2nd Try

Question

Hi,

My name is Eeshan Srivastava, 24yr old from New Delhi, India. I will be taking the GMAT for the second time this year and am also seeking to apply for MBA 2014. I would greatly appreciate if you could provide some thoughts on my last year's experience and this year's plan of action.

Acads 
Xth - 93.2%, XIIth - 88.4%, B.Tech (Computer Science) - 80.6%

Work Experience (~ 3 years) 
Lead Engineer at HCL Technologies - Sep 2010 to Mar 2013
Automation Engineer at S&P Capital IQ - Mar 2013 to present

Extra Curricular Activities 
Working with Greenpeace, Change.org and WFP to spread their online awareness campaigns
Reading classic English Literature and writing poetry
Intermediate knowledge of French
Deep interest in learning about all domains ranging from the Arts to Sciences to Fashion to Entertainment to Medicine. (I believe this to be one of my greatest strengths as it always helps me to churn out innovative and out of the box solutions to complex problems)

Last Year 
GMAT - 690 (Q49, V35, AWA 6, IR 7)
IELTS - 7.5

Schools Applied to - 8
Interviewed at - 3
Accepted at - 2

Accepted Schools 
1. Tippie College of Business, Univ of Iowa
2. Carlson School of Management, Univ of Minnesota

Reason for not joining this year 
Insufficient funding (Seeking scholarship)

MBA Goal 
 Short Term  - Seeking a consulting role in a Consulting Services Firm
 Long Term  - Rise to top management position in the Consulting Services domain

Plan of Action for this year 
- Improving work profile - Switched to a Data Analytics company from an IT services company
- Retaking the GMAT - Seeking score beyond 720

Top Dream Schools 
Kellogg, Emory, Oxford, Cornell, INSEAD

Please suggest some target and reach schools for my profile (assuming I will increase my GMAT score; as I shall not apply if I do not increase it).

Also let me know how you can help me perfect my applications if I choose to avail one of your packages.

Best Regards,
Eeshan

mbaMissionJenK · Answer

Hi Eeshan,

Thank you for sharing your profile information with us. It's good to see that you are re-applying, as it shows how much you want the MBA as part of your future career goals. It sounds like you are working to strengthen your profile in terms of increasing the GMAT and slightly different work experiences. Additionally, with 3 years of experience (vs I believe 2 last year if I'm following you correctly), that will help your application as well... reason being that a lot of the learning at business school comes from your classmates as they contribute their experiences and expertise from their professional careers in class discussions, projects, and cases... so business schools want to ensure that accepted students have a variety of experiences to draw from and contribute to the class. At schools like Oxford and INSEAD, the 3 years minimum experience is likely even more critical.

In terms of your list of schools, if I understand correctly you are not interested in the schools you had offers at last year? I would say that Kellogg and INSEAD are your reach schools; next tier being Cornell, Emory, & Oxford. In terms of picking a couple of more 'safety' schools, you could look at schools in the 15-25 rankings in the US for example, and in terms of which ones it really depends upon what you are looking for such as geographical region, class size, teaching philosophy, typical hiring profiles, etc. We have a free downloadable e-book about selecting schools at https://info.mbamission.com/Selecting-Yo ... ram-E-Book if you are interested.

I would generally say that most likely the weaknesses in your application last year were a) your fewer years of experience and b) your application essays (without having read them of course, but that is usually an area where you can make or break your application and if they were outstanding, the odds are that you would have gotten more offers). With such a competitive application environment, plenty of strong candidates are not accepted... to gain acceptance, you HAVE to stand out with your essays, and if you think about it, the essays are the one component of your application where you create something from scratch to represent who you are, so they are crucial.

Within the essays, it's essential that you demonstrate both what the program will do for you, and what you will bring to the program. You want to use interesting stories and examples of your past experiences and traits and showcase how you are unique. You want to explain your story and how an MBA fits into that story and your goals. And you want to convince the readers that THEIR specific school is 100% right for you for clear reasons. (So you truly need to tailor your application to each program). Our admissions consultants at mbaMission will help you with all of these steps I mentioned, and through our Start-to-Finish packages you can work on your given application for as long as you need to, no time limits or cut-offs, you can continue to edit and perfect your drafts until needed to create something that best represents YOU to the admissions committee. We pride ourselves on employing full-time professional admissions consultants with MBA degrees from top programs who are extremely available to you, professionally trained, and also expert communicators who are published writers, perfectly positioned to provide you with on-going feedback on the state of your communication (essays) to the admissions committee.

Since there are many MBA applicants from India with Engineering backgrounds, you will need to stand out from that group by highlighting what is unique about you and what exactly you can contribute to the class, professionally and personally. Your admissions consultant will help you to identify what your unique traits, experiences and stories are so that you can highlight them in your application. You will want to demonstrate your people and communication skills in particular, since your quant and analytical skills have been demonstrated through your academics and career. We will assist you with all of these important steps in your application process.

Please let me know what other questions I can answer about our services, and if you'd like to have a more in-depth conversation about your profile, I invite you to participate in a free 30 minute consult, available at https://www.mbamission.com/consult.php, at your convenience.

Wishing you the best in this process.

eeshan89 · Answer

Thanks a lot for the advice Jen.

I am interested in applying to Carlson again (forgot to mention here) if I get an increase in GMAT score. I would also like to tell you that last year, I applied in round 2 to both Carlson and Tippie, and in round 3 at the other schools. I think that was a big mistake and I'll surely not repeat that this year. It was my first time and I was not sure of the process itself.

After going through it all, now I have an idea of the requirements and I'm already working on creating the "core" of essays, which, as you rightly said are likely to make or break my application. I'm improving my profile by diversifying my work experience and as for my extra-curricular activities, I am working on an innovation project that is likely to result in extra earnings, if successful.

I want to be absolutely sure of what I want to do after MBA before applying. I would love to have that 30 minute consult with you to discuss this and a lot more.

If possible, can you suggest the names of schools which have been historically more open to providing scholarships to Indian students AND one of their core domains is in IT Consulting/Technology?

Thanks a lot.

mbaMissionJenK · Answer

Hi there,

I agree, applying in Round 3 is challenging because the schools have already offered a lot of spots on their program, so you are competing with a large number of applicants, for very few spots! Applying early is great, and if you are focused on the possibility of scholarships (which I must caveat with saying, are less common in business school than in say, US undergrad programs), you will definitely want to apply early. Many school-based scholarships are only offered to early applicants. Re: scholarships I can't claim expertise in that area, but many schools offer their own specific scholarships to top applicants, and there are also general scholarship programs available in the US and globally, it just involves a lot of research to dig them up. Stanford has a scholarship for Indian applicants who plan to go back and work in India for example, but it is very limited and Stanford is the most selective b-school out there in the first place. Here is a mention of that as well as a few other tips on scholarships for b-school: https://www.businessweek.com/articles/20 ... holarships. Generally the majority of MBA students end up financing some or all of their program with low-interest rate education loans, that they pay off over 5-15 years with their post-MBA salary.

In terms of schools well known for IT, you probably know many of them but you could look into MIT, Tepper, Stanford, Johnson, Georgia Tech, Haas, IE, Judge, McCombs, among others.

It's great that you are already working on the key ideas and core for your essays, that is the right approach, and yes you will want to have a clear career path identified if possible. I invite you to set up your free 30 minute consult at your convenience, you can do so at https://www.mbamission.com/consult.php. I personally am not presently taking on consulting clients as I'm focused on the message boards but we have an impressive team of consultants available, you can check out their profiles if desired at https://www.mbamission.com/about.php?display=team.

Feel free to post any other questions and wishing you the best!

eeshan89 · Answer

Hey!

I took my GMAT again yesterday and I got 650. This is less than my previous score of 690. But I guess GMAT reports both scores to the Universities.

Is it still worth it if I apply to some schools?

Eeshan

mbaMissionJenK · Answer

Hi Eeshan,

Sorry to hear you didn't get the score increased you had hoped for. Yes the schools will see all the scores, BUT they focus on the highest score, as that shows what you are capable of (and it's virtually impossible to get a fluke-high-score on the GMAT since it's adaptive). So they'll still look at the 690 which is within the realm of possibility as long as the rest of your application is strong. I would still suggest you apply, R1 if possible, to 3-4 schools! If you haven't yet you can still set up a free 30 min consult, and/or let us know what other q's you have. Good luck to you!

eeshan89 · Answer

Thanks Jean. Well, I tried to raise my GMAT score but couldn't. But my work experience has been of high quality nonetheless and I hope that will be the highlight of my application.

And I won't be aiming too high now. I've narrowed down my list of schools to this list:

Simon - Rochester
Hough School of Business - University of Florida
D'Amore-McKim - Northeastern University
Tepper- CMU
College of Business - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Carlson - University of Minnesota
Jones - Rice University
College of Management - Boston University
Mendoza - Notre Dame

Tepper, Jones and Mendoza are my targets and I guess the rest are my reach schools. What do you think of this?

I will schedule that consult this week. It would be great to have a chance to get my questions answered and I do have a lot of them.

mbaMissionJenK · Answer

Hi there,
This is very approximate and just my opinion, but here's a rough list of your schools in order from most competitive to least: (but of course I encourage you to do your own research on rankings and stats etc)

Tepper
Carlson
Mendoza
Rochester
Hough
BU
Jones
D'Amore-McKim
Illinois

Is Emory off the list at this point? Could still be a reach school for you if interested, in my view. Avg GMAT 677 and 34% acceptance rate.

It's still quite a list, so I'd suggest you choose 3-4 schools to focus on for round 1 so as not to sacrifice quality for quantity.

eeshan89 · Answer

Thanks a lot Jen.

mbaMissionJenK · Answer

No problem, and keep us posted!!

2nd Try

Prep Toolkit

Top 5 GMAT Debrief Videos

615 to 715 in 15 Days (Ria's Strategies)

More than Quant/Verbal Abilities: Speed vs. Accuracy

745 with Only Self-Prep and GMAT Club

From 555 to 765: 210-point Improvement

Perfect 805 Score Debrief by Julia

My Rewards