Can you please evaluate my profile.

Question

Dear Admission consultants,

I request you to please spare some time to evaluate my profile.

male, 24, Indian
GMAT : 690 (Q50, V33) (86%) Awa 3.5 IR 4
CGPA: 6.59/10 ( NIT - Warangal - One of the top 10 institutes of India, at the time of study ) 
Work Exp: 2 years 8 months 
Software Developer in world's one of the best CVAS company - OnMobile Global ltd.
School - 80.6% (CBSE)
Jr. College - 91.8% (BIE AP)

Note : Studied Engineering in Mechanical Engineering and pursued career in Computer Science Software Development.

Professional achievements:
Initiated and developed a new platform independent Tool - Increasing the productivity of whole team by a third.
Initiated and created a new tool for security management in cross platform teams using a self thought framework ( different from what i work in)
Took complete end-end handling of a product , from development phase to deployment and development of new features in the same from start.

Jr College achievements:
Secured All India -3589 rank out of 12L students appeared for AIEEE.
School Achievements:
Secured All India 7th rank in Inter KV Math Olympiad.
Placed in Top 1% of Physics Astronomy Olympiad.

Extracurricular Activities:
Self thought - Tennis , Table Tennis ,and Badminton player. 
Charity NGO - Teaching orphaned high school kids on life skills and sciences.
Freelanced teaching for college students.

I am considering these schools for Fall 2017 in Marketing.
Can you please throw some light on what all colleges i can apply for and have chance to get scholarships in the same.
Am planning to write GMAT again in 2 weeks. - aiming to score 720+ .

Thanks you,
Aditya

EduSimplified · Answer

Hi Aditya, Your have a good profile in making. Here are my concerns 1. GMAT score is good not great. Especially if you're looking to get a scholarship its low. Also you're atypical candidate from India, hence, more competition in your pool. Concentrate a little on IR too. 2. Your work ex of 2 years 8 months, is that till June 2017 or till Aug' 2018 ? If former then your work ex is too low. If latter its still low but manageable. Basically, you need to have your Why MBA now ? part very strong. 3. You will need to display leadership in your profile. Your job is a technical one but still possible. You're also looking to switch your industry, function and geography in your career. This is not advisable. 4. There is a slight disconnect for a mechanical engineer to work in software but I don't think it'll matter that much. 5. Your extra curricular activities are very good. And if you are presently involved in NGOs and teaching children then its really good. 6. I think you omitted to mention your target schools. But if you get a 720+, you can get into most b-schools in US. Depending on your post MBA goals you should shortlist your schools. Don't just go by ranking. I find the below rankings useful to sort schools on the basis of specialisation. https://www.topmba.com/mba-rankings/spe ... /marketing Hope this helps. Good Luck. Best,

VeritasPrepDozie · Answer

Thanks for sharing your profile. What are your career goals? Not sure I missed them but would help in giving some reccs. You will need to improve your GMAT is you are aiming for top programs, as coming from your demo it will be tough to break through especially if you are looking for a scholarship

MG4MBACrystalBall · Answer

Echoing a few of the thoughts here and a few different perspectives Aditya:
 
  It is good that you have tried to articulate your professional accomplishments. Push this further to really explain the business impact of these now. It will also be important to create a good seamless post-MBA plan. 'Marketing' alone doesn't explain much.  
  The NIT pedigree is great but the GPA means you have to do that much more on the GMAT front. So buckle up. 
  The ECs sound ok but it will be good to understand the next level there. Only teaching for instance has lesser relevance compared to say some organizational stuff. It will also be important to know the time period of these as well as whether you've represented college/company on any of those sports.  
  For reasons mentioned  here , we do not speculate on school selection. In general though, focus on differentiating from the large applicant pool you are up against. Scholarships are even tougher to predict but in general, lower you target, better are the prospects for it.

Hope this helps some.

Cheers,

jeffreyadcom · Answer

This is typical Indian IT profile without an iota of inclination towards business management. At best, you could aspire for project manager roles, with your current profile. I see no reason why you want to rush headlong into an MBA and get back to project manager role, at may be a software product company. I am guessing you'd be at an Indian IT services firm now.

Unless it is M7 MBA and you'd do enough over the next two years (like getting a complete CFA certification before applying for MBA) I see no scope for career diversification post MBA. Don't look at ISB; no point.

GMAT also needs serious scaling up of atleast 50+ points.

Nightmare007 · Answer

Hi,

I am not looking for project manager roles in an IT firm. My interest lies with Marketing degree. I want to rush headlong into an MBA to switch the career from an IT developer to marketing sector, which interests me long before i joined the firm. I am not interested in Finance side so i don't think CFA gonna help me. I am looking for top 50 b-schools, as i am aiming for a higher score this time around. Hope it helps me to some extent. Thank you for your advice. I have read the previous comments on this post which inspired me to get a better score and improve my ECs and showcase my leadership qualities. I even quit my job for this sake. Your post gave me a motivation and showed me exact position with respect to others. Thanks a lot.

Thank you all for your advice i will keep them in mind.

Aditya

AugustAcademy · Answer

Hi Aditya, I'm probably going to repeat what you know here - but sometime's that's alright

As an Indian candidate, you do belong to a competitive pool - and your particular work profile (IT/Software development) is quite overrepresented even within this pool. In general, this would mean that your application will become a GMAT driven game. With a 720, but a fairly typical profile otherwise, I would look at schools in the US top 35/40. This is assuming you are able to do good research about your career goals (marketing will not work - pm me/email me/set up an appointment to talk to me - to understand why), and you are capable of holding a good conversation at the interview. If your communication skills are weak, you will be solely dependent on your GMAT, and so might have to target lower ranked schools as well. About scholarships - please read through this article about scholarships on our blog to see if it makes sense. Best wishes, Karthik

Nightmare007 · Answer

Hi, 
This is my updated profile in clarification to the above discussions. 
Right now am aiming for 740 in the GMAT that i am writing on 12th of july.

BV Raghavendra Aditya
 ********* - ******-****,
Hyderabad, Telangana, India 500088
 (+91) *** **** ***
 **********@gmail.com
EDUCATION
National Institute of Technology, Warangal, India
(India’s 7th best College for Engineering at the time of study)
B.Tech, Mechanical Engineering – 2010-2014
Won Intra Branch Badminton Competition.
Captain of winning team in CS 1.6 in 2010 against other universities.
Self-learned Badminton, Tennis, and Table tennis player.
CGPA – 6.59 /10.
Vijaya Ratna Junior College, Hyderabad
MPC Stream – 91.8%.
•Secured All India 3589 rank in AIEEE, out of 12 Lakh appeared.
Kendriya Vidyalaya No.1 Uppal, Hyderabad
Percentage - 80.6%
•Attained All india 7th rank in Inter KV math Olympiad.
•Placed in All India Top 1% in physics Astronomy Olympiad.

EXPERIENCE
OnMobile Global Ltd. – Software Engineer Trainee (July 2014 to December 2014)
•Handled Graphic user interface for the products.
•Managed Presentations and Seminars with other departments.
•Handled Documentations for products for external clients.
OnMobile Global Ltd. – Software Engineer (December 2014 to February 2017)
•Created an interactive model that segregates the modules for one complete project. 
•Initiated and Developed Flexible Independent simulator of Credit Management (GRIFF, PACKS, and PRISM) from scratch for the in-project DAIUS Team, a work that drastically decreased the time of development and enhanced the productivity of whole team
•Managed a complete project from development phase to deployment phase, includes development code, presentations to other departments, Design Documentations, and product documentations for external clients.
•Flexibility at work:
 - Studied Mechanical Engineering and joined Technology Development team.
 - Trained on one platform (Eclipse, java, MONGO, MARIA) and worked on self-learned another platform (VS, ASP.NET, C#, and Ms-SQL).
 - Took initiative and handled other products in absence of their developers who withdrew from company.
•Took responsibility and Managed code cleaning and error handling for all the products.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
•Hobbies: Badminton, Tennis, Table tennis, Video Games, Teaching, and reading web novels.
•Community Service: Volunteered for various charity funds, Active volunteer for Bhumi an NGO organization to teach unprivileged children of life skills and sciences.

GMAT SCORE
Total Verbal Quant AWA IR 
690(86%) 33(69%) 50(87%) 3.5(13%) 4(40%)

Nightmare007 · Answer

Hi,
 Yeah am not planning for top 15 b-schools. I am better with top 50. Wherein after completing the course which i love, i can expect decent placements. I left my job on Feb 28th 2017. So basically 2 years 8 months of experience is till 28th Feb 2017.

Thank you.

AugustAcademy · Answer

You'll be able to do better than a top 50 with a 740. Please feel free to get in touch once you are done.

Best wishes,
Karthik

ag111 · Answer

Get into Marketing role (if you can go with big brand even better!) as soon as you are done with gmat. Career gap is a big red flag not just in admissions but also when you are job hunting post MBA.

You can then explain the short duration gap stating that you were looking for Marketing roles as that is where you see your future career and hence you took risk and quit your current job. Moreover as you worked in this domain you realized the need to get MBA for a structured learning. I think such a story will tie up well and make sense for your application essays which will be deal breaker for you in top 20- 30 us schools.

Right now you do not have the content to make a case for your significant step change. In US i have realized it in not so easy to persuade - "hey i am smart let me in!" but rather " show them your professional achievements in same domain". The schools are apprehensive regarding internationals employbility and do not want themselves to be in a bad spot where their grad could not find a job.

You may also want to try top indian 1 yr programs.

Good luck!

Sent from my iPhone using GMAT Club Forum

amanvermagmat · Answer

Experts have given you good advice. May I also suggest to focus a bit on your AWA also in your prep for the upcoming GMAT.
Since you are from India (like me), English is not your mother tongue, and communication/logical clarity of thoughts/presentation is an important part of life, not just business. So an AWA score of 3.5 might hurt you somewhere.

May be practice a few AWAs based on expert advice from MGMAT etc. You should target a score of 5 or 5.5 in AWA I think.

Can you please evaluate my profile.

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