plaza202 wrote:
Paul, can you please look at my profile and kindly advice as to where I stand in this rush to get to the top schools?
Background: 30 yr old, Indian, Male.
Academics:
Undergraduation:
Completed my BS in mechanical engineering from a reputed university back home in India. Since we did not follow the GPA system, it’s hard for me to convert it to a 4.0 scale. But, I was always in the top 5 in my class. That should give you a rough idea.
Graduation:
Came to US for my MS in mechanical engineering and did complete it 3 years ago. I came in on a 50% scholarship for the first semester which got converted to a 100% scholarship and a monthly stipend (TA job) from the second semester on.
GPA – 3.7
Work experience:
Totaling to just under 5 years till now.
Worked as a design engineer in a MNC back home after my undergraduation for about 2 years. This was a complete new facility, and was the first person to be hired in the product design group. Initially, my responsibility was to set up the whole department, plan out the needs and organize accordingly. Few months later, when people started filling in, my job profile got shifted to more of design work and as a customer liaison. Had to work with customers around the globe to understand their requirements and design a product accordingly. The industry was in custom-design machinery. (2Yrs)
I don’t know if I want to list this here, but in my 2 years of graduation, I was working as a Teaching Assistant in the mechanical engg department. I used to teach classes for undergraduate and graduate students. Class size varied from about 20 for a graduate class to about 110~115 for the undergraduate class. This teaching took all the time I had in my school days as I had to teach in batches of ~20 and have office hours for couple of days weekly. Responsibilities included teaching classes, handing weekly assignments and grading them, conduct mid-tern and final exams and also grading them.
After my graduation in Mechanical engg, I did land into a dream job as an Advanced R&D engineer in a fortune 100 company. Job is highly demanding with a team of 5 lead engineers (including me) working on a brand new product. This firm is #2 in the world in what they do (off-road vehicles/machinery) and have not introduced a new product for 30 years. This brand new product is slated to be launched next year in the market. My role as a team leader is to design a big chunk of this machine with the help of a team of highly skilled engineers (some of them with more than 30yrs experience). This group will take my lead to design a cost-effective and efficient system and report to me. (3 yrs)
Community service:
During undergraduation days I was involved with quite a few charity organizations, but mostly in one which helped the old people’s home. This organization used to collect all the left-over food from the 5-star hotels in the city at the end of the day, and sort it properly and after processing, would distribute it to the old-people’s home and some other needy groups. I used to help them in the collection center to organize the pick-ups.
This continued in my working years back home.
During my TA job while completing graduation, I used to tutor lot of my students who had issues with other courses not taught by me. Since calculus, statistics, static and dynamics were my strength, I found teaching quite simple and students did use to make good progress in their class work and exams. I don’t know if this can be called a community service, but thought I might include it in here, since everything was free.
Kellogg and Chicago are my preferred schools for full time program.
Given the above said background, and say if I manage to pull a 700+ in the GMAT, what chances do I have to get into either of these 2 schools?
Another thing, I might be able to pull a very good recommendation letter from the VP of this company and also from some other managers here.
Any advice, help here would be highly appreciated.
Thanks.
plaza202,
As you know, being a "male Indian technologist" puts a special burden on you to stand out from the pack. Your profile is solid, even good, but not terribly distinctive, which you really need to be to get into Chicago and Kellogg, even with a 700 or higher GMAT. Your age is also tilting away from the comfort zone of 26-28, though it's by no means a deal breaker. So I would advise you to look a little lower on the B-school food chain. Depending on your goals, you should be able to get into a few top 15/20 schools.
Good luck,