Hi
alphaAbhishek123,
Thank you for your post and the detail you've shared. You're applying from a very crowded and competitive applicant pool, as I'm sure you're aware, but your profile does have many features that will stand out amidst that pool so long as they are articulated properly in your application, essays, and recommendations.
You work at a very well regarded and recognizable company, you have international experience with that company, your work has touched many interesting parts of the firm, and the experience aligns well with your career goals. You also seem to have active interests and extracurricular involvement.
The main challenge I see in your candidacy right now is years of work experience. Matriculating with three years of experience means that you'll be applying with only two. Two years of experience doesn't give you much time for promotions, advancement, leadership, and (non-entry level) impact.
Three years of work experience at matriculation will typically put you around the 10th percentile in terms of experience. For example, Kellogg's middle 80% for work experience is 3.5 to 7.0 years; Columbia's is 3.0 to 8.0 years; Cornell's is 3.0 to 7.0 years. (I know you didn't list those programs, but they are among the handful that actually publish the statistic, so I am citing them as reference points.) Thirteen percent of UCLA Anderson's class has 0-3 years of experience.
I generally find that candidates who will matriculate with only three years of experience are leaving upside on the table in terms of where they get in (relative to waiting one or two years to apply). In other words, most applicants will not do as well applying at that juncture as they would if they waited.
Overall, I think your strategy can very well include the schools you've listed, but I believe that only applying to those five schools would be too aggressive a strategy for you. (For what it's worth, I'd make the same comment next year or the year after, too. But that set of five is going to be especially tough when you have only two years of experience to draw upon at the point of application.) Results for male Indian engineers can be quite challenging and unpredictable, and for that reason, it's worth stretching out your range. Whether now or in the future, I encourage you to research and include some programs outside the T15 in order to balance out your strategy.
For further reading, please check out
this GMAT Club post that analyzed the results for 5,000+ Indian applicants to the top 50 programs in the U.S. There's some drill-down data related to GMAT scores, professional background, and age. You might also check out this (subjective but thorough)
"application guide" that was written for the Indian male applicant audience.
Please feel free to sign up for a Free Consultation if you'd like have a more nuanced conversation!
https://www.avantiprep.com/free-consultation.htmlBest Regards,
Greg
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23 Jun 2018, 07:09
