Profile Review/Evaluation: Which European schools to target?

Question

Hello,

I'm an Indian male applicant (age 28) with the following credentials:

1. GMAT Score - 700
2. IELTS Score - 7.5
3. Work Experience - 5 years (2 years in an IT company and 3 years & counting in the family business)
4. Co-curricular - Have a professional music band with global album release and also signed to a European record label. 16+ years of guitar playing experience.
5. Community Service - 2 years of experience in running an NGO (now defunct)
6. Graduation - Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical & Electronics with CGPA 7.8
7. Class 12th Score (+2) - 86%
8. Class 10th Score - CGPA 9.4

My short-term goal after MBA is working in a consulting firm.

Please provide both optimistic and pessimistic evaluation of my profile if possible.
I would be grateful for your suggestions on which European schools should I target and what are my chances with them respectively. Also, would like to have an overview of similar kind of American universities, although I'm more inclined towards going to Europe.

Any help is greatly appreciated and I would be extremely thankful for your valuable insights.

Thanks & Regards

mbaMissionJA · Answer

Hello! Love your musical enthusiasm here - it's clear this is an area of passion for you. It's a little hard to say which schools might fit you best (I don't even know what kind of consulting or what kind of geography might work for you in Europe...do you speak any languages other than English?), or what your chances might be since I don't know what your actual roles or companies were and what you might have accomplished there. With very limited info, I would simply say that it probably makes sense for you to search for top European MBA programs and try to discern the ones that place well into consulting in countries that fit your post-MBA plans (that have language or other requirements you can meet!), and assess your competitiveness by looking at your stats vs. the class profiles. Because you are in such a competitive and impressively-scoring cohort of applicants, your stats should be higher than the norm for your target schools to improve your chances of success. Good luck!!

Warmly,
Julie-Anne Heafey
Senior Consultant
mbaMission

Warmly,
Julie-Anne Heafey
Senior Consultant
mbaMission

metalheads7k · Answer

Hello Julie-Anne,

Thank you so much for your kind response.

Also, you are the only expert who gave me a genuine response, instead of asking for a sign up or something, so I am very grateful for this.

Coming to the open points,

1. I worked as an IT consultant in the field of Data Engineering for 2 years in TCS. Now, I have been working in my family business, which is an international marketing, sales and services company for industrial capital goods; I work in capacity of Manager (Sales & Marketing), with an experience of more than 3 years now.
2. Apart from English, I do have a beginner level proficiency in French. Also, I'm very open to learning new languages.
3. I want to go into strategy consulting or marketing consulting areas for my post-MBA career, aiming for companies like BCG, McKinsey, Bain, etc. Geography wise, I don't have a strict preference, but a European base is more preferable.

Please suggest 2-3 schools so that I can have a rough idea and understanding of the chances & the type of schools I should aim for.

Thanks & Regards
Shubham Khare

mbaMissionJA · Answer

Thanks for the reply, apologies for delay-- I share board response work with a team and am not on every day.

So whenever someone says consulting and European MBA to me, the first place my mind goes is INSEAD, but it is very competitive and you must fulfill the language requirement. You need fluent English, a secondary language on entry that's fairly strong, and a third approved language on exit that is a more basic level. This is why I was asking about languages. However, if you have Hindi or an Indian language and some basic French, that could meet the requirement. That said, anytime you are in a competitive category, you want to outperform the average stats, and its GMAT average is above your score, so this is would probably be tricky. Same for LBS.

I'd probably look for schools around the 660/680 average. What about IE, IESE, IMD, HEC? These aren't "safe" options by any means, but certainly programs that fit what you want to do and are worth investigating more. You need to demonstrate consulting-friendly skills and good leadership and impact! Good luck!

Warmly,
Julie-Anne Heafey
mbaMission

Profile Review/Evaluation: Which European schools to target?

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