ISB Profile Evaluation - Tools for B-School Profile Evaluation

Hi deekshawadhwa

Below are answers to your questions:

What are my chances of converting with a score of 690?
Based on your profile aspects - Non Engineering background, Big4 stint, Top College Rank, State Level representation - you do have a good chance of getting an interview invite. However you need to bring out clearly in the application through the essays/LOR via suitable examples / situations and how you would add value to the ISB cohort - and what are realistic career goals you want to achieve post the MBA from PGP ISB and how your previous experiences when complemented with the ISB program will help you achieve your goals.

Should i retake the GMAT before the R2 deadline?
If possible Yes. However, please focus on drafting a compelling application in the meantime,

Is there some way to improve the profile?
With less than 4 weeks before the deadline, if I was you, I would not be looking at taking up any new profile improving avenues right now. Rather, spend your energy in making the most of what you have today and showcase it within the best of your abilities

I am an ISB alum and have been guiding applicants get into the program. Feel free to get in touch in case you seek any further guidance.

Regards
Arijit

Hello durdarshan,
Your score is little on the lower side of the average ISB score, and that coupled with a typical engg. background and 6.14 in undergrad, puts you at a slight disadvantage. However, a lot will also depend on your work profile, your demonstrated leadership experience at work, international exposure, which is missing from your current description.
If you could talk about it a little more, it will help to evaluate your profile better. Also, please mention your EC and volunteering initiatives.

DUMMY

Dear Arjun,

Below is my evaluation of your profile:

GMAT: Above Average

Undergrad: Institution: Above Average; CGPA: Very Good

Work Experience: Above Average – 40 months is a sweet spot to apply, Adobe brand is an additional advantage

Extracurricular: Average

Admission committees evaluate applications from a quantitative as well as a qualitative lens. Your profile is well above the average of the applicant pool from a quantitative aspect is concerned. However, from a qualitative aspect, I see some holes, which you will need to cover up in your essays and application. Firstly, you seem to fall in the overly competitive IT pool of applicants. Thus, the admission committee would be interested to know how has your software development experiences differed from those of the many others with similar ‘on-paper’ experience. Secondly, you have not mentioned a lot about your leadership experiences. This might give an impression that you have mostly contributed in solo capacity.

To overcome the above, I would urge you to show case stories in your application, by virtue of which you can bring about unique aspects of your personality and experience. Some examples of the same can be - to provide the background behind why you received a SPOT award, to talk about how you demonstrated leadership at work and beyond (providing mentorship to a team) etc. Lastly, it seems that you are doing pretty well at work (based on promotions history).
Hence, the natural question rises why you want to leave a progressive career trajectory and do a MBA. Adcoms will expect a specific and personalized response to this question.

Overall, I feel that a well-crafted and logically consistent application would give you a good chance of making it to the ISB cohort. To be honest, I have my doubts on the scholarship front.

I am an ISB alum, CO15, and have been guiding applicants in their admission journeys since. Feel free to reach out in case you require specific guidance.
Cheers and Best of luck!

Hi @arjun_iyer,

Your profile definitely looks very promising with an impressive record of academics. It strikes as a high-performing, intellectual person with great academic prowess. With the average GMAT of the class at 710, your chances of selection are strong and depend to a large extent on your essays and interviews now. Though the average work-experience at ISB stands at 4.3, your academics are quite strong and warrant your above-average performance.

ISB looks for well-diverse individuals with all-rounded characteristics who have demonstrated leadership abilities in the past or have led teams. To make a more informed evaluation, in this regard, I will need more information regarding your work-experience and career-progression. Also, candidates who have steady career progression and have contributed significantly towards their organization are preferred more by ISB. Therefore, you’ll have to highlight the same in your profile and bring out how you performed better than your peers at Adobe.

What I find missing however is a mention of your ECs, hobbies and interests. You must bring them forward and make a strong point that how they have shaped you as a person in a positive way.

I would also like to point out that you will have to have a clear reason why an MBA at ISB is perfect for you. Make a clear plan for short term post-MBA goals and introspect over how exactly ISB can help you achieve them.

Are you eyeing any schools abroad? I would recommend trying your hand at US b-schools as well. Though I don’t have exact details of your work experience and post-MBA goals, I believe you can have a good shot if schools are chosen wisely.

If you'd like, we are happy to hop on a call sometime this week to discuss your chances in further detail and help you shortlist schools. I’ll be more than happy to assist you in your journey.

Feel free to book a free session with us as per your convenience.

Cheers!
Shantanu Sharma, Linkedin
Founder and Admissions Consultant, MBA and Beyond
Testimonials
Email: shantanu@mbaandbeyond.com
What s app: +65-97158525

Hi MBAandBeyond, I was not very comfortable posting about the work done at office here hence I didn't post about the same. I have only a few extracurricular points and stories behind the same but I have had successes in the activities I have taken up as you can see in points 1, 2, 3 and 5. I was also thinking of targeting schools abroad but I think 720 is low if I need to have a shot at scholarships there. What is a good GMAT score for targeting M7 schools in next year's R1 ?

Hi @arjun_iyer,

Well, for your work-experience, I would advise you to bring the most impactful stories which can exhibit the values that ISB is founded on. If you are looking for M7 schools with a scholarship, you need a 740+ score with very strong essays.

Have you considered HEC Paris? It can be a good fit for you with the same GMAT score that you have now. It has many different scholarships and financing options as well.

Feel free to connect with us for any doubt or query. We will be very glad to assist you in any way we can.

Cheers!
Shantanu Sharma, Linkedin
Founder and Admissions Consultant, MBA and Beyond
Testimonials
Email: shantanu@mbaandbeyond.com
What s app: +65-97158525

Hey durdarshan,

To commence your profile evaluation, I would say that your undergraduate brand name of NIT aids in strengthening your profile as most top b-schools tend to pick out applicants from the top colleges of their respective countries. While your GPA is a bit on the lower end, your GMAT score of 690 is definitely pretty competitive and poses a proof for your academic prowess.

Another significant aspect that schools focus is on extracurricular activities. So you would be required to elucidate your proactiveness in extracurricular and other initiatives. In case you don’t have any, it's recommended to work upon the same to build a holistic profile. You can take up volunteering work at local shelters or join certain clubs and organizations where you’d be able to make a positive impact by leveraging your leadership and communication skills. You can also take up a few certifications or courses related to your field of interest to portray a proactive attitude towards upskilling yourself.

Coming on to your work experience, you have 3+ years of experience which is decent for targeting an MBA program. Additionally, you have a good brand on your CV which definitely plays a major role as you’d be competing with applicants from the top schools and big4 companies. Since you have worked as a consultant, you must have dealt with various clients (including international) so make sure you highlight your calibre by showcasing your managerial skills in your application.

Speaking of your target school ISB, it definitely falls under the competitive category wherein you have a 50% chance of getting admitted, provided you back your profile with a strong application. A good application through its various components such as essays, LORs and SOPs would help you to highlight your strengths and give apt justifications for your weaknesses to smooth over any flaws in your profile. Moreover, the application acts as the window through which the admission committee can peer into your skills, calibre and your personality.

Furthermore, since you are applying for a highly competitive program such as MBA, applying to simply one business school is not an optimal strategy, hence you should always target a good mix of 6-8 schools to hedge your bets wisely. To know more about the schools that you can target, you can take up our free profile evaluation to avail detailed insights about the competitiveness in your profile and the schools you can be targeting

Link is provided below:

https://www.mim-essay.com/profile-evaluation

Hi arjun__iyer,

At the first glance itself, your profile stands out with exemplary achievements under your belt. Your undergraduate GPA score of 9.58 along with your GMAT score of 720 is very impressive and showcases your strong academic prowess while also allowing you to target most of the top-notch B-schools.
Coming to your work experience, you have around 3.5 years of work experience which is pretty decent especially when it comes to an MBA program. Here you have mentioned that you have worked at Adobe as a software engineer whereby you were promoted twice. This surely highlights your upward graph in your career growth trajectory which is always an added bonus in your profile. Moreover, since you are applying for an MBA program which is a managerial degree, you ought to focus on highlighting some of your experiences in this domain. Furthermore, this can be taken up a notch by elaborating on the kind of events you organized, duties you performed, and most importantly highlight what were your major takeaways.
Now talking about your extracurricular participation, you need to pay extra attention to this aspect of your profile in order to showcase a holistically developed profile. Needless to say, you possess an impressive set of diverse extracurricular activities under your belt from working on research papers to mentoring APAC winners. This shows that you have a diverse set of skills under your belt that will be a great value addition to the school. Additionally, you can also elaborate on the activities you participated in during your college years such as highlighting the kind of events you organized, duties you performed and your major takeaways from the same. All in all, varied skills can contribute towards you being a great future leader which would automatically impress the adcoms. Moreover, you can maybe take up certain certifications or short courses to portray that you’ve constantly voyaged on a path to upskill yourself. All in all, varied skills can contribute towards you being a great future leader which would automatically impress the adcoms.

Now coming to the school ISB that you are targeting, it comes under the dream category (where your chance of acceptance is 60%). However, you can boost your chances of acceptance by focusing on the kind of application you are submitting. Your application is basically what differentiates you by highlighting your strengths and overshadowing your weaknesses. Moreover, since you are curious about the scholarship chances, let me enlighten you that you can directly apply for the ISB scholarship or through the national scholarship programs. Here you need to pitch your scholarship application by highlighting the relevant reasons for your need for this scholarship. Having said that, your chances of bagging a scholarship lies between 50-60%.

All said and done, if you are contemplating on how to draft an impactful application, be it for your admittance at ISB or bagging a scholarship, you can check out our All-in-one service, that is a complete end to end consulting process aimed at providing personalised application suggestions, unlimited edits, from your LOR’s, resumes, SOPs, essays and scholarship applications along with an expert consultant who would constantly be there to help you throughout your journey. We’ve helped 2500+ applicants get into their dream schools so far, and we’d love for you to be next!

Below is the link to our All in One service:

https://www.mim-essay.com/mim-all-in-one

Here you can also Book a FREE 20-minute consulting session with one of our expert consultants.

Hope this helped!

Hi,

Can anyone please evaluate my profile for ISB and IIM A/B/C/L

Male - 27 years old.

Academic Details-
10th - 74%
12th - 71.33%
Bachelor of Technology - 70.22% from Uttar Pradesh Technical University.

GMAT Score - VA28/QA48/IR7

Work Experience-
5 years of experience in the field of Data Science and Machine Learning across different domains such as Supply Chain Management, Batch Analytics, and IT Operations. Have been a part of more than 25 different customer engagements with leading more than 10 of them.

Extra curricular-
Winner of Larson and Turbo Finance - Fin Hack 2 - Hackathon in the year 2020
Winner of Digitate Ideathon - 2020
Winner of Digitate Ideathon - 2018

Head of the drama group 2013-14
President of Leadership Training Service Organization at School 2010-2011

Any inputs would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

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Hey,

Please evaluate my profile for ISB application in 2021:

Age: 25.5 yr (the age when I will be applying for the application)

GMAT Score: Yet to give in April 2021- targetting 710

Educational Qualifications:

Graduation: B.Tech in Computer Science from Symbiosis Institute of Technology (Symbiosis International University) in 2017 (Batch: 2013-2017) with 88.75% (3.55 CGPA).
H.S.C: secured 86.41% from Science stream from Andhra Pradesh Board of Intermediate Education in 2013.
S.S.C: secured 80% from Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in 2011 (8.4 CGPA).
The reason for the low score in SSC is I had an accident 2 months before the exams where I was admitted to the hospital for 1.5 months.

Work Experience:

Consulting and Data Analytics Firm (04/19-Present): Working as a Business Technology Analyst, responsible for end to end leading, planning, designing and development of Business Intelligence solutions on the pharmaceutical domain, also act as a consultant to provide general opinion on newly onboarded BI projects in my client space as I have the highest experience on the BI tool we are using in the client space. I have 3 associates working under me.
IT Firm (07/17-04/19): Working as a Software Engineering Associate, responsible for designing and development of BUsiness Intelligence solutions, also got an opportunity for presenting team portfolio's during client visits multiple times, giving a demo on various new POC projects to the on-site management, training, and delegation of newly onboarded members.

Suggestion Needed:
I have been denied promotion in my current organization as I have not completed 2.5 years in the firm (this was the reason provided by my manager), however, a person who had started their professional career as a fresher from my current firm usually gets promoted in 2-2.5 years, due to this I am planning change my job as my juniors are getting promoted and I am withheld as I have not reached the benchmark of a number of years spent in the firm. I already have an offer to work from one of the most reputed companies starting from Feb-21, will changing the job have any negative impact on the application or on LOR. The new role I got involves similar work that I have been doing along with complex data analytics, the role is for a senior associate but the designation doesn't have the word "Senior".

Leadership Skills:

1. In my current firm, I am the acting lead for ensuring end-to-end delivery of BI project where I am responsible for planning, estimating timelines, etc. of the tasks along with delegating them to the fellow associates.
2. In my previous firm, I was responsible for training some of the newly onboarded team members and deligating a couple of tasks to them.

Professional Achievements:

1. In my current firm, I belong to a specialization team that has various experts on various BI tools who are loaned out to different client teams.
2. In my current firm, I am responsible for conducting Technical Round interviews for the new applicants despite designation not being a senior associate (Company policy is that only senior associate and above can take interviews, however, my manager has requested an exception for me)
3. In my previous firm, Nominated for the "We are one team and we play to win together award" for successful collaboration on various teams

Extra-Curricular:

1. Participated in a robotics workshop during my Graduation and secured 1st position got an opportunity to take part in the finals conducted by IIT Delhi, but couldn't attend as some of the team members were not willing to travel.
2. Conducted a Cloud Computing workshop as a member of Google Club. (Do not have a certificate for that)
3. Attend a telecom conference in 2013 where different telco leaders presented their insights on net neutrality and the rise of the 4G.
4. During my 8th Grade, I was in scouts and guides and we were assigned a task for cleaning up the playground as part of the scout's activity.
5. During my 8th Grade, I was selected to play a synthesizer in front of the entire school as part of a band during the annual event.
6. Conducted the induction session for the first years during my final year in graduation

International Exposure:
I did get an opportunity to travel but was canceled due to budget issues, but in my current firm I have traveled to domestic offices as I was working on a few projects with the other office team

Post MBA goals:
Want to join a consulting or an investment banking firm.

Please share your feedback

Hey,

Please evaluate my profile for ISB PGP Round II @ 2021-2022 batch:

Age: 27 yr Male

GMAT Score: 650 [Quant:37, Verbal:41]

Educational Qualifications:
PG Diploma: Asian College Of Journalism, Chennai
Graduation: Completed BA in English from the University of Calcutta in 2014 with 50.76%.
Class XII: Secured 83% @ ICSE Science stream in 2011
Class X: Secured 86% @ ICSE Science stream in 2010

Work Experience: 5.8 Years
2018 - Present: Manager - Marketing & Communications - Times Group
- Built & operationalised PR strategy for 35 Times brands including MX Player, Dineout & Gaana
- Counsel for deal pipe communication for funding rounds of MX Player, Gaana & Gradeup
- Part of 4 member crisis communications task force for Dineout during #Logout campaign

2016-2018: Snr. Associate - Communications - Paytm
- Headed PR content strategy for all Paytm group companies globally
- Established Paytm Blog & 5 more; led 500X organic surge in traffic within 6 months
- Shaped Paytm's reputation across 13 countries

2015-2016: Startup Reporter - Times Group
- Founding team business Insider India
- Over 400 byline articles across Times Group properties
- Led BI India's first branded content campaign; created multiple viral content properties


Achievements:
Part of Exchange4Media’s Top 30 Under 30 2020 list of young talent in the Media, Advertising & Digital
Winner of Exchange4Media’s ‘Young Gun’ title at the Indian Content Marketing Awards 2019
Led 4 member central Communications Team that won Times Group's Quarterly ‘Terrific Team’ Award
Conferred the ‘Highly Commended Young Communicator’ honor at PRCA South East Asia 2019
Winner of ‘Rising Star of the Year’ Award at ICCO Global Awards 2018
Winner of ‘PR Up and Comer’ Award at 2018 Stars of PR Awards
Winner of ‘Young PR Professional of the Year’ at PR Awards Asia 2018
Paytm Blog is an official case study in the country’s only dedicated post-graduate PR College – the School of Communications and Reputation, Mumbai
Winner of ‘Best Use of Blogs’ honor at Exchange4Media’s Indian Digital Media Awards 2017
Part of a two-member team recognized among India’s top 5 Communications Teams by Reputation Today

Others:
Persuing MICA's online PG Certification in Digital Marketing and Communication
Working on a self-help book for Indian college-goers & young professionals
Guest Lecturer - Indian Institute of Mass Communication, Delhi 2019 Batch

No hobbies or extra-curriculars worth mentioning.

Hi,

My GRE exam is on 7th Jan 2021, and ISB R2 application deadline is 10th Jan 2021. So if I write the exam at testing centre and send the score to the college will it be acceptable ? If anyone can get me info or connect me to the college staff who can reply ASAP, please connect me. I already dropped an email today afternoon to them asking this doubt, but there is no reply as of now.

Regards,
Hawk Eye

Dear Hawkeye,

You can submit your unofficial scorecard and GRE Application Id while filling the ISB application form. Additionally, you should do the following:
- Make sure you put ISB as one of the schools where you would want to apply with the score. This will ensure your score gets automatically sent to ISB. Otherwise, you have to manually request for sending your scores.
- Drop an email to ISB ad com explaining your situation and get written confirmation from them that they will accept your score even if it reaches them a few days after the application deadline.

Hope this helps!

Cheers and best of luck with your entire application.

thehawkeye,
Yes, this should work. Amit (from ISB admissions) had mentioned in the live Q&A last week that as long as you are taking the test on or before the 10th, they will accept the score. However, your profile will not be verified for further assessment till ISB receives your official score. Checkout the full Q&A here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqCeXnW2mjI

Cheers,
Manan
Co-founder, S4G | ISB CO'13
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mananpuri/

Hi,

I just needed some opinion on my profile from whoever has some experience in ISB application process.

10th- 10 CGPA
12th- 94.2%
B.E. Mechanical Engineering- 8.8 CGPA (2019 passout)

GMAT- 660

Work Experience- 1 year 8 months at Deloitte (applying for early entry for PGP 2022)

However, my profile got selected for SPJIMR profile based calls, so I'm assuming that tells me that my profile (academics and extra curriculars) is decent enough.

I have been engaged into a lot of extra curriculars in college as well as in office. Also, leading a team in the current project inspite of relatively lesser experience.

I'm confident about my profile extra curriculars and past academic record. However, GMAT is something which is bothering me. I had given GMAT before and got a fairly low score of 580, but after preparing properly I was able to reach 660. I'm thinking of applying anyway since other parts of my application look decent to me. I have completed my essays and gotten them reviewed by an ISB alum.

Please let me know what are my chances of getting an interview call based on your previous experience. It'll be really helpful!

Thanks.

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Hello, call someone evaluate my profile please?

GMAT-690 (I feel it's not enough)
Acads
10th-9.5gpa
12th-93.5%
Undergrad-87% distinction

Work experience-
Deloitte-audit-4 months
Arcesium-financial services-14 months
Currently setting up a manufacturing unit for my family business. I'm planning to expand the business

Post MBA goals-strategy consultant short term and entrepreneurship long term

I'm a national level karate player
A lot of extra circulars
Treasurer at Student club
AIESEC experience of 1 year. I lead teams in aiesec
I also co-organize international karate tournaments.
I won IIM Indore flagship event in their management fest. The participation was more than 1000 people

Thank you.

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