Profile Evaluation - 25 , female , India , communications background

Hi there, Thanks for reaching out! A lot is going to depend on the extent to which you have been able to drive tangible results at work & for your clients. Your quant score will also be important, especially since you are coming from more of a "soft skills" background. If your quant score is low, it might be worth taking a business-focused quant course (e.g. finance or statistics) to demonstrate that you recognize it as a weakness & are working on it to ensure you'll be up for the rigors of b-school. And like I said, they will want to know what you've accomplished at work & the extent to which you've been able to demonstrate business skills there. Unfortunately, writing is not something they'll place a ton of value on. Good communication is important of course, but they'll want to ideally see you doing work that has directly impacted the bottom line. It will also be important to ideally be able to speak to your leadership experience, whether at work or outside of it.

Finally, I'd consider revisiting your post-MBA goals. Consulting is one of the most common goals, which makes it hard to differentiate yourself, and most consulting firms are focused on larger companies since very few start ups can afford a consulting firm. PE firms tend to be the ones consulting (and offering funding) to start ups. Entrepreneurship can work as a LT goal but it's also a tough one. You don't need a fully fleshed out business plan, but you do need to be able to explain the basics of what your company will do, what unmet need you'll fill/what problem you'll solve, who your customers will be & how you'll compete with the existing players out there. Most people don't have an idea that's that fleshed out, and even if they do it can be hard to convince the adcom that they'll be able to compete with existing companies who will likely be going after this same idea (assuming it's a good one) but with more resources behind them. Post-MBA goals are critical since your argument for why you need the MBA rests on them -- so you need to be as specific & as clear as possible. And, like I said, they're also an important way that you can differentiate your application. Given your background in marketing, brand management or marketing might be a better post-MBA option to speak to in your application since you'll have some advantage there and since you can speak to the challenges you've witnessed firsthand in your experience so far. It's hard to say for sure without knowing more about you, but that's just some food for thought as you think through your goals. Adcom also LOVE family business applicants -- I'm not sure if there is any aspect of your father's business that is of interest to you but if so that would be something to seriously consider & would give your candidacy a boost for sure.

All of that said, given what you've shared here I think you have a shot at the schools you named, but that assumes very strong essays & strong accomplishments at work. It would be a good idea to round out your list with a few additional lower ranked schools (more in the range of Tepper). Depending on where you land with your goals other schools might be good targets as well (since they may have a specialty that maps to your goals) but I think you are generally in the right range - I'd just round out the bottom a bit to include some more schools in the 15-20 range since those schools in the 10-14 range will be a bit more of a stretch. Columbia is worth including but will be more of a stretch as well.

If you need any help thinking through your strategy & your story definitely reach out to us. If you email Claudia at claudia@admisionado.com she can set you up with a free consultation with one of our MBA consultants who can take a look at your resume & give you some more detailed thoughts!