Ask ARINGO MBA Admissions Consulting

Hello,
I would like you to evaluate my profile and provide me a list of b-schools that will be suitable for my profile.

Profile:
Gender - Male
Age - 24
Nationality - Indian

Educational Qualification:
10th: 89%
12th: 89%
Under Grad: 63.5% in Chemical Engineering from one of the Top 50 colleges of the country
Year of Graduation: 2013

Work Experience:
Working with WIPRO Technologies since April 2013. Also received Pinnacle award from my client(DuPont).
Founder of BookingBunty an e-commerce website.

GMAT Score:
11 September 2013 - 640 (IR:7, AW:4.5, Q:48, V:31)
30th August 2015 - 710 (IR:6, AW:4.0, Q:50, V:35)

Post MBA: Have Startup plans

Hey There,

I am 28, Indian "IT" male, 6 years Experience

GMAT 690 (q50,v33)
Work Exp: 2 years as Software Test Engineer + 4 years as Subject Matter expert in Clearing and settlement, UBS as contractor.
International Experience: with UBS in London United Kingdom (2 years)
Education: Mechanical Engineer, Pune university (Fist class with Distinction)

Post MBA goal: Over the years I have been working with IB Operations, but now would really want to be one of them.

Short Story: Took GMAT on April 2013, applied to Manchester Business School for the Sep-2015 MBA course, got admitted with 5k sterling scholarship, but rejected the offer as I got opportunity to work in London (again!). Now I am thinking of applying again for an MBA, but this time in Asia (I do not want to stay far away from home, consequently US, Canada, Europe are out of the picture). I would really like to pursue an MBA from Singapore or HongKong. So please suggest me good bschools for my profile.

Thanks

Hi, we’ve worked with candidates who have applied to HKU, Nanyang, HKUST, NUS and a few others – but not enough to be able to say what profile you need to have for each one.
In my experience, the Asian schools are not as competitive as the ones in Europe or the US, however. The only exception might be INSEAD, Singapore campus. However even there, you would want to try and raise your GMAT up to 700 to be more competitive.

Good luck!!

Joy

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Hi there. From what you’ve written below, I don’t see anything outstanding in your profile; it might be there, but you haven’t included it below. Academics are not superb, nor from a top 10-20 college. You haven’t listed any kind of managerial or leadership experience, nor any extracurricular activities. So without knowing any of that, it’s difficult to recommend what school you’d be competitive at. If you’d care to write back with more information, I’ll be happy to take another look. You should also include if you are looking at N America, Europe or Asia.

All the best,

Joy

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Hi Michael,

Your profile looks good – the GMAT and academics seem to be the only weakness. I do think that you should concentrate on retaking the GMAT and breaking 700, even if it means applying to a later round, or postponing by a few months – remember INSEAD has the January intake as well. I’ve never heard of this conditional offer by INSEAD; it would be interesting to know the candidates’ profiles, and if they had some truly outstanding achievements, like founding their own company, strong management experience, etc.

Good luck!!!

Joy

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Hi there,

Thanks for evaluating profile and providing guidance, Truly appreciate it.

my profile:
Age: 26, Indian Male
Academics: Comp. Sc. Engineering from DAIICT, Gujrat, India, CPI – 7/ 10; GMAT – 770 – Nov/ 2015 - first attempt
Professional Work Ex: Four and half years of work experience in Pharma Consulting – ZS Associates, IMS Health and Novartis. I developed solid understanding of Healthcare industry and of Market Research; led team of 3-4 people; Worked on variety of marketing projects from Understanding the market and competitor landscape, to develop Go to market strategy and finally to monitor product performance and usage attitudes. Negative – lack of onsite experience and I believe I should have managed one more promotion (didn’t happened because I switched companies at wrong time)
Future Goals: To continue working in Pharma management consulting industry and gain more industry knowledge. Long Term – to help make healthcare affordable and accessible in developing countries such as BRICS nations.
REKO: Should be able to get great recommendations.
Miscellaneous:
- 4 Years of NGO work ex p. Worked with 3 different NGOs –first was for Child Education; in second we went to rural area to understand social and political problems faced by villagers ; in my third NGO I’m working to optimize the retail selling price for Farmers in rural areas of India
- CFA Level 2 cleared
- Learned Spanish, apart from Hindi and English. Is planning to pick French later this year
- Member of Toastmasters club
- Coursera – Wharton’s Introduction to Marketing ; Kellogg’s Leadership Specialization (5 courses)
- Hobbies – Good player of Poker (made money), cricket (college team)
- Random leadership and event organization experience in college and school. Admin of FB page with 5000+ members, to discuss current Pharma news/ trends

Hope I covered most of the relevant things, please let me know if you need any further information from my side, will be very happy to share
My query: I want to understand my chances of getting in schools such as – DUKE, TUCK, ROSS, HAAS and Darden. If these are difficult to get in, should I also try – HEC Paris, ESCADE and NUS? And while we are on this topic, what chances (quantifiable figure will be best) will you assign for me to get in LBS, INSEAD or KELLOGG. In short, can you please help me short list 5-6 schools which I should apply later this year.

Thanks a million

Mate, I am also an applicant myself and see your post thru email updates on this thread
your profile is extremely competitive...
You should apply any schools that interest you.
I think even HBS or MIT is within reach....
Given that you've been successful in both academics and extra-curriculum (Your NGO work and things )
To quantify the chance in GMAT CR language ...your chance of getting admitted at the best MBA course (HBS,MIT,Standford) is more than some applicant if not most applicant (i.e. >50% for sure..)

Hi Michael,

Thanks a lot for your kind words and encouragement.

If you were at my position, which 5 schools you would have applied to later this year? and considering that R2 of most top school is already over, do you think it will a smart move from my end to apply HEC, IMD, NUS this year and get done with it?

Kind Regards,

I am not any expert in admission consulting, but would be happy to imagine that I score 770 in GMAT and have a outstanding profile like yours.

The first thing you need to ask yourself is what is the most important thing that you look at when choosing an MBA school.
The brand, location, duration or all of them plus you feel you must join this year's class


If you want to go to HBS or MIT, by no means wait for another year to maximise your chance....and include one or two safe choices.

Hi there,

Your profile looks fantastic. The GMAT, awesome. While you are an Indian engineer, usually an overrepresented pool, your professional experience puts you in a totally different category. Very impressive – leadership, healthcare niche, market research gives you business experience. Going forward in the same industry is a great choice – programs like when your previous experience has relevance to your future career. I love the ambitious long term goal that seeks to have impact on society. And the extracurricular activities and hobbies are also great additions – you will be able to put forth some very well rounded applications that the reader will love. Seems that all your are missing is having founded your own startup-company…

I think you have a chance at all the schools you are applying to. I think you should even choose one dream school – like Stanford, Columbia, Wharton, HBS. Stanford and Wharton, by the way, both have healthcare specializations that you could look into.

So, 5-6 schools?
One top 5 school, one safety school, like HEC or IESE, etc. and the other 3 chosen from your other list. INSEAD is a great option for you, if you are interested in Europe. For the US, the 5 schools you’ve selected are all good options. I think the question now is more what part of the country do you want to be in, and where do your potential future employers recruit?

Good luck!!

Joy

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Hi Aringo, thanks for your response, this is very useful.

Regarding my profile, I believe we are undermining the weightage of Indian male engineer factor. I have seen lot of people with similar or better profile, getting rejected in low ranked schools - I guess a lot eventually comes down to application writing and of-course luck!

For myself - after past few days of research , I'm thinking to apply to HEC for 2017 Jan Intake (and hope I make through it). I don't have any specific Location preference, lot of pharma companies are moving to EU now, so US , EU and east Asian countries works well. Does it sound good to you , if I just apply to HEC and get done with this.

Thanks a lot again!

Hi again,
I had a client recently with a GMAT lower than yours, who was accepted to Tuck and Yale – both as a reapplicant, by the way. I think what really did it for him was the strong leadership in his profile – so don’t count yourself out! As far as applying to HEC, sure. If I were you, I’d add at least one of two other higher ranked schools, just for the heck of it. Why not? INSEAD, LBS…

Good luck!!

Joy

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Age : 25
Educational Qualifications : Bachelors in Applied Petroleum Engineering
CGPA : 2.97, Equivalent percentage : 79.40%
Year of passing : 2012
Location :India

GMAT:710
10th: 89.8%
12th: 86.4%
TOEFL: 115


Work Experience
4 Years (By the time I will start applying it will be 5 yrs) in Reliance Industries Ltd. (India's largest private company with more than 40000 employees)
- Working as Workover Engineer (planning, executing and managing drilling and workover operations of oil and gas wells)
- Managing a team of 20+ engineers directly and more than 200 employees indirectly.
- Managing 200+ sites and 10+ Rigs (In-charge of all rigs).
- Revised and implemented operations procedures that led to reduction in down time from 15%(approx) to <2% effectively saving more than $5,000,000
- Take mentoring classes for new recruits (fresh graduates) and provide training to them about different oil and gas field operations.

Extracurriculars
- Teaching orphans, underprivileged children and illiterate adults via NGO subjects like Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Computers( More than 3 yrs now.)
- Team member of project's Table Tennis and Badminton team.
- Organized Free Health and Eye checkup camps, and Blood donation camps in various villages in India since 2013 , held half yearly. (Through company's CSR policy)

Target 1 : Full time MBA 2 years at a leading college
Target 2 : M Finance at a leading college

My questions :

1. An honest opinion about where I stand
2. What could I do to improve my case ?
3. As per my case, which are the schools that I should be looking at ?

Hi, your profile looks excellent.
Strengths: Great leadership and initiative; excellent extracurriculars; TOEFL score terrific.
Weaknesses: Academics a bit on the low side, and GMAT is low for your pool (Male Indian Engineer)
How to improve your case? A higher GMAT will help.
I think you have a good chance, though, because while you are an engineer, you aren’t IT, and you have strong leadership, so you need to work that and differentiate yourself.

I had an Indian candidate with a similar profile accepted this year to Yale and Tuck, so those might be good schools to try – or if not them, it should give you a sense of where to shoot. However he had a higher GMAT. Other options: Darden, Tepper, McCombs, Cornell…
Assuming you are staying in oil, some popular choices for that field are: Texas A&M, Rice University and U Texas at Austin.

Good luck!!

Joy

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Dear Aringo, kindly ask you to evaluate my profile.

Target schools: Harvard, Stanford, Wharton.

Age: 27.
Country: Russian Federation.
Work experience: Procter & Gamble and BCG.
GPA: 4,92 out of 5,00 Russian scale.
GMAT: 710 (49/37).
Extras: had a small successful business with 5 subordinates.

Assuming good essays and recommendations, what are my chances with current GMAT score?

I've heard that better scores are expected from management consultants, but I do not want to invest more time in GMAT if it will not increase my chances significantly.

So, to wrap up:

1) what are my current chances approximately?
2) how they will change if I will add 20 points to my GMAT? 40?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Hi Denis,

Your score is enough to get in with the right profile and essays. I personally believe that a higher score may win you extra points with Stanford, possibly with Wharton… With Harvard, it’s more about the leadership you can show. You haven’t mentioned extracurricular activities; I’m hoping you have some there as well. The business sounds amazing, great leadership/managerial experience. Not sure what you do or did for the 2 corporations; am hoping it was good business/managerial experience as well.

Remember these schools are tough for anyone; you should consider adding 1 or 2 easier ones as well… Columbia… Chicago… perhaps Ross.

Good luck!

Joy

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Hi Aringo - thanks for your help!

As I'm putting my application together to apply INSEAD's January for 2017, I concern about my low GMAT score, especially low in verbal. Let me know whether you recommend to take GMAT again, though I really want to avoid it....

Here's my profile -

Asian (US Citizen)
Age: 31
GMAT: 660 (80%) (Q49 V32; 79th and 66% percentile)
CFA
GPA. 3.6 (4.0 finance major) from Top 20 US business school (graduated at 25 as I had to pay my tuition as well as support my parents. I did work at restaurant, gas station, liquor store, construction - basically whatever I could get paid. I had to postpone couple semesters to save money).
Work Experiences:
Big 4 consulting doing corporate finance for 2 years
Asset Management for 4 years
I'm currently making 20%-30% more than post MBA's in financial services
I want to get a job at global asset management role in Asia after INSEAD - not picking stocks or building portfolios, but more like a management/relationship role. I speak English and Korean very well...

Based on my research, I concern about my gmat score as INSEAD cares a lot about 75/75 split...My verbal is slightly lower than that. I know it's hard to tell from a high level summary of my profile, but do you think I have a good chance? Of course, I will do my best to put a good application package...