Profile Evaluation / Indian / Male / 24 Yrs

Question

Hi,
I'd be really obliged if you could evaluate my profile and suggest the B-schools that I should aim for.

Origin : Indian,Male,24

GMAT : Scheduled on 23rd Aug 2013. Targeting a score of 700.

Education: B.Tech (Engg) in Instrumentation and Control
GPA: 3.7 out of 5 (73.5 %)
12th: 79%
10th: 84%

Work Experience:

Till date: 23 Months In Wipro Technologies as a Java-J2EE Dev (IT)
Till September 2014: 3 Years
Clients worked for : Citibank USA (Retail-Mortgage Industry)
No international exposure but frequent telephonic conversations with Onshore team member as well as client.
Responsibilities:
1.Part of the team responsible for Enhancement of Citimortgage . com and Mortgage Assessment Tool (an internal tool used by citi employees).
2.Given KT (Knowledge Transfer),technical as well as Project based(Mortgage and related terms), to new joiners.
3.Given the responsibility of conducting POCs (Proof of Concept) and Presentations by the Manager and subsequently gave POCs and presentations to the Delivery head and Clients.
4.Independently worked on a module (including estimation,development and delivery).

I have also established a PVT LTD company of my own (with 2 more friends of mine) under which I am about to launch a website(nation-wide) related to Internal Job Postings.
The website is in the development phase(outsourced).
I also help my father on Weekends in his business,a readymade garments’ showroom which employs 8 salesmen. I also introduced a new bonus system for the salesmen as opposed to the standard market norm, positively affecting the business.

LOR: from Supervisor-who is now pursuing MS in Computer Science from Urbana Champaign and from the Delivery Head of my current project (Citibank). To be reviewed by a professional

Extra Curricular : 
Co-Director, Event Management for IEEE branch of my college.
Part of the college football team for 2 years.
Captained the school football team for 2 years and won bronze at zonal level.
Active participation in quizzes at both-school as well as college level.

Post MBA Goal: Finance (Investment Banking)

I have shortlisted the below mentioned schools. Could you tell me what are my chances of getting selected to these colleges?
Stretch : Carnegie Mellon,ISB, McCombs, Kenan-Flagler, Rotman
Competitive : Schulich(York), Urbana Champaign, Richard-Ivey, Fisher, Mays,Georgia Tech, Carlson, Rice,Wash U. (Olin)
Safe: Boston College (Carroll), Purdue

I understand this is a long list(and my experience is on the lower side) hence, I am looking forward to your guidance to help me shortlist a correct mix of B-schools(like 1 stretch school, 2-3 competitive schools and 2 safe schools) to apply in R1 for Fall 2014 admissions.

I am open to other B schools and geographies.

Also, as ISB deadline is near, I wish to apply in R2 for same. Does my application stand an equal chance as R1 in R2?

Thanks in advance for your time.

essaysnark · Answer

Hey GmatAspirant25 - you took the GMAT yesterday, correct? Please report back with your score and we'll look at your profile and dive into your questions.

The GMAT isn't everything, but having this datapoint will help immensely in seeing what your options could be.

Hope you nailed the test!!

EssaySnark

GmatAspirant25 · Answer

Hi

Yes, I have taken my GMAT..i scored 700.. Quant 48..Verbal 38..
Kindly look into my profile and suggest B-Schools I should apply to, where I have a realistic chance of getting through.

essaysnark · Answer

Hey GmatAspirant25 - well it's actually impossible for us or anyone to say which schools someone has "a realistic chance of getting through" based on only information posted in a short thread on an Internet forum - we're not trying to be cagey, just trying to set expectations. A lot goes into the bschool admissions evaluation process and we can't get nearly enough information here to say what your chances are (we have a whole post on the EssaySnark blahg about this from awhile back in case you like to read rants :-)

). You already got a bunch of feedback from some other consultants and we have to agree with what they've been saying. You're on the young side for a top MBA program and the bulk of your work experience is in the difficult-to-position computer programming field. You have a lot of other stuff going on that may be enough to demonstrate your readiness for an MBA - the entrepreneurial experiences are good and if you have some good results to show from the jobs posting website and/or your contributions to your father's business, then both of those could help. But we have to caution you that a lot of this looks exceedingly standard compared to what other people in your demographic pool are also reporting. Your GMAT is lower than what most successful Indian engineer applicants report (720 is the average) and we're not sure where you came up with that 3.7 GPA - did you get your 73.5% and the transcripts evaluated by WES or something? We have no idea if that 3.7 is in range, we don't know what school you went to and you need to be conservative about using anything but the original marks that the school itself has reported. You've also got some red flags - you said something about having the letter of recommendation that your boss is going to write "reviewed by a professional" - that is moving into danger territory in terms of ethics, the bschools really (really really really) don't like it when there's consultant involvement in the recommendations. Recommendations need to be written by the recommender. Be very careful how you navigate that situation, it's possible to cross the line and get too much help on it. On the goals... transitioning into IB is a VERY big leap. You want to go to the best school you can if you want to make this happen - but it's hard to see how the top schools are going to respond to you at the moment. The programmer -> finance thing can work but man is it a challenge to pull off. Again not trying to discourage you, just being honest. Goals are a key criteria that many schools use to evaluate the candidacy so you need to map those out. We can't advise on whether you're competitive to any of these schools or not since it all depends on how you put the apps together and what stories you can present in the essays - that matters A LOT. You seem to have some raw material that might work for you but it's the presentation that counts, and some of this just looks very very similar to what we see from so many others. We're not saying that to discourage you, only so you recognize the challenges you're up against. If you've never been outside of India then that's making it difficult in some respects too. We wrote a whole book to help candidates with your profile understand what they're up against and what they can do to make their apps stronger - The Indian's Guide to Getting In - you might want to check it out. Hope somewhere in there you're finding some encouragement - we don't mean to give a whole Debbie Downer type of response but there are some obstacles that you need to be aware of. Given how young you are, you may want to buckle down for more studying and re-do the GMAT. We have a post on the ISB and rounds on the blahg too (sorry, that one is behind the paywall, there's others available for free though). This process is not easy - keep at it and you'll end up somewhere good - but you do have some work ahead of you!!! EssaySnark

Profile Evaluation / Indian / Male / 24 Yrs

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