Profile evaluation request+Suggest suitable B school

Question

Hi,

I would like to have your valuable inputs on some top notch International B schools that would best fit my profile. Please note that  I am targeting for only 1 year MBA programs  since I cannot afford to stay out of job for 2 years.

Name: Santosh Panda 29Y / Male
Citizenship: INDIA
Qualification: B.E in EEE - 74.5% (75% is the score for distinction in university) Converting to GPA may skew the results since my university followed percentage grading system. I was in the top 20% of my engineering class, and stood overall 2nd in my Highschool.

Work Exp.: 7+ years in Telecom software development industry. I worked for Motorola Inc. and now the same division is acquired by Nokia Siemens Networks. I am working as a senior R&D Engineer (R&D Engineer-2) in NSN. Both the companies are conglomerates in telecom domain with solid business foundations and huge revenues.
Since mine is a pure product development industry, the team sizes are usually smaller and roles are mostly individual contributor with more focus on R&D. I worked as team lead managing a small team and had been to US for technical discussion and project integration activities in the past. In terms of international exposure, I have limitation on the number of years I spent onsite, however my entire experience involves constant interaction with International teams ranging from, USA,Germany, Japan and Israel. And due to the advancement of technology the interaction had been through video conf calls etc.

As a team, ours was the only team which gave year on year profit of 500% in entire business of Motorola. Success was all due to the best practices put in place by our day to day learning from existing processes. And yes as an active member of the team I had my contributions in this achievement. Owning up critical issues, stretching into extended hours to mentor juniors and to ensure no slippage from any component were my contributions. Our team has the record of not missing a single deadline for deliverable. Can all these be projected as professional leadership qualities? Do I need to highlight on more specific examples? In fact I won two recognition awards for showing exemplary contribution to help the team achieve its goal.

Extracurricular Activity:
Member of YFS (voluntary organization focused towards encouraging more number of young professionals towards volunteering) since last 2 years. Working on generating awareness and raising funds for different activities undertaken.

Member of CSR group of my company since day 1 of my career. Working towards utilizing e-waste (old computers, printer etc) from office in small schools which lack such infrastructure.

Panelist in cafeteria committee of the organization to decide on vendor appointment. Won an award in Motorola for generating employee satisfaction towards office cafeteria. (Don't know whether this actually counts as extra-curricular or not)

Expectations from the MBA: Want to utilize my experience to shape my career in internationalization of small product organizations. I want to utilize my current skills to help organizations which have a vision to ride the path of a product development company. For that reason I wish to learn more about technology management and internationalization of businesses. I will be focusing on schools which have a specialization in these concentrations. I have done some prelim research on schools and targeting:

Emory University: Goizueta
Cornell University: Johnson
Carnegie Mellon: Tepper - 16months early graduation
IE Business SchoolFeatured business school
GISMA 
ESADE Spain
Babson MBA Program
IIMs in India

Please let me know if any other schools I can target for. I am less confident about the top 20 US B schools since my GMAT is on the low side considering the Indian IT Male profile.

In the hindsight, one of the motivations for thinking about an MBA at this time is: 
Since many of the employees in my industry are long timers, who focus more on technology side and have grown up the ladder with the number of years spent in same organization. But the situation is no longer the same for employees similar to me, since these kind of organizations slowly become stagnant at the top, due to less attrition and challenging growth potential. Hence Even though work experience and compensation continue to grow, the chances of getting into a role where impact of my decision on the business as a whole is very less. That is the reason why I want to do an MBA and break away from the tech growth ladder into a more decision making role in a technical organization. In a technical role the decision making is limited to product design, concepts etc. However the actual decisions which make or break a business are taken mostly in board rooms.
How do I put forth this reasoning in a more seasoned manner? Is this a valid reason for doing an MBA? Honestly this is one of the driving forces for me to do an MBA. I think switching to another company, proving my mettle and expecting a bigger role is definitely a very long term scope.

Long term goals  for me is an extension to the limitations I am facing at current job. Also my desire to start up a company is getting obstructed due to lack of confidence and lack of networking. I feel an MBA will provide the necessary exposure which I am unable to get from my current role, plus the networking (with alumni) I would make will definitely help in the long run. Once I work for some time in some organizations which are getting into product development or product management business, I wish to capitalize on this experience and get into a business of consulting/guiding more number of start-ups entering into this field. How can this idea be made more elaborate for the adcom?

GMAT 1 - 600(Q47,V27)/ 6.0 AWA
GMAT 2 - 710(Q49,V38)/ AWA (yet to obtain)

Thanks in advance for your inputs,

-Santosh

sanjuro9 · Answer

1. Don't bother with converting your GPA. Almost all schools that you will apply to will be aware of your countries scoring methods.
2. GMAT is low for Indian, Male, IT pool of applicants. Are you considering retake or will you apply with this score. You can still have a fair chance at many top schools, but a stronger GMAT will give the adcom one less reason to ding you.
3. What's the reputation of the company you work for in India. Is it a global Fortune 50 conglomerate or relatively less-known software company? How many people on an average apply to business school from your company in a year? This would define how well the company and the work you do is known to the adcom.
4. You don't have to manage 50 people to demonstrate leadership. What differences have you made when you managed that small team? Did your team achieve any stellar results? This will define your professional leadership experience.
5. YFS - what kind of awareness did you raise? Did you recruit many new volunteers, increase the organization size by two-fold? What impact did you have as part of CSR. These are some thoughts for you to position your leadership outside work.

6. The short-term goal is not defined properly. You yourself have mentioned that the growth doesn't necessarily require an mba. Before you prepare that application, you need to clearly define why you need an MBA right now. You need to be able to answer that you can't work another year without an mba. Just saying that you need a promotion will work against your application.

7. Long-term goal is completely vogue. Why you need an mba for that? What kind of benefit are you looking to provide? What prevents them from not getting that benefit now?

If you ultimately wish to work in India, your best bet will be top 5 in US and the ones you have mentioned in India. The rest of the top 20 have too few alumni, too few interest from current students to recruit in India. If you wish to work in US, do look at great schools along with top-10 such as Emory, McCombs, Georgetown, Cornell, USC, UCLA, Wake Forest, Oxbridge in UK, McGill, Schulich, York in Canada.

Hope this helps.

santu71182 · Answer

Thank you for the time you spent on my profile and feedback like this would definitely help me to come up with a better application. Some more questions and explanations from my end:

2. GMAT is low for Indian, Male, IT pool of applicants. Are you considering retake or will you apply with this score. You can still have a fair chance at many top schools, but a stronger GMAT will give the adcom one less reason to ding you.

Is there any distinction made between applicants from services based industry and applicants from products based industry? Are both considered as IT pool as a whole? I am less likely to sit for another attempt, since it requires substantial time (1-2 months of dedicated study) which is tough for me to take out from the tight schedule of project.

3. What's the reputation of the company you work for in India. Is it a global Fortune 50 conglomerate or relatively less-known software company? How many people on an average apply to business school from your company in a year? This would define how well the company and the work you do is known to the adcom.

I worked for Motorola Inc. and now the same division is acquired by Nokia Siemens Networks. To my knowledge both are conglomerates in telecom domain. Considering number of people doing MBA from Motorola or NSN, definitely the number would be low. More on this in point #6

4. You don't have to manage 50 people to demonstrate leadership. What differences have you made when you managed that small team? Did your team achieve any stellar results? This will define your professional leadership experience.

As a team, ours was the only team which gave year on year profit of 500% in entire business of Motorola. Success was all due to the best practices put in place by our day to day learning from existing processes. And yes as an active member of the team I had my contributions in this achievement. Owning up critical issues, stretching into extended hours to mentor juniors and to ensure no slippage from any component were my contributions. Our team has the record of not missing a single deadline for deliverable. Can all these be projected as professional leadership qualities? Do I need to highlight on more specific examples?

6. The short-term goal is not defined properly. You yourself have mentioned that the growth doesn't necessarily require an mba. Before you prepare that application, you need to clearly define why you need an MBA right now. You need to be able to answer that you can't work another year without an mba. Just saying that you need a promotion will work against your application.

Since many of the employees in my industry are long timers, who focus more on technology side and have grown up the ladder with the number of years spent in same organization. But the situation is no longer the same for employees similar to me, since these kind of organizations slowly become stagnant at the top, due to less attrition and challenging growth potential. Hence Even though work experience and compensation continue to grow, the chances of getting into a role where impact of my decision on the business as a whole is very less. That is the reason why I want to do an MBA and break away from the tech growth ladder into a more decision making role. In a technical role the decision making is limited to product design, concepts etc. However the actual decisions which make or break a business are taken only in board rooms.
How do I put forth this reasoning in a more seasoned manner? Is this a valid reason for doing an MBA? Honestly this is one of the driving forces for me to do an MBA. I think switching to another company, proving my mettle and expecting a bigger role is definitely a very long term scope.

7. Long-term goal is completely vogue. Why you need an mba for that? What kind of benefit are you looking to provide? What prevents them from not getting that benefit now?

Long term goals for me is an extension to the limitations I am facing at current job. Also my desire to start up an avenue is getting obstructed due to lack of confidence and lack of networking. I feel an MBA will provide the necessary exposure which I am unable to get from my current role, plus the networking I would make will definitely help in the long run. How can this idea be made more elaborate for the adcom?

Please help me in finding answers to these questions. Though these questions require more introspection, but I am more of confused rather than not confident. Hence I am seeking help of this forum to identify what I actually need out of this MBA. How do I trigger my thought process? How do I justify whatever I have done till now? All these questions I need the forum's help in finding an answer.

sanjuro9 · Answer

all the stories you have mentioned definitely demonstrate leadership at work.

its ok for the goals to be not very specific. after all, who the heck knows what we will be doing 5-10 years from now. but your reasons for mba needs to sound very convincing and at the moment, they don't.

pm me with your personal email id if you have specific questions.

good luck

iamblue91 · Answer

Hello,

Before I go into a great amount of detail, I was wondering if this is an appropriate place to write my profile of my competitiveness for MSc programmes or if there are alternatives on GMAT club?

Profile evaluation request+Suggest suitable B school

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