Profile Review - Indian, Male, 28 years, CFA, Silver Medalist

Question

Hi All,

Would appreciate if the experts can evaluate my profile:

Indian, Male, 28 years, CFA, Silver Medalist 
GMAT: 680 (Q49 V35, IR5, AWA 6)

Work Experience - 6.5 years as of Dec 2019

1. Working as an Independent Consultant (self-employed) to a UK Investment Banking firm. Currently working on 6 deals looking to raise $1 million - $10 million and working on one another Indian company to divest its stake outside India. The work involves consulting and discussions with founders/ senior directors on business, due diligence, fund raising requirements and preparing pitch book, IM and interactions with investors representing the companies. The work gets more interesting since I work closely with the founders and senior management and addressing concerns of investors over companies’ operations, strategy and product from financing point of view.

2. Three Years of experience as a valuation analyst in a consulting firm 
• Lead a team of 5 analyst for valuation engagements on financial reporting and tax compliance for startup and private equity funds. Also performed valuations of complex securities for distressed/ illiquid assets and ad-hoc research based due-diligence activities
• Extensively trained, mentored and brought onto production floor, 3 MBA freshers, 1 Chartered Accountant and 1 Chartered Financial Analyst to manage valuation engagements under limited supervision 
• Handled 3 engagement partners and collaborated with managers and associates to assist in due diligence and valuation of companies through all development stages, from seed funding to pre-IPO stage. 
• Collaborated with directors to set up 2 new service offering and single-handedly setup and scaled the team to 7 members in 1 year. 
• Lead the engagement on valuation of a Canadian healthcare medicinal weed-based company for fund raising activity. Independently worked on strategic planning projects, gift tax and M&A activity.

3. Another 3 years of work ex in an MNC and an equity broking firm - covering Indian macroeconomics and banking sector and global coverage of metals and mining companies.

Academics:
• CFA Charterholder, Liberal Arts (Major - Finance, Minor - Economics; awarded BBA Hons with diploma in liberal arts) 
• Silver Medalist and was among the top 2% in academics throughout the college tenure.
• Hosted industry leaders for workshops, lectures and interviews by co-founding 2 clubs – a Management Club and an Entrepreneurship Club in collaboration with IIT and IIM alumnus. 
• Presented research papers at National Level

Extra-curricular
• Current - Art and Craft activities including designing, teaching and creating customized greeting cards, wax sculptures, oil painting, and other DIY creative activities.
• Previous - NGO activities (teaching underprivileged, organizing Global Village through AISEC, raising AIDS awareness campaigns, etc.) in college days.
• Previous - Inter-College Table Tennis (Singles) winner

Post MBA Goal
Post MBA Finance, would either like to move to Buy-side roles (VC/PE) firms or would move to consulting profile.

Which schools should I target to apply in India, Canada and US?

Thanks!

MBADecoder · Answer

Hi Rahul,

While everything else in your profile is great, this GMAT score, unfortunately, will not take you too far. Going through your past posts, I realized I have given you the same feedback two years ago, and since then your score is up by a cool 30 points. I am going to ask you to retake GMAT another time and try getting your score up to a 720+. Its a requirement for an Indian applicant targeting the top 30-40 MBA programs (assuming so) in the world.

MG4MBACrystalBall · Answer

A few thoughts on your profile evaluation  rahul0027 :
 
  The academic arc's highlight is your CFA charter. It is not clear as to the brand of your undergrad - that would dictate the overall shine, more than the Silver Medal. So make sure you bring that out well and if not very relevant, bring out the selectivity therein. On GMAT, as Namita mentioned, it would be on the lower side. One can easily add 20-30 points to a given school's average to get a sense of the Indian GMAT average. If you are done with GMAT, make sure you choose schools accordingly.  
  The professional profile looks very interesting indeed. Again, will be useful to understand the brand of your employers. You'd also have to ensure you give the right explanation for branching out as a freelancer so you get the right mileage from that. VC/PE is usually pretty tough to break into for fresh MBA grads. So make sure you've done your research well. 
  For reasons mentioned  here , we don't speculate on school selection chances. Given your CFA, you should get an exemption at Rotman for instance. Here are some more   top Canadian MBA programs  . While I don't think GMAT will be a complete deal breaker, if you think you can push it by 20+ points, definitely worth the pain of a retake. 
  The ECs arc looks ok. However, make sure you bring out the scale/impact involved. The recent art related activities are likely to have pretty limited mileage, generally speaking.

Hope this helps some.

Cheers,

MBAPrepCoach · Answer

rahul0027  I totally agree with the previous poster aside from the last point. I think what you posted for your current ECs is fantastic and something you can really leverage in additional info section on CV and hopefully in your essays (speaking about "Art and Craft activities including designing, teaching and creating customized greeting cards, wax sculptures, oil painting, and other DIY creative activities.")

I used to work as the final essay editor for a large admissions consultancy that goes to India to recruit clients. I edited hundreds of essays for them each season. Let me tell you, even if you showed leadership or impact, I got SO SICK of reading/editing essay after essay about being the captain of the cricket team (to a lesser degree, badminton team or table tennis team.) Point is, been done and there is no color to it. Will not make anyone feel anything for you.

You really want to separate yourself from the competition and showing that that you have an artistic side to yourself, would really have some stopping power. It would gain my attention. Because it is outside the norm, and shows you as someone who is multifaceted and INTERESTING. Someone I would want to chat with at a cocktail party. This is the standard.

People want to talk to interesting people, who are into all kinds of things. And people want to do business with those they know, like and trust. It's an indicator of future success.

Yes impact is critical but without showing other dimensions it can get monotonous. So, I would encourage you to help them get to know you by speaking vulnerably about your artistic passions. This will help reach adcom on an emotional level, mental level and help them open their heart to you. This is important. This is what gets admits.

All that said, retake the GMAT or take the GRE to see if that comes out better. If it doesn’t, still, wax poetic about your art endeavors and apply to schools where the GRE is not published. The test score gets you an audition but making an emotional connection with the adcom will allow you to be cast for the role.

Profile Review - Indian, Male, 28 years, CFA, Silver Medalist

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