Hi Paul,
My GMAT appointment is in April, but I'm anxious to know your opinion about my profile. Bear with me, this is a little long.
Indian, Female, Age 25, applying for the 2013 intake
3.5 years of work ex, 2 years in TCS and presently an associate consultant at Siemens Healthcare. Will have 5 years of experience on matriculation.
2 promotions in 3 years
Undergrad: Bachelors in Biomedical Engineering, 7.99/10 CGPA (first class), from a non IIT but well known university.
I grew up in the Middle East and then moved to India for my undergrad. Was founder and co chair of a social venture in college that conducted outreach programs to disadvantaged children. This organization continues and is in its sixth year now.
I've been in the healthcare domain for almost 4 years. At TCS, I got to do mostly IT stuff, except for four months when I handled the entire financial and project management operations for an account and received a lot of praise from my account managers.
I wanted to pursue a career in healthcare, so I took up my current job at Siemens. My career growth has been very swift here. After my first year, I was promoted and awarded Best Team Player of the year in my department. I should add that I am 1-2 years younger than my peers and I'm currently in the top 20 percent in my department of a 100+ people.
My official role is to test our product before it is shipped, but I handle a lot of responsibilities that are outside of my job description. I began mentoring new hires when I was 6 months into the job. I also give a couple of presentations from time to time. I've worked on our product from conception to shipping and I've handled 80% of our testing work by myself. I've created a couple of processes that has helped reduce our turn around time from days to a matter of hours.
I haven't been on an international assignment, but I have a multicultural team that I work with on a daily basis. I also help out my colleagues with their presentations and communication skills, and occasionally, I've sat in for my manager and taken decisions on his behalf. Also, I analyze and interpret volumes of data, so I'm very comfortable with graphs and excel sheets
I did a brief stint with an NGO that helps integrate blind people into society, and with a non profit that provides free counseling and placement services to physically and mentally challenged people. I am now working with a couple of friends to set up a social venture that provides employment to the physically challenged. I am also involved in rolling out corporate social responsibility initiatives in my department. If successful, this will be the first time in 10 years that our department will have a CSR program in place.
Other activities: I'm the breadwinner in the family. My mother decided to go back to college, and I'm supporting her with tuition and I help her out with her coursework and presentations. I also play the cello. I speak intermediate French and I'll work to make myself fluent in it once the GMAT is over.
I'm interested in healthcare product management, the roles that require a lot of marketing skills (what I want from the MBA) and technical skills (what I have). This is a natural progression for me. That said, I don't want to be pigeon holed or end up with few options and so I'm not looking at healthcare programs, but rather at your general MBA with healthcare electives.
Since I want an all round experience, Tuck is my first choice. Other colleges would be Ross, Goizueta and Fuqua. This is all assuming I get a GMAT of at least 740. But I'm concerned that these colleges are out of reach for me.
What do you think Paul? Could you also suggest any other colleges that I should look into? Sorry about the long post and thanks so much for your help!
Pru