schools selection

Hi Scott and Omari,

First off, I am reading your book and I think its a great resource!

Although you explain in your book about how to select schools, I am still not able to evaluate my chances at some schools. I plan to apply for the fall,2006 class (yes...I am up against it ! )

Following is brief description of my profile :

Undergraduate Degree : B.E, Computer Science Engineering, Bangalore, India. Graduate with the highest grade in the university.

GMAT : 710, 94% ( Quant : 47, 81% V : 40, 91 %)
( The above is my second attempt score, first time : 680 Q: 90%, V : 77% )

Work Experience : Software development for 2 years for a large IT MNC. Received 2 awards for team work and technical excellence. Was also given the highest appraisal rating. Subsequently have moved on to Business Development for one of the products in the company. I wanted to be in a client facing role which would help me understand how customers evaluate and deploye Software products. Such a role is not usually given to a young guy like me, so have shown decent career progression here. ( I think ! )

Regarding my leadership skills : I have not had any official leadership exp at work. But I did lead and implement a project(handed to me by my manager ) at work which turned out well.

Extra Currics :
a) I helped setup a trekking(which I really like) club at work.
b) I am involved in Toastmasters International and have held leadership positions there.
c) I also held leadership positions in under-grad college(Conceived and edited the first departmental yearbook in college ).

I guess the above is a normal description of a typical Indian applicant, but there is a small difference here. I come from traditional business family in India and we are involved in the food processing industry for quite sometime now. I always had a desire to diversify our business and take advantage of the Indian advantage to build a IT services organization. It was with this in mind that studied for and set out to work for a IT company. And I fully intend to come back to India post-MBA after a certain amount of work-ex(2-3 yrs) in the US and setup a technology services company.

Now my reasons for doing an MBA are :

•To learn entrepreneurship skills
•Hone and develop my leadership skills
•Skills to manage a family business
•Strategy skills
•Marketing skills


Given my interest in Entrepreneurship I have been able to shortlist the following schools :
Wharton (Stretch school. Good for Entrepreneurship )
Ross ( Hopefully a reach school : your comments on this ?)

I intend to apply to 5 schools. I want to apply to 1 stretch school, 3 reach schools and 1 backup school. I am considering the following :

1) Columbia (Given my GMAT (lower quant score ) do you think this is a reach school ? )

2) Duke ( Higher work-ex reqs. So your opinion on my chances here. Reach school ? )

3) Dartmouth ( Reach school ? )

4) HAAS ( Higher work-ex reqs. So your opinion on my chances here. )

5) Tepper ( quant score is low for my applicant pool. So should I consider this for a safety school or a reach school ? )

I did not chose Sloan here because I would prefer a balanced curriculum. And from my understanding Sloan is very quantitative.

I am terribly sorry for such a long post. Would greatly appreciate any inputs you can provide.

Thanks.