Hi:

I come from a technology background and plan to stick to tech world post MBA as well albeit in strategy and management roles. I'm looking at Columbia Business School's January intake next year. Looking at their electives and reading through few forums, I'm still unable to pin point whether there's a good technology footprint in Columbia - be it electives, case studies, students profiles or placements. Just going by the electives and the career placement reports, the school looks pretty much inclined towards Finance & Consulting - no surprises there:). I'm looking at IT strategy and management roles post MBA, can you please let me know if Columbia would be a good fit given my career goals and aspirations?

Many thanks Jon.

A major point of consideration for me is to complete by MBA in 12-16 months 'cz of which I only have limited choices, at-least in the US. Kellogg's accelerated MBA has an eligibility criteria that I do not meet, the only other choices from top bracket schools are Columbia and Cornell.

Thanks for your reply Jon.

I am not entirely inflexible to the idea of pursuing a traditional 21-24 month MBA given I get the right school - as you mentioned Stanford, HAAS or MIT can be great choices given where I am and where I want to be. However, I would be 28 and have an experience of about 8 years by the time I apply in R1 of these schools this year. I do not really see the need of doing an internship given that I don't want to switch industries and I do not want to spend additional time out of the work force mix either if I can acquire the required skill set to accelerate my career growth in 16 months v/s spending 24 months.

Can you please take a quick look at my brief profile and my target schools and share your inputs on my possibilities and if I should widen my schools criteria?

I'm looking at US and APAC schools.
Primarily my target schools are: Columbia, Cornell, INSEAD (Singapore), NUS, NTU, IIM, ISB.
Stanford, HAAS and MIT (I'm still tentative on these).

Brief profile:

Professional -
Indian IT male with 7 years of experience - Worked with big names in IT Service and Consultation Industry.
Current role: Sales Engineering/Pre-Sales/Product-development (youngest member of the group that does pre-sales/client consultations/business analysis etc).
International Experience: 1 Year (and counting).
Leadership experience: Lead an engineering team of 4 software professionals, Recruitment activities, Mentoring fresh talent.

Academic -
Post-grad: M.S. - Software Engineering from BITS Pilani India, CGPA - 9.04
Grad: Bachelors in Electronics - 74% (couldn't figure out what does this translate to in GPA)
GMAT - 730 (taken last year)

Extracurricular activities -
Involved with a non profit organization - child sponsorship, voluntary teaching of under-privileged children, corporate sports - team building around the activities, used to be part of college theater group