Ask ARINGO - if your GMAT is (or might be) below 720

Hello Aringo Consultants,
I would appreciate your input on my profile , my profile is as follows:

GMAT: 680 (Q50 V32), AWA (6.0)
Undergraduate Education : Mechanical Engineering, Top University in Asia
GPA: 2.5
Postgraduate Education : Mechanical Engineering, Top University in Asia, Gold Medalist
GPA: 3.95

Nationality: Indian
Age: 28

Work Experience: 7 years at matriculation (hopefully applying for Fall 2013) in new product introduction roles.
Current Work: GE Water Thailand. Involved in developing new products in the Water industry and government related projects in different sectors.

Job: I am a technical Lead at GE Water heading global team of experts.
Extra Curriculars: I was the captain of my university cricket team. I head several green initiatives in GE. I am business development officer in another NGO. I was on management committee of the school council. I play professional cricket as vice-captain in the Malaysian League.

Int'l Experience: Worked in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and United States.

Planning to work after MBA in product management preferrably in the Energy Sector and want to get an MBA from Top US business school.

Do you think I have a better shot at the LGO/MEM programs compared to the normal MBA?

Preferred list:
1. MIT
2. Wharton
2. Duke
3. Columbia
4. Darden
5. Tepper

mouringhogmat1,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 680, our experience indicates that you would be a stretch candidate at Wharton, between stretch and competitive (closer to stretch) at Sloan and Columbia, competitive at Fuqua, and strong at Darden and Tepper.

The item that strikes me the most is the stark difference in your GPA between your undergraduate and graduate degrees. I am not sure if you tried to convert these GPAs into a 4.0 scale or if they were received on a 4.0 scale - our assumption is the latter. However, please note that you generally do not need to (or want to) convert into a 4.0 scale, but rather should just try to put your placement in relative context with a percentile or distinction (if relevant) highlighted. Either way, you will want to spend part of your essays or the optional essay talking about the reasons for the difference in your academic performance. Schools in the top 10 often resist accepting students with both a below average (for their applicant pool) undergraduate GPA and GMAT score, so you'll need to highlight other areas of your background and accentuate your communication capabilities at work to help overcome the lower verbal GMAT split.

Working at General Electric will help you with your applications because the company sends many engineers to top business schools and is known for having a very well-organized performance management system. If you are responsible for managing colleagues (it's not entirely clear from your writeup), make sure that you highlight this in your application. It's great that you do have some international work experience in a variety of countries in southeast Asia - this will help some on the margin to differentiate yourself from other applicants from India. If you can tie this work experience into your career goals in some way, this also may be of benefit.

As far as the MIT LGO (Leaders for Global Operations) program, we are generally unable to provide differences in chances between this and the traditional MBA program because the sample size is quite small to make this comparison. And, in general if you read interviews from ad coms about these types of comparisons, they will generally not commit to making a clear statement about the relative competitiveness between programs. I would perhaps turn the question around somewhat, and propose to you and other candidates that you consider the program that is most interesting and applicable to YOU. If you're more interested in what the LGO program offers and think that it is most relevant for your future career goals, then apply to that.

Best of luck,

Hi BrianW,

Could you evaluate my profile, you have skipped it :D, I'm sure not on purpose.

Hi sir,

I would appreciate your input on my profile , my profile is as follows:

GMAT: 660 (Q47 V34)
Education: American University of Kuwait - Bachelor of business administration - Accounting
GPA: 3.18
Nationality: Kuwaiti
Age: 24

Work Experience: 4 years at matriculation (hopefully applying for Fall 2013), at E&Y as a Senior auditor. Involved in auditing banks and many companies in different sectors.

Int'l Experience: would be having a 3 month program working at an EY office in Europe (Either London or Paris).

Assuming I submit excellent essays and recommendations.

Planning to work after MBA in investment banking.

I have a scholarship program from my government, as soon as I get admitted in any of the listed schools below, the scholarship includes 100% paid tuition and cost of living.

List is:

1. Stanford
2. London Business school
3. Chicago booth
4. Wharton
5. MIT
6. Duke Fuqua
7. Dartmouth
8. Berkeley Haas
9. NYU Stern
10. Columbia
11. Northwestern Kellog
12. IMD
13. Insead
14. iese

Prefer Schools in states. Thanks in advance for your valuable time.

Albuloushi,

Thank you for your profile submission. Apologize for the issue on my end - I had written up your response and submitted it, but for some reason I do not see it posted.

Based on the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 660, our experience shows you would be a stretch candidate at the schools you mention less IESE, and between stretch and competitive (closer to stretch) at IESE.

The main item that jumps out in your profile is your undergraduate GPA of 3.18 - the average GPA for top programs is about 3.5 or 3.6 (out of 4.0). For the purposes of profile evaluations (this goes for all reading this entry), you do not have to try to convert any GPA into a 4.0 scale if your grades were not structured on this scale to begin with. Schools will know how to do this typically. However, if you provide a GPA on a 4.0 scale, we will use this in your evaluation. In our experience it is challenging for candidates to gain entry, but not impossible, into top MBA programs with a (for top programs) below average GMAT and undergraduate GPA. Make sure to include some contextual detail about the competitiveness of your university (e.g. acceptance rate, if there are limited students who receive distinction, etc.), which may not be known well with some ad coms in the US. Additionally, if you have an impressive graduation percentile and/or graduated with distinction, make note of this on your application.

In terms of your work experience, E&Y is a well-known feeder company to top MBA programs. They are also known to have a formalized performance management process. As such, if you have received positive reviews and/or have been promoted ahead of your peer group, this will certainly help your profile to mention in your resume. Similarly, if the international experience you were offered was as a result of positive past performance, mention this as well (perhaps embedded in the structure of an essay). Finally, along the same lines, if the scholarship you mention is merit-based, we typically advise clients to discuss exactly how competitive this award was to receive.

In general, while the comments above are not necessarily unique to your profile, because you are coming from a smaller country (and one that does not send as many students to business schools), it is important to provide the ad coms with the right level of relative context to help with your application.

Best of luck,

Gil,

Please help evaluate my profile. I just posted a thread on this same forum.

https://gmatclub.com/forum/please-provide-some-advice-133394.html

Your help is highly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Thanks in advance for taking your time out to review my profile. Your response will be highly appreciated! Here is a brief resume:

Citizenship – Russian Federation
Nationality – mixed
Age - 23 years old
Gender - male

a) Work Experience: I left my company 2 months ago so that to get prepared for the forthcoming admission process and GMAT particularly. Is it going to be considered unwise decision or on the contrary may prove my desire for getting into a school?

Total work experience: 4 years by now (including 3 years during the studying)

It should be mentioned, that even though most of work experience was gained during my education, it was a full-time job requiring me to stay in the office for the whole day. I was the only student on my faculty, who received a personal permission from the dean not to attend the classes and to take all the written tests, exams and essays during exams and weekends.

1 year – working for a Russian company as a purchasing manager. The company sells electronics, manufactured in China – OEM. I entered the company as an assistant to the manager and within 3 months was promoted to manager. I mainly dealt with purchasing and logistics but was also responsible for the advertising and the maintenance of the web site. Around 3-4 months before I left the company I also became responsible for the sales through Internet and soon Internet shops turned out to be the main source of distribution.

1 year – working for a Russian company as a senior purchasing manager (team leader for purchasing). The company deals with conveyor part equipment, supplying it to Russian plants from European countries. When hiring me for this position, the company set a goal to diversify the supply channels and to find Asian analogues to European products. By the time I left the company almost 70% of all the products were purchased from Chinese manufacturers, relations with which were established by me. Besides, as a team leader, I substantially streamlined the process of handling the inquiries by developing a prototype of CRM and devising standard forms for inner commercial documents.

2 years – working for a Russian company (with branches in India and China) as a team leader for international trading. The company is one of Russian leaders for chemical trading. It also has a plant in Moscow, which has the biggest capacities in Russia for polymers recycling.
I was hired as a project manager and after 2 months was promoted to a team leader. By the time, I left the company, the team (7 people) had been named “The most efficient” one 8 times (out of 24 months). During the last 6 months, my team was having the highest rate of collected revenue and profit among all the other teams in the company.
Was awarded as “The best new employee in 2010”.

b) International Exposure: I’m afraid that the only cases I might mention here are dozens of business trips to South Korea, China and India and a few to Europe, all of which implied direct negotiations with local leading manufacturers. I’m not sure whether they could be accounted.

c) GMAT: 690 – 47Q (76%), 38V (83%)
1st attempt

d) Education:

1. Specialist (Russian analogue to bachelor which takes 5 years instead of 4)
Subject – Civil Law
University – one of Russian top Universities for Humanities
GPA – 3,53

2. Bachelor of Economics (International trade)
University – one of Russian top Universities for Economics
GPA – 4.0 (still studying and will graduate in January 2013)


e) Schools short listed:
- Wharton Business School
- Yale SOM
- MIT Sloan
- Chicago Booth
- Kellogg
- Harvard
- Stanford
- Duke

I am actually quite confused with my GMAT results which I’ve just obtained today as I was going to apply to the schools during the first stream in October and I’m afraid I might not manage to prepare the essays and get recommendations if I have to study for Integrated reasoning part and try to pass the test again.

So your opinion on the promises of my resume will be very valuable.

Is there a chance that the schools will seriously consider me with my background and even though I’m only 23 y.o.?

Eugenio,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 690, our experience indicates you would be a stretch candidate at Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Booth, Kellogg, and Sloan, between stretch and competitive (closer to stretch) at Yale, and between stretch and competitive (closer to competitive) at Fuqua.

The bottom line is I would strongly encourage you to keep working for at least 1-2 years and/or include programs like Anderson, Darden, and Johnson in your mix, where you'd be competitive (with more work experience).

In our experience, the majority of applicants who are successful at top programs and that have less than three years of work experience post-undergrad when they matriculate are coming from industries like management consulting or investment banking. For applicants who come from industry, the average work experience is fairly higher. And, ad coms for top MBA programs typically do not 'count' work experience prior to someone graduating from an undergraduate program, since the presumption is that you are a full-time student. In your case, it sounds as though you could have a legitimate argument that you have more work experience than the average 23 year old. At the same time, based on our experience with clients, I would highly encourage you to go back to the last company you were at and ask to return for the time being. The main reasons are:

1. Many schools will have a bias to question the 'seriousness' of your work experience while in school. You'll need to convince them that it was not just an internship but that you had full-time responsibility.
2. The fact that you left your job prior to applying may be assessed as presumptuous by ad coms. Many applicants stop working after they've been accepted to a top program and take a couple of months off work before beginning the MBA. However, for someone who is just 23 (and who is perceived to need additional work experience), you should aim towards maximizing, not limiting, your work.
3. There will be a higher standard of expectations from the ad com regarding your application. Since you are not working, you presumably have more time than your fellow applicants to prepare your essays.
4. You're likely going to need recommendation letters from the employer you just came from, so it makes sense to keep good relationships with the management there.
5. I am interpreting your work history as having worked at 3 different companies in 4 years. This is not necessarily a negative, but we advise candidates to try to show multiple promotions within a single company if possible to be able to show that the management at your firm respected your work and abilities.
6. Top MBA programs, especially those in the US, receive relatively few applications from people originally from Eastern Europe. As such they may need more work history to truly calibrate your experiences against those of other applicants.

All this said, I'm a bit confused as to your education situation - it sounds as though you perhaps needed to work during your school because of a financial situation. It also appears as though you're on your way to a second bachelor's degree (and not a master's degree).

Beyond all of this, the 'why MBA' and 'why now' parts of your essays would need to be very well-organized, because there is a higher burden of proof for a 23 year old applicant vs. a 28 year old applicant.

I don't think you have anything to worry about regarding your international experience - it will be more competitive than many American applicants.

Best of luck,

amp0201,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 620, our experience shows that you would be a stretch candidate at Columbia and between a stretch and competitive candidate (closer to stretch) at NYU Stern.

At a high level, I would have two general recommendations:
1) Focus a significant proportion of your essays on stories about communication, persuasion, leadership, presentation, etc. You mentioned that you are not looking to take the GMAT again, but you will need to provide evidence of strong communication skills in your application to overcome your lower verbal split on the GMAT. Although you're ultimately interested in a career in finance, the ad coms will look at your technical academic background, strong GPAs, and strong quant GMAT split and will likely not have serious concerns about your ability to pick up financial knowledge in an MBA program. I love the fact that you're taking a class at Berkeley - this should help somewhat.

2) Do everything you can to connect with people in your existing firm about the roles you would like to have in the future. Learn everything you can about these jobs from these connections, and use this information to your advantage in your essays. Literally, mention people (and titles) by name. Even though you don't work in this role right now, you should have access to people at MS who can give you a great perspective on how to succeed in this career and what it will take. And, most likely some of these people will be alumni of your target schools.

Other topics to keep in mind:
- In order to help reduce the impact of the GMAT, you'll want to try to describe your other accomplishments. Specifically, mention if you received any scholarships or awards, etc.
- You mention you manage 3-5 people. Use just one number in your application, not a range. I'm guessing it might have been one of those in the past and perhaps it's different now with attrition or new people joining, etc.
- Because of the competitiveness of the male Indian engineer demographic, in our experience we'd recommend considering applying to a wider mix of schools outside of the top 10

Best of luck,

Hi,

I'd really appreciate some feedback on my profile.

Asian Male
Age 31
Undergraduate: Computer Science and Engineering at UC Davis
GPA: overall 3.38, engineering weighted, ~3.6
GMAT: 750, q49, v44. Took this past friday! june 1st.
W.E.:
1 year at a data networking startup doing QA.
7 years (and still) at another data networking company (well known silicon valley company, publicly traded) doing software engineering. I am currently at the senior engineer level without any direct reports. Management experience includes leading many team projects with several people in my team and involvement of many groups. Several marks of innovation throughout my career and several large pay increases due to performance.

Interested in..
Primarily part time programs in silicon valley
- Haas
- Andersen (less preferable because of commute)

Would still like to determine how well I would fare at the top 20 full time schools although I understand they would be a stretch for me. Sloan, Yale School of MGMT, etc.

Hello Brian, Gill;
Could you please check my profile and suggest course of action
27/ M/Nepal
WE
1. Currently working in a startup asset management firm (only one of its kind in the country) as an analyst. Helped bring about significant change investment style, focus etc, and raise capital
Duration: 1 year
2. Worked as a finance manager in a small privately owned service industry business in the US for about 3 years ( can a good recommendation from the boss)
Education:
1. Undergraduate : 3.7/4, public school in the US ( business)
2. Graduate : 3.75/4, public in the US ( Ms Finance)
Also I worked a lot during my undergraduate and graduate school years( usually more than regular full time), to support myself, i.e. to pay tuition and other expenses ( Will this be a plus point in the application).
I’m a CFA level 3 candidate (took level 3 few days back).
EC:
I would say decent. Been a lot active in sports since school years.
I volunteer here and there, but not much. But I’m actively working on establishing commercial agriculture in the village I was born. Even though it is a for profit venture, it will provide employment and other benefits to the village. (Would it count as EC?).
Post MBA Goals: obtain excellent international exposure in IB/PE/wealth management. Im also inclined towards consulting (finance) in MBB ( well who isn’t?)
Schools aiming (for fall 2013):
1. LBS
2. NUS
3. ISB
4. HKUST
Also I want to apply couple of North American schools, I’m not sure which ones.
GMAT : Not taken yet, planning for late august ( studying for 700+)
And one more thing, will my country (Nepal) be of extra help since I know not many people apply to top B-schools from here.

Hi,
I gave GMAT on june 2nd and got a 680 with Q50 and V31. Awaiting AWA scores but hopeful of getting at least 5.

I am 34 years old and I am targeting to go for Full Time MBA in Fall 2013. By that Time I will have total of 14 years experience (1 year in manufacturing and rest in IT). I have held managerial positions in US and Mexico for past 6-7 years. I have managed teams as big as 120 people in Mexico (mostly Mexican Nationals) and 60-70 people in US. In Mexico I played Account Manager role for 2 years and in this time period I was able to grow the team size from 40 to 120. I also led the recruitment and training (Technical and Behaviorial) initiatives for the entire Mexico office (close to 400 people).

I have a Bachelor of Technology Degree in Chemical engineering and secured 78% (Passed with Honors). During my engineering I was Atheletics Captain and was part of college Cricket, Table Tennis and Hockey teams. During my school days I was part of my District Hockey team. I was also part of National cadet Core and passed B Certification.

I want to apply to following schools:

Sloan
Haas
Tuck
Duke
UNC
Booth

Please suggest if I have good chance (Considering I could come up with strong essays and recommendations) at these schools with my GMAT score and profile? If you can suggest other schools as well, that will be great. I am looking at US schools only.

Will my age and work ex be a problem for top US schools?

Thanks in Advance
Arvind

Hello,

Please evaluate my profile for NUS.

Gender : Female
Nationality : Indian
GMAT : 650 (Q48V31)
Experience : 3 years in IT industry
Graduation : Engineering
Percentage : 80% (not sure how to convert in to GPA)
Class X : 93%
Class XII : 96% (School topper)
Extra curricular : Was an active member in clubs in college..participated & organized events

Thanks.

pinchharmonic,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 750, our experience indicates that you would be between a strech and competitive candidate (closer to competitive) at both Sloan and Yale SOM, competitive at Haas, and strong at UCLA Anderson. Please note that all of these assessments are for the full-time MBA programs. While Aringo provides guidance to candidates on some part-time programs, we have fewer data points with which to give a precise chances evaluation for these programs. At the same time, it is our opinion based on prior engagement with candidates that part-time programs are, all things equal at a given school, slightly less competitive to gain entry into relative to their full-time program counterparts.

You should feel good about your profile, and if you believe that a full-time program would best fit your needs and future career goals, then I would encourage you to consider applying to them. It appears to me that you are perhaps struggling with which MBA (part-time or full-time) is the better fit. Your age is somewhat on the borderline between students who might typically go for a full-time MBA (<30) and those who have a bit more work experience but are not yet at the executive level (30-35) that more often opt for the part-time MBA. Regardless of the MBA program type you apply to, you'll need to give a well-thought out plan for your future career objectives/goals and how the MBA will help you.

In terms of things to consider for your profile, since you are not in a direct supervisory position but because you have 8 years of full-time work experience, the ad coms will need (expect) to see significant and quantified accomplishments of project execution and impact at your organization. You also don't mention much about your extracurricular involvement. Because of your extensive work experience, your involvement at UC-Davis in these activities will be considered, but perhaps more important will be that you can point to leadership either in the community or at your organization in some regard. This is also going to be important because you are not in a manager position at work, so the ad coms will need to see proof of your leadership potential.

Best of luck,

needamba13,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 700, our experience indicates that you would be a strong candidate at LBS, between stretch and competitive at Booth, competitive at Tuck, and strong at Ross. While Aringo advises candidates to the schools you mention that are in Asia (HKUST, USB, NUS), we have a bit less data points on them in terms of providing a precise chances evaluation. However, given your overall profile (and, again, an assumption of a 700 GMAT score), you would likely have a very reasonable admission chance with a strong application.

You had a number of interesting questions, so let's review these and overall thoughts on your profile:

- Given that you have both an undergraduate degree in business and a master's degree in finance, it will be important to explain to the ad coms why you need an MBA. The "why MBA" question is important for every candidate, but in our experience this is incrementally more relevant for someone like you, because the ad coms may wonder if you truly need the degree given your academic background

- One item that is going to be important in your profile is the reputation of the specific schools you attended - right now you just say that it was a public school. There is a big difference in the minds of the ad coms between a Public Ivy (e.g. Virginia, Michigan, Berkeley) and a 3rd tier public institution. I bring this point up because it relates to your question about whether or not being from a unique feeder country (Nepal) will help you or not. It may help on the margin from a diversity standpoint, but in our experience we see students from smaller countries succeed in applications who are able to prove that they are elite in their application. 'Elite' would come from any of the following - attending (and excelling at) a strong university, working at (and excelling at) a well-known firm, etc.

- Yes, working while in school is a benefit to your profile, and you should both mention it and quantify it (number of hours per week, and what relative proportion of your colleagues were working this much). It is especially relevant for you to mention this because you were able to graduate with a very high GPA despite the work hours on top of this. This helps to show that you have good time management skills and can handle a rigorous academic workload.

- Yes, doing work for a for-profit venture would count as an extracurricular activity. So long as a role is something that you have contributed significantly to and is something that benefits either your community or your organization, you can include it as an EC.

- The one point I would caution you to consider revising or prioritizing more for your applications are your career interests. You mention investment banking, private equity, wealth management, AND management consulting. This, in our opinion, is (way) too many to list in an MBA application. Why?
1) At most, you would be able to seriously go after 2 of these 4 roles in a full-time MBA program, given how busy you will be and given the extremely time-consuming nature of applying to just one of these industries.
2) If you list all of these industries, the ad com may feel as though you have not thought enough about your career goals and narrowed down why your prior experience will help you get there.
3) Since you already have a business and finance background, the ad coms would expect you to have some familiarity already with these industries, compared to an applicant with a background in the humanities, for example
4) Make sure you show some balance in your short-term AND longer-term career interests in your essays - IB, PE, wealth management, and consulting are often viewed as more short-term career goals that may not necessarily be where someone spends an entire career.

Keep in mind that in no way am I saying you should stop considering one of these career paths. It's just that if you list too many of them in an application, it can come across that you may not be able to prioritize your time / interests in an MBA program. It's extremely common for people to write about one career and change their mind at business school - you just need to be able to have a coherent career logic in the essays and interview.

Best of luck,

Arvind,

Thank you for your profile submission. Based on our experience with applicants, I would highly encourage you to apply to executive MBA programs if you are primarily interested in studying in the United States. In essence, you are likely overqualified for a full-time program. For full-time programs, given your vast leadership experience and extent of full-time work experience, most ad coms would seriously question whether or not you would be a fit for a full-time MBA program. As such, yor GMAT score and GPA become somewhat less of a factor, because your work history is a bit of a non-starter. For context, you would have been (by 2 years) the oldest person in my 80 person section at Kellogg, and you would have likely been the oldest person in my 600+ person graduating class. Additionally, outside of the Kellogg classmates I had who were in the military, you would have had the most amount of leadership responsibility (in terms of the number of people) that I can recall.

In our experience, top MBA programs in Europe index slightly higher in age, and you may have a better chance with those programs. But, it will also be important for you to document and elaborate in your applications on your future career goals. If you're looking to remain in your same industry, this would be another reason to consider an executive MBA. If you are looking to change careers, the ad coms for full-time programs would likely question your ability to be successful in the career search. Again, because of your qualifications, most post-MBA jobs / hiring managers would not be sure how to evaluate you because of your qualifications already.

Best of luck,

vijisathasivam,

Thank you for your profile submission.

Please note that the more information you provide in a profile, the more specific I can be with respect to advising you as a candidate about your application strategy. If you are looking for a quick insight or general comments only, then you don't have to submit a full profile. But, I can give much more specific information and a much better estimate of your application chances with the following information:

Age, gender, undergraduate university (and/or reputation) and GPA (or percentile rank if outside the US), graduate degree (if applicable) and GPA, extracurricular activities in school and during full-time work, GMAT (including splits), length of work experience and extent of leadership roles, industry, reputation/size/prestige of your company, why MBA, post-MBA aspirations short and long-term, target schools or target school rank, interesting or impressive accomplishments/achievements, etc.

Since I don't see any information as to the relative repuation of your university, the company (and prestige) of the company you work for, the number of promotions and level of evaluation you've received, why you are interested in an MBA and what are your career goals, and the level of leadership you might have had in extracurriculars (being a 'member' is different from initiating or leading an event), our evaluation is subject to more uncertainty. And, since you're in a very competitive demographic (Indian engineer), it's important in general for you to try to differentiate yourself in your application. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 650, our experience indicates that you would be between a stretch and competitive candidate at NUS - and the relative merit of the items I mentioned that you did not elaborate on would perhaps take you up or down in the relative chances. Although we have advised candidates for NUS, we have a bit less data on this program than those in Europe or the United States and Canada.

Best of luck,

Hello,

Please evaluate my profile and highlight some schools where I have a realistic chance of admission.

Indian Male, 25 Years

GMAT Score: 700 (Q50 V34)

Undergrad Degree: B. Tech. Computer Science (IP University, Delhi)

Undergrad performance : 71.64%

Work Experience : Entrepreneurship, 3 Years.

Details about Work Experience
1) Started a venture that combined online marketing, search engine optimization and online promotion of businesses. The venture specializes in improving the online presence of offline businesses and products and consulting them. Encountered lots of challenges of a startup and managed the risks well.
2) The business grew well and flourished as we enhanced our services, domains and options.
3) The business is still going strong and we have around 80% international clients and 20% local clients.

Extracurricular
1) Have played hockey for 5 years in school, from 2000 to 2005. Have played at North India level (in 2002 and 2004) and placed third in 2004. Other than that, loads of achievements in city tournaments and inter-school tournaments.
2) Most of my extracurricular activities in college revolved around competitive e-sports. Apart from winning lots of tournaments at city level and across different colleges, have lots of experience in organizing competitive e-sports tournaments. Have organized e-sports tournament in different colleges around the city.
3) Due to my passion for competitive e-sports, an upcoming field in India, I still mentor teams and guide them during tournaments. I also sponsor teams and help them achieve their potential in this field.

Post-MBA Plans: I would either want to work as a consultant for upcoming businesses and entrepreneurs (due to my experience) or engage in online marketing after MBA. I also wish to continue creating new businesses.

Thanks!

Thanks for your inputs.
I work for Infosys Technologies..one of the largest IT companies..listed in Fortune 500..Age - 24 yrs
Have been promoted once ..awaiting the second...hopefully will get it by October
GPA in Infosys training - 4.96/5
I have often volunteered to take up additional responsibilities in the team.However,I have no experience in managing people.
I do have an excellent academic record..
Have contributed funds regularly to Non governmental organizations (Women's Welfare Syndicate) that helps to raise funds for surgeries and other medical expenses for people who could not afford the treatment.
In college..i have been class representative for 4 years..volunteered to help organize international & national level conferences.
I am not sure if high school record is worth mentioning..i scored 200/200 in maths,physics & chemistry in state level board examinations..
Please suggest if I should retake GMAT..
Also,please do suggest what schools i should target for this score.

Thanks,
Viji

tech3,

Thank you for your profile submission. On the basis of the information as presented and under the assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 700, our experience indicates you would be between a stretch and competitive candidate at Ross, between stretch and competitive (closer to competitive) at Fuqua, competitive at Darden, UCLA Anderson, and Cornell Johnson.

The fact that you are an entrepreneur will significantly help to differentiate from many of the other applicants in the male Indian electrical engineering / computer science background demographic. And, the sports that you have been involved with are actually fairly unique for someone from India - also important to paint yourself as different.

The number one consideration in your application approach, and based on your entrepreneurship background, is going to be about framing your business in the right context to prove that the venture has been successful. Right now, you mention a few items such as the fact that you managed risks well, and that the business "grew well." You'll want to think about providing specifics (in your resume and weaved into essays where appropriate) for things like:

- Number of and names of major clients (if there are any 'name-brand' ones that people would recognize)
- Revenue and profit growth
- (Important) Number of employees and how many you're directly managing
- (Important) Whether you've received any outside funding and how much you've received
- ..etc.

I would also encourage you to think about context in other areas of your profile. For example, 3rd place in a hockey tournament - out of 4 teams or 1,000? Additionally, the ad coms are very likely not going to know what "North India Level" means (e.g. how competitive it is) - and they're not likely to Google it to find out. Finally, you may want to consider re-framing "e-sports" as video games, as this is the more common term used in the US as far as I know - although I'm not a gaming expert in the spirit of full disclosure. I would encourage you to frame your involvement in this space much more on the organizing event side, opposed to playing and participation. For one, playing in video game tournaments is less likely (in our experience) to win you as much credit as, say, experience working with non-profits or leading the recruiting effort for your undergrad university for your firm. We have seen applicants who have been heavily involved with competitive online poker, however, so it's not as if video gaming has never been mentioned in an application. Second, it's so important to show leadership and initiative in your extracurriculars, rather than just participation. The fact that you were successful in video game tournaments is impressive, but be aware that you run the risk of having an ad com read your application and question the business/character-building application of it.

Your career goals make sense relative to your background. In terms of consulting for other startups, you may want to try to find some statistics about the growth of small businesses/startups in India and say that you could take advantage of the growing opportunity there. This shows that you've researched the field and have a vision for the role.

Best of luck,

Viji,

Thank you for the follow-up insight regarding your profile.

A few general comments on the additional detail -
- Contributing to an NGO is commendable, although it's generally not (in our experience) going to count nearly as much as working with/for an NGO or other community-based organization or initiative
- It is great that you were a class representative - in our engagement with applicants we see this as a positive that ad coms like to see. If you were elected to this position (usually this is the case), definitely highlight this on your application
- If the GPA in your corporate training was especially strong relative what a normal grade is, you might mention this. Otherwise, though, I typically have not seen applicants mention GPA from a corporate training course. If you are interested in including it, it would make more sense to do so if this was an especially significant or lengthy training (say, two weeks in length or more). If the course is in a non-technical topic, though (e.g. public speaking, negotiations) it would make more sense to include. With an engineering background and a good undergraduate GPA you should be ok here. High school metrics are generally only relevant if the applicant has a lower GPA and/or GMAT score to try to overcome, so it does make sense to include these types of quantifiable metrics that help to paint you in a positive light.

As far as retaking the GMAT, it depends mostly on what your target school(s) would look like, the extent to which you believe you can improve your score, and the amount of time you have to dedicate to potentially studying to take it again. On the basis of the additional information you provided and with the same assumption of strong essays and recommendations and a GMAT score of 650, our experience would indicate that you would be a stretch at top 10 programs in the US, between stretch and competitive (closer to stretch) at Fuqua, between stretch and competitive (closer to competitive) at Tepper, and competitive at programs ranked 20-25 in the US.

Best of luck,