Admissionado
Joined: 30 Nov 2009
Posts: 9211
Location: Chicago, IL
Schools:Brown University, Harvard Business School
Re: Profile evaluation + B school selection request.
[#permalink]
26 Oct 2018, 21:14
Hey there! Thanks for reaching out. The good news is you've got great experience, you've had meaningful impact at work, and you have strong extracurriculars. The bad news, as you probably know, is that you're coming from the toughest demographic out there when it comes to b-school applications & it's one that tends to have very high GMAT scores. In general you want to at least hit a school's average GMAT but in your case you ideally really need to exceed it since you will be compared against others from your demographic who will have higher scores. For example, if a school's average is 700, very often the average among Indian IT/engineering applicants will be more like 740 - at least in my experience & based on what I've seen. Your work experience, some strong essays/goals & some strong LORs can help compensate for that lower than ideal GMAT for sure, and I think you have a shot at many of the schools you named here, but unless you can improve your GMAT I think it's going to be pretty tough to get a scholarship unfortunately. UNC, Tepper, & Emory would all be good options to consider since they do tend to take more people from the Indian IT/engineering demographic in my experience. I agree that Stanford is going to be a VERY long shot. I'm not sure it's really worth it to be honest, especially with a 690. Your time is better spent working on applications where you have a better shot at it so you can apply to 5-6 schools R2. LBS, INSEAD Singapore are a bit of a stretch but worth a shot, and you have a solid shot at Rotman, Ivey, and ESADE. Top 10 US programs will all be a stretch so I'd focus more on schools like UNC, Tepper & Emory like I said. Hope that helps!