Hello!
I'm an Indian female engineering graduate, currently working as a Digital Marketing Analyst / Data Analyst in a reputed IT products company in Chennai, headquartered in the US. I'm 29 months into this job, right after my under grad. I'm also working part-time for my NGO/NPO which is a registered one, for the past 4 years. I'm the Founder and President of it. We've done quite some commendable programs over these years. I also have some decent extra curricular that I did well during college and held leadership roles. Received 2 awards - "Best Student Award" (State level, recommended by my University) and "Seva Ratna Award" (for my contribution to the city). Also worked as a free-lance writer during college. Coming to my acads part of my profile, it's bleak I must say. 85.6, 78.25 & 69.4 in 10th, 12th and under grad respectively.
My last attempt in CAT (MBA entrance test in India) was a serious one (CAT 2017) but I failed miserably compared to my mock tests and scores. But prep wise I did well this time which was evident through my tests. Yet the D day was totally not mine for some abstract reasons that I cannot justify.
I've got calls from the New IIMs, just like last year (for CAT 2016) when I cracked the interviews and got admits to all of them. The interview is on 27th of Feb 2018. After that, the final admit results would be some time around end of May. I am contemplating a plan of taking the GMAT by say May start. So by the end of the month I'd know if I should give up on IIM Ranchi (if I get selected), assuming I cross a target score in GMAT.
I'd like to finally land up (if not for now, at least after MBA) at countries like the Nordics, Germany, France, Netherlands and Canada. The kind of streams of MBA that I want to go for are: general, marketing, strategy, and sustainability, in decreasing order of priority. Also, I'm stumbling upon some prep and practice tests (
OG/GMAC for now). Getting a full score in PS and SC with a difficulty level of 2.0 and above. I need to seriously work on CR and RC. Kind of improving. My essays are not great yet. I can get LORs from scholars in Finland, one of my professors at college and a Civil service officer (In India) who's a mentor for my NGO.
With all this said, what should be my target score, strategy, plan, timeline, realistic options and the like?
TIA.
P.S: My under grad score worries me a lot!