.

Do anybody know which schools have good entrepreneurship program. Also can somebody tell me why entrepreneurship is not popular among MBA pursuant as compared with MBA in finance or marketing.

Thanks

Not top 15 generally... but Babson University (Olin) in Boston is supposedly excellent for enterprenurship... It has been ranked #1 in that category by USNews... 05 GPA 3.14 GMAT 623. Might be one worth thinking of in the likely to get in and good in your desired field segment.

ROI I imagine. Entreprenuers are a certain kind of people.

Pelihu: you place too much importance on GMAT, I think you have lot of misconceptions. agreed, it is standard test, but once some one is out for school for a long time, work experience shoudl have more imprtance rather than test scores, thats my view and of a lot of my friends whohave attended top business schools incl. Chicago, MIT, Stanford, Columbia etc.

I'd agree with Pehilu. Your argument holds true I think, somewhat, for GPA, but not for GMAT. GMAT scores are an easy measuring stick - what you have to remember is that whether you have 4 years experience or 10 doesn't much matter, because right next to you is someone else with 4 years experience or 10 years. The quick differentiator is GMAT.

Read the book "We need managers not MBAs" by Mintzberg.

You need to be realistic and think about how your application will be reviewed. After separating out the "easy rejects", the adcom will be left with pile after pile of applications all from people who are selling the fact that they have quality work experience with loads of leadership. They're going to be talking about how they were instrumental in launching a product, or making their company profitable, etc. etc. etc. In the end, and this is just my personal belief, most will start to look alike.

So there are a few things that are proven winners. First of all, pedigree in work experience matters (more than people think I believe). Adcoms will look at your work experience and ask themselves "was that job hard to get"? If you're at a top consulting firm or bank, then the Adcom will know that it was already highly selective to get the position. If you can distinguish yourself among this crowd with faster promotions or whatever, then it will make a huge difference.

On the other hand, if you are with a company where the talent pool is not as strong (for example I had a lot of friends go into the 'management training' program for Robinson/May - yeah right) then even if you are promoted to "management" it's not going to mean as much because the talent pool is thin.

But going back to my original point, unless your work experience is from a known company, Adcoms will have virtually no basis to judge your success on the job. If one person tell you they were promoted in 2 years, while another person was promoted in 3 years, who will the Adcom favor? The answer is, "who knows" because there's no basis to compare the 2 jobs or promotions. If one person is a "manager", while another is an "analyst" and a third is an "associate" and a fourth is a "consultant", then who has the better career? At an Ibank an "analyst" essentially means "trainee" or "peon" but for some corporate jobs "analyst" seems to mean something much more. On the other hand, a 750 is better than a 650; whether the score reflects hard work or smarts, it's just plain better.

So, as I have mentioned elsewhere, for those that believe they can distinguish themselves through work experience or extracurriculars or recs or whatever, it better be something truly special. In fact, I'm quite sure I have seen more reports of 750 GMAT scores than I have seen work reports experience that blew me away.

To say "I know somebody..." means nothing. I just heard about a guy admitted to HBS last year with 3 years of work experience in data entry. Really. What does that mean? Not much really.

Telling great stories in your essays will definitely help your application, but work experience is just so hard to differentiate between candidates. GMAT, well that's right there in black and white.

Pelihu, great analysis. I agree with you. That's why I had to retake GMAT even when I scored 680.
It's like retailers: they don't stick the price of 70, but 69.99. Just couple cents, but it really make people think it is cheaper, between sixty something and seventy something...Similarly, 690 in GMAT means you belong to lower division(from 600 to 690), while 700 belong to upper one : 700 or above.

And thats basically Hinzberg's arugment - that graduate schools are full of academics, places where numbers matter, people like tangible decision points. He argues that undue weight is placed on the GMAT - no matter what you are told - precisely because schools lack the ability to truly identify talent and are thus forced to rely on something they can "hang their hat on".

The "hard" nature of the GMAT - a number, something quantifiable makes it easy to use as a differentiator. Its not that dissimmilar in the workplace either when it comes to recruiting. How many top companies you know have minimum GPAs? Or at least, recommended GPAs? How may people you think go to Goldman Sachs with a 2.5? How many people go with a 3.5? Again, why? It's a tangible and quantifiable data point. An easy point of comparison. The GMAT is no different.

And anyway, the numbers speak for themselves. If you look at the figures for Kellogg:

https://www.gmatclub.com/phpbb/viewtopic ... ht=reverse

In short, these are the accept rates I came up with using an overly kind yield figure.

640 12%
650 17%
660 20%
670 23%
680 25%
690 26%
700 28%
710 29%
720 31%
730 32%
740 33%
750 35%
760 36%
770 37%
780 ?
790 ?
800 ?

Pehilu used a larger spread on the yields - and I think his numbers are actually the better of the two sets. I include mine above just to show that even if you assume the yield at a 600 score is marginally different than that at a 750 score, there's still a tangible difference. I purposefully used a tight band just to avoid making it seem too good to be true - but pehilu's numbers are probably closer to reality than mine.

up to 640:
total applicants 785
total enrolled 50
total offers based on estimated yield of 90% 55
admit rate 7%

650-690
total applicants 1100
total enrolled 139
total offers based on 75%: 185
admit rate 16.8%

700-740
total applicants 1610
total enrolled 272
total offers based on 50%: 540
admit rate 33.5%

750-800
total applicants 432
total enrolled 89
total offers based on 40%: 225
admit rate 52%

Granted, these are not exact, but the numbers absolutely do speak for themselves, and they are rooted in logic. Even if you consider my spread on yield which was pretty small - the difference between 600-640 and 700-740 is not insignficant.

That's really not the reason shops charge 69.99 instead of 70. They do so to prevent fraud/tax evasion. Before credit cards if an item cost 10 dollars even, it would be too easy for a dishonest clerk to just pocket the 10 dollars and not ring up the registar. By pricing it at 9.99, the clerk would have to ring up the registar to return a penny. At least, that was the idea. The cleark could just as easily carry a bunch of pennies...

That was one of the traditional reasons for setting prices like that (like hundreds of years ago). But I think Darren is right that prices continue to be set this way because people view it differently. I've read in several admissions consultant blogs that while they generally do not suggest re-taking unless you can improve by 30 points or better, there is something "different" about a 700, just like there is something "even more different" about a 750 (or maybe 760 now that the 99th percentile cut-off has changed).

It's going to take more than just a GMAT score to get into a top school, but I think think people at this board have a fair view of how important the GMAT is. There's a very good reason why everyone is trying to improve their scores and get over 700 - there's a reason why "700 club" sounds right.

Cept now with the new medians from BW, I guess it needs to become the 710 club. haha...

Here is another reason that Top b-schools want higher GMAT scores.
Some Ranking methodology uses the average GMAT in calculating the rating for each b-schools.
Moreover, some employers do ask for GMAT scores. Thus, to place more graduates into higher salary range, B-schools will take a CLOSE look at the GMAT scores from their applicants. Job placement is another important factor of how successful the program is.

This is the very reason that I am still contemplating whether I should retake or not. I got 700 AWA 5.5.

Pelihu, do you think AWA5.5 will cover the weakness in my verbal score, 34?

Hard to say. I have heard that some schools do not even look at the AWA score, while others basically use it as a reference point to determine if you authored your own essays.

I think it will also depend on your background, and of course the quality of your essays. If you have things in your background to support the fact that you have strong verbal skills, that would help. That said, 34 isn't that bad - it's just 2 points away from the 80%ile that many schools like to see.