Profile Evaluation: Indian 25Y F/ 740 GMAT

Hi mkv30,

Thank you for your post. I think you have a very solid foundation across academics (GMAT and GPA); professional advancement and impact (though I'd love to know where you've worked and more details about what you've done within those jobs... both for clarity purposes, and to begin to understand where the value may lie in your professional experiences); and extracurriculars. Here are a few additional thoughts:

REGARDING INSEAD

INSEAD is a fine target... challenging but in range. You're a little bit on the lower end of the age and work experience curve for INSEAD (average age 29, average work experience six years), so if you do wish to apply there this year, I would encourage you to be proactive about highlighting your leadership, experience, etc., and strategizing with your recommenders to do the same (professional maturity, etc.). To be completely candid, your chances at INSEAD would likely increase if you were to apply in a year or two. But if you have it in your sights to apply this year, we can definitely discuss how to be proactive about these things.

CAREER GOALS, WHY MBA, WHY XYZ SCHOOL

I would also encourage you to develop the specificity of your goals, as "operations/marketing/consulting" is rather undefined and captures a whole slew of industries all at once. Your applications and essays will ultimately need to convey super-specific, logical, and coherent career goals. Not only what industry you hope to work in, but what company(ies), what teams within those companies, what roles within those teams, and why? What projects do you hope to work on and impact do you hope to have? What knowledge, skills, and experience do you already have that are relevant to these goals? What knowledge, skills, and experience are you missing and therefore need to acquire via an MBA? How *exactly* are you going to acquire these things through each program to which you apply? And what unique contributions can you, in turn, make to those programs?

[You can read more about how to think through several of these topics here: https://www.avantiprep.com/blog/the-mos ... on-process]

IR SCORE

The IR score isn't ideal, but it's not the end of the world either. Whether you address it directly depends in part on whether you are targeting earlier deadlines this application season. If you do wish to apply soon, then you can go with what you have, as your time would best be focused on producing the best applications possible, and you can look for other ways to proactively buttress / convey your problem solving and reasoning abilities (again, both in your parts of the applications and in your recommendations). (If you end up deciding to apply in a future year, then you might consider taking the opportunity to button that up, which would simultaneously give you the chance to pull another 10 or 20 points out of your sleeve!)

HAPPY TO CHAT

Hope this helps. If you would like to further the conversation, please feel free to email me at greg@avantiprep.com or sign up for a Free Consultation here: https://www.avantiprep.com/free-consultation.html. We can cover a lot more ground, with a lot more nuance, via a back-and-forth conversation. We can also discuss schools with greater specificity; that's a little tough to answer here when the professional goals that you shared span a few different industries. So please feel free to reach out!

Best Regards,
Greg