Naseef wrote:
Requesting a profile review*Background*Overview:I’m looking to bring a strong sense of purpose in my career by transitioning fully to social impact. I’ve always wanted to go into social impact full-time, but I needed to build a niche and valuable skillset before doing so. Regarding marketable skills, I feel ready now, but I need an MBA to help me transition.
Work experience:I'm currently a Product Manager in Internet Business in a Multinational Telecommunications company. I have 5.5 years of full-time experience, all in Telecommunications product management. The firm I work for is one of the top ones in my country, Bangladesh, and is a part of the 10th largest mobile network operator in the world. I've gotten regular, formal awards (Marketing Award for six quarters out of the twelve quarters of my employment till date + Employee of the month multiple times) at work and my portfolio has increased with time. I can back my achievements with solid numbers.
Some career highlights
- Successful completion of 1-month international assignment & placement in HQ
- Former Management Trainee with fast track progression to Managerial role, within only 2.5 years of my career
- Project Manager for the first telecom merger in Bangladesh
- Product Manager for Facebook's Freebasics program in Bangladesh, which focuses on giving internet connectivity to the bottom of the pyramid, launching it for the first time in my country
On the side, I'm a director at my family business which focuses on government and non-profit sector consulting. I do business advisory for non-profits, and one of these non-profits was founded by a Harvard Kennedy alum and an Oxford Said MBA alum. My area of expertise is "mobile tech & communications for development".
Extracurriculars:During my undergrad, I won multiple international & national awards in social entrepreneurship competitions. One of that was GSEC organized by the University of Washington's Foster School of Business. My team had beat out MIT in that competition. I was also awarded by Nobel Peace Laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, for winning Yunus Centre's social entrepreneurship idea competition. I've coordinated nationwide charity drives back in my undergrad, 100+ people reporting to me.
Other coursework:I finished MBA Math and I scored 100% in all of the MBA Math courses.
Nationality: Bangladeshi
Sex: Male
*Stats*GRE & TOEFL Score:My GRE total is 328, with a breakdown of 169 in Verbal, 159 in Quant, 4.5 in AW. I'm also done with my TOEFL with a 113/120.
I plan to resit the GRE to raise my Quant, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to make the time for it.
Undergrad GPA:I graduated from the best business school in my country. My alma mater has alums in top business schools all over the world, including the business schools that I plan to apply to.
My 3.13/4 CGPA (Major- Finance) is measly though. I dived into ECAs during my first two years, achieving great success at the expense of my academics. Reprioritized and did very well in academics during my third year. During my fourth year, I contracted Hepatitis E just before my final exams, and my CGPA took a nosedive. My last year’s GPA was 3/4 versus my third year’s GPA of 3.7/4. I had the choice of postponing my studies for a year or taking a bad hit to my CGPA, & I chose the latter due to financial reasons. Anyways, even after taking my horrible fourth year in account, my last two years' CGPA is 3.35/4, so there is an upward trend there.
*MBA Info*Goal of MBA:Working in social impact on the side has actually inspired me to enter social impact full-time post-MBA, perhaps joining my family's business on a full-time basis, and/or starting a sister organization to the family business focused on my area of expertise. My area of expertise, Telecommunications, is very important for social impact in my country, Bangladesh. Our internet connectivity is almost entirely mobile communications dependant.
Working in a large private organization has not given me the training I need to embark on an entrepreneurial venture or engage full-time in expanding a family business. I need an MBA to make me ready.
Thanks for the fulsome profile eval request. It’s so much easier to do these when there is more background information than just stats. Here is some feedback based on the info you provided:
If you already have a Bangladeshi network at top global business schools thanks to your undergraduate connections, milk it as much as possible. Connect with friends and their friends over linked in and have as many calls with them as possible so you can reference these conversations (along with names and alum years) in your applications. That signals to schools that you have 1). “Done the work” and 2) already have the network to be successful in business, which is especially critical in emerging markets like Banglaesh.
Don’t underestimate your EC connections. If you have been a leader in ECs that have been founded by Oxford and HKS alums, you should apply to Said and HBS and get those guys to write you rec letters if possible. You could potentially also apply to HKS as well, given your social impact aspirations, as they have consortium joint degree programs with HBS, Dartmouth Tuck, and Wharton.
You are correct that your GPA may be a headwind, especially considering your fiercely competitive demographic. However, your hepatitis story is almost tailor-made for the “do you have anything else you want us to consider about your application” type prompts that almost every business school has to potentially explain a poor GPA. Just remember that if you choose to answer that question with the hepatitis explanation behind lower grades, make sure to “get in and get out” quickly, don’t dwell on this response or get “woe is me” in your response. It should be short and sweet and to the point.
I’d worry less about your GPA if your GRE were higher. In general, you want to have GPA and GRE/GMAT on par with/higher than a school’s average. For your competitive demo, averages are often 1 or more standard deviations above the average. Still, your GPA and GRE aren’t barriers to entry, though you should try to get that GRE up if you possibly can, especially the quant, which is absurdly high for your demo. You should also attempt the GMAT. Schools like Darden (and most top tier US b-schools) accept both, so you should study for and submit the exam that you favor the most.
If you already have 5+ years of work experience post-college, I’d avoid focusing too much on your college-years for EC material on your resume and essays. You can include some of this, but if all/most of your outside-of-work leadership and achievement is college-era, then it’s going to look like a red-flag to AdComs. The good news is that it appears that you have a lot of extracurricular leadership experience since college, so you should have some ripe material to focus on there. Whatever you decide to write about re extracurricular leadership, you need to focus on YOUR INDIVIDUAL IMPACT which you should try to quantify if possible (e.g., number of people helped, funds raised, costs saved, efficiencies gained, etc.).
Social impact is a more popular pre-MBA ambition than it is a post-MBA employment reality. This is because the really good jobs in this space (e.g., corporate social responsibility gigs at large corporations, Gates Foundation, Acumen Fund, etc.) are insanely competitive. The work that *isn’t* insanely competitive is often low-paying. Another reason why Social Impact can be a hard sell to AdComs is because they are screening for imminent employability. Schools get dinged by U.S. News and World Report and Forbes and the Economist and the Financial Times rankings-wise when an increasing % of their students don’t find employment within 3 months post-graduation. They are also dinged for lower average salaries. It’s no coincidence that the schools on top of any of these tables - H/S/W - have some of the highest numbers for % employability and salaries.
The way to develop a winning Social Impact strategic positioning is to have a *tangible* plan for your career. What role in what industry and at what institution do you want to target immediately post-MBA. This is the level of specificity you need in your application. You also need to have a water-tight rationale as to why you’ll be an excellent fit for the role you are espousing interest in and what your long-term ambitions are (again, you need to be specific here) and how the immediate post-MBA goal will help you get there. It’s okay if some of your credentials for your ambitions for the future are derived from your EC work rather than your day job in telecommunications. The MBA Candidate Podcast by Adam Miller is a show that interviews non-traditional candidates (e.g. lots of social impact people) who want to go to b-school. So it’s sort of the reverse path as you. You might be interested in checking it out for some good material to write about:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/t ... 1384253032Another tactic, which I’d argue with the limited data available here might have higher rates of success than a purely social-impact focus, is to apply to b-school with a family business focus. Business schools really like family business because people who espouse this interest are imminently employable and, depending on the size and scope of the business, can be very useful for the global network. But you have to be careful with this story and not come across as seeming entitled or unqualified or making the essays about the business/founder and not about YOU (all of these are common pitfalls of family business applications). You can have your strategic positioning aligned with both your family business and ultimately social impact as well. I’ve worked on lots of essays that do this well. Family owned, private enterprises have the latitude to make more of a social impact because they aren’t beholden to quarterly earnings and wallstreet the way large corporations that your peers will be working at would be, and their investors are often more patient and involved in the local community. Just because you write about your family business interest in your essays doesn’t mean you have to work there after you matriculate, lots of people change their minds about their career plans based on the opportunities presented in business schools. The point is to get in with a story that shows you know who you are and what you want and how you are going to get it.
With 5.5 years of experience, you should apply this year all things equal. You will be on the older side if you apply next year. If you wait to apply, you won’t necessarily be disqualifying old, but the correlation between acceptance and age starts to go down around 28 yo for top American schools. International schools like Cambridge, Oxford and INSEAD have slightly higher average years of experience.
Your strategic positioning will make or break your application, especially given your super competitive demo. Keep that in mind as you sketch out how you want your branding to come off for your app. If talking to a consultant about strategic positioning (and potentially, how to marry your edge with the family business with your passion for social impact in your essays) might be helpful, feel free to sign up for a free consultation here:
https://admissionado.com/free-consultation/
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08 Jun 2020, 07:52
