MBA Admissions Consultant
Joined: 25 Jan 2010
Status:Admissions Expert
Affiliations: Founder, Amerasia Consulting Group
Posts: 1081
Given Kudos: 264
Re: Please evaluate my profile
[#permalink]
25 Aug 2010, 22:22
Hi Rajan,
Honored that you would seek my opinion on your chances. Let me caveat this by saying that it's not my job or any admissions consultant's job to tell you where you can or can't get in - that's why they have admissions officers at all of these programs. Disclaimer aside, let me break down each program for you:
HBS - Your strong academic record helps you here, as Harvard boasts the highest average GPA of any business school. Part of the reason for that, however, is that the class is typically younger than any other top program and so the college experience weighs more heavily into the decision when someone is just two or three years of out of school. Your age, while right on average (or just a tick above) at most b-schools, puts you outside the typical HBS window. If you look at the class profile breakdown by graduation year (released each of the last few admissions seasons), you will see that three and four years out is the sweet spot. There's a huge drop off after that. This will be a tough one.
Sloan - Staying in Boston, Sloan strikes me as possibly your best bet of the four, primarily because you have such strong chops in engineering. Sloan has tried to go against type in the past, but many "soft skill" or "non-MIT" types wind up going elsewhere, so an applicant with strong academic indicators, good predictors of future professional success, and a capacity to handle the course work tends to fare pretty well. It's obviously an incredibly selective school, but it is certainly a place you should apply. Your objective here will be to use the essays to get introspective and really put themes on display that indicate success on the horizon. Your career goals won't matter as much (MIT doesn't even ask for them), but rather the focus will be on your experiences and skills and how/why they add up to someone amazing and beneficial to the class.
Stern - Stern is a school that fosters a strong sense of community. This is probably the one place where your limited outside activities will hurt you the most, as an active student body is a hallmark of NYU. That said, Stern is also very culturally sensitive and does a good job of normalizing these types of things across different regions and countries. So your lack of ec's and community service will only be problematic if peers from similar schools and career paths can boast of more. Stern is certainly a school to keep on the list.
INSEAD - This one comes down to what you want to do when you graduate and how close you are to being hirable for that selected path. Due to the compressed nature of the program, you have to be very "market ready" at INSEAD. It's also a "work hard, play hard" type of school and so while outside activities are not heavily considered in the admissions process, they will be looking closely to see if you are a wallflower or someone who will dive in and participate. Your job in the essays will be to promote your employability (also important at Stern, I should note - less so at Harvard and MIT) and also your ability to lead and connect with others. INSEAD needs to see that you are poised and ready on all fronts.
I hope this is helpful and gets you off to a good start. If you would like to discuss this in greater detail, private message me for a free initial consultation. We of course work with applicants to all of the schools above.
Respectfully,
Paul Lanzillotti