Hi nguyenkhoi6394,
Happy to share some thoughts on your profile. Your work experience sounds strong - the time is in line (albeit a bit on the lower side) of the typical MBA student. It will look good to be with a market leading company and have exposure in different areas of the business. Management trainee programs are well regarded because they are typically more selective and include senior leader exposure.
Your GPA is excellent and it's great you've had a bit of exposure to studying in another country. Do you have any experience on the job working with other offices/teams outside Vietnam? If so, that would be something to highlight on your resume.
Do you have any leadership in the community, in volunteer roles, or outside work? If not, that could be a weaker area to try to address (though it's hard to do with limited time).
Your GMAT score is strong, especially if you are not targeting top 20 schools. Usually you have a good chance of scholarship if your GMAT score is 30+ points above the school's average, so I think you would have pretty good chances at the schools you listed.
Seems like you are being focused and reasonable with your schools and now you just need to execute really strong applications!
Good luck,
Kate
nguyenkhoi6394
Dear all Experts,
I am a Vietnamese young professional planning to apply for MBA for Fall 2020. Would you mind having a look at my profile and give me some evaluation thoughts so that I can know which parts of my application to polish in the next few months (I am going to apply in R1)
1. Working experience
Up to now, I have 3 year working experience at Suntory Pepsico Vietnam Beverage (market leader in Beverage Market of Vietnam), first as a Management Trainee in Logistics Finance (6 months), then as a FP&A analyst (1 year) and be promoted to Finance Business Partner for Marketing Department-my current role. I also handled important Tech-led projects in my company, as a Business Intelligence/Data Analytics champion and SAP implementation project member.
During my career, I have received 2 employee awards from CFO for Business Partnership Excellence and Business Process Improvement. I was also funded by Vice President of Business Development to pursue Microsoft Professional Certificate on Data Science as a compliment for my contribution to BI initiatives within my corporate.
2. Educational background:
I graduated from a Vietnamese university (top 5 in my countries according to QS Ranking). My GPA is 3.81/4.0 (second highest in the whole School of Business of my graduating batch). I also had one semester studying at University of Limerick, Ireland under Lotus Unlimited Erasmus scholarship funded by EU.
I have also been a Certified Management Account (CMA US) since 2018.
I took GMAT last month and it is 690 (Q48,V37,IR6,AWA6). After considering all the priorities, I decided not to retake and focus on preparing application essays, re-defining my goals and sharpening my Analytics skills to grasp at upcoming opportunities instead.
3. MBA goal:
My intention is to apply for MBA programs which offer specialization in Business Analytics since my career objective is to become Business Intelligence Consultant or In-corporate Data Analyst. I do not aspire to apply for Top 10-20 given my moderate GMAT score. Top 50 is really fine to me.
My shortlisted programs are: William and Mary, University of Connecticut and University of Pittsburgh.
Considering my profile, what are my possibilities of getting a full-tuition scholarship at these MBA programs? I know that there are my factors in application that could influence my chances, besides GMAT, but I just want to have a clearer insight to know which areas I should pay attention more to before November deadline.
Thanks for any comment,