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25 Jul 2015, 04:27
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Hey everyone,
I'd appreciate it if someone could help me get an idea of my profile and how it would look to admission committees. I'm a 27 year old Qatari male with almost 5 years of work experience. I'm planning to apply in a year and a half.
Work Experience:
Started out at a bank after graduation, 3 month internship and 6 months as a credit officer. I had to leave to help run the family business due to a family tragedy and because it was struggling. I spent 4 years running the company (mainly real estate investing and development). During this time I had a lot of opportunities to prove my leadership abilities, from negotiating with many different parties to dealing with the many problems we had to confront. However, the business is small and the situation we were in (defaulting, cutting back and reorganizing) was rather strange.
I left the family business a month ago and joined a very large bank as a performance analyst at their international division. This bank has been expanding aggressively in the Middle East and Africa.
GMAT:
1st attempt: 680 (Q45, V38, IR 4)
Education:
BSBA, major in Finance and minor in economics. GPA: 3.17. Trending upwards, bad first 2 years.
CFA Chartholder
Extracurricular:
Not much to be honest. I box and I speak 3 languages. I will hopefully get a certificate for Spanish as a second language by the end of the year and possibly one for french (4th language) before I apply. I'm also planning on joining Toastmasters soon.
I want to apply for the 2017 summer intake, which gives me about a year and a half I can work with. I sat through the GMAT this morning and its much lower than my mocks (710 Q48,V40,IR8 and 730 Q47,V44). However, its within the range of the MBA's I'm interested in (IESE, HEC, ESADE).
Should I retake the gmat? Do I have a good chance of being accepted into these universities? Is there anything I can do in the next 18 months to improve my chances? The bank I joined is semi-government (as are all the larger and more influential companies). Would that hurt my chances? I joined because of the scope of the international division and the potential in learning about an often neglected part of the world. I believe that there's a good chance I might get promoted before I apply.Thanks in advance.
I'd appreciate it if someone could help me get an idea of my profile and how it would look to admission committees. I'm a 27 year old Qatari male with almost 5 years of work experience. I'm planning to apply in a year and a half.
Work Experience:
Started out at a bank after graduation, 3 month internship and 6 months as a credit officer. I had to leave to help run the family business due to a family tragedy and because it was struggling. I spent 4 years running the company (mainly real estate investing and development). During this time I had a lot of opportunities to prove my leadership abilities, from negotiating with many different parties to dealing with the many problems we had to confront. However, the business is small and the situation we were in (defaulting, cutting back and reorganizing) was rather strange.
I left the family business a month ago and joined a very large bank as a performance analyst at their international division. This bank has been expanding aggressively in the Middle East and Africa.
GMAT:
1st attempt: 680 (Q45, V38, IR 4)
Education:
BSBA, major in Finance and minor in economics. GPA: 3.17. Trending upwards, bad first 2 years.
CFA Chartholder
Extracurricular:
Not much to be honest. I box and I speak 3 languages. I will hopefully get a certificate for Spanish as a second language by the end of the year and possibly one for french (4th language) before I apply. I'm also planning on joining Toastmasters soon.
I want to apply for the 2017 summer intake, which gives me about a year and a half I can work with. I sat through the GMAT this morning and its much lower than my mocks (710 Q48,V40,IR8 and 730 Q47,V44). However, its within the range of the MBA's I'm interested in (IESE, HEC, ESADE).
Should I retake the gmat? Do I have a good chance of being accepted into these universities? Is there anything I can do in the next 18 months to improve my chances? The bank I joined is semi-government (as are all the larger and more influential companies). Would that hurt my chances? I joined because of the scope of the international division and the potential in learning about an often neglected part of the world. I believe that there's a good chance I might get promoted before I apply.Thanks in advance.
PersonalMBACoach
Expert
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Expert reply
25 Jul 2015, 09:48
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Alpha5,
Thank you for the detailed info. Your experience is interesting, though I would want to examine it a bit more to get a sense of the story that could be told.
I would recommend retaking the GMAT if you have the time and think you could add 30-40 points.
Why are you waiting 18 months to apply? You could apply this year actually, as being older won't increase your chances of getting in, and could work in the other direction actually.
You should focus on extra curriculars. Ideally do something that ties with your overall profile and story. I'm happy to brainstorm some ideas for you as there are things you could do in a short amount of time that would help, but keep in mind quality over quantity and leadership roles.
The government bank won't hurt your chances, though it's a bit less attractive than a top tier prestigious bank.
In order to guide you a bit more, it would be good to know more about your family real estate business.
-how big was it? Revenue and profit
-biggest success stories?
-are you still doing anything for it?
Also what undergraduate school did you go to?
Feel free to email me any of this if you would rather not post publicly or if you want to talk about how I can help you get into your target schools with a customized approach.
Good luck!
[email protected]
Thank you for the detailed info. Your experience is interesting, though I would want to examine it a bit more to get a sense of the story that could be told.
I would recommend retaking the GMAT if you have the time and think you could add 30-40 points.
Why are you waiting 18 months to apply? You could apply this year actually, as being older won't increase your chances of getting in, and could work in the other direction actually.
You should focus on extra curriculars. Ideally do something that ties with your overall profile and story. I'm happy to brainstorm some ideas for you as there are things you could do in a short amount of time that would help, but keep in mind quality over quantity and leadership roles.
The government bank won't hurt your chances, though it's a bit less attractive than a top tier prestigious bank.
In order to guide you a bit more, it would be good to know more about your family real estate business.
-how big was it? Revenue and profit
-biggest success stories?
-are you still doing anything for it?
Also what undergraduate school did you go to?
Feel free to email me any of this if you would rather not post publicly or if you want to talk about how I can help you get into your target schools with a customized approach.
Good luck!
[email protected]
25 Jul 2015, 22:09
Kudos
Bookmarks
Thank you for your prompt response PersonalMBACoach. I guess I need to provide more details of my work.
The main reason I'm waiting is to be able to get proper references but I also want to try to get a raise in order to improve my CV. It would have been difficult to get references from the family business since I was the GM and everbody in the company was my employee. I could possibly get some from contractors but, since we're paying them, I'm not sure if that would be acceptable. If I didn't believe that it would hurt my chances I would have applied already.
Revenue last year was about 30 million USD, about $8M the year before and much lower the first 2 years I was there. Most of our revenue was eaten up by interest until last year when our profit was close to USD15M.
Biggest success stories? I guess during the first year I was working when I negotiated between 2 banks to transfer a loan from one bank to another with a significant discount, much better terms, and a grace period. The situation was completely under my responsibility and I was coordinating between the CEOs, Risk Managers, and real estate departments of the banks. I have other experiences coordinating with contractors and managing employees towards certain goals and projects. I'm not really doing anything for the family business at the moment.
My undergraduate university was the American Univeristy of Sharjah. It has a good reputation in the region but is unknown internationally. I know that the BSBA is accredited by the AACSB.
Thanks again for taking the time to respond.
The main reason I'm waiting is to be able to get proper references but I also want to try to get a raise in order to improve my CV. It would have been difficult to get references from the family business since I was the GM and everbody in the company was my employee. I could possibly get some from contractors but, since we're paying them, I'm not sure if that would be acceptable. If I didn't believe that it would hurt my chances I would have applied already.
Revenue last year was about 30 million USD, about $8M the year before and much lower the first 2 years I was there. Most of our revenue was eaten up by interest until last year when our profit was close to USD15M.
Biggest success stories? I guess during the first year I was working when I negotiated between 2 banks to transfer a loan from one bank to another with a significant discount, much better terms, and a grace period. The situation was completely under my responsibility and I was coordinating between the CEOs, Risk Managers, and real estate departments of the banks. I have other experiences coordinating with contractors and managing employees towards certain goals and projects. I'm not really doing anything for the family business at the moment.
My undergraduate university was the American Univeristy of Sharjah. It has a good reputation in the region but is unknown internationally. I know that the BSBA is accredited by the AACSB.
Thanks again for taking the time to respond.
. I would be willing (thrilled in fact) to apply for next year at the later rounds if I could still be competitive. I'd definately apply to a backup school or two. 
, but you can always find a partner or client, as an alternative to a boss if that is not possible.
